In the late 1930s, British medical committees predicted that aerial bombing would kill 600,000 people in 60 days and produce up to four million psychiatric casualties. The government printed emergency triage forms and braced for the collapse of civil society. This episode explores the gap between those apocalyptic pre-war theories and the messy, heavily mythologized reality of the Blitz, the eight-month bombing campaign against the United Kingdom from September 1940 to May 1941.

We trace how the Luftwaffe pivoted to bombing London after failing to destroy the Royal Air Force, how Hermann Goering's mismanagement and Hitler's obsession with bomber numbers left Germany without heavy four-engine bombers, and how radio beam systems like X-Geraet guided night raids with mechanical clocks that dropped bombs automatically. On the ground, Londoners  ...