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.

snip

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'.

snip

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.

snip

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.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216788/Did-Lancaster-bombers-killed-600-000-German-cities-deliberately-target-civilians-A-new-book-says-YES-.html#ixzz0T6aJMWPZ

[Don Caballero]

1. Uh yeah what about the Holocaust?

The Germans were killing millions of Jews in concentration camps.

[Orsino]

5. Truly, a withering comeback...

...which totally excuses the targeting of civilians. :eyes:

[cynatnite]

2. Not surprised...

Dresden.

[Canuckistanian]

25. Yes, Dresden.

The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945 remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 39 square kilometres (15 sq mi) of the city center, and killed up to 135,000 civilians. Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.

~

It has been argued that Dresden was a cultural landmark of little or no military significance, a "Florence on the Elbe," as it was known, and the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and not proportional for the commensurate military gains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

[Captain Hilts]

3. Even Eleanor Roosevelt defended bombing cities that had war industries and killing the civilians

that worked in them.

[Morning Dew]

4. Meh. The Blitz wasn't exactly aimed at military targets. nm

[bbinacan]

6. No shit.

This is some sort of revelation?

[BlooInBloo]

7. Didn't realize people actually debated this.

[Forkboy]

10. That was my first thought.

I thought this was already accepted as fact.

[MisterP]

8. H. Bruce Franklin's "War Stars" covers the US obsession with superweapons

and "merciful" techniques like lighting cities on fire

he also noted that the masses were blamed for their leadership's actions and just as responsible

[Journeyman]

9. Why is this still being debated? . . .

Better to waste time debating the relative sweetness of chocolates or the fragrance of a rose if called by another name. It was what it was. Mature people recognized that decades ago and act today with such knowledge readily at hand. Only those who wish to repeat atrocities or worse, fool themselves into believing they're different than their makeup describes, continue to debate issues of the past that are well past debating.

[Regret My New Name]

11. Is if it happened really the question though?

Seems like it's pretty well established that it happened, and that the real debate would be if it was right to do so. Which I suppose is a far more interesting and difficult debate.

[rockymountaindem]

12. I thought everybody already knew that

I was under the impression RAF Bomber Command's official policy was to "de-house the German workforce" by blowing up their homes. Obviously that's not too far from the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" mentality. I wasn't aware of any denials that this was their stated goal.

[SoCalDem]

13. Inflicting mass-damage on civilians is the "best" way to change public opinion

we should know that by now.. We are DOING it right now in Afghanistan (even though we claim it's accidental)..

[GCP]

18. Actually it didn't work

Londoners stiffened their backbones during the Blitz, they were determined Hitler wouldn't win.

[RamboLiberal]

21. Suprisingly from what I read of the war

It wasn't that effective against Germany or Japan either. Though at the time the bomber people thought it was.

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. I'm not surprised it's reported as revelatory news by the Mail. Several ago, there was a

bit of a scandal about the directors turning up at a party held by the paper, wearing SS uniforms.

Also, fairly recent articles stating that the appeasers were really the rational ones. It wasn't really rational not to make peace with Hitler before the war. Apart from the moral bankruptcy, how long do they think, I wonder, it would have been before Hitler expressed less concliatory plans for Britain? I get the impression they would not have been greatly exercised by such a development.

In another article, the author wrote to the effect that all the French women immediately fell for the strong, handsome, young German soldiers, so unlike their own cowardly men. Really weird, infantile stuff. It was clearly the musings of a narcissistic psychopath.

[RamboLiberal]

15. And what was the Luftwaffe doing during the Blitz?

Seems this was tit-for-tat. And since the Brits were flying bomber missions at night there was no way for them to target industrial targets as the Americans were attempting to do & paying a horrendous price in planes & crews to accomplish.

Unfortunately the Germans paid a helluva price for backing Hitler.

And on the other side of the world we were fire-bombing Japanese cities like Tokyo where more civilians died than from the A-Bombs.

War is hell for civilians as well as soldiers.

This is no revelation. If anyone believed that the RAF was bombing industry at night & not targetting civilians then they don't know history or are incredibly naive.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. I am not surprised that there is a widly held view

that since the Germans started the war and they bombed London in the Blitz their should be no second guessing of the once strenuously denied fact that the RAF conducted a terror campaign against German civilians or any need to express any sympathy for those German civilians burned alive in bombing raids.

Just something that Americans might bear in mind is that today it's the USA invading other countries and starting unjustified wars based on absolute bullshit, lies and propaganda leading to the deaths of thousands and the displacement of millions more as refugees, so if some Iraqi were to join Al Quaeda and let off a mini nuke in a US city, I trust everyone would receive that news with the same equanimity they they greet the news that the RAF conducted a terrorism campaign against German civilians in WWII in an effort to destroy enemy moral.

[RamboLiberal]

19. And how should the RAF have handled it?

That was the most god-awful war with millions dying all across Europe (not to mention Asia). With their sons & husbands being killed on the continent (and before that in Africa) and with their cities being bombed nightly while there was a threat at one-time of being invaded, the people of Britain were in no mood to deal lightly with the Germans. The best thing at that time was to end that war as quickly as possible. Analysis of the bombing of industry and oil alone proved it was surprisingly ineffective.

I think if we had lived at that time in Great Britain or the U.S. we may have felt very differently about the bombing of German civilians and what the German people were suffering.

It's easy now to sit here in our safe homes at our keyboards & decry what the RAF did then.

You made a good point though. Mind-boggling how the Bush Admin was able to turn much of this country against Iraq & convince many Americans that Iraq was responsible for 9-11.

However there is no denying that Germany was responsible for the fighting in Europe and much of their population happily backed Hitler & his war machine when they were winning.

[Nikki Stone1]

17. I bet if we looked at WWII, we'd be surprised at what really happened in a lot of ways

Paint me not surprised.

[RamboLiberal]

20. I don't think this book reveals anything

If you read of the bombing campaign of the RAF even if their writings denied it you have to come away thinking that they were attacking cities & the people within. Doing night bombing and mostly not using formations there was no way for the RAF to target industrial targets.

[applegrove]

22. I just saw a Lancaster flying at an air show a few weekends ago. I looked at those

planes and thought of the brave pilots not of the people on the ground. But yeah..they did alot of damage.

[hayu_lol]

23. Nothing new here...

Toward the end of the war, Churchill asked Eisenhower to bomb all German cities to the ground. This was in retaliation for the blitz of English cities by fighters, bombers, and the V-1 'Buzz Bombs' which were only targeted for a region and not a specific target.

Ike refused.

[Kaleva]

24. I thought this was decades old common knowledge

[anonymous171]

26. That's Total War for you. nt

[Kaleva]

27. There are no civilians in total war.