Bomber Harris a 'colonial warmonger'
 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-removed.html
So the so called educated are saying Harris was a colonial war monger. As far as I can remember he was only involved in mining and farming in Africa and then fought in the German SW Africa campaign. These ridiculous protests are now branching out to a more general sphere. What next?

...and of course, being the Mirror, it writes that Harris was responsible for bombing German Cities which were "typically working class areas". Oh dear.

The article is actually in the Daily Mail

So just another brand of toilet paper then? :}

I have the utmost respect and admiration for those at the sharp end of Bomber Command but, honestly, I'm never been at all sure about their commander-in-chief. Too me he was from the same mould as many of those Great War generals who could not see the wood for the trees and were of the 'one last push' mentality and to hell with the casualties.

The bombing campaign may have held a lot of German artillery and manpower back from being deployed to the Eastern Front, but in my opinion Harris was far too blinkered to see that if the Blitz had not broken civilian morale in London it was unlikely to happen in reverse. Too many times he promised area bombing would solely bring about German surrender when it failed to do so, even when it was clear invasion would be the only means to end the war. He resisted when his bombers were needed in the lead up to the Allied invasion to hit logistics and communications targets in France, and I believe he arefused to allow any four-engined bombers to be diverted to support Coastal Command in the Battle of the Atlantic when the U-boats were wreaking havoc on merchant shipping.

There was disquiet about area bombing at the time, and ever since, and even I remain unconvinced that, in the end, the results were worth the sacrifice of so many young men.

I apologise if my thoughts offend, but that's how I feel.

It was only a matter of time of course. The statue of Bomber Harris has been a target for the Hampstead Thinkers from the very moment it was unveiled by the Queen Mother. That it hasn't yet been cocooned a la Churchill's statue I find surprising, though on reflection he was just as despised by the Establishment (including those of his own Service). Now that attention has been drawn to him let us hope he is put on the at risk register and appropriately protected.

Four posts before the obligatory Daily Wail denunciation appears? Tut tut, we really must sharpen our ideas up mustn't we?

I was a small lad living in the southern outskirts of London for most of WWII. I still have strong memories of the Blitz, the Bedecker raids and then the doodlebugs and V2 rockets. I also remember standing in the playground of my school and cheering as our bombers and the USAF streamed overhead on their way to targets on the continent. This was vengeance personified for the damage Hitler did to our country. So I for one am happy to applaud Bomber Harris for what he did, including the morale boost he gave to my family and school friends.

Perhaps I should also mention that I had members of my family flying in those bombers and thank God they were among the lucky ones who served with pride and without regret. So stuff the Hampstead Thinkers and their cohorts.

This issue was discussed extensively only a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.pprune.org/military-avia...rman-dams.html
Is it really necessary to do it yet again?

What must be remembered is, that after Dunkirk, Bomber Command was the only force that was capable of taking the fight to the enemy. Churchill himself said that:

'The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.'

Harris was a complex individual, as many war leaders are, and he certainly believed that Bomber Command could win the war on its own. However, what these 'enlightened' protesters fail to realise (or singularly don't want to realise) is that Harris did not set the bombing policy...he was carrying out direction from the War Cabinet. The 'Area Bombing Directive' was issued on 14 Feb 42...a week before Harris took over as C-in-C Bomber Command...so the die was already cast. It is undoubtedly true, that he certainly put his shoulder to this particular wheel, and carried out its tenets to the best of his, and his Command's abilities. However, the fact that he is constantly portrayed as the architect of this policy is simply untrue.

Even Dresden, in Feb 45, for which he is constantly (wrongly) castigated by the so-called 'intellectual elite' was part of a larger series of raids under the code name of THUNDERCLAP. (as an aside, we certainly weren't overly sensitive when picking op names...MILLENNIUM for the 1000 Bomber Raid; CHASTISE for the Dams Raid, and perhaps most prescient of all, GOMORRAH for the Hamburg Raids of Jul/Aug 43).

The fact that Churchill had direct links to Dresden can be easily demonstrated. On 25 Jan 45 Churchill rang Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for air, and in a typically Churchillian turn of phrase queried:

‘What plans Bomber Command had for basting the Germans in their retreat from Breslau’.

Breslau was a major city in Silesia just 100 miles east of Dresden that was under direct threat from the Soviet advance.

War, and especially 'Total War' ('Totaler Krieg – Kürzester Krieg' - 'Total War – Shortest War' [Goebbels in the Sportspalast, Berlin Feb 43]) is never simple, and when national survival is at stake then single-minded individuals such as Sir Arthur Harris are needed by our nation. That nearly 80 years on, and given the hindsight of history, we cannot praise him (and the 55 573 aircrew who didn't return) without applying what I can pejoratively describe as 'the woke mores of today' sadly says more about what we have become as a nation than the lives of the men that people attempt to denigrate.

Doomed
 

Burn the history books. Topple the statues. Bury all remnants of past injustice.
nothing bad has ever happened when people ignore the lessons of history....

Eventually that tactic won that war though.

My parents/grandparents are all from South London and were there during the Battle of Britian and the Blitz. They endured.
Dodgy I am with you on that one, that these revisionists can peddle their midguided views in the public domain is thanks to the freedom bought with the blood of thousands of men, women and children, irrespective of nationality, during conflict.

Interestingly, if you had moved out of the suburbs, and into central london, (or Coventry or Plymouth) those sorts of attitudes became less common (or even a minority view). There was gallup poll in 1941 that looked at public attitudes to 'reprisal' bombings which found that support for them overwhelmingly came from areas that had experienced the fewest air raids. I imagine that the people who had experienced area bombing had a much better idea of who was actually being targeted for 'vengeance' than the wider public.

I don't support the motives of these people seeking to topple the statues for the reasons cited.

However, did the west not celebrate when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in a campaign fuelled by western support? What about the facts of politics and history then and that statue serving 'as a reminder' to the future populations of Iraq?

Can't see the point of removing statues - - if you have to attach an explanatory notice but where do you stop? Knock down the Roman Wall (clearly imperialist) or the Louvre or..........?

Bomber Harris? Not a great leader - he rarely ever went anywhere near an operational station, blinkered (fought tooth & nail against letting Coastal have any decent aircraft) and bombastic. He also slithered around clear orders at times. Not worthy of the people he sent out to fight

Unlike Keith Park, who was frequently out and about to the front-line stations in his Hurricane.

Asturias56...I suspect that any of Harris' surviving 'Old Lags' would take deep exception to your comment that:

'Bomber Harris? Not a great leader - he rarely ever went anywhere near an operational station...'

As Squadron Historian and Adjutant in the early 90s I had the immense privilege of meeting, talking with (in depth) and, best of all, drinking with dozens of ex-Bomber Command aircrew, groundcrew and their families..and almost to a man and woman they would not hear anything bad said about 'Butch' as he was very affectionately known to them. They would have followed him to hell and back, and to the survivors it must have felt like that at times.

The main problem with 'Bomber', 'Bert', or 'Butch' Harris has been the revisionist view of the strategic bomber offensive that was started as early as Feb/Mar 45 by one Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, who, after Dresden, feared that his legacy could be tarnished by association with Bomber Command and Harris.

Yes Harris was cold blooded man, but he had a job to do, to wage war against the enemy with all that he could muster. as others have pointed out, for a long time at the beginning of the War, the Bomber Offensive was the only means we had of striking back at the enemy, and helping our Allies, in taking some of the heat off of them.

War is a dirty business, and people get killed, on both sides, Military or Civilian..Area bombing was a blunt tool to get at Hitler, but precision bombing, even in daylight with a Norden bombsight, was just not accurate enough.

I am also sure that if the Manhattan Project had come to fruition 6 months earlier, Berlin would have been the recipient of Little Boy and maybe Dresden would have got Fat Man...maybe that would have convinced the Nazis to pack it in...What would we have made of Harris then?

Park and Mallory were GROUP Commanders responsible for their squadrons.

Harris was a COMMAND Commander. His responsibility was for the Groups. Even 30 or more years later Group Commanders would make annual visits to their units and frequently fly with their crews. Where Command chiefs visited it was usually as a farewell trip around their Units before they retired.

​

Well, you say that, but it appears that multiple Bomber Command veterans would’ve disagreed with you (Hamish Mahaddie, I think it was, who said that after a speech by Harris, the men of his station would’ve happily stuffed bombs in their pockets and flown over to Germany by flapping their arms vigorously). He also spent a lot of time in HQ because of the PM’s penchant for phoning him at all hours of the day. Churchill skilfully promoted the offensive Harris prosecuted and then dropped Bomber Command like a hot brick - ‘history shall be kind to me. I know, for I shall write it’ - when he realised the devastation the Command he’d so assiduously supported had inflicted.

Also, don’t let the head of the AHB hear you say that he avoided ‘clear orders’. Harris manoeuvred himself around Air Ministry Directives which he thought stupid, but not orders. There is an important difference between the two. Not that Max Hastings or AC Grayling have ever understood this.

My father was in Bomber Command (Night Fighters) he and his colleagues always held Harris in high esteem. They knew that he was made a scape goat but never forgot how he supported them. By all means criticise the carpet bombing of cities (remembering to include the USA in your condemnation) but state that these raids were authorised by the War Cabinet. Politicians make final choices - just as they this year.

Things are always clearer with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. There is considerable evidence that the strategic bombing campaign was not an efficient use of resources - but few knew or even suspected that during the war.
Revisionist history is just that - applying modern standard to historical events gives a distorted view of what happened and why. Similar revisionist history has been applied to the US dropping the A-bombs on Japan ('Japan wasn't a threat, they were about to surrender anyway, etc.'). Given that my dad was training for the invasion of Japan when the dropped the bombs - he was going to be a platoon leader on the second wave of the initial landings and had been told to expect 80% casualties - I remain unconvinced that we didn't need to drop the bombs. In fact a pretty good argument can be made that dropping the bombs and preventing the need for an invasion of the mainland saved move lives - both Japanese and Americans - than any single act in history.

Is Harris' statue on Sadiq Khan's hit list then? What will be interesting will be what statues go up in place of say Harris? John Lennon perhaps?

FB

tdracer,

My father was a POW in Singapore. I agree 100% with what you say about the A bomb probably saving more lives than it took. There is also good reason to believe that it saved the prisoners' lives too. None of these issues are easy to disentangle from modern points of view.

Shouldn't be, Butch may have been into Bombing, but Slavery wasn't his thing.

Amen
 

I signed up for an account just to praise your astute and human observation of what I can only describe as merciful reflection.

Starving Germany through blockade won the war, the Armies could have just sat in their trenches for duration and achieved more or less the same effect. By 1916 Germany was receiving ~5% of what she had been before the war in terms of food and material which was unsustainable.

OJ – Glad to see your conversations with veterans did not include the misnomer 'Butcher', which I moaned about some years back on this forum after Andrew Marr used it in his British history series.

I agree that Harris, and the crews of Bomber Command, were left high & dry by Churchill - whose weasel words after Dresden were very shabby indeed.

people forget that for much of the war - certainly until; '44 Bomber Command was the only way to actually strike at Germany in W Europe. 1940-42 there was no option at all, after Dieppe it was clear any ground invasion was going to be a very serious exercise indeed. I'm not convinced by Harris - his Berlin Campaign was badly thought out and kept going long after it was clear it was costing a lot of crews - but to me the crews were the bravest of the RAF - and they were not given anything like the honour they should have had

Bollocks to the revisionist snowflakes, I raise my glass to Sir Arthur Harris and all who served in Bomber Command.

Well said Beamer so will I

On the other hand, one of the Bomber Command veterans who had been a 21-yr old Lancaster captain is on record talking of his experience of having his home bombed while he was on ARP duty (too young to volunteer at 17). Word reached him as he started his 8 hour shift, which he completed. When he got home, "My house was just a pile of rubble. The kind lady who lived next door was plastered to the wall like some hideous gelatinous graffiti and my bruised, battered and shocked parents were in a shelter. … I salvaged a pair of Scout shorts and a school prize, and these became my sole possessions. At that moment I swore to become a bomber pilot and make the buggers pay." Which he did!..

Flt Lt 'Steve' Stevens DFC sadly died at Easter, but at least this fine and brave gentleman did not live to see the current nonsense.

My father told us that, when his civilian parents (his father was in the RFC flying SE5a) were killed in their beds by a V2 in October 1944, it was no trouble at all to go out on operations.

As with all history - it is written by the wiiner. What we need is less editing of the past, less clinging to the past. More of understanding everything, including their social and political attitudes at the time. We have the advantage of that hindsight and should remember it all, good and bad.

We need to look and acknowledge. Judgement is way past. Just think how many more wars there have been since then? Whatever historians and archiologists discover - there have always been civilian casualties. War is what humans do because we are tribal animals and every tribe/state/company/corporation thinks it is better and more deserving than any other.

Harris as a "colonial warmonger"? He was a product of his time and circumstances. We had a very different way of looking at the world back then.

Some quotes in relation to Harris about his inter-war service .. from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Ar...,_1st_Baronet)
"He said of his service in India that he first became involved in bombing during the usual annual North West Frontier tribesmen trouble." and later,
"Harris is recorded as having remarked "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand."" and
"He helped devise area bombing in Iraq in 1923."

Colonial: - probably hard to argue he wasn't a "colonialist"
Warmonger: - in his time probably not. Using today's social norms, probably yes.


Thread Drift:
tdracer

I've seen it claimed several times that the A-bombs were a (significant) adjunct to Japan's decision to surrender, but it was the Russian invasion of Manchuria, and threatened invasion of the Japanese islands, that were the icing on the cake of 4 years of allied (primarily US) endeavours against Japan.

For example, in Paul Ham's "Hiroshima Nagasaki" two quotes highlight this:
12 August - Kantaro Suzuki (Japanese Prime Minister) is quoted as saying "If we miss today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war while we can deal with the United States." (page 395)
17 August - Hirohito (in his surrender speech to the Japanese military) said "Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war to continue (fighting) would only result in further useless damage and eventually endanger the very foundation of the empire's existence." (p. 380)

9 August - Hiroshima
11 August - Nagasaki
9 August - Russian launch 'surprise' (and very successful) attacks with forces in excess of 1.5 million soldiers
10-14 August - 1,000 plus B-29 bombing sorties on Japan
10 August and on - numerous raids and shore bombardments by US 3rd fleet (including elements of the BPF)
15 August - Japanese surrender

No 'uptick' option so have a + 1 :ok:

An understandable reaction, if not a humane or logical one; the kindly neighbours and elderly parents who he in turn 'plastered to the wall' or incinerated in the streets were very unlikely to have had any part in determining Luftwaffe strategy or target selection. I was only pointing out that the opposite reaction was the more common one amongst people who actually experienced that sort of bombing.

Nobody can (or should try to) downplay the bravery and patriotism of the aircrew who volunteered to carry the fight to Germany and the risks that they took to do so. However, the mere demonstration of those qualities says nothing about the morality of the act; those taking the same risks for Hitler could be described in equal terms. It has accurately been said that the most immoral thing that the allies could have done was to have lost the war. There are no easy answers (which is why I don't offer any), but it is legitimate, even in hindsight, to ask whether there should be any moral constraints on how you fight a war in such circumstances and even to ask what personal responsibility was borne by the leaders.

Well he was certainly a warmonger. That was, after all, his job!

beamer; have another +1. We owe them a lot. Per Ardua

Family member was an air gunner in Bomber Command.

Operational life expectancy at one stage was measured in days, perhaps weeks - but not even months!

Fatalities: almost as many as American losses in Vietnam (which we still hear about ad infinitum)

Morale: sky high, if not higher. Otherwise how would ordinary people who had all volunteered for flying duties put up with the life expectancy figures etc?

What shines out - and confirmed by so many many of the survivors, my family included - was their respect for their commander-in-chief.

Personally, their views - the views of those whose lives were on the line, and who lost so many of their colleagues - are what count.