St. Paul's Survives
St Paul's Survives (Saint Paul survived) is the name of a photo, which during the Battle of Britain was recorded. The picture was taken on December 30, 1940 and shows the undamaged dome of St Paul's Cathedral in London, shrouded in the smoke of the burning buildings all around.
Origin and use
The night of December 29-30, 1940 was the 114th night of The Blitz , as the English called the air raids on London, alluding to the word Blitzkrieg . The first bombs fell around 6.15 p.m. GMT . That evening, 160 people died in London and more than 500 were injured. Almost all buildings in the area around St. Pauls were destroyed or badly damaged. The fires that started became known as the Second Great Fire of London compared to the Great Fire of London of 1666 . 120 tons of incendiary and high explosive bombs were dropped over London that night .
In the early morning hours of December 30, 1940, the strongest smoke had subsided and the photographer Herbert Mason, who worked for the Daily Mail , climbed onto the roof of the newspaper's editorial building on Tudor Street in the Blackfriars district and took only one picture from there - this photo. The picture also contained military information in the broadest sense, e.g. B. on the accuracy of the enemy bombers. Therefore, the picture first had to be submitted to the censorship authority for approval. It was released on December 30, 1940, and the picture first appeared in the Daily Mail on New Year's Eve 1940. The headline read: "War's Greatest Picture: St Paul's Stands Unharmed in the Midst of the Burning City." (The greatest picture of this war - St. Pauls stands undamaged in the middle of the burning city).
The photographer's impressions were also described in the newspaper: “At intervals I kept concentrating on the direction in which the big dome should be seen, but huge clouds of smoke obstructed the view. Then the wind picked up. Suddenly the shining cross, the dome and the towers could be seen and stood like a symbol in hell all around. The scene was amazing. At that moment I pressed the shutter release. "
On January 23, 1941, the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung printed the picture on its title page without the permission of the Daily Mail, together with the headline: “The City of London is on fire”. Now the picture should be proof that the air raids on London had an effect. By simply changing the accompanying text, the image was given a completely different meaning than what the photographer originally had in mind.
Since the end of the war, the picture has also been used in books on the Battle of Britain as their theme, and it eventually became an icon for the perseverance of the English people.
background
The fact that St. Paul's Cathedral survived the air raids on London largely unscathed is only due to the special measures ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill . The effects of the destruction of the cathedral on the morale of the people in London would have been devastating, and irretrievable cultural assets would have been destroyed. Churchill therefore ordered that numerous firefighters and other auxiliary workers be stationed in the cathedral. They stayed in the crypt when there was nothing to do. One of the dangerous tasks of these people was to climb the dome of St. Pauls in the event of an air alarm and keep an eye out for incendiary bombs. These then had to be deleted immediately or at least knocked off so that they could safely burn down on the pavement. Only a few weeks earlier, Coventry Cathedral had been completely destroyed in a major German attack; no special measures had been taken there to protect the cathedral.
The precautionary measures taken for St. Pauls offered fairly good protection against incendiary bombs, but would have been ineffective against explosive bombs. Earlier, on September 12, 1940, an aerial mine weighing one ton fell nearby, but did not detonate. After three days, the mine was able to be removed and blown up in the open, where it left a crater 100 feet in diameter. If it had exploded near St. Paul, nothing would have been left of the cathedral.