08-05-2025
Queen's 10-word message of defiance after Buckingham Palace bombed by Nazis
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, won hearts and minds when she revealed her first thoughts after the Royal Family's home, Buckingham Palace, was damaged by German bombs during World War 2's Blitz
Bomb damage at Buckingham Palace and London during World War II
On September 13 1940, six German bombs rained down on Buckingham Palace after a Luftwaffe plane screamed up the Mall and dropped its load over the iconic building.
It marked a turning point in the Royal Family 's role in the Second World War, transforming a reluctant King George VI into a national hero who refused to leave London, against his own government's advice.
'I am glad we have been bombed,' the then-Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, wrote to her mother-in-law Queen Mary. 'Now we can look the East End in the eye.'
The royals played an important part in the war. Not only did they stand as figureheads for the values Britain and her allies were fighting for, but their steadfast refusal to leave the Blitz-torn capital for the safety of the countryside - or even North America - boosted national morale.
"The children will not leave unless I do," declared Queen Elizabeth. "I shall not leave unless their father does, and the King will not leave the country in any circumstances whatsoever."
Images of the Queen Mother picking her way through rubble in her heels and handbag in the devastated docklands were as reassuring as the King visiting munitions factories and speaking to workers to boost spirits.
Royal visits, research by the Ministry of Supply revealed at the time, boosted weekly production figures and were an easy way for the monarch to stay in touch with his traumatised subjects.
The future queen - then Princess Elizabeth - was just 13 when war broke out in 1939. She and her younger sister Margaret were evacuated to Windsor Castle, where they remained for the duration of the conflict.
'They were cosseted and didn't see much of their parents,' says historian Tessa Dunlop, author of Lest We Forget: War and Peace in 100 British Monuments.
'They were trapped really, going through adolescence with nothing to do but stare at still-lifes of horses and dogs, then rocking up for the odd photoshoot.'
Elizabeth famously gave a radio broadcast with Margaret early on in the war, sending a message to evacuees in Canada on the Children's Hour programme, urging them to 'have courage'.
And it was during her cloistered teenage years that a dashing young naval cadet by the name of Prince Philip caught Lilibet's eye, after they met for the third time during a visit to the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth.
It was at that meeting that the 14-year-old princess fell in love, although it would take them another eight years to announce their engagement.
'He was showing off, jumping over a tennis net and later he chased down the royal yacht in his row boat,' says Tessa.
His charm offensive worked. 'The princess kept a scrapbook and cut out pictures and stories of her prince, and knew the vessel he was serving on - she had an eye for him right through the war,' Tessa reveals.
By 1944, Elizabeth was displaying his photograph on her mantle - and he carried a picture of her throughout the conflict, even when his ship, HMS Whelp, joined the action in the Pacific. 'There was this underlying war hero narrative, with the princess in her turret,' says Tessa.
At the age of 18, towards the end of the war, the princess was permitted to join the Auxiliary Territory Service (ATS) as second subaltern. Despite having never ridden in a bus or even a taxi, Elizabeth trained as a mechanic and driver of heavy military trucks, passing her test two days earlier than the prescribed course.
While the King decreed Elizabeth should receive no special privileges because of her royal status, she was not allowed to stay in the barracks at Camberley, Surrey, with her fellow ATS trainees.
'She was the first female royal to serve full-time in a military service, albeit for a couple of months,' says Tessa. 'She would be driven back to Windsor Castle to sleep. The whole 'bust-out-your-bodice' time in the war was about being away from your parents, being independent. Elizabeth didn't get that. She learned to drive a Bedford truck but she didn't get to muck in.'
A woman called Gwen who trained with the princess in Camberley remembers her being 'weirdly composed around cameras but very shy among her peers,' Tessa added.
'She'd never been around peers, she'd been brought up by governesses. Even posh girls went to boarding school but she'd been trapped in Windsor Castle; the best she'd got was a pantomime in Windsor Park at Christmas with some of the estate children.'
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In 1942 the royals were devastated by the death of the King's brother Prince George, the Duke of Kent, who was the last royal to die in active service.
The playboy prince, whose marriage to Princess Marina made them one of the most glamorous couples of the 1930s, was serving as an air commodore in the RAF when his aircraft crashed into hills in Caithness, Scotland.
While the weather conditions were poor, mystery still surrounds the exact circumstances of the crash, which killed all but one of the 15 passengers on board.
Conspiracy theories exploded, fuelled by the destruction of the plane's fuselage and the lone survivor being gagged by the Official Secrets Act. An official report into the incident went missing before its findings could be made public and George's death faded from public consciousness.
Meanwhile, the King's elder brother, Edward VIII - who had abdicated the throne in December 1936 to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson - was 'a loose cannon', Tessa explains.
Made Duke of Windsor when he gave up the throne, he used his royal connections to tour Nazi Germany with Wallis the following year, fuelling speculation that the pair were Nazi sympathisers.
But instead of damaging the Royal Family's public relations, Edward's questionable behaviour simply made the monarch look good in comparison.
'Edward left, he's the traitor. It's a little like Harry and William now - the unpopularity of one heightens the popularity of the other,' says Tessa. The war, ultimately, was good for George VI.
'He started the war as a bit gauche, he stumbled around, he was nothing like his charismatic brother Edward. But appeasement fell massively out of fashion, all of the royal family were appeasers pre-war, but once they'd leant into the war and they were standing on the balcony, the King and Queen didn't leave Buckingham Palace or flee abroad or even hang out in Balmoral.
"They stayed at the coal face of the Blitz: that was massively significant and symbolic for Britain.'
By May 8, 1945, the King had cemented himself as the symbolic head of state, having held weekly meetings with Churchill to discuss the war effort. When crowds started gathering outside the palace on VE Day, they chanted, 'We want the King!'
Immediately after Churchill's famous victory speech, the Royal Family appeared on the palace balcony - the King dressed in his Admiral of the Fleet uniform and Princess Elizabeth in her khaki ATS uniform.
Their waves and smiles were captured by the television cameras mounted on vans below, and a crowd of more than 100,000 people screamed and cheered for them.
In perhaps their first taste of real freedom, Elizabeth and Margaret left the palace to join the crowd below, sneaking in among the public outside the gates and cheering alongside them for their parents, who had made several more balcony appearances throughout the afternoon and evening, even positioning Churchill among them - the first time a political figure had been allowed in such a prestigious place.
Elizabeth's sense of duty had been forged by her wartime experience, but the night of May 8 would stay with her forever. "I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall. All of us just swept along in a tide of happiness and relief," she recalled 40 years on, after becoming Queen herself.
"After crossing Green Park, we stood outside and shouted, 'We want the King!' I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life."
