"Experts"

Britain's civil defense experts, fearing a "knock-out blow," predicted that the first aerial attack on London would destroy much if not all of the city and kill two hundred thousand civilians. It was widely believed that London would be reduced to rubble within minutes of war being declared," wrote one junior official. Raids would cause such terror among the survivors that millions would go insane. "London for several days will be one vast raving bedlam," wrote J. F. C. Fuller, a military theorist, in 1923. "The hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will be a pandemonium."

- From The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During The Blitz by Erik Larson