Blitz in London

Another exhibition is about to be showed in London, at the London Transport Museum. This one is a commemorative exhibition about the 70th anniversary of the Blitz in London. The Blitz was an aerial attack from the Luftwaffe, the German air force Under the Nazi regime. This attack was part of a plan initiated by Hitler, who wanted to invade Great Britain. A huge resistance to the attack by the British soldiers and citizens, and of course its royal air force, made Hitler back down and gave up his plan of invasion.

Certainly a turning point of WWII, the Blitz, which is believed to have hardened the British resentment and hatred towards the Nazi regime, was a terrible shock for British citizens, especially in London and Coventry, the two main targets of the German bombers in 1940. The exhibition also puts forward the same atrocity inflicted on the German civilians of Dresden, by the bombers of the Allied Forces. This, I think is not surprising but greatly appreciated as a sign of recognition, sorrow and disenfranchisement from the past. It calls for a greater comprehension of the past of some countries: people should not hold grudges toward others for what their ancestors have done, something that certainly a lot of British people have trouble with putting in practice. As Robert Mac Namara said, and sorry if I don’t remember the exact quote, if the allied forces had lost the war, they would have been judged, and rightly so, as war criminals. Of course nothing can excuse and counter-balance the Shoah inflicted on Jews and other minorities by the Nazi administration, but Dresden is another example showing how everyone can be held as responsible for the atrocities of war, not mentioning the US atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki…

Anyway, a good exhibition to reflect the reasons to commemorate the shallow past of Britain and Europe to a larger extent.