*Bomber Harries - War Criminal?
Published by Campbell M Gold in Revisionist · Friday 31 May 2024
Tags: Bomber, Harris, War, Criminal, Legacy, Controversial, WW2, Bombings, German, Cities
Tags: Bomber, Harris, War, Criminal, Legacy, Controversial, WW2, Bombings, German, Cities
Harris was the mastermind behind the indiscriminate area bombing of German cities.
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A statue was erected on 31 May 1992 to memorialise "Bomber" Harris and the fallen men of Bomber Command. This sparked a heated debate: was he considered a war criminal for his role in the devastating WW2 bombings of German cities? Here is an overview...
Sir Arthur Travers Harris (1892-1984), known as "Bomber Harris," was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command in Feb 1942. He was the man who believed in and wholeheartedly directed Britain's relentless Bombing of German cities and civilians in WW2.
Harris was a "complex character"—he could be obstinate, ruthless, and rude, and some saw him as unrefined, insensitive, impatient, and almost inflexible. He said he had "a gentle face and a furious tongue."
He did not suffer fools gladly, and a standard greeting for senior civil servants was: "What are you doing to retard the war effort today?"
Civilian Bombing Campaign
Harris was the mastermind of the indiscriminate area bombing of German cities from 1942 to 1945 - during this time, over 850,000 tons of bombs were dropped on German cities/civilians by the RAF at night.
It has been estimated that >/= 600,000 German civilians were killed in the bombing raids planned by Harris.
The Beginning
Harris began with Lübeck, a picturesque Baltic port of no military importance.
On 28 Mar 1942, about 400 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, two-thirds of them being incendiaries. The aiming point was the heart of the old town, with its densely packed, half-timbered medieval housing - 3,400 buildings were destroyed or damaged, and over 1,000 people were killed.
This was followed in Apr 1942 by similar attacks on Essen, Hamburg, Duisburg, Dortmund, and Rostock.
It was after the attack on Rostock (like Lübeck, a town with many medieval, half-timbered buildings) that the Germans started using the word "Terrorangriff" (terror raid) to describe the RAF attacks, and they began to evacuate their children to the countryside.
From 24 Jul 1943 to 03 Aug 1943, in a series of raids which Harris named "Operation Gomorrah," nearly 8,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city of Hamburg, half of them being incendiaries.
On the night of 27 July 1943, the fires grew so intense that the updraft of hot air created a great vortex, creating winds of up to 155 miles an hour. Burning cars and uprooted trees tumbled through the streets, and even the asphalt pavement burst into flames as air temperatures reached 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Fifty thousand people died in this inferno. The Germans called it a Feuersturm (firestorm).
By the end of 1944, many German cities had been repeatedly and heavily bombed, sometimes by more than 1,000 planes in one night, all carrying incendiaries as well as bombs and directed against the residential areas, trying to reproduce the firestorm of Hamburg.
These attacks culminated in the infamous raid on Dresden on the night of 13 Feb 1945 (called "Operation Thunderclap") in which over 130,000 people were killed.
Among the Dresden dead were thousands of children who had been brought back into the city that night for the Shrove Tuesday festival. Dressed in carnival costumes, their bodies were heaped in great numbers at the train stations where they had been brought to meet their parents.
The British Government Lied
During all this time, the British government told its people that only "military and industrial facilities" were being targeted in Germany; however, Harris (who by this time was being called "Butcher Harris" by RAF airmen) resisted every attempt to transfer resources from his carpet bombing of cities to more precise attacks upon military and industrial targets.
After the war, when the true nature of this bombing became known, Harris was publicly vilified as a war criminal, and in disgrace, he left the country to reside in South Africa. However, he returned with impunity to England in 1953.
Harris never expressed remorse for his deeds and was never officially called to account for his actions.
In retrospect, it seems clear that, despite the efforts of military men and politicians to distance themselves from what happened, Harris had pursued his policy of civilian bombing with the full knowledge, approval, and encouragement of the wartime Chiefs of Staff and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Postscript
Bomber Command lost 56,000 men killed in action.
Harris was not made a peer, as were the other victorious British Commanders, and a Bomber Command Campaign Medal was never struck - these are significant indictments.
Bomber Harris Quotes
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. They put their rather naive theory into operation at Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places. They sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind. (Sir Arthur Harris - 1942)
Attacks on cities, like any other act of war, are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind, we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. (Sir Arthur Harris)
Dresden? There is not such a place any longer. I want to point out that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities. (Sir Arthur Harris)
There are a lot of people who say that bombing cannot win the war. My reply to that is that it has never been tried... and we shall see. (Sir Arthur Harris)
We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go in with the war. That is our object, and we shall pursue it relentlessly. (Sir Arthur Harris - 28 Jul 1942)
I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganised resistance. (Sir Arthur Harris - 29 Mar 1945)
War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city. (Sir Arthur Harris)
In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method. (Sir Arthur Harris - 1943)
Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940… We ourselves are now at the crossroads. (Sir Arthur Harris)
Post War Accolades
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris received several prestigious awards and honours for his service during WW II:
- Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB): This is one of the highest British honours, awarded for outstanding service.
- Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE): He was recognised for his significant contributions to the British Empire.
- Air Force Cross (AFC): Awarded for acts of courage or devotion to duty while flying, though not in active operations against the enemy.
- Mentioned in Despatches (twice): Recognized for gallant or meritorious action in the face of the enemy.
- Order of Suvorov, 1st Class (USSR): A Soviet military decoration awarded for outstanding leadership.
- Distinguished Service Medal (United States): Awarded by the United States for exceptional service.
- Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit (United States): This is another high honour from the United States for exceptionally meritorious conduct.
- Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Poland): Awarded for outstanding achievements in various fields.
- Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil): A Brazilian honour for distinguished service.
- Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour (France): This is among France’s highest military and civil merits honours.
- Croix de Guerre (France): Awarded for acts of heroism in combat.
These awards reflect the international recognition of Harris’s contributions to the Allied war effort.
However, Harris was never elevated to the aristocracy in the UK - this is significant.
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