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In this film I will take you back in time to London during WWII to show you what this great city really was like back then. This video is made as seen through the eyes of my parents who lived in London during the war. They met each other in 1943 and got maried in the summer of 1945. My father was stationed in London as member of the Dutch Navy and my mother, who was born in London, worked for a large London warehouse: “Debenham & Freebody'. She lived through the entire 5 year war period, including the Blitz that lasted over 8 months as well as the V1 and V2 attacks period. As a red thread throughout this video, the Top-3 comments that are usually made under my videos about old London are addressed in detail. 1. When London was still white, 2. Everybody in this film is now dead, and 3. Not a fat, obese person in sight. Hopefully this video will provide a much better understanding of having to live for 5 years under the constant terror inflicted by the German enemy. Each topic in this video is introduced by a war poster; these were displayed in the streets, stations and tube trains during the war. The topics are: - Introduction - Dig For Victory - Barrage balloons - Evacuation of the children - The Phoney War - The Battle Of Britain - Daily life and the “Blitz“ - Women during WW-2 - Food rationing - Mobilisation - The role of the London Underground - The Gasmask period - The Blackout - Incendury bombs and fires - The Americans occupy London - The key players - German V1 and V2 attacks - Social climate - The end of the War - Epilog. If ever there was a place and time wherein people were drawn much closer to each other it was WW-II in London. The need to fight a common enemy and the fact that all classes of society suffered the same effects of war was a strong binding factor. Food rationing affected 99% of the population, houses were bombed indescriminately, including stately manors and even Buckingham Palace. Death and severe injuries came to all walks of life. The war compelled people to support each other and stick together as one nation and one society. Unlike in today's over-protected, money and status driven society with deeply embedded anti-social and selfish behaviour, there was the urgent need to simply stay alive and to help each other in every possible way to survive the war. It drew the best out of people including comradery, friendship, decency, support, love and respect for each other. The fact that people became reliant on each other also encouraged strong cooperation in a military, political, social and economic sense. Many inventions were done to assist the war effort, like the development of radar, code breaking at Bletchley Park and much more. Please read more under my Pinned comment! This has been my biggest project so far. The topic is very close to my heart and has caused quite some emotion during its making. I really do hope you will enjoy it and learn from it. Music: Vera Lynn (rare!) Duration: 60 minutes. Sources: Beeld En Geluid, , Prelinger, Library of Congress, British Film Council. This video is not being monetized. Sadly I cannot stop Youtube from including advertisements. The B&W footage from many sources has been meticulously restored, motion-stabilized, enhanced, edited and colorized, among other using the latest video software based on A.I. (Artificial intelligence). Ambient sound has been added where necessary (a first for me...). About half of the sound track has been dubbed because a lot of the original footage was silent or had spoken commentary. The full transcript of my documentary as well as the full (60 minutes) original version of my video can be read and viewed here: You may find that some short pieces of the documentary are missing or have no sound (in total about 4 minutes). This is because I had to trim out 5 scenes for which, strangely enough, someone made a copyright claim... Believe it or not, the airraid sirenes were copyrighted! You can watch the uncut version via the above link. *Please note that this comments section is only open to comments that focus on London during WW-II* . If you want to make comments related to race, skin colour, obesitas or make nasty comparisons between London during WW-II and now then you have not understood the objective of this film, i.e. to forget about today but to go back in time to really understand London's history. Kindly respect my wish to keep my channel a pleasure to watch, with decency and respect among all other viewers. If you intend ignore this urgent request then please leave now, sorry!
