Underground

So imagine it here, during the Blitz, when the Capital bombed by Nazi Germany from September 7, 1940, to May 10, 1941.  While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across England, it began with London for 57 consecutive nights. Many people found shelter - and slept - in the Underground, pictured, here at Bank tube station where I am this morning.  By the end, over 43,000 civililans, half of them in London, killed by bombing and more than a million houses destroyed or damaged in London alone.  Hitler's aim to break Britain's morale before invasion. Morale unbroken, Hitler's attention turned on the east. While the Germans never again managed a similar large scale air attack against Britain, they did carry out smaller strikes taking the death-toll to 51,509.  In 1944, the V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets scared the shit out of Londoners but too late to inflict catastrophic damage - in all, the V weapons killed 8,938 in London and the south east.  Thomas Pynchon turned this outrage into a most outrageous novel, "Gravity's Rainbow," where the pavlovian Tyrone Slothrop gets a boner moments before a V-2 strikes. Such an absurd, mad, premise until one considers the reality.  


"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."
-- Adolph Hitler