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HOW THE BOMBING BEGAN

Lord Trenchard made some pointed criticism of the Government in Parliament. The British Government revealed it had given assurances to the President of the US that it would not attack civilian targets from the air but reserved the right to do so if any German bombs fell on towns in Europe:

“Action followed swiftly on the warning, and it was action from our side. We began to bomb objectives on the German mainland before the Germans began to bomb objectives on the British mainland. That is a historical fact which has been publicly admitted. The way in which the bombing began was explained by Captain Harold Balfour, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, in reply to a question in the House of Commons on 28 January, 1942…

“In an article contributed by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Bomber Command, to the American periodical Flying (‘Special Royal Air Force Issue’) for September, 1942, he wrote: ‘The first British bombs fell on the soil of the German mainland on the night of 11 May 1940, when a force of 18 Whitley bombers attacked railway communications behind the lines of the German advance across Flanders and the Low Countries…’ 

“Bomber Command went to war on 11 May, 1940. It had only been fooling with war until then. That is the great date in its war diary: not because of anything spectacular achieved immediately, but because of what was to follow in the fullness of time. In that decision of May, 1940, there was implicit the doom of Germany, though we little guessed it then.” (pp.51-3)

Britain carried out numerous raids on German towns from May 1940 but up until the raid on Hanover on 1 August, the Nazi press remained silent. Following that raid, German newspapers declared that “Britain loses her honour” and denounced the raid as “an appalling crime.” Britain was less sensitive to the effects of warfare than the Nazis it seems.

On the night of August 24 a few bombs were jettisoned by a handful of German planes over the London docks, against the express orders of Hitler. There were a small number of civilian casualties in what was obviously an unintended consequence. However, this gave Churchill the cover needed to launch a 100 bomber raid on Berlin. This also had minimal effect militarily but it had the desired consequence. Hitler began diverting the Luftwaffe from the bombing of RAF facilities, that was eroding its ability to contest the skies, to retaliatory bombing of London. This was a turning point in the Battle of Britain.

Hitler explained in a speech in Munich on 9 November 1940 why he had retaliated against British bombing of German cities by bombing London, saying his decision had been taken because “Mr. Churchill had bombs dropped on the German civil population. I waited in patience, thinking ‘The man is mad; for such action could only lead to Britain’s destruction,’ and I made my plan for peace. Now I am resolved to fight it out to the last.”

Addressing the National Socialist Party on 31 December 1940 Hitler said that the British bombed German cities for over three months before any reprisal action was taken and he now promised for every bomb dropped by the British, the Germans would drop 10 or if necessary even a hundred upon British cities.

Mission accomplished!

Philip Knightley in his famous book, The First Casualty, suggests that Churchill’s reasoning for waging this type of war was to sacrifice British civilians in the hope that America would come into the war and save Britain:

“Churchill was obsessed with getting America into the war. He tried to frighten Roosevelt with the prospect of an early German victory. He searched for an outrage, such as the sinking of the Lusitania in the First World War, that would arouse American public opinion. German bombing of British civilians might well achieve this. But for weeks it looked as if the Germans had no intention of being so obliging.”

The RAF raid on Berlin on the night of May 11th 1940, although itself trivial, was a deliberate breach of the fundamental rule of civilised warfare in Europe that hostilities should only be waged against the enemy combatant forces. Its aim was to anger Hitler and divert him from attacking military targets in England so that he would be provoked into blitzing London. Hitler obliged.

Spaight was honest in saying that without the RAF’s desire to bomb civilians the War might have proceeded without the destruction of cities from the air. But it was worth it, even if London was offered as a sacrifice to German reprisal:

“I have given my reasons for thinking that the Germans did not want to start strategic bombing and that they would gladly have called it off when it did start; and what I have recorded… is further evidence to support my argument.

“Suppose that it had not been started; suppose that the view of the French General Staff had prevailed in the counsels of the Anglo-French alliance, which, let us again suppose, had continued to exist until now; and suppose that, in consequence, the air arms of all the main belligerents had been reserved for tactical employment: what would have been our position now in that event? Certainly our cities would have escaped the grievous scars which they now bear, honourably and proudly. Thousands of innocent persons who are dead or maimed would be alive and vigorous today. We should have been saved much suffering and loss; but should we not have lost something, too?

“I am not thinking here of loss of military advantage, of the difference it would have made to our and our Allies’ prospects of victory if we had not weakened Germany by our hammer-blows in the air, of the worsening of our outlook if we had still held our bombers on the leash. I am thinking of something more intangible and imponderable but not less real and important: our national honour. Today we can hold our heads high. Could we have done so if we had continued the policy which we adopted in September, 1939, and maintained until May, 1940? It was a selfish policy after all, an ungenerous one, an unworthy one… As it was, we chose the better, because the harder, way. We refused to purchase immunity — immunity for a time at least — for our cities… We offered London as a sacrifice in the cause of freedom and civilisation.

“Retaliation was certain if we carried the war into Germany. There was no certainty, but there was a reasonable probability, that our capital and our industrial centres would not have been attacked if we had continued to refrain from attacking those of Germany. No doubt some readers will say that I am making too big an assumption here and that Germany would have raided London and our provincial towns in any event. Perhaps so; I can only put on record my own belief that she probably would not have done so, partly because it would not have suited her military book, partly because she was afraid of the long-term consequences. She would have called a truce if she could from the cross-raiding by British and German bombers when it did begin; she did call one, in effect, whenever she saw a ghost of a chance. It simply did not pay her, this kind of air warfare. Humanitarian considerations had nothing whatever to do with the matter.

“Yet, because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic offensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May, 1940, the publicity which it deserved. That, surely, was a mistake. It was a splendid decision. It was as heroic, as self-sacrificing… We should have shouted it from the house-tops instead of keeping silence about it.” (pp.55-6)

Churchill, in the summer of 1940, before Hitler had been successfully turned eastwards to Russia, explained to his Minister for War Production, Lord Beaverbrook, that Britain had no intention of fighting on the continent and there was no military power that England could enlist to do its fighting for it. Even when Hitler went east it was unlikely the Soviets would halt him, thought Churchill:

“But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country on the Nazi homeland.” (John Terraine, The Right of the Line, p.259)

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