New book: WWII RAF bomber raids deliberately targetted civilians

[JohnyCanuck]

Did Lancaster bombers that killed 600,000 in German cities deliberately target civilians? A new book says YES..

In the decades since 1945, the debate has continued to rage. Some have accused the British Government of war crimes. Others have drawn an emotionally charged parallel between the urban firestorms and the horrors of the Nazi gas chambers.

Defenders of the bombing offensive have long argued that such criticism is a gross injustice. The aim of the RAF, they maintain, was to destroy German industry and the military infrastructure. Civilian deaths were a regrettable consequence of this strategy, not its central goal.

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In one post-war lecture, Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff throughout the campaign, said it was 'a fallacy that our bombing of the German cities was intended to kill Germans, and that we camouflaged this intention by the pretence that we would destroy industry. The loss of life was purely incidental'.

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The most passionate enthusiast of the strategic offensive was, of course, Sir Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command from 1942. 'What we want to do is to bring masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill the Boche and to terrify the Boche,' he said.

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Harris's complaint against the RAF top brass, highlighted in archive papers which have never been published before, was that the Government should be far more candid about its policy of deliberately targeting Germany's civilians.

He never had any time for Portal's and Sinclair's denials, as he explained in a letter to them in October 1943: 'The aim of Bomber Command should be . . . publicly stated: the destruction of German cities and the killing of German workers.'

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