Part Four: Bombing Vindicated
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"Our great decision"
J.M.Spaight: Bombing Vindicated (1944): the great decision to concentrate on mass civilian slaughter
The rejection of land warfare
The criticism by General Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff
How the Germans used air power
The Germans, even with regard to Rotterdam and Warsaw, still saw air power as a support to land warfare
Hitler tries to prevent civilian slaughter
Spaight ridicules Hitler's 'sob stuff about war on women and children.'
Cost effective war
In 1939 until the fall of France, Britain believed the war could be won easily and cheaply just by a policy of blockade
How the bombing began
How Churchill provoked the blitz, as recounted admiringly by J.M.Spaight
Ineffectiveness of the 1940-41 bombing
Failure of the strategy of civilian bombing ...
The bombing strategy saved by the USAF
... until the USAF's different strategy of targeted bombing broke the German air defenses
Defending the indefensible
Spaight points out that the traditional policy of blockade, used for example in 1918-19, is also directed against the civilian population