ABSTRACT
Adaptive responses only became widely discussed from the mid-1930s, after the Nazis came to power in Germany. A deep divide separated proposals for adapting British society to the threat of aerial bombardment. Preparing the nation for aerial bombardment appeared to be a much more difficult task for democracies than for dictatorships, as Jonathan Griffin noted in 1938 after several years of limited progress in official but non-compulsory ARP programmes. The unelected regional commissioners who had been given wide powers to maintain law and order in their areas in the event of a successful knock-out blow against London were hardly symbols of the ability of democracy to withstand aerial bombardment. Britains political system had not in fact crumpled under aerial bombardment and that Britain itself would survive the Blitz. The likely immobility of the working classes after heavy aerial bombardment would, Garratt believed, add to their desperation and, perhaps, create a revolutionary mood.
