Original subtitles

NARRATOR: September 1940.

Bombs rain down on London.

Nazi Germany is trying to destroy Britain from above

with a series of night-time bombing missions

that will become known as the Blitz.

MAN: London got the worst of it initially.

Just an attempt to bomb them into misery, dejection,

where the morale would be so low

that the British would want to do nothing else but surrender.

Over an 8-month period, London and many other major UK cities

were under siege

as the Nazis tried to batter Britain into surrender.

But the country refused to bow or break.

WOMAN: The Blitz perhaps changed British society

and British character forever

because of the fact that it had this sense of knowing

that it could cope with things more than it thought it could,

and these sort of got embedded into the British character

to the point that they still linger today.

But not all the stories surrounding the Blitz are well known.

Some secrets remain buried in the debris.

They used to gather round of a night-time when the Blitz was on,

trying to get people out from the rubble.

I think they saved a lot of lives, really, and they was only kids.

This is the secret history of the Blitz.

By September 1940,

the Battle of Britain had been raging for two months.

The RAF's fearless pilots

had fought off the planes of the German Luftwaffe,

all but snuffing out any chance of a Nazi invasion.

MAN: Basically, Hitler was looking for a way

to subdue the British, to...

..to overcome the British.

He wanted, first of all,

with the Battle of Britain,

to clear the path for an invasion.

Well, clearly, that hadn't succeeded.

So then he turned to bombing.

For the Germans, in some ways, it's easier,

instead of actually flying in the daylight

and coming up against RAF Fighter Command,

to fly at night, to target cities.

It's a kind of an easier form of attack.

These after-dark bombing missions targeted many strategic sites.

Lasting until May 1941, Britain was pounded by German bombs.

The hellish 8-month period became known as the Blitz.

The Blitz saw Britain being bombarded

for 57 consecutive nights

by the Luftwaffe

in the hope of interfering with British wartime production,

bringing Churchill to the negotiating table

in order to try and sue for peace,

and interfering with civilian morale by trying to destroy

their homes, their livelihoods and their families.

If the factory workers have got no factory to work in

and no home to live in, how can Britain continue to fight?

So these were very, very basic attempts

to absolutely batter the British public into submission.

WOMAN: It becomes a total war.

Every Brit is impacted.

He is bombing indiscriminately in

one of the biggest civilian cities

on the planet - children, women.

Who isn't affected by the war?

Everyone's affected.

The nerve centre of the British Empire is under attack.

New technology allowed the German bombers

to rain literal fire down from the skies.

VICTORIA TAYLOR: During the Blitz, Britain had to contend with

a lot of different aerial threats from the skies

from the German bombers,

so they had to deal with high explosives,

which, of course, could cause incredible injury

to the civilian population,

and, perhaps even more damagingly,

they had to deal with incendiary bombs,

the fires of which could absolutely rip through businesses,

homes and factories.

By May 1941, around 43,000 British civilians had been killed

and nearly 140,000 more had been wounded by the aerial bombardment.

SEAN LONGDEN: This went on for months.

From the first day of the Blitz, 430 people were killed.

Vast swathes of London were burned down.

It became part of their life.

The nightly bombing of London in the latter half of 1940

became a turning point

and it became an illustration that,

as the saying goes, "London can take it."

Even the Queen is out there looking at where Buck Pal's been hit

and meeting East Enders face to face.

This idea of sort of pluck, the need to be brave, really grows.

WOMAN: The Blitz did put Britain under a time of great stress,

and so there are some tensions that

were exacerbated and exposed by that.

British morale was shaken, for sure, but it certainly wasn't broken.

Blitz spirit has become part of the British psyche,

the sheer embodiment of stoicism and togetherness.

But what's a secret to many

is that some ideologies from one of the nation's most trying times

aren't as clear-cut as they may seem.

HARRY BENNETT: In terms of popular history,

we often think about the period of the Blitz

as a moment when the nation comes together -

"We're all in it together," in terms of a certain famous phrase.

And to a large extent, that is true, but also there are other elements

which rather go against that story.

You know, there are certain moments

when that doesn't necessarily hold up.

There was a kind of Blitz consensus that grew up, a story of the Blitz,

that was later called the myth of the Blitz.

People were singing in shelters, working towards one single goal

and coming out of their shelters when the bombing was finished

to...to shake a fist at bloody Adolf

and then make their way to work in their factories the next morning,

walking over broken glass, and... and the spirit was never shattered.

Now, clearly, that's not true, because life isn't like that.

Nothing so...so simplistic could ever be true.

While many bonded together, opportunistic crime skyrocketed,

especially in London, the worst-hit city of all.

SEAN LONGDEN: War brings out the best and the worst in people.

And so in the Blitz,

there were situations where people just had to survive.

And if that means stealing from a shop, looting from a house,

because you have nothing left of your own,

for some people, that's just the only way they could get by.

HARRY BENNETT: You have a home there that's received a bomb

where the...the front of the property is gone,

some of the valuables are gonna be spread out here and there.

So there are cases of looting which take place

as people literally use the Blitz as an opportunity for criminal gain.

So while overall, the picture of kind of "We're all in it together"

is right, it's not 100% in terms of totality.

At a time when the nation needed each other more than ever,

crime rates across Britain increased by 57%.

The so-called Blitz spirit was being stretched to breaking point.

When the German bombs began falling over Britain

at the start of the Blitz in September 1940,

it opened up a huge window of opportunity for criminal gain.

Looting and crime within Britain

was said to have increased

by about 60% during the Blitz,

because the blackouts

and, of course, the...the chaos that comes from aerial bombardment

provided an absolutely perfect cloak

for criminals to do their activities.

You do have some petty criminals

who...who get very organised.

So you have some who arrive

with air-raid warden armbands

that allow them to walk around at night

when really there's a curfew, but they can then have rich pickings,

and there are some stories, unfortunately,

of people arriving with ambulances and then just loading up with goods

and taking them away for the black market.

But not all the looters considered themselves to be criminals.

During wartime, the line between thieving and finding

was a blurred one.

JOSHUA LEVINE: Now, what's the difference between

looting and recycling?

If you're passing a house

and it's been completely bombed out

and there's something on the street

and you think the people are dead in the house

and you pick something up, "I could use that. That would be handy,"

is that good, is that recycling, or is that looting?

HARRY BENNETT: The kinds of things

that might be spilling out into the street

are really too tempting for some people,

who might just quietly pocket one or two things.

This is a time of great privation.

People are desperate, and people who are desperate do desperate things.

The lawlessness of the time

clashes with the idea of a heightened unity.

(INAUDIBLE)

But in truth, both ideologies lived side by side during the Blitz.

VICTORIA TAYLOR: The myth of the Blitz spirit

actually isn't intended as a disparaging concept.

It's more wanting to be honest about the fact

that there wasn't any real spirit that was all-encompassing

and that followed across all social classes and backgrounds,

so it's the idea of the fact that you did have the buildings

that had signs that said "Open as normal"

or "Blast!" or having these sort of jokes,

this sort of British humour in the face of...of terror,

but also that you did have increases in crime, increases in looting,

you have people going AWOL,

and so it's looking at the fact

that neither of those explanations should be considered by themselves

and that they should be put together.

Another crime that became big business during the Blitz was fraud.

CLARE MULLEY: The British government would provide a £500 grant

for people whose homes had been bombed out,

to help set them up in a B & B for a while

and get them back on their feet.

And there was one guy who applied for that grant

19 times within a period of months.

So there are always some frauders looking for those opportunities.

But all-in, there wasn't...you know, given the conditions of blackout,

limited police, exposed and broken properties,

there wasn't the mass lawlessness,

the level of looting, that you might well have anticipated.

In fact, pretty much, people did come together.

With many members of the emergency services

called up to serve during the war,

maintaining order in communities around Britain

fell into the hands of a new team of uniformed workers.

VICTORIA TAYLOR: Air-raid wardens in Britain had to contend with

a lot of different challenges, one of them being

that they had to consistently keep studying up on the different bombs

that were being dropped on Britain,

to know what they did, how they impacted buildings and civilians,

but also, naturally, dealing with those bombs as soon as they fell,

and sometimes they wouldn't be armed

with anything more than a stirrup pump

in order to neutralise them,

so they really had to deal with a lot of different tasks,

from saving people from burning buildings

to identifying bodies, and it really was a...

..a taxing and an emotional job to have.

But the story of one warden in London is less well known than many others.

Ita Ekpenyon didn't look like many of the other

1.4 million ARP wardens across Britain.

It was a role he never expected to be in but one he excelled at.

Ita Ekpenyon wanted to study law in the UK,

and that was initially why he came over.

He'd been a headmaster in Nigeria

and wanted to sort of expand his expertise,

but, of course, with the coming of the war

and also with financial difficulties,

he wasn't immediately able to pursue that ambition.

When war broke out in 1939,

46-year-old Ita was too old to join the army,

but he immediately volunteered for civilian defence duties.

I think he wanted to do his bit, and this was something he could do,

something he was accepted as part of,

and I think he didn't just want to sit on the sidelines.

London had become his adopted home,

Britain had become his country,

and he wanted to contribute.

JOSHUA LEVINE: He understood that he was responsible

for order within the community as the bombs came down.

Various different things he...he had to do.

So he...he... he had to patrol the streets,

making sure that people didn't have lights on.

The idea was during the blackout, people had to keep their lights off

so there was no guide to the bombers up above.

There was this idea that if you lit a match or you had a cigarette lit

that a bomber at 20,000 feet could see your cigarette down below.

Well, that wasn't true, but the fact was that in heavily populated areas,

lights did attract the bombers to that area.

He rose quite quickly in the ranks of that position

and became the air-raid warden for Marylebone,

which is in the heart of Central London,

and proved to be very popular with the people.

Ita's role as the air-raid warden for Marylebone

was quite unprecedented for an African man in 1940.

We weren't exposed really

to very many ethnic minorities

in Britain at that time.

There were a few educated black people

who came to study, for instance, between the wars.

This was gonna change overnight in the war.

JOSHUA LEVINE: It would have been very difficult

to be a black person in Britain at this time.

There were very few black people

and certainly very few in positions of authority.

And as an air-raid warden, he was stepping into

a position where he was going to have to tell people what to do.

He was gonna be responsible for people's lives.

He was gonna be responsible for shelters, for posts,

and he was going to have to order people to do certain things.

And how they reacted to being ordered by a black person

was going to be quite interesting.

Ita documented his experiences

in a series of broadcasts and journal entries,

including one night during the Blitz when he had to act as peacemaker.

OKU EKPENYON: There was an incident that, actually, he has written about

where there were some people in a shelter

who didn't want those coming in who were not British

or were seen as foreigners,

and he pointed out that he himself

was someone who was not a white Brit.

Even at times like that, racism was evident by some people.

Ita would not allow any discrimination

within the bomb shelter.

So, what did he do? He stood up and, basically, he made a speech.

He said that, "If you don't like it,

"you better get out and shelter somewhere else."

He said that, "We are fighting this war for freedom, for tolerance,

"and there are going to be foreigners in the shelter,

"there are going to be all sorts of people in the shelter,

"and we are going to be together,

"and if you don't like it, you can get out."

And he says some people did, some people did leave.

But he also says that after that point, he didn't have any problems.

OKU EKPENYON: I think he was trying to be a pacifier,

because there was so much trauma happening outside,

you didn't want to introduce it into a shelter

where people were together for... it could be any length of time.

Could be hours. It could be all night.

And so I think he tried to defuse a situation

that potentially could have been quite destructive

in a confined area where people had to live with each other

for how many hours they were in the shelter.

It's counterproductive to react in such a way,

because nothing is going to be achieved

by taking an aggressive, unpleasant approach.

Despite facing racism in some parts of the community,

Ita wrote about how he was accepted and embraced

by many Londoners during the Blitz.

"It amuses me to know that in the district where I work

"the people believe that because I am a man of colour,

"I am a lucky omen.

"I had heard of such childlike beliefs,

"but I am delighted that such beliefs exist,

"for wherever my duties take me,

"the people listen to my instructions and orders

"and are willing to allow me to lead them,

"so I'm able to control them,

"which makes my duties lighter in these troublesome days."

He talks about it as a strange superstition

but one that he was able to take advantage of,

and he was able to tell people what to do

because he was considered lucky in their midst.

Ita Ekpenyon survived the war but never got to finish his law degree.

He worked as a postman until his death in 1951, aged 58.

OKU EKPENYON: I feel proud.

I feel very proud, because he brought people together

in those war years, in that difficult time.

He didn't have to sign up.

He could have just stayed on the sidelines.

So I'm proud of what he did.

I'm proud when I read his experiences, and...

..I just think, "Well done."

Like so many men at the time,

Ita Ekpenyon would have loved to serve in the army

if he had the chance,

but there were some men in Britain during the Blitz

who, for ethical reasons, flat out refused to fight.

The story of these pacifists is not widely known.

(INAUDIBLE)

In the Second World War, there were 59,000 'conscientious objectors',

commonly known as 'conchies',

which is four times the amount there were in the First World War.

So these were people who refused to take part in armed combat

for very specific reasons, due to their conscience,

freedom of thought and freedom of religion.

And it wasn't an easy position to take.

David Briggs was 22 years old during the Blitz.

As a devout Christian, he didn't want to bear arms.

We all knew that war was coming,

and I wanted to take part,

but the problem is

what was the right reaction in accordance with my beliefs?

At the end of the day, Christ didn't resist people.

It's all about turning the other cheek.

If that's not true, then it doesn't make any sense to me.

Archie Tucker was a fellow conscientious objector.

He raised his family, including son Nicholas,

as pacifists during the war.

My father was a small man in size,

but he had a gigantic determination

to do what he thought was the right thing,

and you couldn't shift him on that.

And that was one of those convictions of his,

was his total pacifism.

As a teenager, Archie had seen the atrocities of the First World War.

At the age of 32, he swore an oath.

In 1936, the Peace Pledge Union started,

and my father always had a little badge on his lapel

with the initials PPU,

and the Peace Pledge Union just said,

"I renounce war, and I will never fight in another."

These people always had, I think, in the back of their mind

the First World War, the trenches, the slaughter,

and they didn't want to have anything to do with that,

and so a lot of people actually signed that pledge.

But as the threat of another war

became more apparent,

the enthusiasm for pacifism dwindled.

People were really nice and almost, you know, apologetic

for not agreeing with his views,

because there was no appetite for the war when the war started.

Nobody wanted it.

And so, in a way, those pacifists had quite a local following

until the Blitz began, and that changed everything.

The German bombs awoke a patriotic fervour

that the fight should not be questioned.

Every Brit was expected to do his duty for the war effort,

and that included the men of peace.

The Blitz was Germany's attempt to bomb Britain into surrender,

but by late 1940,

the country was becoming more in favour of fighting the war.

Even pacifists like David Briggs were caught up in the German bombardment.

DAVID BRIGGS: I happened to be

in Banstead Military Hospital,

and it had a direct hit

in the evening

and all the lights were... were out and so on.

And the whole hospital wing was smashed up,

and we had to spend the whole night

rescuing the bod... bodies in the dark,

which wasn't easy.

Despite making a pledge to not take up arms,

some pacifists still found a way to help the war effort.

A number of the men who had registered

conscientious objector status

did serve, for example, in London during the Blitz

and in other cities as air-raid wardens and fire officers as well

and firemen, fighting those blazes, so...

..it was actually incredibly dangerous work, just not on the front line.

One of these conscientious objectors

who felt impelled to help out during the Blitz

was Archie Tucker.

He got some old tin hat somewhere, and he put initials on it,

PSU, Pacifist Service Unit, or something like that.

And then twice a week, he went to a hospital in Old Street, London,

on the roof, fire-watching.

And, of course, he was in the middle of the Blitz,

and so he wasn't in any sense a coward.

The truth of the matter is that he rather enjoyed it.

Fellow pacifist David Briggs was eligible for conscription,

in spite of any beliefs he held.

I was called up, 'cause I... I had to go before a tribunal,

and in the tribunal, I had to state my case and defend it,

and...and the tribunal found that I should take part,

but in non-combatant duties, which is what I did.

David was assigned to the Medical Corps and served for six years.

His beliefs made him stand out from the crowd.

I think initially they were rather suspicious of me,

but then I got to be friends with them,

and I think they understood - they thought me a bit of an oddity.

And they...they knew my crossing the line was I would not carry arms.

I would refuse to carry arms.

David ended up on the Normandy beaches during D-day,

a frightening experience of the realities of war

for an armed soldier,

let alone a man of peace who refused to carry a weapon.

This is the armband that...that...that we wore,

when we crossed over... over to France.

It was supposed to protect us, but, of course, it was no use at all.

If I had to live life again, so help me God,

I would do basically what I have done.

Although I've made endless mistakes, basically,

I believe in what I've done.

Archie Tucker also remained a staunch pacifist throughout the Blitz

and right up until his death in 1980.

He said this thing which I... still shocks me now.

He said, "But, you see, I... I wanted us to lose the war."

He said, "I didn't want Germany to win the war,

"but I didn't want Britain to fight in the way

"that I found morally unacceptable."

And that's when I realised that he actually

had a bit of a martyr complex.

His strength was...

..just this...

..unafraid to be very unpopular and...

..sticking up for his rights and...

..he's quite a moral force.

He was that voice that sometimes needed to be heard.

The Blitz lasted for eight months, ending in May 1941.

By late 1943, Britain was retaliating with a blitz of their own...

..strategically bombing many major German cities

in an attempt to obliterate Nazi resources.

A secret project carried out during this time

helped pave the way for these successful missions.

Operation Corona was the use of

high-frequency ground transmitters

to send messages

to German night fighters

and to their controllers.

MAN: During this time, the Germans had introduced broadcasts

to their night fighters

so that they could direct them en masse on the Bomber Command streams.

And they were doing so from a number of high-powered transmitters,

but that meant they only had a...very few

frequencies they could operate on,

and it was determined in Britain that it'd be possible to jam those.

The thought then occurred, "If we can jam them,

"could we not also broadcast on a higher strength

"and misdirect those night fighters?"

And that's what Corona attempted to do.

The RAF's plan was to broadcast instructions to the German pilots

in order to confuse them.

These radio operators, known as ghost controllers,

had to be convincing.

You have to be able to not only converse in German,

effectively, you need to pass as a native German speaker.

So, of course, it helps if you are actually a native German speaker,

and that is what happens in Corona.

They use Germans who have come to this country, often as refugees,

to mislead the German night fighter defence,

and there's something quite nice about Corona

in that it's a people who have been displaced

able to take part in the fight.

VICTORIA TAYLOR: Of course, because they were fluent German speakers,

they were absolutely ideal for Operation Corona

in that they could even mimic

certain dialects and accents

within Germany in order to be as convincing as possible.

HARRY RAFFAL: So they might tell them that the bomber stream

was going in a different direction.

They might tell them the weather was bad in a particular area.

They might simply countermand the instructions

the previous controller had given them,

in order that there was confusion

and the German night fighters didn't actually know what they should do.

The chaotic instructions led to a huge disruption

in the German night fighter missions.

So you had this really almost comic situation

where you had the real ground controller sending a message,

and then you had the ghost controller, in Britain,

using these incredibly high-powered transmitters,

sending another message.

So the pilot wouldn't know which was the real message.

So you'd have situations genuinely

where the real controller would tell them to do something

and the ghost controller would say,

"No, no, no, no, don't... ignore that.

"That's not the real controller. I'm the real controller.

"You should be doing this instead."

HARRY RAFFAL: There are some really great stories from Corona,

and one of those which I particularly like is

a ghost controller's introduced, and he's not just fluent in German,

he's capable of mimicking the voice of the German controller.

So it now becomes almost impossible

for fighters to know who is the true controller.

And this, understandably, drives the German

who is trying to control the night fighters

to despair.

And more than that, he becomes quite obscene over the broadcast,

which leads to the British ghost controller saying,

"The Britishman is now swearing over the radio,"

and the German replying, "It's not the Britishman swearing. It is me."

Though one imagines

that he probably added several words into that broadcast.

The RAF's retaliation to the Blitz was hugely successful.

Britain's strategic bombing campaign of Germany,

which included Operation Corona,

lasted until the end of the war.

Operation Corona was incredibly important

as an additional supplement to the British intelligence effort

and to interfering with the Luftwaffe's plans

because of the fact that jamming devices

could so often be foiled and new technology could be brought in

in order to interfere and supersede those systems,

so keeping that up and using a sort of a multi-pronged attack

was incredibly important in keeping Britain

in the intelligence in the air war.

JOSHUA LEVINE: It came into force in October of 1943,

and by early 1944, it wasn't working anymore.

But while it did work, it was great, it was glorious,

and it was even quite funny.

The bombing of German cities was in retaliation to the Blitz,

which began in September 1940.

When the bombs began falling, many men and women did their best

to help out their communities,

but what's less well known is that children played their part too.

Not all children were sheltering

in the relative safety of the countryside.

Many were right in the heart of the cities,

and some even pitched in to help during the nightly attacks.

TESSA DUNLOP: Hundreds of thousands are moved, of course,

at the beginning of the war.

I think before war's declared,

actually, we're shifting children

out of the main cities,

predominantly London, also Birmingham,

but, do you know, it is the largest mass movement of people

ever to have taken place in Britain.

Large numbers of children didn't ever want to be evacuated.

In some cases, parents just said,

"No. We live together. We'll die together."

And some mothers just did not want their children to go away.

So children started to just head home,

and especially for the older children,

who liked the idea of being home

and didn't want to be away in the countryside,

they just started trickling back.

Mary Lock grew up in the industrial city of Coventry,

in the West Midlands.

She was 17 years old when the Blitz began.

We'd all been registered and had a...an identification number,

and I've still got the bracelet and I've got the number.

And we were all issued with gasmasks,

which we carried around with us wherever we went, just in case.

So although there was activity,

we didn't expect it to happen in Coventry.

Mary's family prepared as best they could

for any potential attack from above.

My father, very sensibly,

realising that things could get quite desperate,

decided that we'd better have a shelter

built in the garden, which we had,

and then he decided that as we'd got to black out the windows,

he decided that it were better if we had shutters,

so he made shutters for the windows of the house,

which, in the long term, proved to be our salvation.

On 14 November 1940, Mary and her family were caught up

in one of the most devastating German attacks during the Blitz.

That night, we did the usual things. We had our tea.

But the sirens went about nine o'clock.

My father, he went to survey what was going on outside

and came back and said there was something looking like a sheet

on the tree doors down from where we lived.

So he came back and sat down and we all got ourselves settled

behind the 3-piece suite by the wall in the house.

It was about 20 minutes later that we...

..I don't remember a noise.

But we had all the... wall fall down on us

and all the cement from the wall, but we all just got up

and walked out into the garden, to the shelter.

Shaken.

Couldn't understand what had happened.

And we stayed there until the following morning,

until the sirens went to say that it was all clear about seven o'clock.

Hundreds of German bombers

had destroyed almost 2,500 homes across the city.

Over 550 civilians were dead.

The shutters on the windows saved us, without a doubt,

'cause our house just fell down and we all walked out.

And a man on the next two house,

he'd gone out to investigate about the bomb and he was killed.

So altogether, 10 people lost their lives that night.

Shocked.

The bomb that had killed Mary's neighbours

was a new type of devastating explosive.

Perhaps the most dangerous weapon

that the Germans were dropping in the Blitz proper

was the parachute mine, which had 1,500 pounds of explosives,

which was 70% of the overall weight of the munition.

Because it had a very thin case,

it could allow an extraordinarily large destructive potential

from an explosive filling

and take out very large areas when it was dropped on cities.

MARY LOCK: We'd never seen anything like this happen before,

and we think they touched it, they moved it from where it was.

This is what we understand since.

They moved it.

And all of those men that had gone out to investigate,

to see what had happened, lost their lives.

Teenagers like 17-year-old Mary had to grow up

during one of the most traumatic times in British history.

But instead of shying away from the war effort,

many children decided to take a stand.

The Blitz lasted for eight months from September 1940 to May 1941.

Life for many children growing up during this terrifying time

included regular trips to the bomb shelter.

Mary Lock survived the devastating German attack on Coventry

in November 1940.

Aged just 17, it inspired her to help in the war effort.

Eventually, I decided to join the Civil Defence.

I went round giving talks

on how to use a stirrup pump

and where to keep the water

and help people wherever you could

with the security of their own houses

in case they were bombed or needed any help,

and I think... I think I grew up. (LAUGHS)

Nearly 100 miles south of Coventry, in the East End of London,

many children were facing night after night of bombing raids.

Jean Duggan was just four years old

when the Blitz began in September 1940.

My mum... I think all the mums was the same.

They had their...

..children and that,

and the bombs was dropping.

It must have been terrible.

We didn't take no notice 'cause we was too young.

It was an adventure, really, but we was too young to understand.

SEAN LONGDEN: For teenagers, there was a real sense of excitement

for what they were living through.

They didn't see it in the same way that their parents saw it.

They didn't see the dangers.

They saw London as this giant playground.

Those that were actually just living their lives as normally

found it exciting to be bombed,

even though it was terrifying at the same time.

They had a sense of immortality.

This no-fear attitude

led to the formation of a small gang of youngsters,

headed up by a 17-year-old boy named Patsie Duggan,

who were determined to help out their devastated community.

The Dead End Kids were led by a local docker named Patsie Duggan,

and he wanted to join the military,

but because he was a docker, he was in a reserved occupation,

so he got together a group of younger children

and formed this group of firefighters,

private firefighters, who would just go out

and do what they could in the docks

to try and prevent fire from spreading.

Because in this period, the fire services were utterly overstretched.

So everything that could be done to help

and to rescue people was a bonus.

JEAN DUGGAN: The Dead End Kids was my husband's family more.

His brother Patsie sort of organised it.

They used to gather round of a night-time when the Blitz was on

and then go out...

..outing fires, if there was any,

making sure people were safe,

trying to get people out from the rubble and that that'd fell.

I think they saved a lot of lives, really, and they was only kids.

He had cousins, nephews, brothers and a sister all in this gang.

And the youngest was Maureen. She was 13.

The Dead End Kids were equipped with nothing more than a few basic tools.

They all had a tin helmet each.

They'd help people out that'd been bombed.

And I think they saved quite a few people by helping.

SEAN LONGDEN: They used a handcart to transport

their meagre sort of supplies,

their tools just iron bars to force open doors

in order that they could get inside buildings and rescue people.

The boys had a ladder, to reach upper windows.

They had buckets of sand that could be used

to snuff out incendiary bombs and help put out fires.

When they found an incendiary bomb, they'd get a rope,

tie it around the fins of the bomb,

drag it out and then dump it in the river.

Anything they could do to help protect their local area.

JEAN DUGGAN: As soon as there was a bombing,

then they'd be there with their gear to do whatever they had to do,

which was great, I think.

I'd like to have been there myself. (LAUGHS)

But fighting fires and saving lives in a metropolitan war zone

comes with inherent dangers.

It is reported that two members of the gang

lost their lives during the Blitz,

which underlines the tales of their bravery.

They wasn't frightened, don't... didn't seem to be anyway,

you know, like some kids would be frightened, their age.

They didn't seem to be.

SEAN LONGDEN: Very little is known about them.

But they made a real, real important contribution

to the war effort in their local area.

Millions of children all over Britain

were left with harrowing memories of the Blitz.

It was very traumatic for any of us

at that particular time in our lives.

When...you lose some of your youth, without a doubt.

You feel almost as if the rug's been pulled from under your feet.

TESSA DUNLOP: Over 7,000 children die in bombing raids during the war.

And another 7,000-plus are injured.

So, it's a total war.

We'd had a taste of this in the First World War,

but the Second World War totally changes people's mentality.

Before, war was something men did.

They put on a uniform and they went off and fought in a war.

No. Now anyone could be a victim.

The German bombs fell for the last time in May 1941,

when Hitler turned his attention towards an invasion of Russia.

In the eight months that it lasted,

the Blitz claimed the lives of over 43,000 Britons

and the entire landscape of the country had been changed.

It's hard to imagine now, but often you would look down a street,

at the end of the war, and it was almost like

a row of teeth with one missing.

You know, 200,000 homes were totally destroyed during the war.

There were 34 million changes of address.

And it wasn't just if your house had been bombed.

It was that it might be bombed or that Mum and Dad were dead,

or baby Tommy was dead or, do you know...

..or, "Actually, we need to move now,

"because this might be the next target for a Nazi bomb."

Although it had a devastating effect on the country,

Britain was spurred on and went on to win the war just four years later,

thanks largely to the indominable spirit of the nation.

VICTORIA TAYLOR: The Blitz perhaps changed

British society and British character forever

because of the fact that it had this sense of knowing

that it could cope with things more than it thought it could

and that it could endure more than it thought it could,

and these sort of got embedded into the British character,

to the point that they still linger today in certain circles.

HARRY RAFFAL: British people don't want to be told they can take it.

They want to know that they will retaliate.

They want to know that they can strike back.

British people standing up to bombing,

perhaps not in a unified way

that we perhaps like to picture,

but certainly a way which it's hard to imagine

if we were undergoing those kind of attacks.

But it's certainly an idea that they want to make sure

that they strike back as well.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2021