Even immediately after the war, the sheeple of formerly great Britain were so divided over the bombing of civilian targets that they never erected a monument to the RAF bomber command until 2012.
Three days ago the monument was vandalized.
I guess they never thought that was fair retribution for the Huns having bombed London in both world wars.
Plenty of controversy over WWII aerial bombardment. “Bomber” Harris was in charge of British strategic nighttime (read, grossly targeted) bombing. He was a very controversial figure after the war. Harris operated on the theory that the German economy could be sufficiently damaged by area bombing as to preclude the Germans from continuing the war. Which, in hindsight, pretty much takes nukes.Harris was so committed to bombing cities that he dragged his feet when ordered to divert from city-busting to support of USAAF efforts to strangle German fuel supplies. He just simply wouldn’t do it, despite all indications (which proved out postwar) that attacking their fuel supply infrastructure was close to a show-stopper for the Germans. E.g., one of the essential intermediate objectives of "Operation Watch on the Rhine” (the attack which launched the Battle of the Bulge) was to capture allied fuel depots to obtain enough fuel to continue their attack. And German aircraft ran on lower octane gasoline than was available to the Allies, which naturally compromised the performance of their planes (other than Me 262s, of course). Britain and the US were desperate to keep the USSR afloat in large part because they didn’t want Germany to control the oil resources of the USSR.
- Fire and Fury
- The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945
Randall HansenIndiscriminate bombing was even more controversial in the US; the propaganda was put out that the Norden bombsight was a secret to be guarded at all cost because it was so accurate. Fact is, it couldn’t have been as accurate as claimed - the tech just wasn’t there, it takes smart bombs to achieve the claimed accuracy. Scruples about collateral damage to civilians was part of the motivation for the propaganda.
- The New Dealers' War:
- FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas Fleming