The 'Blitz on Liverpool' was the sustained and heavy bombing of the English city of Liverpool and its surrounding area by the Germans (28 August 1940/10 January 1942).

Other than London, Liverpool was the most heavily bombed area of the UK as, along with Birkenhead on the other side of the Mersey river estuary, it was the largest port on the western coast of England and was of significant importance to the British war effort. Descriptions of damage were kept vague to conceal this information from the Germans, and downplayed in the newspapers for propaganda purposes, leading many Liverpudlians to the belief that their suffering was overlooked compared with that of other cities and towns. About 4,000 people were killed in the Merseyside area during the period of the German bombing campaign, and this tool was second only to that of London, which had suffered more than 40,000 dead by the end of the war.

Liverpool, Bootle and the Wallasey Pool complex were, in strategic terms, very important locations during the World War II. The port of Liverpool had for many years been the UK’s primary maritime link with the North American continent, and proved to be a key part in the British involvement in the 'Battle of the Atlantic'. As well as providing anchorage for naval ships from many nations, the port’s quays and dockers handled more than 90% of all the war matériel brought to the UK from overseas, some 75 million tons passing through its 11 miles (17.7 km) of quays. Liverpool was thus the eastern terminus of a transatlantic chain of supplies from North America. Other industries were also heavily concentrated in Liverpool and across the Mersey in Birkenhead.

The 'Pied Piper' evacuation of children at the start of the war was a pre-emptive measure designed to save the population of urban or military areas from German aerial bombing. Between 1 and 6 September the evacuations, organised by Liverpool Corporation, saw the movement of 8,500 children, parents and teachers from the city to rural areas and small towns in Lancashire, Wales, Cheshire and Shropshire. As the months went by with no signs of an air offensive by the Luftwaffe, many parents brought their children back to Liverpool and, by January 1940, 40% of the evacuated children were back in the city.

The first major air raid on Liverpool took place on the night of 28/29 August 1940, when 160 bombers attacked the city. The assault continued over the next three nights, then regularly for the rest of the year. There were 50 raids on the city during this three-month period. Some of these were minor, comprising a few aircraft and lasting a few minutes, but others involved as many as 300 aircraft and lasted more than 10 hours. On 18 September, 22 inmates at Walton Gaol were killed when high explosive bombs demolished a wing of the prison. There was a heavy raid on 28 November, and this resulted in the single most serious incident when a hit on an air raid shelter in Durning Road caused 166 deaths.

The air assault in 1940 came to a peak with the 'Christmas Blitz', a three-night bombardment on 20/22 December in which 365 people were killed. The raids were characterised by several instances of direct hits on air raid shelters: on 20 December, 42 people died when a shelter was hit, while another 40 died when a bomb struck railway arches on Bentinck Street, where local people were sheltering, and on 21 December another hit on a shelter killed 74 people. The bombing decreased in severity after the new year.

The period from 1 to 7 May 1941 saw a renewal of the air assault on the region, and involved a seven-night bombardment that devastated the city. The first bomb landed on Seacombe, Wallasey, Wirral, at 22.15 on 1 May, and over the seven-night attack involved 681 German bombers, which dropped 2,315 high explosive bombs and 119 other munitions such as incendiary clusters. The raids rendered 69 out of 144 cargo berths inoperable, and inflicted 2,895 casualties (1,741 killed and 1,154 injured). Liverpool Cathedral was hit by a high explosive bomb which pierced the roof of the south-east transept before being deflected by an inner brick wall and exploding mid-air, damaging many stained glass windows. Another landed on the front steps without exploding, but incendiaries destroyed equipment in the contractor’s yard at the western end. One incident on 3 May involved the Malakand, a merchant vessel carrying munitions and berthed in the Huskisson Dock. Although the cargo’s eventual explosion is often attributed to a burning barrage balloon, this fire was in fact extinguished. However, flames from bombed dock sheds spread to the Malakand, and this fire could not be contained. Despite great efforts by the fire brigade, the flames spread to the ship’s cargo of 1,000 tons of bombs, which exploded a few hours after the raid had ended. The entire Huskisson No. 2 dock and the surrounding quays were destroyed and four people were killed. The explosion was so violent that some pieces of the ship’s hull plating were blasted into a park more than 1 mile (1.6 km) away, and it took 74 hours for the fire to burn itself out. The seven-night bombardment resulted in the complete destruction of more than 6,500 homes by bombing and damage to another 190,000 homes, leaving 70,000 people homeless. Some 500 roads were closed to traffic, and a number of railway and tram lines were destroyed. Totals of 700 water mains and 80 sewers were damaged, as too were gas, electricity and telephone services. Some 9,000 workers from outside the city and 2,700 troops helped to remove debris from streets. On the night of 3 and 4 May alone, 400 fires were attended to by the fire brigade.

Bootle, to the north of Liverpool, suffered heavy damage and loss of life. One notable incident here was a direct hit on a Co-Operative air raid shelter on the corner of Ash Street and Stanley Road. The exact total of casualties is unclear, though dozens of bodies were recovered and placed in a temporary mortuary which itself was later destroyed by incendiaries at a moment when it was known that they were more than 180 bodies inside it.

After the raids of May 1941, the weight and rate of the German air assault diminished as Adolf Hitler’s attention turned toward the 'Barbarossa' invasion of the USSR. The last German air raid on Liverpool took place on 10 January 1942, destroying several houses on Upper Stanhope Street. By a quirk of fate one of the houses destroyed was number 102, which had been the home of Alois Hitler, half-brother of Adolf Hitler and the birthplace of Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler. The house was not rebuilt and the whole site was eventually cleared and planted with grass.

By the end of the 'Blitz on Liverpool', German bombing had killed 2,716 people in Liverpool, 442 people in Birkenhead, 409 people in Bootle and 332 people in Wallasey. In May 1941, after visiting Liverpool and the surrounding area, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, said that 'I see the damage done by the enemy attacks, but I also see…the spirit of an unconquered people.'