IT'S ALL ONE 'WAR'. PBS SHOW TO ARGUE ALLIES AS BAD AS NAZIS

"The aim of strategic bombing was . . . in large measure to kill German civilians by destroying the most densely populated parts of the country."

Stefan,

There is a huge difference between going out of ones way to kill German civilians, and unintentional civilian casualties. This quote from Mr. Ferguson indicates the former. So, I'm gonna have to disagree; it is entirely incorrect.

 

I don't have a problem with all revisionist theories, just the far off ones. the part I quoted above, I didn't like it claiming that the objective of the bombing was to largly murder the civilians of a city. What? Industrial and military targets where secondary?
'The aim of strategic bombing was . . . in large measure to kill German civilians by destroying the most densely populated parts of the country'
With this sole quote I disagree.

[/quote] Exactly. Quite a few people on this forum, Including myself, have toted Shattered Sword as one of the best books ever written on Midway. This book is a revisionist view(the authors even claim it so) but was presented well, and backed up with new or previously unused sources.
If time permits I would like to watch the episode at the very least see where he is getting his information from.

 

Von Poop,

I'll grant you that we should keep an open mind to a point. But you must admit that the quotes attributed to Mr. Ferguson are at best incendiary. I have family who flew in the 8th Air Force, and find it offensive that he would characterize it so. If he didn't say it, a retraction might change my mind.

 

Aye, but everything lies within a greater context than a small prequel can give.

A friend of my fathers was a Lancaster Tail-gunner (Now dead), and as far as he was concerned he was out to attack any German in any city with no remorse or mercy, as he felt they'd offered none to anyone else. Total war was his mantra until the day he died.
That's just one contemporary perspective but in contrast with your own families perceptions it perhaps helps illustrate that everything, particularly in war and it's post-bellum analysis, is a hundred more shades of complex grey than can be extracted from a single quote.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Disagree or not, the aim of bombing Hamburg was to kill civilians, simple. The same can be said of numerous other area bombing raids on German cities, the RAF's area bombing campaign was intended to cause massive numbers of civilian casualties. We aren't talking about a few bombs dropped by accident, rather entire raids on densely populated areas.

Sorry Diddy, but there is no need for a retraction, Ferguson is accusing the allies of things they clearly did, targeting civilians (RAF bombing of cities, bombing by the USAF of Japanese cities and so on) is just one example.

In the bombing campaign of the RAF, sort of, the aim of raids was (as I understand it) to damage industrial capacity by targeting the civilian population. We aren't talking about 'pickle barrel' raids but the targeting of large, densely populated residential areas.