Bliztkrieg Kingpin: The Story Of WWII London's Most Notorious Crime Boss | Wartime Crime | Timeline

access to hundreds more exclusive history documentaries by downloading the history hit app Britain World War II as Nazi bombs rained down on London a crime wave is taking place across the nation's capital a million homes destroyed hundreds of thousands of people turned into refugees people living in shelters and subway stations and it creates the perfect environment for criminality emerging from the city's smoldering ashes is a race for unprecedented control of the underworld suddenly we had a character who was Rising above a lot of the minor criminals in London this was a guy who people were genuinely scared of a new Godfather is poised to seize power and his reign will change the Streets of London forever [Music] thank you September 1939 Germany invades Poland the world is at War as Hitler's armies begin their Relentless march across Europe they bring with them a new and fearsome tactic of War Terror bombing of Civilian populations the prospect of the German luftwaffe darkening English Skies is a major concern for the British government Churchill himself had warned Parliament as early as 1934 that in the event of war the nation should expect an air assault on London that will drive millions of people into the Open Country outside the capital the idea of Terror bombing was that you would Reign high explosive bombs or incendiaries on enemy population centers and absolutely freaked the population out the committee on Imperial defense estimates 600 000 dead 1.2 million wounded if the loofah Blitz is London when bombers came over City first of all they couldn't be stopped they were gonna get through and when they bond they were going to cause such cataclysmic damage that basically civilization would end akin to nuclear war today the missiles will get here before we can react and it will result in Untold Devastation and the British are absolutely you know appalled by their Prospect if you hit the London where they keep the government then people are going to panic morale would collapse there would be a Revolution and the government would be forced to surrender but Britain is prepared for the Nazi assault on the 10th of July 1940 the RAF takes to the skies to intercept the invading German air force the Battle of Britain begins the British fighter command is much more resilient than the Nazis anticipate its ability to recover down Pilots its ability to maintain its production of aircraft despite German bombing its ability to weather the attacks on its airfields and still stay in the fight after two months of this Hitler becoming desperate wanting to have a victory over the British so they can turn his attention to the Soviet Union then decides to shift to a bombing campaign the Blitz by September 1940 despite the early success in the Battle of Britain the British government's worst fears are realized reich's Marshall Hermann Goering orders the luftwaffe to bomb English cities the blitz begins the idea of the blitz is that he's going to take out key Industries key facilities key ports and he's going to spread Terror [Music] from London September 1940 there were 57 consecutive night attacks on them every single night for the British people the people underneath the bombs this was suddenly something new the Battle of Britain taking place in the air by their heads in Southern England they'd seen it but now suddenly they were being targeted some people would be Sheltering in Anderson shelters which were little personal shelters you had in your back Garden where just you and your family would be in it some people were Sheltering in the London Underground interestingly the government didn't really want people to shelter in the underground they tried to keep people out of the underground at first sounds extraordinary now but genuinely they were worried that sort of underground troglodyte communities of anti-social people and anti-sential behavior would develop fearing Chaos on the Streets of London the British government executes its plan for the outbreak of War discover the past with exclusive history documentaries from history hit and uncover the secrets of some of the most famous people and events in history history hit brings you the stories that shaped the world through exclusive documentaries from the world's top historians travel with us to the bloody Battle of Stalingrad or uncover the lives of the people who called Pompei home we also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast Network sign up now for a free trial and timeline fans get 50 of their first three months just be sure to use the code timeline at checkout alongside the blackout an order that all lights be extinguished after Nightfall it introduces a series of strict regulations designed to maintain social order in the face of unremitting bombing a whole raft of Defense regulations were brought in covering things like the blackout covering things like people's behavior where they could and could not go defeatism became illegal people who moaned about the war ran the risk of being reported in even imprisoned so it became very much a police state of all the ironies we were fighting a police state Nazi Germany and yet to an extent we had to create one some people were absolutely terrified of what was going on people who were affected personally people who were bombed out themselves or people who knew people who were hurt obviously had a horrifying time for others and you know this may seem a little surprising the blitz was a very liberating time and the first to feel liberated by the blitz are London's criminals at the outbreak of War a general amnesty empties the prisons putting some of the city's toughest gangsters back on the streets among them is Billy Hill 28 years old and already a notorious Thief while a nation gripped with fear prepares for German bombs Hill sees an opportunity Billy Hill came from a criminal family there are such families in Britain as there are in any country his father was a thief his mother was a fence receiver of stolen goods his sister Maggie was the best of them all she was known as the queen of the baby elephants it was a holy women shoplifting gang cleared out store after store up and down the countryside and he'd been brought up with the great criminals of the day for example Eddie Guerin a high class in his time robber who escaped from Devil's Island and was said to have eaten his companions to survive he was a friend of the family so was Alice Darman who was another of the 40 thieves born William Charles Hill on the 13th of December 1911. Billy grows up as part of a large family of Irish immigrants in the seven dials area of London's West End a criminal slum really it's a series of rabbit warriors with very poor living conditions now Billy was one of 21 kids they weren't all bent but he was he carried on his parental tradition all around him was poverty and of course poverty bred crime and in order to survive you had to commit crimes even if you were 10 years old he was a grocery delivery boy from the age of nine and he carried out various Petty thefts from that age too so he became a small time crook during his teens Billy Hill was in and out of juvenile detention centers for a variety of minor crimes in those juvenile detention centers he met other kids who were professional criminals who were already steeped in crime and really that was his education a natural Leader by the 1930s Hill had established his own gang in the north London borough of Camden the gang's criminal activities draw them into turf wars with other local outfits and as they emerge Victorious Hill becomes feared as a cold and violent adversary thank you these guys were pretty Adept at burglaries robbing bank employees but there was something extra chilling about Billy Hill is going because Hill used to leave a v mark on the face of a lot of his victims he would do this with what's known as achieve which is a very narrow sharp knife but he was careful not to murder anybody he used to say murders and mugs games and he always used to slash down with his razor rather than up up runs the risk of cutting an artery down does not he later called it good public relations what he meant was he could scare his enemies as well as scaring his victims as a daring Thief Hill Pioneers a series of techniques that transformed crime in London and bring an Unstoppable wave of lawlessness to the capital first among them is an explosive new type of motorized Jewel Heist the smash and grab Ray Smash and grab robberies were becoming very prevalent at this time they were literally as they sounded you'd smash the window of a short dip your hand in and pull out as much jewelry and watches as you could lay your hands on before the police turned back they were very dramatic Hill often used open top cars so that getting in and out was even quicker you simply jump in you simply jump out on other occasions he used his gang members posing as detectives who would go into jurora shops and warned those Jewelers about the risk of Smash and grab raids and they really must be alert and what kind of safety techniques did they have and Hill was able to capitalize on that too gang committed so many Smash and grabs that the newspapers called it a crime wave and the publicity from it became bigger and bigger on each and every Smash and grab he committed day after day headlines Jules stolen first stolen and so forth and indeed the Home Secretary made a statement in the House of Commons that this was going to be stopped suddenly we had a character who was Rising above a lot of the minor criminals in London and this was a guy who people were genuinely scared of and for Billy Hill the outbreak of war in 1939 is the perfect setting in which to launch an all-out assault on London's underworld 1940 Hitler's bombs are raining down on London as Germany's Campaign Of Terror bombing known as The Blitz brings chaos to the lives of the ordinary British citizen one man is seeking to capitalize on the moment for career gangster Billy Hill the war provides the perfect opportunity to seize control of the city's criminal underworld London's underworld up until 1939 1940 was far more arbitrary far more disorganized the kind of crime that was occurring in London's underworld would have been recognizable to a time traveler from a previous Century it was the usual crimes that preyed upon human weaknesses and human greed Smash and grab fencing illegal gambling dens a bit of prostitution and a bit of drugs in London criminal activity is dominated by a few powerful gangs that hail from the city's slums the professional underworld was very much dominated by the old family gangs loose associations of criminals held together really by their family or ethnic backgrounds so you've got Jewish gangs Italian gangs Irish gangs or group by neighborhood in London the principal people running what we would call Crime would be the savinas they were an Italian family from saffron Hill which was in Clark and well they were led by a man called Darby who was one of the younger brothers curiously and his youngest brother a man who always went by the name of Harry boy the sabinis were Violent Men they had fought just after the first world war a long battle with people called the brahmagen boys a man called Kimber who wanted to control the race tracks race track crimes is basically protection rackets so a gang would go to a bookie and demand money from that bookie otherwise he'd be beaten up possibly even killed they would demand money for the very seat that the book he sat on their demand money for the chalk he used to mark up his Tic Tac signs they'll demand money even for the sponge that was used to wash the chalk off the speed is we're a protection gang really and they moved into protecting clubs in SoHo bars in SoHo that sort of thing it's often been said that if London is the capital of crime Soho is the capital of London crime Soho had evolved as this epicenter of crime because of its central location in London because of its small buildings it's anyways it was the perfect location for Crime to thrive he's always had a pretty unsavory racy reputation for two or three centuries illicit gambling dens prostitution of All Sorts male female and specialized um speeders drinking dents or gambling dens they were illegal because they weren't licensed or they flaunted and flouted all the licensing regulations they could once you're in control of Soho you certainly had a lot of power and during the years between the two World Wars a fierce battle rages in the Underworld as various neighborhood gangs Vie with the sabinis for control of both the racetracks and the lucrative rackets of Soho the Cortez brothers and Rico and Augustus were at one time part of the sabinis but they fell out they wanted a bigger share of take and there was a fight in the fratalanza club which was down in Clark and well in which Harry Boyce sabini was shot and Darby sabini had the ignominy of having his false teeth broken some people called the whites also now wanted a share of the prophets and throughout the 1920s the late 1920s there were series of battles in and around Soho culminating in 1927 with one called The Battle of ham yard an agreement was made the whites would have control King's cross the sabinis would control Clark and well still and people call The Elephant Boys who came to the elephant castle would have a look in at any rate at the very least and look in on Soho but when Britain mobilizes for war everything changes for Soho and London's gangs the introduction of National Defense regulations and fear for social stability sees the police launch a Crackdown on organized crime racetracks are closed rackets broken up and the old criminal Empires begin to collapse before the War the attitude to the underworld from the police was kind of to look the other way a lot of the time once the war started interestingly even though the police were so busy elsewhere even though the police lost a lot of its manpower to the Army the police actually started to clamp down on organized crime in SoHo and that clamped down coincided with the sabini family basically be neutered in June 1940 events in the war throw London's organized crime syndicates into total disarray Italy entered the war in that month a very large number of Britain's Italian population were interned these people suddenly became enemy aliens and the effect this had on for example the sabini family was that they were taken out of circulation suddenly they lost their business so there was a kind of power struggle in SoHo to take the place the vacuum sabinis had left this worked out very well for Billy Hill and his cohorts because suddenly the crime that the Italians have been specializing in was free for them with the sabinis neutralized the chaos of the war has put Billy Hill in a position to launch a violent takeover of the Soho clubs and as Law and Order starts to break down under the terror of Hitler's bombs his campaign of robbery heists and racketeering is poised to change the nature of crime forever [Music] [Music] September the 7th 1940 the Blitz commences London is pounded for 57 consecutive nights as Hitler aims to batter Britain into submission nearly a thousand German aircraft fill the sky the skies by mid-november they have dropped 12 000 tons of high explosives and 1 million incendiary bombs on December the 29th the luftwaffe drops over 24 000 high explosive and a hundred thousand in Century bombs in a single night creating firestorms that burn at a thousand degrees Celsius no lights are permitted after Sunset and beneath the crack of anti-aircraft fire and Rumble of falling bombs crime surges on the city's blacked out streets violence and robbery is widespread a mysterious killer is prowling the famous West End and public order threatens to collapse under the campaign of Nazi Terror we've got a million homes destroyed in London you've got hundreds of thousands of people turned into refugees you've got people living in shelters and subway stations and that sort of thing it creates the perfect environment for criminality this was the opportunity a golden opportunity to make money not only do we have a blackout in which people could be robbed in the street they could be cost prostitutes could apply their trade relatively safely but you've got the idea that you can steal theft increased and theft increased enormously theft is always the most common crime in any country at any time and the war made it possible because of the situation one of the largest increases in crime at this time was from looting and Lucy was very much an opportunistic crime one minute the house was there the next minute it wasn't and people who would never normally commit crimes would be tempted to take something by the side of the road or out of a shop window even the emergency services for example the auxiliary fire service or or the heavy rescue people who are meant to be helping these people were taking advantage of the situation to get things for themselves you know they keep a watch out for police and then we'll just take things for themselves and this just is happening all the time there's also a darker side to crime in the blackout and that's at bomb dark buildings are a great place to dispose of bodies we even have some examples as Grim as it sounds of people helping themselves to valuables like jewelry and watches on Corpses [Music] the effect of these conditions on public morale is profound the blackout and the upsurge in crime that it brings proves to be one of Hitler's greatest weapons in his quest to break British resolve imagine for six years having to live behind blackout curtains with very limited light but essentially drives Humanity underground in a way and it just really crimps social life when Britain's reflected back on the war more of them complained to the blackouts and complained of rashing it was quite frightening not to know where you were where you were going you you'd lose a sense of sort of stability um but also a sense of fear because you didn't know what was happening around you it could be crime happening around you if you're a woman walking on your own it could be a man coming up behind you just didn't know you were scared of noises but all sorts of insecurities that came into play that when there were street lights around you just didn't even consider in an effort to crack down on lawlessness and disorder the government introduces a set of Defense regulations that make many normal activities crimes hundreds of previously law-abiding citizens are caught up in a legal system where the lines between criminal and good citizen have been blurred I spoke to a woman whose mother became a criminal when she went into a butchers and bought an unweighed chicken you weren't allowed to drive a light-colored car presumably because that could be seen from above you weren't allowed to have car radio because that could be a transmitter used by spies so all sorts of areas of society was suddenly literally overnight affected by laws that people didn't know had been brought in so people were suddenly caught out people became criminals just like that as everyday Behavior suddenly becomes illegal public respect for the law begins to break down together with the scarcity of consumer goods this change in Attitude gives rise to a huge Nationwide criminal Enterprise in which almost everyone participates the black market [Music] the black market trade in peacetime or easily obtainable but with the war it suddenly become very very scarce soap babies bottles alarm clocks decent whiskey alongside that of course were the food shortages because of the result of rationing people would be quite prepared to do deals to get a few extra eggs for the family there are stories that they were quite prepared to offer sexual favors to The Butchers to get a an extra cut of meat the black market was seen as part of the victimless crime situation the government has caused the problem the government has clamped down there is a kind of them and US feeling it meant that people accepted theft it meant that they were quite willing to cheat and steal and connive by using the black market in a way that they wouldn't have thought of doing I'm talking about honest members of society I'm talking about Vickers I'm talking about teachers I'm talking about the police themselves participation in the black market forces millions of people to abandon their pre-war standards of morality it also makes low-level Street criminals known as spivs a useful point of contact for ordinary families looking to circumvent the new laws there's a wartime stereotype of a cockney spiv this person basically tended to look quite slick he's quite well dressed perhaps a slick mustache and he's got a pattern the way he speaks Yes Man and we'd like a bit of this we'd like a bit of that this is the man who can get you more and he's your friend because he can help you out they sold Goods on street corners keeping a weather eye out for the local patrolling policeman the Bobby and if you knew the right person you could obtain almost anything on that black market it made some people an absolute Fortune people who didn't think of themselves at all as criminals require D to dabble that was always the word dabble in the black market have a bit here have a bit extra there there's no harm in it the trouble was there was no harm in their end but once you get up to the other end where there are armed robberies going on they certainly wouldn't want to be associated with that violent end for Billy Hill the black market becomes the perfect foundation on which to build an Empire at first like a lot of professional criminals Billy Hill wasn't impressed by the black market he regarded it as being small fry too small scale not worth his trouble then of course he realized very quickly that it was actually extremely lucrative as the public demand for everyday items increases Hill plans a spree of bold robberies to secure Goods with which to feed and expand the market Billy Hill said the blackout was Hitler's gift to the criminal world the effect of the black market was to provide a whole new form of crime fur coats and jewelry which are the kind of things he'd thieved before the war or one thing now people needed cigarettes and whiskey and meat it was a great warm welcome Embrace that he walked into he said I didn't just exploit the black market I fed it typically Billy Hill always thought big he'd filling tar warehouses with things like sheets Hill organized the forgery of petrol coupons he organized a house in Hertfordshire to which stolen goods could be taken formed documents for servicemen for deserters who are on the Run he was able to harness all that and make it work he has the system he has the structure he has a gang of Heavies who can implement the crimes they work for him he was becoming boss of the underworld and he has got that team Billy Hill's status was improving as it were year by year in the Underworld he was becoming a major figure in London there would be contacts with the rest of the country by late 1940 Hill has a burgeoning Empire of stolen goods Contraband and forged to documents the money flowing in makes him one of Britain's most influential criminals but Hill has even more ambitious plans a series of high-stakes raids on an unlikely Target the post office during this period post offices were being used almost like banks by many citizens but of course they didn't have guards in the same way that bangers had Billy Hill noticed this and he saw this as a potential criminal Target in a bid to become Britain's most powerful gangster Billy Hill is poised to launch a crime wave across London a crime wave that no one sees coming or will be able to prevent [Music] prior to the second world war London's underworld worked largely in the shadows of society and as long as it remained out of public view the authorities would look the other way policing in the 1930s was more concerned about protecting the public from violence than it was bothering about The Gangs of petty criminals as long as they didn't hurt the general public the police themselves were incredibly lowly paid so much so that most of them would be bought a pint of beer which is another way of saying a bribe and there was nothing wrong with it but by 1940 as Nazi bombs rained down on the city London gangster Billy Hill is Remodeling and expanding the underworld having taken control of the lucrative wartime Black Market he launches a new audacious type of crime post office robbery he began by reading some of the warehouses and buildings belonging to the post office which contained large amounts of cash he then started hitting the vans that were taking amounts of cash from one post office to another and this revolutionized the whole crime scene in London at that time Billy regarded being a criminal as just like any other job he himself said that the better you got at it the harder you had to work at it this new type of crime catches the security services completely off guard lacking numbers and struggling to respond to the nightly emergencies caused by Nazi bombing the police are helpless as Hill takes advantage of the war and oversees an avalanche of postal robberies heists and smash and grabs across London in the war you could enlist The public's support for example to a people called ARP wardens who helped clear bomb damage and so on Hills men would have ARP helmets on and direct the public stand back we're clearing there's no need for you to come here so stand away while they just looted the premises Mr Big Time like to do the big robberies and he was committing and continued to commit these sort of crimes throughout the second world war at one stage he even carried out a gold bullion robbery in hat and God claiming that he needed to get enough money together to support his family after he was going to be conscripted but he actually never got conscripted and the suspicion is that he paid someone off to avoid being conscripted he was cautious he planned things meticulously and he had a kind of Rapport not just with the public but with the police too he was always very careful to be deferential to them in the case of Chief superintendent Edward Greenough he always called you Mr Greeno oh sir and it was a kind of understanding which is rare but it seemed to have worked in Billy Hill's favor Benny Hill stood out as a criminal because he was so cool so calm so well organized and he was a good leader of men he looked after his teams people would share and share a like there'd always been a policy of looking after wives and children while their husbands were away and the hill carried that out he was a good leader I mean he was liked by his people he paid his debts he behaved in criminal terms he behaved very well he was trustworthy he ran his operation almost as if it was a corporation he had a payroll in employees he broke up fights when members of his gang came out of jail he would ensure there were clothes waiting for them and cash by now Hill is personally making around 400 pounds per week equivalent to 20 000 pounds today from the black market on top of that high value Jewel heists and postal robberies connect the gang roughly five or six hundred thousand pounds in a single job Hill begins to bait his underworld Rivals walking into their Soho clubs without permission dressed in expensive tailored suits despite having a young wife at home he is often seen in the company of Mistresses his trusty chive hidden in his breast pocket and frequently used to maim anyone who objects to his presence is running more operations than anyone else and his skill was at running these crimes simultaneously and getting away with all of them unlike the black market organized crime on this scale is not perceived to be victimless Hill starts to attract the attention of the press public and politicians as his notoriety grows people were outraged by the type of crimes that Billy Hill was committing during the war because most men were away fighting for king and country and here was this professional criminal flouting the law smashing grabbing robbing thieving racketeering and there was a feeling that it was outrageous that he would do such a thing where most people were away fighting and risking their life and limb increasing pressure is brought to bear on the gang and in 1940 an unsuccessful robbery in London's jewelry district lands Billy hill behind bars [Music] by the time he is released towards the end of 1941 the worst of the German bombing campaign is over [Music] the Soviet Union has entered the war and Hitler has turned his military machine away from English skies and towards the vast expanses of the East the change in the pattern of the conflict means nothing to Billy Hill Britain remains at War and he leaves prison ready to rebuild his criminal Empire he gets out in 1941 goes straight back into the underworld and starts to commit the sort of crimes he was renowned for but on an even bigger scale the war was the making of Billy Hill it enabled him to expand a range of contacts it moved him into other fields of crime it was a big criminal underworld in Manchester and indeed Liverpool leads where there was money there was crime he was now probably the most influential criminal in the West End and the West End has become a more violent dangerous and edgy place than it had been in the days before the war all types of chances opportunists and deserters flood into wartime Soho swelling the ranks of the underworld and bringing the lore of the gun with them there's an increased availability of guns simply because the number of servicemen the service Personnel coming into London as a result of the war you had American and Canadian servicemen bringing guns in but you've got other nationalities as well there were over twenty thousand deserters in London during the war those guys would have had weapons too deserters were people who had very little to lose I mean they were already the authorities were looking for them and they couldn't get ordinary jobs so they had to live on their wits and that meant they were willing to take all kinds of criminal chances and they were quite a surprising number of them all these people entered the underworld they increased it in size they had so little to lose they made it significantly more violent than it had been before reputation was all important to Billy Hill criminals wanted to join his game they could see how much money they were all making and they could see the success ratio that Billy Hill was managing to attain yeah okay he did go to prison a few times but overall he was getting away with probably 95 percent of the crimes that he and his gang committed but in August 1942 his luck runs out again during a postal robbery in London Hill's getaway vehicle is rammed by a nearby Lorry and he has returned to prison this time with a four-year sentence although his rapid rise has come to an abrupt halt it won't be the last that the world will hear from Billy Hill 1947 two years after the Allied victory over Nazi Germany having exploited the chaos of War to build a criminal Empire London gangster Billy Hiller spent the last few years languishing in prison when he has returned to the streets he finds the new modern underworld to be very different from the one he left the villains became even more daring they looked at bigger targets places like Heathrow Airport they would hit bigger post office fans they'd hit bigger Banks fit and trained to behave in a certain way project crime was going to become the name of the game because they were used to planning and organizing kind of Mastermind so you could then carry off something like The Great Train Robbery in the 1960s because they're used to working in teams in units the changes suit Billy Hill and his Ambitions his greatest asset remains his Criminal Mind and he sees an opportunity to harness the strength of the post-war underworld and professionalize it previously with the families like sabinis disorganized crime whereas with Billy what you're getting was the start of real organized crime he moved on to a different level he stepped back from being so overly involved in a lot of the crimes and robberies himself and became the managing director of crime the guy who would Supply the finance for the arranging of a crime particularly robberies Billy Hill emerged from the end of the war as the king of Soho the King of London The Godfather of the underworld and Soho becomes the center of post-war glamor servicemen returning from the war flood into its bars clubs and spielas looking for a good time and London's gangsters most prominently Billy Hill suddenly become fashionable remember that London of that period was very drought for most people they were wearing old clothes uniforms but if you went to Soho you'd see the space with wider than regulation lapels beautiful suits chunky Rings big hats with a brim turned up mustaches pipes or cigars looking affluent so you knew straight away that you were in an almost cinematically different place from the rest of London hill was a celebrity criminal he referred to himself as the Humphrey Bogart of British crime he didn't look unlike Bogart and he had himself photographed in very expensive Savile Rose suits his wife wore very expensive Furs all of it stolen by now Hill is concentrating exclusively on high-stakes raids with huge rewards in 1952 he carries out the East Castle Street robbery with a value of over 7 million pounds today it is the biggest criminal Heist Britain has ever seen the East Castle Street robbery which was just off Oxford Street was a an attack on a post office around brilliantly organized one has to say that he rehearsed his men in the suburbs under the pretext of making a film one realized then what a major player he was because apartment thing else no one was arrested it was done very carefully almost like an army exercise everything was timed and it became the precursor to other even bigger crimes such as The Great Train Robbery the Brinks map robbery and other such pivotal robberies committed in Britain the Press are quick to describe large-scale robberies and heists overseen by Billy Hill and his new professional underworld as a crime wave and questions are raised in Parliament as to how to stop the tide of lawlessness these concerns however are largely ignored by the British public whose experience of War has changed their perception of crime forever people realized after living through the experience of the blitz they couldn't suddenly expect the government to look after them or the church or their local MP so everybody became a wee bit more Lawless people realized what they were capable of for the first time that they would do anything to survive Hill spends long stretches of the 1950s pursuing criminal opportunities overseas he will eventually return to Britain to launch a ferocious turf war against his former partner the East London gangster Jack Spott by the 1960s many of the prominent gangsters are household names their activities followed eagerly by press and public alike they owe it all to Billy Hill what we had during the war were kids who had no fathers there were no policemen about the bomb sites were their playgrounds and the whole criminal ethos was feeding off this some of the characters that Billy hill men taught included the Kray twins notorious London criminals who went on to run the underworld 15 to 20 years later but what of the Blitz the Nazis Campaign Of Terror bombing that had allowed Hill to build his Empire Hitler had sent the luftwaffe to break Britain but for all the death and destruction he failed and against all the predictions of the military theorists British resolve stood firm the blitz beard is a reaction that the Germans don't take into account they assume that if you spread Terror from the air you will destroy the will of an enemy population the opposite occurs and not just in Britain imagine Pearl Harbor imagine 911 and you put the Blitz in that context the actual attack on British soil creates this galvanizing crystallizing effect where British Society pulls together to reject this Invader and reject this invader's terroristic methods going to see the bombs and just collapse into some sort of Anarchy and Chaos people did indeed pull together people did withstand the bombing people were tough despite the surge in crime Britain's response to the blitz is still remembered as one of the nation's proudest moments an American Observer perhaps best summed up the mood when he said by every test and measure I am able to apply these people are staunched to the Bone and won't quit the British are stronger and in a better position than they were at the beginning thank you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Id: O8t2g27IpGg

Length: 44min 50sec (2690 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023