<Ul> <Li> Exeter </Li> <Li> Bath </Li> </Ul> <Li> V - 2 </Li> <P> The Blitz was a German bombing offensive against Britain in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War . The term was first used by the British press as an abbreviation of Blitzkrieg (lightning war). The Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns and cities, beginning with raids on London towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940, a battle for daylight air superiority between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force over the United Kingdom . By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had failed and the German air fleets (Luftflotten) were ordered to attack London, to draw RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation . Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander - in - chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940 . From 7 September 1940, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 out of the following 57 days and nights . Most notable was a large daylight attack against London on 15 September . </P> <P> The Luftwaffe gradually decreased daylight operations in favour of night attacks to evade attack by the RAF, and the Blitz became a night bombing campaign after October 1940 . The Luftwaffe attacked the main Atlantic sea port of Liverpool in the Liverpool Blitz and the North Sea port of Hull, a convenient and easily found target or secondary target for bombers unable to locate their primary targets, suffered the Hull Blitz . Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton and Swansea were also bombed, as were the industrial cities of Birmingham, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield . More than 40,000 civilians were killed by Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in the capital, where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged . </P>

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