After the Blitz: The Luftwaffe Bombing of Britain, 1941–1943 (Aviation & Air Power)

After the Blitz: The Luftwaffe Bombing of Britain, 1941–1943 (Aviation & Air Power)

From May 1941 to the end of night raids in 1943, Luftwaffe bombers attacked provincial cities across England, Scotland, and Wales. However, these air raids are not considered part of the Blitz―at least, not according to the British Official History. The official historiography maintains that the Blitz on the United Kingdom ended when aircraft were redeployed to support the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, after the final major raid against London that May.   In After the Blitz: The Luftwaffe Bombing of Britain,1941–1943 , author Stephen Moore argues that official histories minimize the impact of bombing on cities like Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham because they use attacks on London to define the Blitz's chronological boundaries. By excavating British and German archives and cross-referencing government documentation with memoirs and secondary sources, Moore demonstrates that Britain suffered from Luftwaffe assaults well after the official end date of the Blitz and rescues the history of post-Blitz bombings from obscurity. After the Blitz cements itself in the historical record by confronting the official scholarship that has been foundational to the field and affirms the traumatic experiences of people who lived outside of London during this period. "Insightful and persuasive―a detailed tactical overview of Germany's continued harassment of Britain after the Blitz's official end. Moore has taken great care in not only mining the archives but also citing relevant documents and collections for further research."―Sterling Michael Pavelec, author of Airpower over Gallipoli, 1915–1916 "An impressively researched and significant work challenging the traditional interpretation that the German bombing of England virtually ended in mid-1941 as the Luftwaffe turned its attention to operations in the east against the Soviet Union. This book is one more badly needed assault on the official historical narratives that have dominated World War II's historiography for more than seventy years."―Stephen A. Bourque, author of Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889–1963 Stephen Moore is a twentieth-century conflict historian. He has published articles on the Bethnal Green shelter disaster in War & Society , Fighter Command night air defense policy in Royal Air Force Historical Society Journal , and the pilot supply crisis during the Battle of Britain in the British Journal for Military History.