In 1941, Joseph P. Kennedy was replaced as the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, for favoring Natzi policies.

 He without consulting FDR, announced we should stay out of the war abandoning England to Adolf Hitler, one of the most brutal leaders ever to have walked the earth.

He was succeeded by John Gilbert Winant, much beloved by all Britishers for his steadfast loyalty and profound empathy, unlike his much disliked predecessor.

  The term Blitz, the bombing Britain suffered from September 7, 1940 called Black Saturday, to May 11, 1941 is from the word blitzkrieg, German for lightening war.

More than 500 planes from the formidable German air force, coined the Luftwaffe, dropped an estimate of 700 bombs killing 15,000 people destroying roughly 11,000 homes.

7,736 children were killed.

In 1938, the British government presciently issued everyone, including babies, gas masks, to protect them from poisonous gas.

A group of children wearing theirs.

 Winston Churchill, England’s Prime Minister during WWII, after a raid, would walk through bombed out neighborhoods bolstering the English people in the hopes of keeping morale high. 

 One can’t even imagine what it had to be like. 

German Shepherds were renamed Alsatians, because aside from hating anything German, Hitler owned one. 

 The Murrow Boys were a group of radio broadcast journalists at CBS, specially selected by their esteemed peer Edward R. Murrow during World War 11,

fearlessly stationed across Europe, bringing hands-on news via CBS radio.

This is London, was Murrow’s signature opening before each broadcast, ending with, good night and good luck, a phrase Londoners used to end their conversations when they were not certain they’d see each other the next day, that could be their last.

  Romance ran rampant heightened by the threat of imminent death.

  Murrow and Winant, both married men, had passionate love affairs while in London.

  Murrow with the then Pamela Churchill, wife of Winston’s son Randolph, Winant, his daughter Sarah.

 Neither would end happily. Sarah refusing John’s marriage proposal that led once the war was over, to take his own life at 58.

 Mrs. Churchill was crestfallen when Murrow returned to his wife Janet, pregnant with their son Casey.

 She and her husband would divorce in 1945.

When you choose peace, it comes with lots of good byes…Maisie Dobbs…The America Agent 

 The Blitz ended in mid-May 1941, when much of the German air force was sent east to prepare for the invasion of Russia. The threat of a German invasion of Britain was over. But it took almost 15 years before Londoners even had a semblance of what life was like before.

 In years to come, men will speak of this war and say, “I was a soldier,” “I was a sailor,” or “I was a pilot. Others will say with equal pride, “I was a citizen of London.” 

 Journalist Eric Severeid, October 1940

Suggested reading:

The Murrow Boy: Pioneers of the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism…Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson (1996) 

Citizens of London…Lynne Olson (2010)

The Splendid and The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During The Blitz. …Erik Larson (2020) 

SB