<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 and is the German word for' lightning' . </P> <P> 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> <P> In early July 1940 the German High Command began planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union . Bombing failed to demoralise the British into surrender or do much damage to the war economy; eight months of bombing never seriously hampered British war production which continued to increase . The greatest effect was to force the British to disperse the production of aircraft and spare parts . British wartime studies concluded that cities generally took 10 to 15 days to recover when hit severely but exceptions like Birmingham took three months . </P>

What cities were bombed in ww2 in england
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