[BroJoeK]

Page 9 headline: "BRITAIN REBUFFS BOMBING CRITICS
Cranborn Says Attacks Will Go On, After Clergymen Denounce RAF Actions"

"The British bombing offensive against German cities, generally considered to be the heaviest assault yet mounted by the United Nations against the interior of the Reich will continue 'in increasing power' and 'with more crushing effect,' Viscount Cranborne, Government leader, told the House of Lords today in an emphatic Government reply to a sharp attack by the Bishop of Chichester, the Rev. Dr. George K.A. Bell, on the ethis and expediency of the heavy bombing of German towns and cities..."

The article lists both pros & cons for bombing German cities, leaving out some that, to later historians seem as, or more, important.
Chief among these is the fact that to defend its cities, Germans withdrew huge manpower and material resources from other fronts -- particularly in the East.
That effectively made allied bombing another "Second Front" Stalin kept asking for.

But in the end, those churchmen got their "last laugh", since once the bombings' purpose was accomplished, Churchill's government eventually turned against the bombers themselves, both to mollify the churchmen and in hopes of allying with post-war Germans against Stalin's Soviet Union.

[henkster]

Every flak gun defending the skies of the Reich could have been shooting up T-34s instead.

[colorado tanker]

One of the churchman’s points boils down to “disproportionate response.” We’re still dealing with that crap today. Your objective in war is to make the other guy suffer disproportionally.