Bomb them all to hell
My issue with this revionist view is that it is placed out of context. There was a war on for heaven’s sake.
My Uncle was one of those who did his best to hit his target tonight. And not so long ago I met a woman who, as a young girl, met my Uncle in England during his training in 1942.
During our correspondence I mentioned something about how I look upon the men of Nachtjagd in more-or-less equivalent terms to those of Bomber Command. Just young men doing their duty, fighting for what they thought right. On the one side the elimination of the Nazi menace and the other fighting against those who were trying to kill their mums and sisters.
Boy was I wrong … I got hit back with something to the effect that “we just wanted to bomb them all to hell!”. It turned out that this then young girl and her family had been bombed out of Coventry and were not-at-all well disposed to Germans of any variety. Oh.
Harris of course echoes this. As did pretty well the high command of RAF Bomber Command and right up through the political leadership of the country.
So in a sense Randall Hansen has a wash of truth to his positioning re. the plaque. But he misses the key point, made immediately above by my Coventry survivor, and more generally by others that … this was total war and the Allies were not at all disposed to be kindly or gentle towards their enemies.
In this context, hitting as hard as you can makes absolute sense. Then of course there are the technical factors we know so well … the accuracy of target finding and bomb aiming, the relative safety of a Bomber at night vs day, and the prevailing thought that strategic bombing would work – particularly as a weapon against the enemy’s morale. Flattening cities is very sensible in those contexts.
And as to the failure to reduce production … someone else pointed out to me some time ago when I offered up that suggestion … that what needs to be contemplated is, if production could increase in the circumstances, just imagine how significant production would have been without the disruption to productive capacity and workers lives and circumstances!
Mind you, I agree with Resmoroh above, this too shall pass.
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