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Blitz spirit was a thing to some extent but history has a revisionist view of how people behaved doing the war. Both in terms of obeying and abiding the rules and the fact that the mental health toll was basically just ignored.
I heard recently (can't remember the source, but not just a random internet comment), that psychiatrists were expecting a huge mental health toll from WW2, but actually the net effect was not all that severe and, by some metrics, actually positive. I find that quite hard to believe and wonder if they were ignoring PTSD in actual service people, but in terms of those effectively under lockdown in the UK I wonder if the effect of having a clear external enemy and a clear goal mitigated the effect of the hardships.
ffm-
Probably helped that the huge majority of the fighting took place elsewhere against enemies that were considered to be (and looking back, proved to be) evil regimes.
Also imagine there was a good sense of effort in (or sacrifice) producing tangible benefits.
A fair number of the population didn't experience any lasting detrimental effects on their lives, some experienced no change at all. For some, their lives improved.
Contrast with the situation we are in.
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I read something recently (again can't remember where from, but possibly a Graun article) which spoke about the myth of the Blitz spirit and how there were very significant rises in mental issues in the cities which were bombed. Will try to find it, was an interesting read - though I do appreciate that newspaper opinion pieces =/= actual historianism.
Edit - found it, and it was an actual historian. There are some elements that indicate we may have read the same thing - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/myth-blitz-spirit-model-coronavirus
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I find that quite hard to believe and wonder if they were ignoring PTSD in actual service people
I don't know when this study happened but the earliest mention of PTSD in the medical world is about 1980.
Howard
kl
Stonehedge
Blitz spirit was a thing to some extent but history has a revisionist view of how people behaved doing the war. Both in terms of obeying and abiding the rules and the fact that the mental health toll was basically just ignored.
The idea that there was some kind of national spirit that dragged us through the war is basically a myth. Sure, people looked out for each other in amazing ways but a lot of it was simply striving to survive. People sufferered. They were scared. People lied,cheated and stole to survive. They set each other up and grassed each other up. There are even accounts of downed German pilots being beaten to death in the streets of London.
Blitz spirit was the desire to survive. It wasn't always stiff upper lip and helping your neighbours.