Bethnal Green is a London Underground station in Bethnal Green, London, England, served by the Central line. It lies between Liverpool Street and Mile End stations, is in Travelcard Zone 2, and is open 24 hours on a Friday and Saturday as part of the Night Tube service. The station was opened as part of the long planned Central line eastern extension on 4 December 1946, having previously been used as an air-raid shelter. On 3 March 1943, 173 people, including 62 children, were killed in a crush while attempting to enter the shelter, in what is believed to be the largest loss of civilian life in the UK during the Second World War.
The 1935–40 London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) New Works Programme included a new deep level station in Bethnal Green as part of the Central line extension from Liverpool Street to Ongar and Woodford over the London & North Eastern Railway suburban branch to Epping and Ongar in Essex, as well as a new underground line between Leytonstone and Newbury Park mostly under the Eastern Avenue to serve the new suburbs under-development in the north Ilford and the Hainault Loop.
Construction of the eastern extension of the Central line began in the 1930s and the tunnels were almost complete at the outbreak of the Second World War although rails had not been laid.
The unfinished station at Bethnal Green was requisitioned in 1940 at the onset of the first Blitz and administration was assigned to the local authority, the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green, under the supervision of the "Regional Commissioners", the generic name for the London Civil Defence Service. Heavy air raids began in October and thousands of people took shelter there, often remaining overnight. Use of the shelter dwindled in 1941 as the air forces of Germany and Italy were redirected away from the United Kingdom and against the Soviet Union. A relative lull occurred although the number of shelterers rose again when retaliatory bombing in response to Royal Air Force raids was expected.
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Le terme East End (banlieue est) fait communément référence à l'East End of London, une aire géographique de Londres délimitée à l'ouest par les anciennes murailles de la cité médiévale et au sud par la Tamise, quoique cette démarcation ne soit pas formellement ni universellement reconnue. L'utilisation du terme, péjorative à l'origine, est attestée à la fin du , alors que l'expansion de la population de la cité provoque une surpopulation extrême dans toute la zone, les pauvres et les immigrants se concentrant dans l'East End.
Le Blitz (terme allemand signifiant « éclair ») est la campagne de bombardements stratégiques durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale menée par l'aviation allemande contre le Royaume-Uni du au . Il s'agit de l'opération la plus connue de la bataille d'Angleterre. Elle toucha principalement Londres mais également Coventry, Plymouth, Birmingham et Liverpool, et aussi les villes historiques de Canterbury et Exeter et la station balnéaire de Great Yarmouth. furent tués et selon des chiffres officiels.