The greatest effect was to force the British to disperse the production of aircraft and spare parts. Bombing failed to demoralise the British into surrender or do much damage to the war economy eight months of bombing never seriously hampered British war production, which continued to increase.
In early July 1940, the German High Command began planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. More than 40,000 civilians were killed by Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in the capital, where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged. The port cities of Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Swansea, Belfast, and Glasgow were also bombed, as were the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, Manchester, and Sheffield. The North Sea port of Hull, a convenient and easily found target or secondary target for bombers unable to locate their primary targets, suffered the Hull Blitz. The Luftwaffe attacked the main Atlantic seaport of Liverpool in the Liverpool Blitz. The Luftwaffe gradually decreased daylight operations in favour of night attacks to evade attacks by the RAF, and the Blitz became a night bombing campaign after October 1940. Notable attacks included a large daylight attack against London on 15 September, a large raid on 29 December 1940 against London resulting in a firestorm known as the Second Great Fire of London. From 7 September 1940, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 of the following 57 days and nights. Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940.
By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain and the German air fleets ( Luftflotten) were ordered to attack London, to draw RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation. The Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns, and cities, beginning with raids on London towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940 (a battle for daylight air superiority between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force over the United Kingdom). The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term Blitzkrieg, the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, in 19, during the Second World War.
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