news Bomber Harris - waste of time

[LarryH57]

duplicate post

Edited August 25, 2009 by LarryH57

[LarryH57]

"For my two bobs worth I would say that most of us would if we could go back in time change things but we ca'nt, so it should be left as it is and he did a bloody good job."

 

We can only wonder how things would be if that British Soldier in the First World War had shot Adolf Hitler a second time! According to accounts I have read he did not kill him as he loathed to shot wounded men! Sadly in this particular case his compassion was misplaced

[Tony B]

Not all Germans were Nazi, a friemd of mine told me about his Grandfather. He escaped to Russia in the early thirtes. He and some other ethnic Germans crewed Rusian Tanks at the battle of Kursk. However, after seeing the results of the Russian invasion of Germany and the actions of the NKVD, they decided the best thing was to aquire some german uniforms and surrender to the Americans. It should also be noted that an american war aim, on record, was to bankrupt the European empires, especially to seperate India from Britian. A lot is made of the Holocast, and it was beyond a crime, but bear in mind anti semitism was the norm at the time, many higly placed people in what became the Allied nations had no problem with Hitler dealing with the 'Jewish Problem'. Not to mention the American attitude to couloured troops. Though the Tischalli airmen throughly disproved that one.

 

On the other hand Von Staffenberg is looked on a s a hero. However he only developed his rabid anti Nazis feeling AFTER suffering injurys including a severe head injury AND at a time that his families possecions were threatned with occupation by the Russians. The conspiritors intentions were to surrender to the Americans and British BEFORE the Russians arrived.

When ever you study a historical subject, be very carful of two things ! You are judging with the preudices of the time you live in, 2 YOU know what the result was!

[Desert Rat]

Its very refreshing to read opinions that are 'aware' of the twisting of history, be that accidentally, intentionally or for profit and gain.

 

Just as an example, i once spoke to a Lancaster crew (all except the Mid-upper guner who had passed away a few years back). We got onto the subject of an individual raid during the breakout from Caen in 1944. Their aircraft had flown a daylight raid and then was hit by anti-aircrat fire but made it home. Certain parts of the story they remembered like yesterday and all agreed on, but if you had spoken to them individually, you would have thought they had been on different aircraft !!

Such is the diversity of memory and personal opinion.

 

The one thing to remember about Harris is that, as a generalisation, any commander in WW2, be that British or American, Army or Navy, only probably had to make the hard and grave decision to send their troops into battle and certain death in large numbers maybe two or three times during the whole six year conflict. (El-Alemein, D-Day, Market Garden, Pacific islands etc)

Harris had to send the majority of his force into full-on battle, night, after night, after night for the entire war.

That takes a strong type of person.

 

Its very easy to sit in front of a computer, sixty years later with a cup of tea and a biscuit and judge that what was decided over half a century ago was wrong etc.

I wonder what peoples opinions would be if they were trying to decide if Harris was right or wrong whilst being sat in a damp Anderson shelter listening to enemy aircraft droning overhead, feeling the pressure of the blasts as they are bombing your town, your workplace even and wondering if your family on the other side of town had been lucky or maybe they were now buried under the remains of their house......

Or even worse, just carrying on unaware that in a few minutes, your street is going to be flattened by a V-2....

I wonder what public opinion would have been then to 'ease up' on the Germans ?

Be thankful we now have these choices.

 

Anyway, excellent thread.

 

DR

Edited August 26, 2009 by Desert Rat

[Snapper]

Good points.

 

The most important being Harris's duties day in day out. How can we honestly put ourselves in the minds of him, or his air staff or more importantly his crews? Some good recent works reveal that politics was as rife in Bomber Command as it was at Bentley Priory. The dead hand of the Air Ministry and the CAS were everywhere. Churchill and Cherwell were a consistent cancer. But the raids went on and on. It had to be so.

 

Area bombing of cities was morally and ethically suspect and they knew it then as we know it now. But they were fighting a war for the very survival of our nation and much more than mere sovereignty or status.

 

But the following decades, especially during the tenure of the GDR, allowed a string of revisionism for other purposes to bash the RAF Bomber Command. It was a stick to hit Churchillian capitalist Britain with. Peacemongers (by that I mean politicised types with an agenda against the West in all its forms) found it easy to slag off Harris. People who used him to win the war for them conveniently dropped him. His route to ignomy was his very success at his job. How ironic is that?

 

We all know there were devoted anti-Nazis who never believed in Hitler. There were also the von Stauffenbergs and people fuelled by a need to replace the Fuhrer as they saw his original successes turn to nightmares for them - the aristocracy, industrialists, senior soldiers. Switching sides, in a manner of speaking, suited them - but they wanted to maintain the war, but as a different Germany - preposterous then as it is now. But this latter group were more than happy when the Panzers were cutting a swathe across the whole of Europe making them rich, powerful and fabulous. Once things started to go awry they played their hand and lost.

 

We cannot put our morals or ethics into a 1940s world. The trouble is, too many people try for all kinds of reasons. When you hear people say we should not have carried out the bomber offensive, ask what else they could have done in 1940-41? We don't know how to hate or fear the enemy of that time because he is not our enemy today and we were not there. The Germans were our enemy. They are not now. Different times. Different people.

 

Armchair generals and critics never fade away.

[Enigma]

I agree with Maurice

The Dutch in 1940 had allready surrendered, still Rotterdam was bombed.

In the Spanish war (1936) the Germans (winning allready) bombed Guernica.

During the Polish campaign it was clear the Poles were losing, Warschau was bombed.

 

Does that justify Dresden? My opinion doesn't matter.

Just ask the people in Rotterdam, Guernica, Warschau and many more cities....