“Too ghastly to believe”? Liverpool, the press and the May Blitz of 1941

In Britain, only London was bombed more than Liverpool during the Second World War, a campaign by the Luftwaffe that reached its height in the first week of May 1941 when the city and surrounding areas were blitzed for seven successive nights. More than 1,700 people died in the May Blitz, one in every 35 civilians killed in bombing raids in the whole of Britain over six years. This article analyses how newspapers reported this story by researching the Daily Mirror, The Times and the Liverpool Echo for a two-week period when there was time not only to report the raids, but to reflect on them afterwards. The coverage, too, was held up to a report from a Home Intelligence inspector who visited the Merseyside just afterwards to assess the morale. The contrast between what he wrote and what was appearing in the press was significant, and the effects far reaching