Royal Air Force personnel, firefighters, nurses, and ambulance staff all attended the service.
Sept. 7 was chosen to commemorate the attacks 70 years ago because it is the day Germany began to focus its offensive on nonmilitary targets in Britain. The Blitz continued until May 1941, but Londoners decided they would try not to let the war disrupt their lives. As the now-famous poster says, they managed to keep calm and carry on.
“After the shock, surprise, and initially panic, people displayed a ‘Blitz spirit,’ ’’ said Terry Charman, a senior historian at London’s Imperial War Museum. “There was a stubbornness . . . ‘we are not going to give in like others gave in.’ ’’
Adolf Hitler wanted to knock “Britain out of the war by fair means or foul, so he could concentrate all his efforts on Russia,’’ Charman said. Hitler hoped the attacks would force the British government to capitulate — or provoke its citizens to revolt and demand that their leaders reach a settlement with Germany.
In London, 20,083 civilians were killed during the Blitz, and 23,602 more died outside the city because of the bombing. King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — visited the city’s East End in the week after the first attack.
In a letter to his own mother, the king wrote “we have seen some of the awful havoc which has been done in East London, and have talked to the people who are quite marvelous in the face of adversity. So cheerful about it all, and some have had some very narrow escapes.’’
Holding the service at St. Paul’s was especially poignant, Charman said, because the cathedral was a symbol of strength for Londoners during the attacks. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had given orders that “whatever happens, the cathedral must be saved,’’ Charman said.
A photograph of the cathedral’s dome emerging from a cloud of smoke is, for many, an iconic image of the war.
The service yesterday was followed by a parade and a flyover by a Royal Air Force commemorative unit comprising a Spitfire, a Lancaster bomber, and a Dakota aircraft.
Earlier this week, Westminster Council released rare color footage showing some of the damage inflicted on London during World War II. That footage shows Churchill visiting bomb sites to assess the damage.
Last month, a ceremony to honor the pilots who defended the country during the Battle of Britain was held in London. It featured a reading of Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons — in which he said of the air crews that “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’’
