RUCAWO
Belfast April 41,where the Luftwaffe attempted a firestorm, the first target being the waterworks on the Antrim Rd cutting off water supplies to the city ,900 killed, 1250 injured with half the houses in the city damaged.
Is this where the RAF got the first idea of starting firestorms? Or was that an older idea?
And this was the justification for Dresden?
500N
Interesting, I wonder what the the primary goal of the bombing of London (and some other cities) was aimed at ?
Certainly from my families perspective it was civilians who were targeted.
It was aimed at the civilian population. In fact, Hitler specifically ordered the Luftwaffe to break the British's will to resist.
I think everybody acknowledges this was fundamentally wrong, and a war-crime
(the Hague conventions specifically prohibited the targeting of civilians)
Load Toad
Possibly by the spring of '44 Harris could have been replaced with a commander who could use the bomber force....more efficiently. Less targeting of whole cities - more of specific militarily important targets, for example.
That would have been better, but you have to keep in mind that would require people like Winston Churchill to have been willing to replace him. He had no inclination to do this.
Churchill basically felt that their militaristic culture
(which proceeded Nazism) needed to be pulled up by the roots. His attitude was that the Germans were either at his feet, or at his throat.
goudie
Interesting that when discussing who was to blame, (if blame is required) for the mass destruction of German cities, no mention is made of Hitler and his cronies.
Isn't that self-evident?
Chugalug2
The reason that Harris targeted them is because he was ordered to do so by the War Cabinet (headed by Churchill), via the Air Board.
The fact is that the RAF wanted to employ these kinds of attacks before WW2. The poor success of the bombers earlier in the war, Churchill's personal desires, and the London Blitz
(and the resulting desire for revenge) basically greased the skids. What was previously political impossible, now became politically acceptable.
All WWII adversaries who had the means to target cities did so, and for the same reasons (the USA included!).
Of course, after all they basically got their doctrine from the same exact groups of people. The Germans got the idea from Douhet; the British got it from Trenchard and Douhet; the US from Douhet, Trenchard, and Billy Mitchell.
their US counterparts (who you omit to mention)
The US counterparts would predominantly be Billy Mitchell who got his ideas from Trenchard and Douhet. During WW2, personalities included H.H. Arnold, Max Andrews, Ira Eaker, Curtis E. LeMay and so forth.
, the Strategic Bombing of cities happened because it could happen
Actually that sounds suspiciously similar to my motto which is a variation of Murphy's law: If it can go bad, it will go bad; if it does go bad, it will do so in the worst possible way.
The reason that such statements became utter heresy is not for moral reasons, for war is immoral anyway
There are degrees of immorality. That argument effectively says that because war is immoral, that we can act like complete amoral psychopaths. Bomber Harris tried the same argument and asked if it was immoral to drive a bayonet into a man's belly among other things.
The fact is, if I was a soldier, I'd rather stick a bayonet into an enemy soldier any day of the week than firebomb a city loaded with civilians. The hypothetical soldier is an enemy of mine, he's attacking me. The civilians bombed in these raids were not fighting, yet they were firebombed as a primary objective in what could be described as little more than acts of terrorism.