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DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE
In truth, despite Hitler’s admiration for Britain and his desire to emulate its example in the world he was a mere amateur in war-making, blessed with a small, but brilliant army. He had not done the thing Britain does instinctively – make meticulous plans for war over decades and then wage it with utter ruthlessness. There was no Nazi Committee of Imperial Defence and the exterminations he conducted had to be kept from the German public in the obscurity of the east. The exterminations of German civilians were done quite openly by the RAF and were defended in Parliament by all but a few humanitarian and socialist troublemakers. The British State’s church, the Church of England invoked St. Augustine and his Just War in defence of the massacres. The Archbishop of York said:
“Often in life, there is no clear choice between absolute right and wrong: frequently the choice has to be made of the lesser of two evils, and it is a lesser evil to bomb a war-loving Germany than to sacrifice the lives of our fellow-countrymen who long for peace, and to delay delivering millions now held in slavery.” (Stephen Garret, Ethics and Air Power, p.99)
The Anglican Church had given moral support to the industrial slave system Britain had constructed a couple of centuries before and it had benefitted handsomely in a financial manner through its investments in the vast trade in human beings. It supported the Bombing strategy in WWII in preference to land fighting which although it would have lead to greater numbers of British military casualties would also have shortened the war for those “millions now held in slavery” and probably saved them from the Soviet system which the Archbishop would have seen as an even worse form of slavery.
The annihilating of civilians was “the lesser of two evils” for the Anglican Church. It was not the Church of the British State for nothing.
In justifying the saturation bombing of civilian centres Spaight had coined the term “battle-towns” to make the case that civilian centres involved in the manufacture of weapons or materials in support of a country’s military were legitimate targets. But Spaight did not draw a line at armaments factories. He added transport workers, civilians engaged in civil defence, fire watchers and fire fighters, rescue parties, demolition squads and medical orderlies as legitimate targets in the new warfare. Their work was seen as essential in the German war-effort as that of the military.
The use of massive bombs by the RAF which took whole residential areas and their occupants with them was defended by Spaight in a section entitled The Bomb Splash on the basis that with German defence of their cities improving Britain had no choice but to engage in large bombing that was indiscriminate:
“It would be idle to deny that the use of 4,000 lb. and 8,000 lb. bombs has enlarged enormously the radius within which private property is likely to be destroyed or damaged when a military target is aimed at in a built-up area. The bomb-splash is a mighty one when bombs of that size are dropped, and inevitably its effect is felt over an area far exceeding that in which it was expected before this war that incidental damage would be caused… the effect of the dropping of one 5,000 lb. bomb in Parliament Square and another on Horse Guards Parade would be to leave little of administrative London standing. Fortunately, Whitehall, though it has suffered, has not had the unpleasant experience of meeting the impact of a bomb even nearly so large as that, still less one of the colossal size which our airmen have frequently dropped on German towns. How terrible the effect of such monster projectiles can be we shall not know for certain until the Germans see fit to disclose exactly what happened to Dortmund on the night of 23 May, 1943, when an exceptionally large number of them was dropped. There is reason to believe that the effect was appalling. The photograph published in The Times and other papers on 3 June gives some idea of the devastation.
“The big bombs are the answer of the attack to the intensification of the defence. The anti-aircraft barrage had been made so powerful that bombing was becoming ineffective and indeed almost a waste of effort. The military results of the so-called high-level, precision bombing were not commensurate with the wastage of personnel and materiel involved for the attacking formations. To redress the balance it, was necessary to bring into use projectiles of such destructive capacity that when launched from great heights on the estimated target area they could be counted upon to wreck the target as well as (unfortunately) much else besides. The justification of the method must rest on military necessity. If in no other way can a belligerent destroy his enemy’s armament centres or interrupt his enemy’s process of munitionment, then this way can be defended. So justified, it is not inconsistent with accepted principles of the laws of war.” (pp.75-6)
And Spaight had one final argument to vindicate the bombers of civilians in the face of those of his countrymen who did not have the stomach for anti-civilian warfare. He simply reminded them of the last Great War against Germany when the Royal Navy Blockaded civilians into starvation as the major plank of Britain’s war effort, killing the best part of a million to win its War:
“The Toll of Blockade
Lamentable as is the killing of non-combatants proper when an industrial centre is bombed, the tragedy must be viewed not in isolation but against the sombre background of war. Some critics of bombing policy appear to lose perspective in this matter. They discuss the question without regard to certain other incidents of war and almost as if it were one which could be decided according to the standards applicable to preventible disasters in peace. That is to misconceive the whole situation. War is war, and it is horrible. The loss of civilian life which bombing causes is almost trivial in comparison with that due to blockade. In the war of 1914-18 the excess civilian mortality, as compared with the normal, amounted in Germany to about 700,000, while the deficit in the birth-rate in the four years was about 2,900,000. These figures compared with an excess mortality of 250,000 and a decrease in births of 600,000 in Britain during the four years. The difference between the German and the British figures must be attributed in large part to the action of the blockade. History seems to be repeating itself in the present war.
“Some very significant statistics were published in Germany and summarised in The Times of 24 May, 1943.They showed that in the large towns of Germany, containing a population of 24,500,000, infant mortality per 1000 live births was 59 in 1941 and 69 in 1942; the rate for England and Wales in 1942 was 49. That difference of 20 per 1,000 births between the two countries must be attributed mainly to the strangle-hold of our blockade. The mortality for the whole population of Germany was 24 per cent higher in 1942 than in 1939.
“Deaths from tuberculosis and some other diseases rose substantially. The birthrate
showed a dramatic fall; there were 80,000 fewer births in the large towns of Germany in 1942 than in 1940. For the whole of Germany the drop in the birth-rate indicated a loss of approximately 550,000 live births in 1942 as compared with 1939-40. It is hardly too much to say that these dry statistics are the tragic sign of a nation dying in the grip of sea power. Air power could never reap such a terrible harvest. Do those critics who devote so much attention to our bombing policy ever think of this other accompaniment or consequence of war?”
Finally there was The Military Balance Sheet which overrode any issue of humanitarianism, according to Spaight:
“It is not uncommon for the critics, when baffled in their attempt to arraign strategic
bombing on the humanitarian or ethical plane, to fall back on the argument of military expediency. Bombing, they sometimes assert, is not a profitable undertaking, in view of the heavy losses suffered by the raiders and the comparatively small extent of the damage which they can inflict upon a country geared for total war. Civilians are killed and mutilated but the enemy’s war-potential is not seriously affected. That is a completely mistaken view. There is not a shadow of doubt that the strategic offensive conducted by Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force and the Bomber Command of the United States 8th Army Air Force is a militarily profitable undertaking. That being so, it is hardly reasonable to ask them as belligerents to forego the use of a mode of warfare against which the only remaining argument that can be urged is the humanitarian or ethical one. Such an argument has never been held to prevail against military interest. If the results of the employment of a weapon or a method of warfare are worth-while, belligerents will not be prepared to discard them. Only where they are not worth-while, that is, where giving up the use of them does not matter very much, has the humanitarian objection won the day.
“That was why explosive bullets were banned in the Declaration of St. Petersburg,
whereas the larger projectiles remain lawful. To expect States as powerful in the air as we and the United States now are to abandon bombing, at all events during the current war, is to expect a miracle. It simply will not happen.” (pp.95-6)
At Nuremburg when the victors brought the vanquished before a form of justice they had constructed the Luftwaffe was left immune from any charges in this area. The moral was that slaughtering people from the air was entirely acceptable within the new system of International Law that was being constructed. One wonders whether that was due to Allied precedent or intention for the future?