Why this new study of the Blitz? Dozens of books over the past six decades, after all, have already been devoted to chronicling and examining the trial by fire that London underwent between September 1940 and May 1941 at the hands of the Luftwaffe. According to the author, one of the central pillars of British studies in the United States for many years, he was drawn to the Blitz as a subject—and more specifically to its first day—by the public comparisons that were made on both sides of the Atlantic between what London endured and what New York experienced on and after 9/11. How did people react? And what did it all mean?

Drawing on the extensive published primary and secondary literature, as well as—crucially—diaries, letters, and narrative accounts held by the Imperial War Museum, Stansky begins with a survey of the official preparations for a possible aerial Armageddon undertaken in the years leading up to the Second World War. He is not sparing in his criticism of the defects of the civil defense structure; some of the breakdowns in the evacuation of those bombed out, indeed, later lead him to draw parallels with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on a couple of occasions.

The following chapters explore the varying experiences and reactions of those who actually endured or observed the two successive raids on the capital that took place in the late afternoon and early evening of 7 September and through the night of 7–8 September, including the overworked civil defense services. Equal space is then given over to how the Blitz was interpreted at the time and subsequently in the form of the so-called Myth of the Blitz: the common belief that the people of London heroically endured the efforts of Hitler to terrorize the capital into submission. The views of ordinary Londoners, the press, and a variety of postwar commentators are brought into play but so too—and not surprisingly in light of Stansky's earlier work on various progressive cultural figures—are members of the London intelligentsia. As he explains somewhat defensively, “They were not unaffected by the bombing; their reactions to the events of September 7 and ensuing months of the Blitz, while more articulate than those of the working class in the East End, are no less valid or worthy of examination” (156).

What then, are the author's conclusions? First, even if terror bombing anywhere at any time has never achieved its goal of complete social collapse, many Londoners “were convulsed by fear on September 7, 1940” (184). But although there were some who behaved badly, giving way to panic and brutality, “much of the population refused to reveal that fear” (184), which in turn indicates that the stoicism associated with the Myth of the Blitz was grounded in reality. As for the meaning of it all, Stansky argues that 7 September was a historical turning point in the war, insofar as it marked the beginning of the Luftwaffe's bid to terrorize the population of the capital, a highly destructive but ultimately futile attempt to end the conflict. “If not very clearly and with much difficult fighting yet to come, it now appeared, perhaps for the first time, that the Axis were less likely to win the war. Or to put it another way, that Britain would not lose the war” (180–81). Stansky is, however, rather more ambivalent about just how important the Blitz was in bringing about the welfare state after the war had ended. On the one hand he writes that “the people behaved so well that at the end of the war, they deserved a welfare state” (186). On the other hand, in an endnote linked to this statement, he fully acknowledges that “one could argue that the welfare state was shaped far more by forces in British society that went back through its history deep into the nineteenth century, but more immediately to the 1930s” (204). The Blitz, in short, may or may not have been a key way station on the road to 1945.

A highly meditative work in which the voices of those who lived through that terrible day and night nevertheless predominate, The First Day of the Blitz is a timely addition to the historical literature on the civilian experience of the Second World War. As for the link between the Blitz and 9/11, both attacks “were marked by death and destruction, but they also provided evidence of our ability to survive as human beings” (189). It is hard to argue with that.