Found it:

As Harris himself once expressed it in a letter to the Chief of Air Staff, Charles Portal: "In Bomber Command we have always worked on the principle that bombing anything in Germany is better than bombing nothing.

AND

Not long before his death (in 1984 at the age of 91) Harris, in an interview with Canadian journalist and military historian Gwynne Dyer, was still vigorously defending his beliefs: "Tell me one operation of war which is moral," he challenged. "Sticking a bayonet into a man's belly, is that moral? Then I say, well, of course strategic bombing involves civilians. Civilians are always involved in major wars... I don't believe it's right to hit a man in the nose and make his nose bleed. But if he's offensive enough, you hit him in the nose or anywhere else you can hit him in order to stop him. The same applies to nations."

http://www.valourandhorror.com/P_Rep...omber%20Harris
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Attacks on rail yards, oil facilities and armaments plants were the very targets to which Harris stubbornly balked at committing his forces, despite repeated air directives and entreaties by the Americans, the War Cabinet and Harris's boss, Sir Charles Portal. Harris continually dismissed these as "panacea targets" that, in his opinion, were of little strategic importance compared to the destruction of entire towns or cities.

While the Americans followed the directive, Harris usually found some excuse to bypass oil targets in favour of yet more area attacks. Between October and December, 58 percent of Bomber Command's raids were against cities, with only 14 percent directed against oil targets. "It was," says Max Hastings, "impossible to believe that Harris was applying himself to the September directive. He had merely returned to the great area-bombing campaign ... despite the almost unanimous conviction of the Air Staff that the policy had long been overtaken by events.

The facts support the film's thesis that saturation bombing was not only morally questionable, but also tactically unsound. A concentration on strategic objectives, versus indiscriminate area bombing, might have spared the lives of many Allied airmen; and, it goes without saying, the lives of countless German civilians.

The same site

http://www.valourandhorror.com/P_Reply/BC.htm#Effect

"Death by Moonlight is amply supported by the historical record and post-war analysis when it depicts the period after 1942 as a bombing offensive deliberately aimed at German civilians, yet disguised at home by the politicians, the Air Ministry and Bomber Command as strategic bombing on military and industrial targets." ?????

When the American equivalent to Bomber Command, the U.S. Eighth Air Force, joined the air battle in 1942, they made it clear that their squadrons of Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses would be directed only at military and industrial targets in Germany and occupied Europe.

British military historian Martin Middlebrook acknowledges that the Americans "were strategic-bombing purists. Heavy bombers, used by daylight to guarantee accurate bombing, should be used only in precision attacks on industrial and other legitimate targets of war. There was no hankering by the Americans to pursue an attack on civilian morale."37

(The Americans, of course, were not above applying area-bombing methods in the Pacific Theatre, as witnessed by their firestorm raids on Tokyo, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in Europe, at least, they stuck to precision bombing).

Despite overtures by Harris and others to have the Eighth Air Force join Bomber Command in the destruction of Germany's cities, the U.S. refused to alter its policy. Even in combined bombing operations (such as on Hamburg in July 1943) the B-17's struck by day, and targeted factories, shipyards, refineries and other such installations. They left the blasting of workers' homes and residential areas to the British.

Attacks on rail yards, oil facilities and armaments plants were the very targets to which Harris stubbornly balked at committing his forces, despite repeated air directives and entreaties by the Americans, the War Cabinet and Harris's boss, Sir Charles Portal. Harris continually dismissed these as "panacea targets" that, in his opinion, were of little strategic importance compared to the destruction of entire towns or cities.

Hmmm.... We have been talking about the faults of Goering so long that now after reading these I think that Sir Harris was not very far behind, unless you tell me this article is *****. I mean Goering shoud have bombed the air fields and plane factories, radar stations. Was Sir Harris in the end doing the same mistake? I mean lots of Brits and Canadians were killed for his stupid ideas if that´s the case?!

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Kai,

The website link you are referring me to is David Irving's own website !!! ( Focal Point is Irving ). So as we can see, he contradicts himself by his own writings. I rest my case, as indeed the High Court rested it's case on Irving....

And Harris' autobiography : -

You've left a tiny but rather important piece out of your quotation . You've put ; -

''...generally be out-manouevred.Dresden; this was considered a target of the first importance...''

I'm sitting here looking at a first edition of 'Bomber Offensive ' (1947) and it actually says : -

''...generally be out-manouevred. In February of 1945, I was called upon to attack Dresden : this was considered a target of the first importance...''

Slightly different meaning, yes ? This makes it very clear that Harris was ordered to bomb the place.

An oversight - or are you trying to out-Irving Irving ???

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Martin; but was Harris ordered to destroy civillians and leave the few strategic targets alone? Im not sure, but I think the point kai was making was that Harris was bloodthirsty and interested in terrorism more than fighting a war.

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"If your gonna buy the angel s**t, you might as well go for the zombie package as well."
-George Carlin

We've debated the 'Harris vendetta against Dresden' question earlier in this thread.

Fact : the area bombing of Germany was British policy. The USAAF as well, discovering that Europe is covered by 10/10ths cloud most of the time, effectively relied more and more on area bombing as the war went on.

Harris, agreed, was not a 'nice man'. Few war leaders are. Again, the overall policy ( decided before Harris took over at High Wycombe ) was to 'bring Germany to it's knees' by area bombing. Harris saw this as his job to the almost obsessive exclusion of anything else ( not just the oil ; he hated diverting his 'heavies' to support ground forces as well ).
He used the Schweinfurt 'ball-bearing panacea' as justification for avoiding oil tagets. Wrong, yes - and his superiors were weak in this case.

I know it's hard to face ; but a democracy decided to bomb German civilians and people in this country at the time shed few tears. Since the war, of course, people uncomfortable with this thought have found comfort in blaming it all on one man - sort of a 'lone nut with a thousand Lancasters' theory.

And being very selective with quotations is, IMHO, not a good way to debate on this Forum...

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Heartland "Dresden was simply another German town."
In my view, Heartland is spot on with this remark.
Dresden was just another target for the Allied bomber forces, no more no less.They knew Dresden was a communications hub for this part of East Germany and that it had a number of war-related industries. The fact that it was an ancient city with lots of wooden buildings, and that it was full of refugee`s was of little interest to Bomber Command.

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!

Martin, my friends

I do not wish to outsmart anyone.I only wish to make more information available. If Irving says something that is different to what he said before I don´t think I am responsible for that. And what comes to Harris:"Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself, and that if their judgment was right the same arguments must apply that I have set out in an earlier chapter in which I said what I think about the ethics of bombing as a whole." as he said earlier in my messages.

In Finland many Generals were named "Bloody" because they were famous for killing many Finns in battles in WW2. One Colonel even said in a phone call " Ok,if that´s what you want we can as well die here .." to one General.And the colonel died as well for that. I don´t think that was fair. And I don´t think it was fair for the Ju 87 men to die for Germany in 1940 for Goering or if it should be the case, for many English and Canadian people or Germans to die for one man, Sir Harris in 1941-1945 for the attack plans, if they were considered not so working. The same goes for Mr Churchill who tried to save his neck by the messages after the reactions by the press in 1945.

No Vendetta-ideas Martin. Simply that if bombing cities did not give results then why continue as both parties were hammered? Pride? I do think BoB showed that bombing cities is not effective?? Yes, in a way I am blaming these bosses but for making unlogical strategies with maximum losses on both sides. Is that bad??

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Sorry, Kai - didn't mean to lose my temper !

I just feel that Harris is 'scapegoated' to a very large degree ( nowhere more so than in this country ) for what is now felt to be 'politically incorrect' policy.

As we've discussed before, the bombing of civilians was militarily ineffective ( even counter-productive ). But when the policy was set in motion ( 1941/42), it was all that Britain could do that was offensive as opposed to defensive - the resources were not available to do anything else. Harris was in many ways an unimaginative man who was given the 'job'. Cruel and ultimately regrettable this policy was - maybe - but as discussion on the forum agreed before, the bombing force shortened the war.

But two points which maybe are not for this thread : -

It is strange but true that Harris cared for his men ( his 'old lags' as he called them ) deeply and sometimes emotionally. And the men of Bomber Command felt ( and the survivors still feel ) a strong attachment to 'the Butcher'.

And, for a policy that all agree was wrong, what's the first thing the democracies think of doing today ? That's right - 'bomb Baghdad, bomb Kosovo, etc...'

( And don't tell me 'smart' bombs don't hit civilian targets ! ). But here I'm getting O/T !

And as for Irving - the problem with Irving, and what has led to his disgrace, is that he does for sure keep changing his mind, and his sources, and his quotations, to support whichever revisionist idea he is trying to promote at any given time. He relies ( or relied ) on people not having the interest or resources to back-check. That's why it's dangerous to use him as a source.....
( And here I should say that I have all his books in my collection - some signed by Irving - but I'm very careful before quoting them here and I always make it clear if I'm citing his work ).

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

I agree completely. There is a very good book on this that was released in 2001, "The Bomber War" by Robin Neillands. Neillands feels the same way and sets out to dispel a few myths about Harris, not neccessarily new information, but a very good overview.

And here's perhaps one of them. [img]smile.gif[/img]

According to Neillands, Harris had been nicknamed "Butch" much earlier, and the name stuck. Not the "The Butcher", and it's not a short form of "butcher", or anything like that. This seems to be another case of assigning a more sinister theme to Harris and Bomber Command.

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

Time for a few more Harris quotes. It's not like he was a squemish man. Like Max Hastings points out, "Unlike some of his service and political masters, he was no disembler or hyporcrite. He gave unequivocal notice of his intentions."

---

"We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly to make it impossible for her to go on with the war. That is our object, we shall persue it relentlessly."

"When this storm bursts over Germany they will look back to the days of Lubeck, Rostock and Cologne as the man caught in the blasts of the hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer."

"In the House of Commons he [Air Minister Sinclair] should have been more forthright then he was....There was nothing to be ashamed of, except in the sense that everybody might be ashamed of that sort of thing that has to be done in every war."

[ 25. October 2002, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Heartland ]

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

On a quoting spree today...

"We have to be clear about one thing. Namely that the method of the English and Americans of bombing the inner city and its civilian population, a lesson they likely learned from our attacks against their cities, in the long run affects production more than an attack against the factory itself. We have to counter this stubborn English strategy by trying to reduce such absenteeism. Often, even eight days after an air raid, only 20% to 30% of the employees are reporting for work."
--- Albert Speer

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

We could go on and on arguing the ethics of bombing.

The sorry fact is that WWII was total war, with nations fighting for their very existence against an evil tyranny.

I just feel that it is too simplistic to point a finger at Harris.

When quoting, it's useful to have the context. Don't forget he took over Bomber Command when morale was absolutely rock-bottom; in fact many wished to disband the Command for use elsewhere. He had to restore an esprit-de-corps very quickly - and he did this brilliantly.

His pronouncements were aimed as much at his own aircrews as anyone else. Listen for instance to 'Hamish' Mahaddie in the famous 'World At War' documentary. With total honesty he quoted a message from Harris being read out at a briefing for a difficult raid to the effect that ' Tonight Bomber Command would bomb the black heart out of Germany'.

Mahaddie admits that 'after that you could have filled the crews' pockets with bombs and they'd have flown over without aircraft'.

Agreed, to us, today, that sounds naive and bloodthirsty. But we weren't there.........

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Thanx Martin!

Yes, the ethics of bombing is not easy to discuss, probably impossible.They did what was looked as necessary evil at the time and that´s about it.Victory above all and with all means possible.I had actually very little knowledge on Harris previously so I don´t make judgements on him by previous knowledge.I do understand that he was under massive pressure, and Churchill was one of them. And politicians have a way of escaping when those in charge are being looked for when something "not-so-nice-who´s-guilty" kind of things happen.

And thanx for the info on Irving. I´ll keep that on mind now!

[img]smile.gif[/img]

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[quote]Originally posted by Martin Bull:
We could go on and on arguing the ethics of bombing.

The sorry fact is that WWII was total war, with nations fighting for their very existence against an evil tyranny.

I just feel that it is too simplistic to point a finger at Harris.

When quoting, it's useful to have the context. Don't forget he took over Bomber Command when morale was absolutely rock-bottom; in fact many wished to disband the Command for use elsewhere. He had to restore an esprit-de-corps very quickly - and he did this brilliantly.

His pronouncements were aimed as much at his own aircrews as anyone else. Listen for instance to 'Hamish' Mahaddie in the famous 'World At War' documentary. With total honesty he quoted a message from Harris being read out at a briefing for a difficult raid to the effect that ' Tonight Bomber Command would bomb the black heart out of Germany'.

Mahaddie admits that 'after that you could have filled the crews' pockets with bombs and they'd have flown over without aircraft'.

Agreed, to us, today, that sounds naive and bloodthirsty. But we weren't there./QUOTE]

Agree totally with the "finger pointing" at Harris. This man just did what he was asked to do in a very amigious way, and he was complete convicted to do the "perferct thing" to win the war.

We know that "his" (in fact the theories of Douhet and others were made official strategy in england since before the war) idea of targeting urban areas and "de-moralizing" the civilian population was comletely wrong. Some say it stiffed german resistance, some say it shortened the war, well, I don't know, all I know is that much money, men and ressources were put into a campaign against the civil enemy population which didn't show effects until late 1944.

Having said this, I think it is a matter of honesty to label the strategy of the BC and USAF as what it was: A military campaign against the civil population. I have no respect for the Eichmanns, Heydrichs, Goerings etc. out there who also believed to do the "right thing" to "win the war" (for Germany) by targeting civilians iso the enemies military, so it would be hypocrite to me to spare BC's/USAF's SBC from criticism in terms of morality or proportionality.

There's a lot of dishonesty and hypocriticsm flying around here. "Total war" was started by the Aliies, not by Germany. If "tital war" means getting rid pof any proportionality in warfare, it is a crime.

Some food for thought:

"What we want to do in addition to the horrors of fire is to bring the masonry crashing down on the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify Boche."

Sir Arthur Harris in the Sunday Times of January 10th 1942

"Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. (...) When someone comes to me and says, 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them', then I would have to say, 'you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood'."

Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler Himmler in a speech at Poznan, October 4 1943.

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed."

Winston Churchill to Chief of Air Staff, Sir. Charles Portal, March,28th,1945

"7. The following principles are put forward as essential to the achievement of the maximum moral effect upon a civilian population:
(i) The attack must be delivered in such density that it imposes as nearly as possible a 100% risk of death to the individual in the area to which it is applied.
(ii) ... the total weight of the attack must be such as to produce an effect amounting to a national disaster.
(iii) The target chosen should be one involving the maximum associations, both traditional and personal, for the whole population.
(iv) The area selected should embrace the highest density of population.
(v) Attacks of this nature are likely to have maximum effect when the populaiton has become convinced that its Government is powerless to prevent a repetition. (...)"

OPERATION 'THUNDERCLAP', 2 August 1944

Cheers,

P.S: The Canadian TV broadcast "The Value and the Horror" has nothing to do with David Irving, AFAIK.

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"Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!"
(President Merkin Muffley in "Dr. Strangelove")

True. Although if people are not aware of this, it is worth pointing out that this "documentary" is created in very much the same vein as the work done by David Irving. That is, riddled with factual errors, quotes out of context, opinions presented as facts, etc.

The show recieved severe complaints from both the Senate Committee that investigated it and the Ombudman appointed to give an unbiased review. Indeed, the Ombudsman brough in six military historians for the review, three of them chosen by the show's producers, and not even those historians would support the thing. Ouch!

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

Andy- I was under the impression that it was first the germans who used the idea of "total war" in russia. Where did the allies start this idea?
I'm still learning about the bomber campaign- was the idea of total war brought up in 42 by the allies in reference to the bomber war?

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Seriously, all today is missing is free cotton candy and the annual Bay State Hooker Parade to make it any better.

OK - my last posting in this ! ( I hope )

I agree with your point, Andy. For me this is one of WWII's lessons ( which seems to be forgotten or overlooked to a frightening degree ) ; the War seemed to develop an obscene momentum of escalation. It is not simply a case of 'They were bad and we were good'.

Nazi oppression was evil and had to be defeated ( I hope we all agree ) but awful things were done to achieve this. This is the lesson that I keep in mind for today ; that war should be the absolute final resort .

The war that Bomber Command ( and the 8th ) waged was terrible for all concerned. I often re-read Len Deighton's novel 'Bomber', a superb anti-war book describing a raid from the point of view of all concerned - the RAF, the Luftwaffe, the FLAK crews, the civilians - and it is a miserable and terrifying experience for all of them.

Let us all sincerely hope that we will never 'need' another Harris, Spaatz or Eaker.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Crazy, Andy

I am afraid the original idea was brought by the Germans. That is the BoB. The later on bombings were mostly revenge kind?? Mostly prepared by Churchill and his staff.Anyway that is **** as we knew from BoB that killing people in the cities was not getting positive results!So the initial idea of killing people in the cities was more or less prolonging the war I think. S
Harris only took the idea on ( UNFORTUNATELY )

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Sorry the messsage was broken...

and made it happen. I am happy I never was there to decide for all these things as the cruelsome bombing of Germany was still there to be faced...I think I would have said "GO" anyway ....