I mentioned already that we're dealing a lot with war and conflict in this particular course. It's not deliberate in terms of. An interest purely in the sphere. But, as I'm, as I discussed earlier, some of the most challenging and striking images have come out of conflict. With regards to photography in the 20th century. Now as a cultural. Experience as something which is in British cultural memory. The blitz is quite an important issue, as is the Battle of Britain that took place around it. 1940 before America's participation directly in the Second World War, when continental Europe western continental Europe had fallen to Germany. The, terrors of bombing on a scale far greater than we discussed with regards to Guernica came to London. Now, it should be said that, that was a little bit of an accidental tactics. Hitler was. Offended by the fact that the Royal Air Force had the audacity to actually bomb Berlin. And as a consequence, the tactics of the German bombers during the Battle of Britain changed from looking at strategic military targets. Airfields, gunning placements. Manufacturing bases, radar sites when they were known to actually bombing London and other major cities. Now we have a lot of images around this, but if we actually again think back to Under exposed and the images they are putting forward. There was a feeling that some of these photographs had to be suppressed at the time because what they would do is undermine contemporary morale. There is a myth about about the blitz in British history. That it was something that brought all strands of society together. And if you'd like, rendered temporarily Britain classless so to speak, in the face of German aggression. I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think it gives a very strong and common purpose to the British population at home. At the time of war. They are brought into the front line. However you want to consider aerial bombing, it was directly affecting the population as a whole. To a much greater degree than we've seen at any point previously in history. Yet, there were still issues of social devices at the home front. Rationing is put forward very strongly as something that was common to all. You have news reports on the royal family in particularly having Spam. For dinner, as a part of their rationing. But do remember that if you have the money, you could eat out every night at the restaurants in London, and elsewhere. So, when I talk about the myth of the Blitz, it took place. It was a traumatic experience. And I think it did have, for each strata through British society, quite a profound and prolonged effect. In drawing people towards a common goal, but it didn't necessarily mean it drew the areas of British society together, as one per say. Never the less, we have images here of destruction and destruction on a large scale. Well. London suffered at various points in time. I just want to bring up another image from 1945. By 1945, 1944, we see Germany developing another form of terror weapons what we might politely describe as a cruise missile in modern terms, although it was very much cruder than that. And the first armed ballistic missiles. The V1s and the V2s. And they did literally have a devastating effect. They would deliver the equivalent of about a ton of high explosives. And would drop out of the sky in the case of the V1s because they ran out of fuel, in the case of the V2s because they, they'd followed a, a high-level ballistic trajectory from the Netherlands or France towards Britain. And, as you can see, there is very little left in the background as a result of here is put down as a V2 strike. but I just wanted to get you to think about the perspectives that we apply, the Blitz is culturally very important to Britain as I said but think about what the British and the Americans rained back on the Germans and the Japanese. The photograph to the right here is an image of Dresden. In February of 1945. Now this book says that over a hundred thousand civilians were killed in this raid. That's over two nights by the RAF and a day bombing by the United States Army Air Force. The devastation was tremendous. This was. Partly seen as an open city. It was a city that hadn't been subject to bombing to any great degree prior to, February of 1945. And many people questioned the significance of this particular bombing exercise. Kurt Vonnegut, the American writer. Author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle and a number of great American novels from the 1960s and 70s was a prisoner of war. And was billeted in Dresden at the time of the bombing. He, he experienced it directly. Now. Vonnegut is scathing in saying that the war did not end one second earlier as a result of the bombing of Dresden, but Dresden has a significance not only being the backdrop and the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse Five. But it's one of the first histories that was written up in the 19th the early 1960s when the extent of allied bombing became clear to the public at large.
