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Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris - Butch or Butcher?
In his BBC TV series The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr last night referred to ACM Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris with the alternative moniker ‘Butcher’. I’d always thought the nickname coined for him by his men in Bomber Command was actually ‘Butch’ – which, in the 1940s, didn’t have the connotations it has today, but simply meant vigorous or forceful.
So, is the pejorative ‘Butcher’ label wrong? I recall Bomber Command veterans a few years back complaining about a Canadian TV documentary that had played on it to discredit Harris and the RAF bombing campaign: they insisted he had simply been known to them, respectfully, as ‘Butch’. Can any ex-Bomber Command folks confirm the facts? |
Sir Arthur Harris
In those days being 'Butch' was a description of a person who was very forthright and didn't stand for any nonsense, which describes Sir Arthur quite accurately. 'Butcher' was never used.
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'Butcher' was never used. |
Yer man Marr irritated me as well. He also made a point of referring to area bombing as "terror bombing". This link supports my memory of the great man's life and times;
http://da.mod.uk/defac/colleges/jscs...isInternet.pdf I think "Bert" was a common name for any Harris in those times; certainly in the Merchant Navy. Some famous turn-of-the-century bike racing champion, I think. |
An example of the touchy-feely huggy-fluffs putting a new spin upon history. The Germans engaged in total war and received like for like. There were no "Smart Bombs" in the 1940s and the objective wasn't to terrorise (unlike the Stuka with its siren) but to destroy the German capacity to make war by destroying its industrial and communications infrastructure. There is no doubt that had a nuclear weapon been available to us in 1943 it would have been used and would have saved even more lives than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And no, thats not a misprint. Bringing the war to an earlier conclusion than would otherwise be the case is/was a means of saving lives - on both sides. That the bombing campaign went on as long as it did was the responsibility of the German High Command not "Bomber " Harris. |
Marr's use of the phrase "terror bombing" infuriated me. That's the terminology used by the Nazis' propaganda machine, along with describing RAF aircrew as "terror flyers".
Absolutely pathetic application of today's "values" into a situation which soft-left types like Marr (or indeed anyone of us who didn't have to live through the war) can have no real comprehension off. Hindsight allows everyone to be an expert. The entire series looked at recent British history through the prism of the anti-empire, left-biased "liberal" media person. God help us if it's that viewpoint which the next generation learns its history from. Sorry, my mistake . . . . it already does. |
There was very little in the early years of the war that Britain could do to show that it could continue the fight against the evil Nazis.
There were still a lot of people in Britain and around the world who thought it would be best to cut the losses and try to work on some compromise with the evil Nazis. There was a sizeable minority that thought that the Jews (and anyone the Nazis didn't like) would just have to suffer and make do. Some people didn't agree with this view and realised the evil Nazis could not be placated, compromised with - indeed they intended to dominate by power as much of the globe as they could and in the process kill anyone that got in their way or they just didn't like. In the absence of any other significant means to win the war bombing the opposition - the Nazis was considered a suitable, realistic and acceptable target. There was still the feeling early in the war that bombing would create such misery in the German population they would overthrow the Nazis or specifically Hitler and his mates. Plus of course the moral of the British needed to be kept up AND the British had to prove they were not beaten. Winston and his mate in the US thus got themselves a lend lease deal on bombers. But it was found that accurate bombing was not going to happen because the technology didn't exist. That plus the need to keep British moral up and the feeling that German morale could be beaten down meant area bombing. We also had to show the Soviets that we were going to support them. So a bomber command leader was needed who would single mindedly focus on this task. Though of course he would know it would cost many crew and kill many civilians. So because for years people had tried to placate and accommodate Hitler, because no one wanted another war...Bomber Harris got called nasty names. And then when the war was coming to an end people said 'Did we really have to do all that?' And then Mr. Harris and all his crews were not given respect because it was 'difficult' but people had forgotten why it had had to be that way. Anything that doesn't specifically target and hit a military target could be called a 'terror' attack. What we should know (borne out from WW1, WW2 and the most recent examples...) now is that 'terror bombing' does not work to achieve the desired aim. In fact it does the opposite. |
Dont take Andrew Marr's programme too seriously, the whole series was "history lite" aimed at an audience with only the vaguest grasp of the major events of the 20th Century. Marr took every opportunity to dress up in silly outfits and attempted probably the worst Churchill impression I have ever heard! In his defence he did imply that the Germans started the ball rolling with their bombing of Coventry, but a 60 minute gallop through WW2 was never going to offer anything but the briefest snapshots of the major events.
Harris's reputation has stood up to far more rigorous examination than anything Marr could ever offer, so those of us on here who, like me, understand the huge task which Harris and Bomber Command faced, can treat Marr's casual misuse of Harris's nickname with the contempt it deserves. |
...the whole series was "history lite" aimed at an audience with only the vaguest grasp of the major events of the 20th Century. |
The series was called "The Making of Modern Britain". What exactly did the impact of the so-called "terror bombing" on Germany (and the Dresden raid in particular) have to do with that? The bravery of the Bomber Command aircrew in the face of massive losses is certainly worth noting in said series, but the bomber offensive's impact on the Germany population?
What's the relevance? It just smacks of Marr making his own pathetic little point. There is no rigourous editorial control within the BBC to challenge that item's relevance, as the BBC is staffed by the likes of Marr, and holds broadly similar views. |
This subject has been aired time and again. It always goes round in circles and I think the matter in this one has probably run its course. However, I will leave it for a couple of more days.
Incidentally,it is worth noting that for years, decade upon decade, it was proffered more times than anything else to do with the allied bombing, that Dresden suffered most with deaths figuring towards 100,000. Dresden itself, issued the real figures about two years ago to be around 25,000 killed. Very much lower than those above. Still too many, of course, but London suffered more killed than Dresden did! Some 32,000. That is war, as they say. |
This programme was defined for me by the hilarious sight of Marr prancing down a road in a Home Guard uniform. What on earth has happened to the BBC?
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Sam Wollaston in the Grauniad today
I wish my school history lessons had been more like Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain (BBC2). It's not just his energy, his animated bounding about, his willingness to get involved, play soldiers, do a (not very good) Churchill impression, that makes it so engaging. It's also the way he mixes in little stories with the big ones. So along with D-Day, we learn about the imprisoned Italians and Austrians who made a little pocket of European culture on the Isle of Man. He gives it a humanness that makes it mean so much more. And now that's it, the second world war done, modern Britain made, end of the lesson. Boo. :ugh: |
The UK's area bombing srategy was the brainchild of Sir Charles Portal and Winston Churchill (with the backing of the Chiefs of air staff etc). Arthur Harris merely pursued this strategy with ruthless efficiency. When, towards the end of the war and in it's immediate aftermath, it became apparent that public opinion was rapidly starting to question area bombing on moral grounds, Churchill and Portal rapidly distanced themselves from this most unsavoury aspect of 'total war' and tried (v successfully) to make Harris out as the public scapegoat. Hence the lack of a Bomber Command Campaign Medal (which to this day is a national disgrace and a most obvious insult to the bravery of the bomber boys whose courage has never been surpassed IMHO) and the continuing antipathy to Harris, the crews, and all they stand/stood for. Disgraceful, in the same league of treachery as the userping of Dowding and Park by Sholto-Douglas and Leigh-Mallory......:(
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Hence the lack of a Bomber Command Campaign Medal (which to this day is a national disgrace and a most obvious insult to the bravery of the bomber boys whose courage has never been surpassed IMHO) The exception was the Aircrew Europe Star, which was only awarded to aircrew who had flown operationally over Europe from the beginning of the war up until D-Day. Whilst many Fighter Command aircrew were awarded this star, the vast majority of recipients were quite naturally members of RAF Bomber Command. Far from being denied a medal, Bomber Command aircrew were among the few recipients of an award specific to their role, rather than the theatre awards given to all others. There was, for example, no particular medal given to the submarine service, the airborne forces, commandos, or to many others who could claim that their services were particularly deserving of mention - they received the same campaign star as all others in their theatre. Indeed in Europe, those fighting in the BEF in France up to the time of Dunkirk received no award, whilst those flying over them were qualifying for the Aircrew Europe Star. I never know where this story comes from, but it is continually repeated by those not in possession of the facts. Bomber Command were not insulted in this way. Their exploits may well have been subject to grossly unfair comment in the post war years it is true, but in the matter of medals they were certainly not slighted - quite the opposite some might say. |
Butch or Butcher?
Ref my first post atop this thread, I've contacted Andrew Marr and will report any reply - but don't hold your breath...
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famous turn-of-the-century bike racing champion http://www.wheelers.org/club_history...uary_times.pdf |
The campaign to raise money to fund the Bomber Command Memorial is well established and is two thirds of the way to the target of £3m. This is a very worthy cause and I hope that many more people will support it.
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....there were eight campaign stars awarded after the war |
And your point is?
If you are referring to the recently awarded clasp awarded to those who served on Arctic convoys I would admit that this might create a precedent for a similar Bomber Command clasp on the Aircrew Europe Star. However as around 80 - 90% of the recipients of this star were Bomber Command Aircrew, this seems a fairly pointless exercise. Personally I have always thought that once you start down this slippery slope you will get all sorts of special interest groups pleading their own case, until veterans resemble those heavily laden retired Russians you see who can hardly stand up as a result of the hardware weighing them down Russian and American War Veterans at the Central Museum of Armed Forces in Moscow |
Personally I don't like the man Marr-I don't like his politics and I don't like the face and flappy ears.He does tell a good story though-but whether its true or no largely generally depends on where it fits in the marrpolitosphere-ie you sometimes have to take it with a large pinch of salt-sometimes outrageous lies are heard to spout from that ugly gob, entertaining to some, though it may.
Of course others can and do find him downright offensive. Anyone who has been quoted as repeating the old dogma "if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it" -has to be taken with great caution. In regard to Harris, I personally believe he took air power way beyond the importance it had.Now don't get me wrong, I'm aware the essential nature of air supremacy-but to think that it alone could win the war for you-was fundamentally flawed.Repercussions were that places like Dresden-obliterated at the war's end with no real military value, ensuring the mass cremations of thousands of civilians-was an absolute catastrophe. Lastly back to la Marr-any man who resorts to the courts and injunctions to prevent the public knowing a part of his family life that he'd prefer them not to know-says a lot about the essential nature of a man I could never trust. |
I think it is often assumed that area bombing was Harris's idea but he was simply appointed to carry it out.
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So, will Bomber Harris get the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square?
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My goodness wouldnt that be good. It would certainly put the cat among the pigeons (if there any left there after Ken tried to have them exterminated!). Personally I'm not holding my breath though.
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Have to say I grunted in the armchair (as Milady Teeters says I increasingly do) at the "Butcher" error ....
But then Marr also used film of Stukas to illustrate the bombing of Liverpool! Enormous drop tanks or AAR d'ye think?:ugh: |
POP,
It is true that last year a group of German historians put the actual figure of the dead in Dresden as between 18.000 to 25.000. It should also be pointed out that after the bombing the authorities in Dresden also put the figure as around 20 - 25.000. However, Goebbels and the Reich propoganda ministry decided that it would paint the Allies in a worse light if the figure was increased to 100.000 dead. It often appears that he was right, especially amongst the the huggy fluffy crowd. |
Bomber Command Memorial
Tony Rennell wrote an article in the Daily Mail dated 14th February 2004 where he put to rights the myths about Dresden. "It had a vital role in the final military manoeuvrings of the war on the Eastern front........Dresden records were accessible.......people of Dresden were kidding themselves about their city's peaceful nature........it housed 127 factories....switched to war work.....Zeiss, camera makers, made bombaiming apparatus and time fuses......typewriter and sewing machine factories were turning out armaments......waffle and marzipan factories were making torpedo parts.....an arts and craft workshop was producing wooden tail assemblies for V1 flying bombs, machine guns, searchlights, ,aircraft parts, field telephones and two-way radios....peaceful Dresden was a war factory and a fortress......and a vital link in the German rail network"
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Read Frederick Taylor's book: Dresden. It's very persuasive and, most importantly, well researched history.
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I think it's Taylor's book that claims that the loss of life in Dresden was exaggerated by the East German authorities, as part of Cold War propaganda. People know about Dresden and Hiroshima, not Hamburg and Tokyo, which were more destructive.
From what I've read, the British authorities had serious qualms about area bombing, but did it because they couldn't do anything else (like frontal attacks in WW I, which the generals knew were pretty hopeless, but the army wasn't well enough trained to do anything else). The real question about Harris, I thought, was his persistence in area bombing when alternatives were available: either the diversion of aircraft to anti-submarine patrols, or a more directed targeting plan, which was possible by 1944. Perhaps a combination of theory and inter-sevice rivalry? He seems to have been pretty inflexible, which at one point was a virtue, but then, later, not so much. |
Bomber Command Memorial
We are all very comfortable in our modern society but by 1945 the majority of the people were asking ' When is it all going to end ? Over 5 years of war meant that something had to done. Dresden was still being used as staging post for troops and the people were living amongst war factories. Our equipment was better than previous years but targetting individual factories without damaging domestic properties was impossible. In warfare there will always be casualties among civilians especially if military installations are among their houses. It still happens today, even with the sophisticated weaponery available. How did we know that the war was going to end soon ? Sitting back and not doing anything was not an option.
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"Ellingen, a small town with 1,500 inhabitants in Bavaria, was bombed by the 8th American Air Force in February 1945. An interview with the lead navigator reveals that Ellingen was selected as a "target of opportunity" simply because it had a road running through it. A few weeks later, British Bomber Command attacked Wurzburg, a medium-sized town with next to no industry of military importance. In only 20 minutes, incendiary bombs destroyed 82 per cent of the town, an even greater proportion than in Dresden.
....documents....show that once Germany's industrial centres were virtually all destroyed, Bomber Command Intelligence began to select towns initially, not for their military value, but because they were easy for the bombers to find and destroy. A briefing note by an American Air Force general shows that raids on rural places such as Ellingen also had the political purpose to deter the Germans from ever starting another war." These raids are difficult to justify nowadays and perhaps even then? |
As someone who was a youngster in London during WW2 and suffering bombing, V1 & V2 attacks, and hearing of Coventry and the Baedeker raids, the idea of German towns being bombed seemed a pretty good idea at the time. Before anyone says two wrongs don't make a right, they should try listening for a V1 engine to stop and then the long pause before the explosion.
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Did he attend a Bristol UAS dining-in night in late '84 or early '85?
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Bombing mistakes still occur today-but they do not involve the mass killing by the thousand-of civilians, women and children-in such a dreadful manner. But......as someone mentioned above, you have to have been involved in bombs being dropped around you, V1's with your name on the engine and V2's with anybody's name on the engine! It was not nice and you sure as hell wished every day that the RAF bombers were doing their worst for you. |
Precisely.
It's much the same as the arguments about the sinking of the Belgrano in the Falklands war. Why did it happen? It was because there was a war on. It was total war, a nasty war and if the Germans had the capability to do it to the UK, they would have done. And they started it. |
As this has gravitated to Dresden (as these things inevitably seem to), perhaps the words of the great man himself are useful;
Page242, BOMBER OFFENSIVE, A T Harris By December of 1944 we had devastated or very seriously damaged 8o per cent of all the cities in Germany with a population,before the war, of more than 100,000; yet more cities, especially in the east of Germany, were devastated in 1945. With the German army on the frontiers of Germany we quickly set up GH and Oboe ground stations close behind the front line and this ensured the success of attacks on many distant objectives when the weather would otherwise have prevented us from finding the target. At the same time the bombers could fly with comparative safety even to targets as distant as Dresden or Chemnitz, which I had not ventured to attack before, because the enemy had lost his early warning system and the whole fighier defence of Germany could therefore generally be out-manceuvred. In February of 1945, with the Russian army threatening the heart of Saxony, I was called upon to attack Dresden; this was considered a target of the first importance for the offensive on the Eastern front. Dresden had by this time become the main centre of communications for the defence of Germany on the southern half of the Eastern front and it was considered that a heavy air attack would disorganise these comnmnications and also make Dresden useless as a controlling centre for the defence. It was also by far the largest city in Germany, the pre-war population was 630,000, which had been left intact; it had never before been bombed. As a large centre of war industry it was also of the highest importance. An attack on the night of February 13th-14th by just over 8oo aircraft, bombing in two sections in order to get the night fighters dispersed and grounded before the second attack, was almost as overwhelming in its effect as the Battle of Hamburg, though the area of devastation, 1600 acres, was considerably less; there was, it appears, a fire-typhoon, and the effect on German morale, not only in Dresden but in far distant parts of the country, was extremely serious. The Americans carried out two light attacks in daylight on the next two days. I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unncessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself, and that if their judgment was right the same arguments must apply that I have set out in an earlier chapter in which I said what I think about the ethics of bombing as a whole. Modern war is mechanised and dependent on industry. Arguably then, industry is a legitimate target. Industry, of course, is a civil activity. |
As an 8to 14 year old during WW2 and saw the aftermath of the bombing of Bristol, Manchester, Coventry and Bath and kept awake during the bombing of Bristol and Manchester ,and being very frightened all I can say is" Good old Sir Arthur Harris" and all the Bomber aircrew . they hit back at Germany the only way we could and it certainly kept the moral of the British People up during that time and frankly we couldn't have given a toss how many people were killed over there it was all out war with suffering on both sides .So I'm with Rotorfossil and Prune pop and all I can say to end the matter is all those people who were not born and did not suffer at that time, Harris may not have won the war but he certainly shortened it as Albert Speer the German Minister of Production said 3 more raids like Hamburg and we would have collapsed at that time our morale broken, but we didn't have the capacity to do it and the chance was lost.
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There were surprisingly few troops left to hold Berlin so where were their men going?-they certainly weren't heading west. |
We no more knew on 12 Feb.45 that "the war was over", than we knew on 5 August 1945 that Japan was "ready to surrender". Armistice, maybe...back to 1938 borders, recoil, the better to spring... but Unconditional Surrender, Occupation, subjugation to the barbarian...oh, no. Remember Churchill's June 1940 words about (MPs and all) Brits choking on their blood as they fought the invader...remember "better dead than Red": Germans and Japanese civilians loved their Homeland just as we did/do. For them, all of their enemies, not just the Eastern one, were bad guys. They would fight on to the last kitchen knife until their own blood nourished the Motherland.
Demonising Dresden, carpet bombing generally is untutored (esp. by the Philosophy tutor Prof. A.C.Grayling, whose Down Among the Dead Cities, in every UK Public Library, holds Bomber Command aircrew to be collective war criminals). The most effective way to reduce a castle under siege was not to clamber up its defended walls, but to poison the well and interdict resupply; the purpose of Henry VIII's Royal Navy was to bombard ports and interdict resupply: both bring Weapons of Mass Destruction onto the civilian population. Get the job done, so our boys can come home. It was civilian starvation of the Central Powers caused by Allied Naval blockade that was seen by our Leaders as having won WW1. Blockade/interdiction of supply, this time maritime+aerial, was the strategy adopted by UK in 1937 (KGV battleships and (to be) Stirling/Halifax/Lancaster), adopted in 1941 by US' Two-Ocean Navy and Ford Liberators en masse, and by (less effective) Russian, Italian and German attempts at Heavies. "Carpet bombing" created no new "frightfulness": just that by 1944 the Allies' Combined Bomber Offensive was doing the job that Zeppelin and Gotha had attempted last time. If you want to demonise Dresden, you must in logic seek to outlaw aerial bombing generically. That's precisely what the League of Nations explored, 1929-33. But when one Nation was suspected of seeking monopoly advantage, we good guys had to gird. CBW was/is in that category...and in February and August,1945 when rubble had removed their fear of our retaliation, Germany/Japan could have put up a last barricade of spores, to choke the invader to stalemate. Hitler is believed to have ordered exactly that in Berlin in May,1945. |
Bomber Harris
It depends on whether you are British or German. If you were women and children stuck in Dresden and being bombed ,choice of description is obvious.I know someone who survived the Bombs in Germany with two small children and the attack sounds really heartless.
I also had an uncle who flew over and bombed Germany and he was shattered after seeing later reports. |
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