Does anyone have any insight on this?"
Churchill (and Roosevelt) fully supported "Bomber" Harris' heavy bombing of German civilian targets, indeed pushed for ever more bombing all the way up until Dresden in February 1945.
At that point, a number of factors came to play:
- It was perfectly obvious the war was nearly over, and the Allies would win, unconditionally.
- It was becoming increasingly obvious that Stalin would no longer be our friend, after the war.
Indeed, preventing further Soviet expansion into Western Europe would require enlisting defeated Germany as our new ally against Russia. - Along with imminent victory, western publics were becoming aware of the total devastation brought by allied bombings, and began to question: is so much destruction really necessary?
On March 28, 1945 (two months before war's end), Churchill turned and in effect stabbed his bomber chief in the back:
- "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.
Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land…
The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.
I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.
"The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."
Roosevelt died on April 12, and the new President, Harry Truman, was far less sympathetic to "Uncle Joe" Stalin than FDR had been.
Anyway, the new-found western angst over bombing of German civilians served only one useful purpose I can imagine: to win sympathy among post-war Germans for the West versus Soviets.
