As air raid sirens wailed and bombs fell nightly, Londoners of all ages faced the inescapable horrors of World War II during the German Blitz. A new movie examines the family bonds uprooted by one of the most violent stretches of the conflict.
Directed by Steve McQueen, Blitz began playing Friday in select theaters ahead of its streaming release on Apple TV+ November 22. The movie stars Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan as Rita, a London mother, and George, her son, who are separated during the deadly bombing campaign waged against Great Britain in the early 1940s.
While the story of Rita and George isn’t directly based on true events, the two characters act as dramatic stand-ins for the thousands of British civilians who faced mortal danger—not only from the bombings, but also the panic and fear they helped spread. Here’s what we know about the real events of the war that helped shape the movie.
What was the Blitz?
The Blitz—a shorthand for the German term Blitzkrieg, which means “lightning war”—was a prolonged series of aerial bomb attacks carried out by the German Air Force against British cities and towns during World War II.
According to the Imperial War Museums, the German campaign began on September 7, 1940, with a series of bombings in London that killed 430 people and injured 1,600 more. The day is now known as “Black Saturday.”
Regular bombardments continued through the following May, with London bearing the brunt of German firepower. The capital city was attacked for 57 consecutive days. In total, more than 43,500 British civilians died across the country.
But as the new movie illustrates, the repeated explosions were only one aspect of the hazards regular citizens faced.
Two separate subway tragedies killed hundreds
According to the London Transport Museum, stations on the London subway system, commonly known as the Tube, became crucial civilian shelters during World War I. But at the outbreak of WWII, which prompted the evacuation of more than 1.25 million people from London in August and September 1939, authorities were reluctant to use them again for this purpose as they thought it would negatively affect civilian morale.
However, at the start of the Blitz campaign, thousands hurried underground anyway, and soon, stations were filled with refugees sleeping on walkways, platforms, and non-electrified tracks. Unfortunately, these overcrowded conditions could turn deadly in the wrong set of circumstances. Director McQueen has said a pair of disasters served as key influences for Blitz.
On the evening of October 14, 1940, a bomb fell above a Tube station in the Balham district of southern London. Following the explosion, a double-decker bus fell into the blast area, rupturing a water pipe and causing the platform to flood. According to the South West Londoner, 66 of the 500 people taking shelter in the station died in the incident, including two children as young as 4 years old. Other estimates have reported as many as 68 fatalities. The movie Blitz includes a similar scene with shelterers struggling to escape flooded conditions.
Then long after the initial Blitz campaign, another incident at Bethnal Green on March 3, 1943, became London’s worst civilian disaster of the war. At 8:17 p.m., an air raid siren prompted three buses worth of travelers and many others on foot to take shelter in the half-completed underground station there. However, the crowd panicked at the sound of an anti-aircraft artillery test nearby and began falling on top of one another in the dark conditions eventually blocking the stairwell.
According to the Stairway to Heaven Memorial Fund, 173 people died in the chaotic stampede, many of asphyxiation. An inverted staircase now serves as a memorial to the victims at the station’s entrance.
A photograph inspired the Blitz main character
As these tragic events show, children weren’t immune from the dangers of combat during the war. For its part, the new movie shows the perspective of a 9-year-old boy named George. Although McQueen fleshed out the character’s backstory, a real but unidentified child inspired George.
The director explained to The Los Angeles Times that while writing his 2020 TV anthology Small Axe, about the West Indian community of London, he found a photograph of a young Black boy standing on a railway platform during World War II. Wearing an oversized coat and holding a large suitcase, the child was one of 800,000 children evacuated from the United Kingdom during the conflict.
The photograph inspired McQueen to tell the story of the London Blitz through a child’s eyes, rather than those of traditional heroes such as Prime Minister Winston Churchill and British Army officer Bernard Montgomery. “I thought to myself, that’s my ‘in.’ Who was [this child], what was his story, we need to see the war through his eyes. What was it like for him?” McQueen told The Guardian.
Young actor Elliott Heffernan, now 11, received the part of George, his first movie role. Heffernan is of mixed race like his character and told The Upcoming he drew from his own experiences with racism and bullying to bring McQueen’s vision of George to the screen. And, according to McQueen, Heffernan did all of his own stunts, except one.
“[My acting coach] helped me understand how to be a character,” Heffernan said. “He always said ‘You’re not pretending to be someone else; you’re being yourself in someone else’s shoes.’”
For McQueen, the true stories behind Blitz remain relevant as ever amid ongoing violent conflict in the Middle East. “I was interested in ordinary people, how they navigated their way through this hell which was put on them,” McQueen told The Guardian. “For me, it wasn’t about guys in khaki in a field somewhere in France, fighting each other. It was about people trying to deal or trying to survive in their everyday life, a little similar to what’s going on now in Israel and Gaza and Lebanon.”
Blitz is now playing in select theaters and will stream globally on Apple TV+ beginning November 22. The movie stars Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, and Elliott Heffernan.
Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.
