3587 - The Battle of Britain and the London Blitz (Peter Campos)
Course Description
Instructor: Peter Campos
The Battle of Britain and the London Blitz
“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” Winston Churchill’s words referred to the RAF resistance to Luftwaffe attacks on the homeland in what came to be called “The Battle of Britain.” We will examine this conflict and the ensuing “London Blitz” that happened over only 10 months but had a significant impact on the war’s outcome. In Week 1 we will consider the conditions in Europe that led to these conflicts and how internal decisions by both administrations affected the outcome. During Week 2 we will cover the air battles of “The Battle of Britain”; learn about each side’s main aircraft, including the iconic Spitfire and Messerschmitt Bf-109. Week 3 will tackle the ensuing bombing of civilian targets known as “The London Blitz”; why did the Germans switch strategies and why weren’t the British people totally cowed? Week 4 gives a summary of the immediate and later consequences of these battles on the outcome of the war in Europe. We’ll entertain some “what-if” scenarios that will illuminate just how pivotal these two short early conflicts were.
Bio: Peter Campos is a retired clinical psychologist who was on faculty at SUNY-Binghamton’s Psychology Department and at Emory Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He began teaching 40 years ago in Honolulu as a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, and has since taught at Chaminade University, Georgia State University, Mercer University, and Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. He taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in psychology, behavior disorders, research methods, and applied statistics. His lifelong “passion subjects” include history and travelogues, which he shares as an OLLI-at-Emory instructor.