page_title: Baedeker Blitz
section_title: Name
hierarchical_section_title: Baedeker Blitz / Name
caption_attribution_description: Description: Front cover of 1937 Baedeker travel guide of Great Britain. The format and style is consistent with most other travel guides produced by Baedeker during this period.
context_page_description: The Baedeker Blitz or Baedeker raids were a series of attacks by the Luftwaffe on English cities during the Second World War. The name derives from Baedeker, a series of German tourist guidebooks, including detailed maps, which were used to generate targets for bombing.
  The raids were planned in response to a devastating increase in the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force's bombing offensive, starting with the bombing of Lübeck in March 1942. The aim was to begin a tit-for-tat exchange with the hope of forcing the RAF to reduce their actions. To increase the effect on civilian life, targets were chosen for their cultural and historical significance, rather than for any military value.
  The main set of raids began in late April 1942, and ended by the end of May, though towns and cities continued to be targeted for their cultural value over the next two years.
  By any measure, the attempt was an abject failure. In the time following the original Blitz, a little over a year earlier, the RAF had dramatically improved its night fighter capability and introduced the AMES Type 7 radar specifically for the night fighting role.
context_section_description: The raids were referred to on both sides as "Baedeker raids", derived from a comment by a German propagandist. Gustav Braun von Stumm, a spokesman for the German Foreign Office, is reported to have said on 24 April 1942, "We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide", a reference to the popular travel guides of that name. Goebbels was furious; keen to brand British attacks as "terror bombing", he was equally keen to designate German efforts as "retaliatory measures". Stumm's off-the-cuff remark "effectively admitted the Germans were targetting cultural and historic targets, just what the German leadership did not want to do, and Goebbels took steps to make sure it did not happen again".
caption: Baedeker's Great Britain guide for 1937
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