London at war 1939: target, port and government capital
Why London Mattered
By 1939 London was the most important target the German Luftwaffe could imagine in Western Europe. As the seat of national government, the city contained Parliament, Whitehall, the Cabinet, the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry — a single bomb run could in theory cripple Britain’s war effort. As the largest port in the British Empire, the Pool of London and the Royal Docks (Royal Albert, Royal Victoria, King George V) handled food, oil and raw materials that fed the country and the army. As an industrial centre, the East End housed engineering, food-processing, ship-repair and chemical works concentrated along the Thames. And geography mattered: London lay only a few minutes’ flying time from German-occupied airfields in northern France and the Low Countries. From the moment the war began, the government assumed the city would be bombed.
London was a priority target in 1939 because it was the seat of national government, the largest imperial port, a heavy industrial centre and within easy bomber range of German-occupied airfields in France and the Low Countries.
Operation Pied Piper: Evacuation
The government had been planning evacuation since 1938. Operation Pied Piper began on 1 September 1939, three days before war was declared. Over the first three days roughly 1.5 million people across Britain — school children, pregnant women, mothers with babies, blind and disabled people — left the cities by special trains and buses. London accounted for around 800,000 of those evacuees. Children left from terminals like Paddington and Liverpool Street with luggage labels tied to their coats and gas-mask boxes round their necks. They went to reception areas in Devon, Somerset, Wales, the Lake District and East Anglia, where they were billeted with host families.
Billeting was uneven in practice. Some evacuees met kindness; others met cold houses, prejudice and exploitation as casual labour on farms. East End children billeted in middle-class villages produced famous moments of class shock on both sides — Mass Observation collected diaries on the experience. By Christmas 1939, with no bombs falling in the period later called the ‘Phoney War’, perhaps half of the first wave of evacuees had drifted home. A second wave followed Black Saturday in September 1940, and a third in 1944 with the V1 attacks.
Anderson Shelters in the Garden
The government distributed Anderson shelters from 1939, named after Sir John Anderson, then Lord Privy Seal and architect of the civil defence programme. The shelter was made of curved corrugated steel sheets bolted into a tunnel shape, partly buried in the back garden and covered with earth. It was free to households earning less than £250 a year (most working-class families); above that income line, families bought one for £7. By the outbreak of war about 1.5 million Anderson shelters had been distributed and another 2.1 million followed during the war. They were cold, damp and cramped — one Bethnal Green resident said her family stopped sleeping in theirs because of the rats — but the curved geometry and earth covering made them surprisingly effective against blast at close range.
Public memory often pictures the Underground as a sanctioned shelter from the start of the war. In fact the Home Office initially banned shelter use in Tube stations, fearing ‘deep shelter mentality’ — the worry that civilians who went underground would refuse to come up and work would stop. Londoners forced the policy by buying day-return tickets and refusing to leave at the platform exits. By October 1940 the government accepted reality and provided bunks, lighting and chemical toilets at 79 stations. Anderson shelters were designed precisely so the government did not need to use the Tube; the public made the policy in spite of Anderson’s plans.
Gas Masks for All
Memories of poison gas in the trenches of 1914–18 made the government certain that German bombers would drop gas on London. By the spring of 1939 around 38 million gas masks had been distributed across Britain. The standard adult mask was a black rubber face piece with a metal filter; small children received a brightly coloured ‘Mickey Mouse’ mask intended to be less frightening; babies were sealed inside an entire helmet-and-pump baby gas helmet. Carrying the box was made compulsory and posters reminded Londoners that ‘you may need it any time’. As it turned out, gas was never used on London; but in 1939 the precaution looked essential, and it produced a uniformly visible sign of civil defence on every shoulder.
Civil Defence: ARP and the 1939 Act
The legal scaffolding for all of this was the Civil Defence Act of 1939, which followed the 1937 Air Raid Precautions Act and the regulations issued in the months before war. Local authorities recruited ARP wardens, mostly part-time volunteers, who took responsibility for a designated ‘sector’ of streets. They enforced the blackout, walked the streets at night to report any chink of light, guided people to public shelters when sirens sounded, and reported bomb damage to local control rooms. By 1940 there were over a million ARP wardens, fire watchers and rescue workers in Britain. Sir John Anderson, as Home Secretary from September 1939, oversaw the system; he later became Lord President of the Council and gave his name to the shelter that defined his ministry.
By 3 September 1939 London had distributed gas masks, sent 800,000 evacuees to reception areas, buried 1.5 million Anderson shelters and recruited a network of ARP wardens. But the ‘Phoney War’ from September 1939 to May 1940 saw no bombing of London, and the systems were tested only theoretically. When Black Saturday came on 7 September 1940 some of the assumptions broke down: the East End was hit hardest and Anderson shelters in flat-roofed terraced backyards were less practical there than in suburban semi-detached gardens. Top-band answers acknowledge that 1939 preparation looked thorough on paper but was uneven in practice when the bombs actually arrived.
By the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, around 800,000 Londoners had been evacuated under Operation Pied Piper, 1.5 million Anderson shelters had been distributed and 38 million gas masks issued nationally.