Wotan, I pointed out last time that that wasn't a genuine quote from a government paper, yet you continue to use it. First time could be a mistake, second time and it looks deliberate.
Feb 14, '42 the 'Area Bombing' directive (Air Ministry Directive No. 22) was issued to Bomber Command saying:
It has been decided that the primary objective of your operations should be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers.
The directive was drafted by Air Marshal Bottomley and the minutes were kept by Chief of the Air Staff, Lord Portal.
I suppose it is clear that the Aiming Points are to be the built up areas and not the dockyards or aircraft factories.
In that Directive Bottomley also states:
You are accordingly authorized to employ your forces without restriction.
The quote I provided:
"the bombers... must in future be used to kill German civilians" - directive No.22 to BC
It maybe paraphrased but it's a valid one. It's not just Keegan's opinion either, that opinion is shared by British historian John Terraine:
Morale, in a bombing directive, means either the threat or the reality of blowing men, women and children to bits.
He goes on to state that the Air Ministry's estimates on the effects of area bombing on the German populace were:
a prescription for massacre, nothing more nor less.
Add to that the words of Mr. Churchill himself a few months after Directive No. 22:
Churchill’s letter to Lord Beaverbrook, on 5th July 1940.
"Nothing else will get the Germans to their minds, and on their knees, than an absolutely devastating extermination campaign against their homeland with heavy bombers."
See: John Colville : Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955. London 1985, pg. 186.
So yes my use of that quote was quite deliberate.
That's hardly the point. I never claimed the "Germans made them do it". I pointed out that every major airforce eventually ended up using area bombing of cities, and the British did so after being on the recieving end of both types.
It must have seemed to them that area bombing was the better option, otherwise they wouldn't all have taken it.
Of course, what's the combined experience and judgement of the Luftwaffe, RAF and USAAF compared to Wotan's?
You are
in fact claiming the Nazi's made BC and Harris do it. All other nations in war inevitably hit targets in cities and / or embedded with in the civilian population. The only bomber force in WW2 that practically built their entire strategy on the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was BC whether it be to de-moralize, de-house' or to outright kill civilians.
It would be one thing if that strategy lived up its justification or even came close to what it was sold to do.
Did BC succeed in breaking German Morale?
Did it succeed in significantly disrupting the Nazi war machine?
Captain Carnahan of the U.S. Air Force Academy argues that:
the military advantage accruing from area-bombing proved to be either minimal or nonexistent... Civilian populations under bombardment on both sides in World War II commonly reacted with anger and resentment towards the enemy. Although the bombings terrorized people, these tactics had little ultimate effect on national war-making ability. Thus, beyond the question of its legitimacy, `terror bombing' has not proven its worth even to the attacker in terms of lost airmen and aircraft.
This conclusion can be quantified in the 10-volume report,
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) released in 1947 and can be found on the web.
The British did their own survey
British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU). It was lead by Solly Zuckerman who in is biography stated that bombing had little effect on German morale. He goes far as to critisize BC for continuing on their de-housing strategy beyond what was necessary to overcome their operational limitations of inaccuracy in navigation and bombing.
Even Albert Speer who readily admits that the bombing campaign tied up resources and equipment states that area bombing:
spurred us to do our utmost. Neither did the bombings and the hardships that resulted from them weaken the morale of the populace. On the contrary, from my visits to armaments plants and my contacts with the man on the street, I carried away the impression of growing toughness. It may well be that the estimated loss of 9 percent of our production capacity was amply balanced by increased effort.
Speer wrote in
Inside the Third Reich:
I had early recognized [that] the war could largely have been decided in 1943 if, instead of vast but pointless area bombing, the planes had concentrated on the centers of armaments production.
Even Harris in his autobiography states:
The idea that the main object of bombing German industrial cities was to break the enemy's morale proved to be wholly unsound; when we had destroyed almost all the larger industrial cities in Germany the civil population remained apathetic, while the Gestapo saw to it that they were docile, and, insofar as there was work left for them to do, industrious. But it seemed quite a natural opinion in 1941
How natural was that opinion early on?
In 1917 Churchill himself states:
It is improbable that any terrorization of the civil population which could be achieved by air attack would compel the Government of a great nation to surrender... In our own case, we have seen the combative spirit of the people roused, and not quelled, by the German air raids. Nothing that we have learned of the capacity of the German population to endure suffering justifies us in assuming that they could be cowed into submission by such methods, or indeed, that they would not be rendered more desperately resolved by them.
By '42 the British had experience with the effects of this type of bombing campaign (although limited in comparison) and knew that morale was not broken but emboldened.
The Nazi's didn't make Harris do it, it was ineffective, at least on some level the leadership in Britain knew that it had little hope of achieving its goals.
Do you not agree that the bombing campaign did not break the morale of the German people or produce a “speedy” victory?
Do you not agree that as new technology, and with the increased concentrations of bombers, and with the control of the air that came later in the war that BC was perfectly capable of re-evaluating and adjusting its strategy of area bombing cities? Why in 1945 did Harris continue the area bombing of cities with little relevance to the German war effort? Especially considering that BC could hit more precise targets with a more immediate impact on Germany’s capacity to wage war.
Harris pushed to stay the course even at the expense of his crews.
No, that's a comparison you made.
You claimed the aim was to kill Germans. Clearly the German's aim was to kill Jews, but they didn't do so with bombers, they used far more efficient ways instead. If the British aim had been to kill Germans, they would have done so as well.
You are making the comparisons not me.
I can judge individual acts by themselves. The context in which my judgments and points are presented in this thread aren't wrapped around what the Nazi's, or American's, or Soviet's, or Japanese did. Those are other topics for other threads.
You are making the moral comparisons. I state the deliberate strategy of targeting civilians by BC during WW2 was wrong. A valid rebuttal is not 'well the Nazi's killed Jews and others...'
You are making a case that BC and Britain had no other method, tactic or strategy available to them other then 'de-housing'.
There were British folks during the war who were appalled at the methods of BC. After Dresden even Churchill tried to get some space between him and Harris. In previous posts and threads of mine I quoted such folks. In this thread I posted Churchill's memorandum. If need be I can re-post them.
My point is that comparing immoral acts is in no way a useful tool in making your point.
Uh, no. I said the Luftwaffe led the way, as they did with the Blitz on London and other British cities.
On 24 Aug '40, German planes bombed central London due to a navigational error. This is for the most part is in agreement with a good portion of Historians. During the next 2 nights the Brits launched raids on Berlin.
From their everything escalated.
Fighter bombers didn't have the range to reach targets in Germany until after the invasion of France.
To prepare for invasion they didn't need to go Berlin or into Germany. They just needed to established control over western Europe. In fact leading up to and in support of D-day Bombers were pulled back from Germany to hit targets in the area I just described.
And how does this show that the Luftwaffe didn't try to bomb their way to victory?
I already told you. The LW wasn't tasked with 'victory'. Their roll was to force Britain into a deal. The Wehrmacht won its 'victories' on the ground with the LW supporting the ground forces. They didn't win it, nor was it their overall war objective to win the war by demoralizing, de-housing and / or killing civilians.
Hitler had no real plan to win a military victory over Britain by invasion and the best he could hope for was to destroy the RAF and get a deal.
From their I already answered your claim about the LW shift in strategy to hitting British cities.
continued in next post due to length restrictions:
