It may be
Inconvenient History but England rather than Germany initiated
the murderous slaughter of bombing civilians thus bringing about
retaliation. Chamberlain conceded that it was ‘Absolutely
contrary to International law’.
“It began in 1940
and Churchill believed it held the secret of victory. He was
convinced that raids of sufficient intensity could destroy
Germany’s morale, and so his War Cabinet planned a campaign
that abandoned the accepted practice of attacking the enemy’s
armed forces and, instead made civilians the primary target.
Night after night, RAF bombers in ever increasing numbers struck
throughout Germany, usually at working class housing, because
it was more densley packed.” –The Peoples’ War, Angus
Calder. London, Jonathan Cape, 1969.
"Hitler only
undertook the bombing of British civilian targets reluctantly
three months after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian
targets. Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the
slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain
an agreement confining the action of aircraft to battle zones.
Retaliation was
certain if we carried the war into Germany. There was a
reasonable possibility that our capital and industrial centres
would not have been
attacked if we had continued to refrain from attacking those of
Germany. We began to bomb objectives on the German mainland
before the Germans began to bomb objectives on the British
mainland. Because we were doubtful about the psychological
effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we
who started the strategic bombing offensive, we have shrunk from
giving our great decision of May,11th, 1940, the publicity it
deserves." - J.M Spaight., CB., CBE., Principle Secretary to
the Air Ministry, Bombing Vindicated
"The attack on the
Ruhr was therefore an informal invitation to the Luftwaffe to
bomb London. The primary purpose of these raids was to goad the
Germans into undertaking reprisal raids of a similar character
on Britain. Such raids would arouse intense indignation in
Britain against Germany and so create a war psychosis without
which it would be impossible to carry on a modern war." -
The Royal Air Force, 1939 - 1945, The Fight at Odds.p.122.
Dennis Richards, Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
THE MOST
UNCIVILISED FORM OF WARFARE
The eminent British
war historian and strategist, Captain Sir. Basil Liddell Hart
declared that through this strategy
victory had been
achieved "through practising the most uncivilised means of
warfare that the world had known since the Mongol invasions."
The Evolution of Warfare. 1946, p.75: "Was absolutely
contrary to international law."
Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain:
"The inhabitants of Coventry (Liverpool), for example, continued
to imagine
that their
sufferings were due to the innate villainy of Adolf Hitler
without a suspicion that a decision, splendid or otherwise, of
the British War Cabinet, was the decisive factor in the case." -
F.J.P Veale. Advance to Barbarism, P.169.
THE TERROR
TARGETING OF WORKING CLASS CIVILIANS
"I am in full
agreement (of terror bombing). I am all for the bombing of
working class areas in German cities. I am a Cromwellian - I
believe in 'slaying in the name of the Lord!" Sir. Archibald
Sinclair, Secretary for Air.
WIVES AND
CHILDREN TARGETTED
"They (the British
Air Chiefs) argued that the desired result, of reducing German
industrial production, would be more readily achieved if the
homes of the workers in the factories were destroyed; if the
workers were kept busy arranging for the burial of their wives
and children, output might reasonably be expected to fall."
It was concentrated
on working class houses because, as Professor Lindemann
maintained, “A higher percentage of bloodshed per ton of
explosives dropped could be expected from bombing houses built
close together, rather than by bombing higher class houses
surrounded by gardens." Advance to Barbarism, F.J.P
Veale.
SO COWARDLY IT
HAD TO BE HIDDEN
"One of the most
unhealthy features of the bombing offensive was that the War
Cabinet - and in particular the Secretary for Air, Archibald
Sinclair (now Lord Thurso), felt it necessary to repudiate
publicly the orders which they themselves had given to Bomber
Command." R.H.S Crossman, MP. Sunday Telegraph, Oct.1st,1961
PERSPECTIVES
During
the war, more bombs by weight were dropped on the city of Berlin
than were released on the whole of Great Britain during the
entire war.
All German towns
and cities above 50,000 population were from 50% to 80%
destroyed. Dresden, an unprotected city, was incinerated with
an estimated 135,000 civilian inhabitants burned and buried in
the ruins. Hamburg was totally destroyed and 70,000 civilians
died in the most appalling circumstances whilst Cologne was
likewise turned into a moon-scape. As Hamburg burned the winds
feeding the three mile high flames reached twice hurricane speed
to exceed 150 miles per hour. Trees three feet in diameter on
the outskirts of the city, were sucked from the ground by the
supernatural forces of these winds and hurled miles into the
city-inferno, as were vehicles, men, women... and children.
Between 1940 and
1945, sixty-one German cities with a total population of 25
million souls were destroyed of devastated in a bombing campaign
initiated by the British government. Destruction on this scale
had no other purpose than the indiscriminate mass murder of as
many German people as possible quite regardless of their
civilian status. It led to retaliatory bombing resulting in
60,000 British dead and 86,000 injured.
CHILDREN
MACHINE-GUNNED
The strafing of
columns of refugees by both American and British fighter planes
was par for the course: ".... it is said that these (zoo)
animals and terrified groups of refugees were machine-gunned as
they tried to escape across the Grosser Garten by low-flying
planes and that many bodies riddled by bullets were found later
in this park." Der Tod von Dresden, Axel Rodenberger,
February, 25th, 1951. In Dresden, "Even the huddled
remnants of a children's' choir were machine-gunned in a street
bordering a park." David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden.
"I think we shall live to rue the day we did this, and that it,
(The bombing of Dresden) will stand for all time as a blot on
our escutcheon." Richard Stokes, M.P. "What we want to
do in addition to the horrors of fire is to bring the masonry
crashing down on the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify Boche."
'Bomber' Butch Harris, Sunday Times, January, 10th, 1993.
THE FIRESTORM OF
HAMBURG
“Its
horror is revealed in the howling and raging of the firestorms,
the hellish noise of exploding bombs and the death cries of
martyred human beings as well as the big silence after the
raids. Speech is impotent to portray the measure of the horror,
which shook the people for ten days and nights and the traces of
which were written indelibly on the face of the city and its
inhabitants.
No flight of
imagination will ever succeed in measuring and describing the
gruesome scenes of horror in the many buried air shelters.
Posterity can only bow its head in honour of the fate of these
innocents, sacrificed by the murderous lust of a sadistic
enemy...."The Police President of Hamburg.
ˆ
"Three-hundred times as many people died in Hamburg during the
ten-day blitz as died in Coventry during the entire course of
the war. "Not even Hiroshima and Nagasaki, suffering the
smashing blows of nuclear explosions, could match the utter hell
of Hamburg." Martin Caidin, The Night Hamburg Died,
Ballantyne Books.
THE CHILDREN
"Of the children
these dreadful nights, what can be said? Their fright became
horror and then panic when their tiny minds became capable of
grasping the fact that their parents could no longer help them
in their distress. They lost their reason and an overwhelming
terror took over. Their world had become the shrieking centre
of an erupting volcano from which there could be no physical
escape. Nothing that hell offered could be feared more.
By the hand of man
they became creatures, human in form but not in mind. Strangled
noises hissed from them as they staggered pitifully through the
streets in which tar and asphalt ran as streams. Some of these
tiny creatures ran several hundred feet. Others managed only
twenty, maybe ten feet. Their shoes caught fire and then their
feet. The lower parts of their legs became flickering sticks of
flame. Here were Joans of Arcs.... thousands of them. All who
had perished unjustly on the fires of the Middle Ages were as
nothing when compared with what was happening that night.
The sounds of many
were unintelligible and undoubtedly many more called for their
parents from whom they were parted by death or by accident.
They grasped their tortured limbs, their tiny burning legs until
they were no longer able to stand or run. And then they would
crash to the ground where they would writhe in the bubbling tar
until death released them from their physical misery." Martin
Caidin.
DRESDEN
"The long
suppressed story of the worst massacre in the history of the
world. The devastation of Dresden in February, 1945, was one of
those crimes against humanity whose authors would have been
arraigned at Nuremberg if that court had not been perverted."
Rt. Hon. Richard.H.S Crossman, M.P., Labour Government Minister
AGAINST
INTERNATIONAL LAW PHOSPHOROUS
"Men, women and
children too, ran hysterically, falling and stumbling, getting
up, tripping and falling again, rolling over and over. Most of
them managed to regain their feet and made it to the water. But
many of them never made it and were left behind, their feet
drumming in blinding pain on the overheated pavements amidst the
rubble, until there came one last convulsing shudder from the
smoking 'thing' on the ground, and then no further movement."
Martin Caidin, The Night Hamburg Died. "Phosphorous burns
were not infrequent." U.S Strategic Bombing Survey
ˆ
"Phosphorous was used "because of its demonstrated ability to
depress the morale of the Germans." Official British source
ˆ
"Even the senseless
and highly culture-destroying terror acts, against for example,
Lubeck and Dresden, carried out by the Allied pilots, should
have been investigated and brought before a proper court of
justice." Major General H. Bratt, Royal Swedish Army
ˆ "A nation
which spreads over another a sheet of inevitably deadly gases or
eradicates entire cities from the earth by the explosion of
atomic bombs, does not have the right to judge anyone for war
crimes; it has already committed the greatest atrocity equal to
no other atrocity; it has killed - amidst unspeakable torments -
hundreds of thousands of innocent people." Hon. Lydio
Machado Bandeira de Mello, Professor of Criminal Law; author of
more than 40 works on law/philosophy ˆ
"As for crimes against humanity,
those governments which ordered the destruction of German
cities, thereby destroying irreplaceable cultural values and
making burning torches out of women and children, should also
have stood before the bar of justice."
Hon Jaan Lattik. Estonian
statesman, diplomat and historian
