Brum's wait of expection

CARL CHINN looks at the run up to VE Day and how a city celebrated 80 years ago today

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"WHEN will it happen?" As 1945 dawned, that was the question seemingly everybody wanted an answer to. When would Nazi Germany surrender and Victory in Europe Day be announced?

Those were questions that would have been impossible to answer in the dark days of 1940, for as prime minister Winston Churchill stressed, after gallant France had been struck down, "We from this island and from our united Empire maintained the struggle single-handed for a whole year".

Bombed and battered, yet did the United Kingdom hold out against an enemy that had conquered much of Europe and cowed the rest. Bereft of continental support, the future looked bleak but then came a dramatic turn of events.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union and so gained the British a powerful ally.

Soon after, things began to look up even more. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the USA, following the destructive Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour. As Churchill emphasised, this brought into play a nation of overwhelming power and resources.

It would take time for the alliance with the USA to make an impact, but the assault on the Soviet Union meant that the Luftwaffe’s bombing shifted away from Britain. That brought immediate relief to the people of Birmingham's working-class neighbourhoods. Living cheek by jowl with numerous munitions factories, from August 1940 they'd been pounded in a devastating Blitz.

However, the Luftwaffe fitfully resumed its raids in the summer of 1942. On the morning of July 27 bombs were dropped on the Rover in Solihull, and that evening Birmingham was blasted by at least 60 planes. Rookery Road, Handsworth and Summer Hill were badly hit, 283 fires were reported across the city, and a high explosive fell on Gabriel and Company's works in A.B. Row, Duddeston.