Bomber Command Campaign Medal Petition

I don't see how the British can complain about terrorism when they firebombed cities for five years.

 

Apparently, not enough.

 

Personal preference for this cause...I'm going to reactivate this thread in reply to this...

Remember what Bomber Command Chief Arthur Harris said on taking command in 1942?
" The Germans began this war under the childish assumption that they were going to bomb everybody else's cities and no one was going to bomb theirs...."

Do we not now realise that Bomber Command provided the " Second Front" two years before ground troops made it ashore? Albert Speer is on record as stating that "six more Hamburg's would have finished the war"...a statement that Harris, had he been aware of it, would have used to try to achieve exactly that.

It will always be academic as to whether bombing alone could have achieved a surrender. But according to Speer, it was possible, given the right circumstances.

Bombing is NOT "terrorism", despite the aircrew receiving the public label of "terrorflieger". All of those men were in uniform, were not paramilitary, and were a significant part of a war effort that was becoming more and more effective all the time.

Six more Hamburg's would have saved millions of lives. Think of all the gassed people in death camps that would have survived alone. All the Hungarian Jews who were put to death in mid 1944 still alive. The many German soldiers killed or wounded between August 1943 and May 1945.

The Nazi government have it all to answer for. Stopping the war was entirely dependent on their desire to cease to continue.

But they waited for "vengeance", waited for a "super bomb" that didn't happen, and by Hamburg the " Final Solution" was well underway. It makes me think the National Socialist party were simply prolonging the conflict to finish The Final Solution.

Maybe if Harris had have had two thousand more aircraft operational in mid 1943, the war might have come to a screeching halt.

But it didn't, and nobody listened to Harris.

That's my take on it all.

And I will defend Bomber Command operations until I die of old age or misadventure.

Bolshevik

 

Allow me to chip in.

"Remember what Bomber Command Chief Arthur Harris said on taking command in 1942?
" The Germans began this war under the childish assumption that they were going to bomb everybody else's cities and no one was going to bomb theirs....""

I'm sure the Germans never assumed that they were never going to be bombed. I suspect that Harris was being deliberately disingenuous here.

"It will always be academic as to whether bombing alone could have achieved a surrender. But according to Speer, it was possible, given the right circumstances."

Speer was a proven liar. He lied to save his own skin at Nuremberg and lied again in his memoirs. The idea that bombing alone could win wars was invented by Giulio Douhet, an Italian general with some very fanciful theories about aerial warfare. Theories that were proven incorrect.

"Bombing is NOT "terrorism", despite the aircrew receiving the public label of "terrorflieger". All of those men were in uniform, were not paramilitary, and were a significant part of a war effort that was becoming more and more effective all the time."

The fact that the men were uniformed military men does not change the fact that area bombing was a concept deliberately designed to (1) cause panic and terror to the enemy population and (2) kill as many people on the ground as possible, most of these obviously being unarmed civilians. If that isn't terror, I don't know what is.

"Six more Hamburg's would have saved millions of lives. Think of all the gassed people in death camps that would have survived alone. All the Hungarian Jews who were put to death in mid 1944 still alive. The many German soldiers killed or wounded between August 1943 and May 1945."

This is completely incorrect. I think you are quoting Speer here, and he is not a reliable source of information. After Hamburg the area bombing campaign continued with ever greater intensity and Nazi Germany still did not surrender until May 1945. A total of 69 German towns and cities were heavily bombed, with around 500,000 German deaths and 100,000 deaths of foreign workers in Germany - at Hamburg some 43,000 were killed, so the end result was considerably more than "six Hamburgs" but the war only ended when German forces were decisively defeated on the ground. Indeed, the only truly effective allied bombing of Germany was the 'oil campaign', which crippled German oil usage for long periods. As for the Jews, the allies didn't fight the war to save them, and repeatedly spurned opportunities to do so, refusing to bomb concentration and extermination camps, refusing to launch attempts to assassinate Hitler, and refusing to negotiate with the SS leadership even when the latter offered to hand over Jewish civilians in exchange for motorised transport.

"The Nazi government have it all to answer for. Stopping the war was entirely dependent on their desire to cease to continue."

For the Nazi government, surrender was tantamount to suicide. They had no reason to stop because the allies made a pact to fight on until unconditional surrender, which would be the end of the Nazi regime.

"But they waited for "vengeance", waited for a "super bomb" that didn't happen, and by Hamburg the " Final Solution" was well underway. It makes me think the National Socialist party were simply prolonging the conflict to finish The Final Solution."

The 'final solution' was instigated by Hitler and promoted by Himmler and the senior SS leadership. It was done because in Hitler's mind the global Jewish community was irrevocably opposed to everything the NSDAP stood for and desired the end of Germany, its race, its traditions and its culture. He recognised that the war would destroy the lives of millions of Germans and other 'Aryans', so in order to redress the balance he decided to initiate a programme of genocide against the Jewish people. Utter madness to any normal person, but of course Hitler was far from normal. I highly doubt that the genocide of the Jews would have happened under any leader other than Hitler. Even Himmler and Heydrich performed their grim duties as acts of obedience to Hitler rather than as necessary imperatives. The majority of Nazis would have preferred to use the Jews as forced or slave labour, in the same way that non-Jewish Europeans were used in German factories. This still makes the Nazis criminals in every sense, but Hitler remains the prime mover behind the Holocaust.

"Maybe if Harris had have had two thousand more aircraft operational in mid 1943, the war might have come to a screeching halt."

Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe if Hitler had not meddled and the Me-262 jet plane had come into large scale production as a fighter a year earlier the allied bombing effort would have been blown from the skies. History is full of 'maybes'.

"But it didn't, and nobody listened to Harris. That's my take on it all."

Nonsense. Harris was largely left to carry out his plans without interference and was supported by his boss, Portal, as well as Churchill. But clearly wars cannot be won by aerial bombing alone and ground troops are needed, with tanks, artillery and motorised transport. Indeed, I would argue that the large scale production of bombers hindered the allied war effort by diverting resources that could have been used to provide more tanks, artillery and logistical capacity to ground forces. The Soviets did not practise area bombing except in a few cases very late in the war, and focused most of the air effort into industrial targets and tactical operations to support the ground troops.

"And I will defend Bomber Command operations until I die of old age or misadventure."

Carry on defending, and I will carry on opposing you.

 

The crews on bombers practiced hitting targets on the ground as accurately as they possibly could...That was THIER job, hitting targets as accurately as possible. The target choice was NEVER up to them.
Bombing is STILL a relevant military option. Indeed it allows targets otherwise unreachable to be destroyed with just the bomber crews lives at risk...Bombers are expensive and crews take a lot of training and civilians dont like their kids dying so MISSILES became the answer to all the problems. Today missiles are seen as extremely valuable, both as a deterrent and as a weapon able to strike at the heart of a country - USA would have used them against Japan after Pearl Harbour like you wouldn't believe. Look at Russia to day with their missile destruction of Ukraine - Australia has changed its military strategy to build long range hypersonic missiles INSTEAD of the new stealth bomber...This should tell people something when it comes to bombers and their replacement, the long range Missile.

 

Just a comment on '6 more Hamburgs'

It wasn't a reaction to the statistics (number of houses lost, acreage of rubble produced, lives list, etc). It was a reaction to the infamous Firestorm raid, which thoroughly devastated much of the city in one go, and completely overwhelmed the German ability to fight the fires and alleviate the damage in any way.
For a single raid to be that devastating is far more punishing than 4 years of smaller raids which add up to greater statistical losses.
Also worth noting that the Firestorm was exactly what Harris was trying to achieve every night.