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Old 20th Jun 2020, 12:26
  #87 (permalink)  
Archimedes
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Swindonshire
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Originally Posted by Jenns
I did not really expect overwhelming approval in a British dominated military forum. Outside this filter bubble things would look different. There is a lot of speculation and interpreting going on here which is totally irrelevant to my argument. We are talking about a statue of a man who in the whole world is seen as a symbol for the systematic slaughtering of civilians. And him being seen as this symbol is actually more important than what happened in detail and what might have happened otherwise. Bombing civilians by the thousands with no other military justification than "breaking morale" is absolutely nothing to be proud of. Who has not understood this in 2020 is - to pick up that expression - a "lost cause" for sure.

The comparison of today's united Europe with a Europe being united by conquering clearly shows a mindset that is completely one of the past. It is sad to hear something like this but I have heard it many times before. Yet I have never met a person who was in favour of that statue. That's the reason I am posting in this thread, I want to hear what your arguments are. So far I am not impressed, I only see stubborn nationalism and militarism. To leave these behind was the real foundation of present day Europe. I guess we can at least all agree that Brexit was a good idea?
Ignoring some of the spurious hyperbole and false comparisons in there for a moment...

You're dangerously close to the 'Harris was just as bad as Hitler' moral equivalence nonsense that sees certain historians, many of them genuinely extreme right wingers (as opposed to how the British media defines XRW). There was military justification for bombing whether you like it or not. The evidence is there, in countless files, that Germany's ability to wage war was the target. Morale was but one component of that effort. Although this draws in the counter-factual to an extent because of the technology and likely outcomes of its employment, had the US and UK possessed precision weaponry of the sort available 20-25 years after the war (not now), morale would never have come into the equation. Nowhere, in Bomber Command's pre-war planning, was hitting civilians part of the equation. When the area campaign began just before Harris took over, it was still not part of the plan. Morale and 'dehousing the German worker' only came into play as a brutal perceived necessity once the campaign was underway.

Senior Air officers were concerned - not about 'image' but because they were instinctively uncomfortable with the thought that women and children were being killed and wounded. They weren't a bunch of callous senior officers, but were able to put those concerns aside, or to rationalise them, or to suppress them by seeing the target for tonight as being some sort of inanimate object (buildings) and pretending to themselves that these objects weren't surrounded by people. They adopted other 'coping' mechanisms. Harris's approach was to accept the fact that bombing would lead to deaths of civilians because this was the only way of winning the war. It wasn't about terror bombing, but about destroying (or attempting to destroy) Germany's ability to wage war.

You try to compare 'today's united Europe' with a 'Europe being united by conquering' as though there's a complete separation. Today's united Europe arose because the Allies conquered Germany. The western allies then set about attempting to ensure that the continent was not riven by further major wars through the establishment of the ECSC, EEC, EC and EU. But this stemmed from conquest.

Bombing was a 'necessary evil' to try to bring about the destruction of Germany's ability to fight, to liberate nations conquered by Germany and try to ensure that the war ended as swiftly and with as few casualties as possible on the other side.

To apply the standards of today to those trying to defeat one of the two most vile, inhumane regimes in modern history is fallacious. Harris' statute stands as a tribute to the men he led (remember, there was no Bomber Command memorial at the time Harris' statue was erected). Those protesting against the statue fail to realise that without the likes of Harris and the men he led (and literally millions of others at sea, on land and in the air), Hitler would've triumphed.

It's not about being British, or imperialist, or xenophobic, or right wing, or nationalistic or racist, or anti-European- it's about seeing history properly rather than attempting to shape it retrospectively to fit modern agendas which try to make crass moral equivalences between 1945 and 2020 and if that means twisting the context or the reality to fit the 'truth' desired, then those busily propagandising the history for their own ends couldn't care less. Bombing was not a 'nice' thing, it was an awful, terrifying, horrific thing. But it made a significant contribution to the defeat of an awful, terrifying, horrific thing, far greater in the scope of its evil and immorality - Nazi Germany. Implicitly comparing Harris to (say) Heydrich or Dietrich is nothing more than fake moral equivalence and dangerously close to an apologia for the Nazis.

So, no, it isn't much of a surprise that people are objecting to the line you're trying to spin. Just as it's no surprise to see you adopting an attitude of contemptuous moral superiority to those who dare to disagree with your world view.
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