Understanding Society
The Blitz
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Frederick Lindemann expected bombed cities to confirm Gustave Le Bon’s bleak theory of the crowd. In Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, Doug recounts the psychiatrists Lindemann sent to Birmingham and Hull — and the conclusion they printed in capitals: ‘There is no evidence of breakdown of morale.’ Lindemann disregarded their findings and assured Winston Churchill that bombing civilians remained an effective strategy.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
“‘British society became in many ways strengthened by the Blitz,’ a British historian later wrote. ‘The effect on Hitler was disillusioning.’
When put to the test, the theories put forth by Gustave Le Bon could hardly have been further off the mark. Crisis brought out not the worst but the best in people. If anything, the British moved up a few rings on the ladder of civilization. ‘The courage, humor, and kindliness of ordinary people,’ an American journalist confided in her diary, ‘continue to be astonishing under the conditions that possess many of the features of a nightmare.’
These unexpected impacts of the German bombing sparked a debate on strategy in Britain. As the Royal Air Force prepared to deploy its own fleet of bombers against the enemy, the question was how to do it most effectively.
Curiously, given the evidence, the country’s military experts still espoused the idea that a nation’s morale could be broken. By bombs. True it hadn’t worked on the British, the reasoning went, but they were a special case. No other people on the planet could match their level headedness and fortitude. Certainly not the Germans, whose fundamental ‘lack of morale fiber’ meant that they would ‘not stand a quarter of the bombing’ the British endured.
Among those who endorsed this view was Churchill’s close friend Frederick Lindeman. Like Gustav Le Bon, he took a dim view of the masses, writing them off as cowardly and easily panicked.
To prove this point, Lindeman dispatched a team of psychiatrists to Birmingham and Hull, two cities where German bombing had taken an especially heavy toll. They interviewed hundreds of men, women, and children who had lost their homes during the blitz, inquiring about the smallest details — ‘down to the number of pints drunk and aspirin bought in the chemists.
The team reported back to Lindeman a few months later. The conclusion, printed in large letters on the title page was this: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF BREAKDOWN OF MORALE
Lindeman ignored this report and answered Churchill with the conclusion that this bombing was very effective!
This ended the debate over the efficacy of bombing. The whole episode had, as one civil servant described it, ‘the perceptible smell of a witch hunt.’ Conscientious scientists who opposed the tactic of targeting German civilians were denounced as cowards, even traitors.”