More strikingly still, Sir John Steel, who was to become the first commanding officer of Bomber Command, had scorned 'a lot of nonsense talked about killing women and children.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command from 23 February 1942, sought a strong public statement of the objectives he had been invited to achieve: ‘the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilized community life throughout GermanyThe British media, quietly complicit with government, took the same line. We still can't make up our minds about Bomber Command and Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, its commander.Two years ago a statue of Harris was unveiled in the Strand by the Queen Mother despite the protests of the Mayor of Dresden among others. It has been contentious above all because of the gulf between the exceptional courage of the young men who served in Bomber Command and the horror that they inflicted on the German civilian population. The programme has already aroused vehement criticism, and even a lawsuit, in Canada, a country which made a disproportionately large contribution to Bomber Command and suffered disproportionately large losses, almost 10,000 killed.The Queen Mother's loyalty to the old air crew is admirable, and the insistence of some, though not all, of the airmen that what they did was necessary and right is understandable.
They were indeed the flower of the country, a lost generation who had been sent over the top like their predecessors on the Somme.At least Harris was honest: his aim was to destroy whole German cities and their inhabitants. The Operations Order for the bombing of Hamburg in July envisaged the 'total destruction' of the city. {{#replies}} Official reluctance to celebrate the bombing offensive may be explained by the distaste referred to by Frankland, and by the perceived need for good relations with the Federal Republic of Germany within the context of the Cold War and, from 1961, of Britain’s rapprochement with Europe. try again, the name must be unique Many of the senior officers in Bomber Command … Yet the British public were also told that the Allied offensive was not only vastly more powerful than the German Blitz on Britain but vastly more moral, and that while the Luftwaffe sought to terrorise and kill civilians, the RAF did notThe development of British memories of the bombing offensive since 1945 can be set roughly into three periods: relative quietism from the war until the early 1960s; two decades of scepticism from then until the early 1980s; and, since then, the slow growth of acceptance and memorialisation. Though not published until 1998, the BBSU’s report was influential both because many of its findings appeared to be confirmed by those of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), and because significant parts of it were ‘carried forward into the work of the British Official History of the offensiveHarris, unsurprisingly, took the opposite view, both in his By 1961 the British had not one, but two official histories. The first, sceptical, analysis came in the 1946 Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. He also had direct communications with Fighter Command and the Air Ministry. Independent Premium. The 800-bomber raid dropped some 2,700 tons of explosives and incendiaries and decimated the German city. He had claimed in 1942 that Bomber Command would win the war single-handed within two years. Throughout the bombing campaign, ministers lied to the public. In that context, Webster and Frankland identify a turning-point at the spring of 1944, when American air forces won (partial) air superiority over Germany thanks to long-range fighter escorts with disposable extra fuel tanks. However, fulsome press and radio coverage left the public in no doubt that there was a policy of ‘area bombing’ – attacking whole cities – and that it was causing, in the enthusiastic words of RAF spokesman and BBC commentator John Strachey, ‘destruction such as we in Britain never knew’. Bomber Command was the Commonwealth’s use of airpower to attack Nazi-controlled Europe. Please Or should we take such pride in the bombing campaign as to make another war film, showing how those children died?Enter your email to follow new comments on this article.Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate?Want to discuss real-world problems, be involved in the most engaging discussions and hear from the journalists? A passage had been removed from the original, which exultantly showed the effects of the breached dams: torrential water poured over farmland, through factories, and into mines, drowning terrified workers.This excision suggests that our view of the wartime bombing campaign has altered, but not necessarily that we have become more honest. The difficulties are compounded, as Süss observes, if the international context is taken into account.
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