The Valour and the Horror

The Valour and The Horror

The Policy and Morality of Area Bombing

The Effectiveness of Area Bombing

The Secrecy of Area Bombing

Bomber Harris

The Hamburg Raids

The Dams Raid

The Nuremberg Raid

Lack of Moral Fibre

Conclusion

Endnotes

Bibliography

Table of Contents of Producers Reply

 

Synopsis

Death by Moonlight, the second film in the series, The Valour and the Horror, details the massive bombing campaign carried out against Germany in the Second World War.

It tells the story of the 50,000 Canadian airmen who flew with Bomber Command, and dropped bombs in the pursuit of a policy set out by the British War Cabinet and RAF military leaders. Their task was to apply all of their bravery and skill to reach the appointed target, drop their bombs, and make it back to England so that they could fly yet another mission. Night after night they repeated this process until, against horrendous odds, they completed their 30-mission tour of duty. Many even volunteered for a second tour. Close to 10,000 Canadians died for their cause - a fatality rate that was proportionately the highest of all those who fought in the war.

Death by Moonlight never once criticizes what those individual airmen accomplished; nor does it question their personal motives for doing it. They, clearly, are the heroes of the film.

Still, the policy and strategy behind some of those raids is open to debate. At the time, the crewmen who flew the raids weren't privy to that policy; nor were they in any position to argue its merits. Some critics have suggested that the film demeans the airmen who took part in those campaigns. That is not the case. Any implicit criticism in the film concerning the morality or the efficacy of area bombing is directed against the policy-makers; not the gallant young men who flew the raids.

Areas of Criticism

The preponderance of the attacks on Death by Moonlight have been instigated by the film's critical analysis of the policies and strategies set out by the British War Cabinet and RAF military leaders. Overall, the critics of Death by Moonlight take exception to eight major themes, topics or points of view that are presented in the film. Their main arguments are directed against the film's treatment of:

1. The policy and morality of area bombing;

2. The effectiveness of area bombing on Germany;

3. The secrecy of the area-bombing policy;

4. Air Marshal Arthur Harris;

5. The Hamburg Raids;

6. The Dams Raid;

7. The Nuremberg Raid;

8. Lack of Moral Fibre.

Prologue

In dealing with all of these topics, the producers based their statements, analyses and conclusions on research and interviews accumulated over some two and a half years.

The resulting critical analysis found in the film is commensurate with that of other recent military histories. Indeed, in a letter to Brian McKenna, the film's director, Steve Harris, staff historian with the Directorate of History in the Department of National Defence, wrote "... the funny thing about all this is that, in terms of British historiography, there is nothing new here. The role of Harris, and a fair appraisal of how Bomber Command spent the war, have been subjects of research, writing and debate in the United Kingdom since before the end of the Second World War."¹

In view of this comment, it is perhaps worthwhile to note that two of Britain's foremost military historians have viewed the films, and in summary have offered the following words:

But, in summary, let me say that I think the general tenor of your film reflects a fair picture of the bomber offensive, and pays full tribute to the courage and sacrifice of the aircrew who carried it out.²

Max Hastings

I have watched The Valour and the Horror. In my view it is a fair representation of the history of Bomber Command's offensive against Germany.³

John Keegan

In his closing remarks to the Senate Sub-committee on Veterans Affairs, Dr. Steve Harris told the Committee: "The Bomber Command episode portrays a point of view. The makers of the film have a right to that point of view. I do not believe it is necessary for them, given the vast literature on the bombing offensive,to prove the validity of that point of view when others have [already] done it."⁴

The documented facts, as well as analyses and interpretations by postwar historians, lend overwhelming support to the film's treatment of the eight contentious issues listed above.

The film examines the decisions by Allied politicians and military policy-makers to use Bomber Command to specifically target the German civilian populace as a means to wage its necessary war against the Nazi military regime. Many have since asked whether this decision, which resulted in the deaths of over half a million German civilians, was morally tenable, especially for the side which, justifiably, considered itself ethically superior to the enemy.

The counter arguments run from: "It was the only way and weapon with which we could defeat them at the time"; to: "War is war, and anything goes"; to: "The Germans started it, and they were only reaping what they had sown."

These arguments have stimulated a debate that continues to this day, as evidenced by the controversy in England over the May 31, 1992 dedication of a memorial to Sir Arthur Harris.

Here in Canada, the debate over the efficacy and morality of the Allied area bombardment of Germany has obviously been stimulated by the presentation of Death by Moonlight. Nevertheless, it's an issue that has previously been raised in this country.

As Desmond Morton, one of Canada's most respected military historians, wrote in 1981: "The value of the bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly controversial. Canadians who are willing to pronounce the Dieppe raid a needless blunder, are understandably hesitant to condemn an operation which went on relentlessly throughout most of the war. It is too painful to admit that 9,980 young Canadians, to say nothing of many thousands of airmen of every allied nationality, died to very little purpose."⁵

The humanitarian aspects of area bombing is an issue that goes back to the dawn of the air age, when the Rules of War covering military aerial bombardment were originally laid down under the 1907 Hague Peace Conference:

Article XXV: The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

Article XXVI: The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn authorities.⁶

It wasn't long before political and military expediency ignored or circumvented the Hague convention. The employment of air bombardment against civilian targets was initiated in 1911 by the Italians during their war against Turkey. Then, on May 31, 1915, the Germans launched the first of their Zeppelin raids on London, which eventually killed over 700 British civilians. In England and elsewhere there was outraged condemnation of these attacks on non-combatants.

However, Desmond Morton notes, some military strategists began to view this new weapon as a certain war-winner. "Between the wars, enthusiasts like Lord Trenchard [Britain's first Chief of Air Staff], Billy Mitchell of the United States, and Giulio Douhet of Italy had passionately insisted that aerial bombardment would devastate cities and shatter civilian morale... Guernica, Warsaw and Rotterdam all seemed to prove the air power arguments. The Battle of Britain should have raised questions. It did not."⁷

In 1938 the Assembly of the League of Nations unanimously adopted a resolution (advanced by British Prime Minister Chamberlain) that codified air war laws under the following principles:

1. The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal.

2. Objectives aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be identifiable.

3. Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighborhood are not bombed through negligence.⁸

A moot point, of course, is whether a civilian making a bullet in a factory is any less the "enemy" than the soldier who might eventually fire that bullet. And, how about the civilian who grows food or provides other services (or buys war bonds) to sustain the munitions factory worker or the soldier? Where does the list end? Are all men, women and children of an enemy state fair targets during wartime?

The extreme hardliners would answer yes. Many others answer no.

U.S. Air Force Academy lawyer Captain Burrus Carnahan, noting that some military theorists argue that civilians employed in munitions plants should be subject to air attacks, raises an interesting point: "If [such persons] are lawfully subject to direct attack, then [they] should logically be subject to bombardment in their homes, as well as at their factories... [But] the basic fallacy is that it would allow the direct attack of certain persons from the air who would be immune if attacked on the ground. It is unlikely that proponents of [air raids on munitions workers] would approve of a ground commando unit ambushing and killing the unarmed workers as they left their factories at the end of a shift."⁹

The question arises as to how a typical seven-man British or Canadian Lancaster crew, had they been army commandos instead of airmen, would have felt about orders to machine-gun a village of unarmed civilian factory workers in order to disrupt production or undermine the enemy's morale.

Doug Harvey states in the film that the "morality of altitude" relieved him and his fellow airmen of such troublesome considerations. They were, as the film repeatedly acknowledges, patriotic and courageous young men applying their skills over the night skies of Germany under terrifying conditions. The `rightness' or `wrongness' of the policy they were committed to carry out was not a question that could or should have been of concern to the rank-and-file crewman.

Canadian Bomber Command navigator John Harding agrees. "I didn't give [German civilians] a second thought, I was worried about my own neck; were we going to get there, were we going to get back?... [Besides] you never really saw them dying. It maybe would have had a much greater effect on you. You might not have been able to stick it out."¹⁰

And, says Canadian bomb-aimer Dallas Laskey: "In those days right and wrong were more clear cut than they are now... At the time it didn't bother me much. Later I thought about it and thought that was a horrible thing... but I think the idea that the Germans had started it and we're going to finish it prevailed. It's strange for me now, it's a very strange mindset to be in, but we were very quickly manipulated into that at the time, even though a lot of us thought we were sort of objective."¹¹

At the outbreak of war, Britain, Germany and France, responding to an appeal by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed to limit bombing to "strictly military objectives," although they reserved the right to take "appropriate action" should the enemy break the accord. In the spring of 1940, the Germans bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam, but the British held back.

Then came the Battle of Britain. On August 24, 1940, German planes bombed central

London. The Germans claimed the attack was a navigational error, with the East London docks being the intended target; a fact with which most historians today agree. The British, convinced the attack was deliberate, launched reprisal raids on Berlin on the following two nights.

Hitler then set out to destroy London, and on September 7 the London Blitz began. After the attack on Coventry in November, the British government authorized the use of bombing to destroy German civilian morale as well as industrial targets.

The gloves had come off, with both sides claiming the retaliatory right to engage in terror bombing.

Burrus Carnahan notes that "most of the apparent violations of the principles [of international law governing area bombing] during World War I and World War II [began as] either simple cases of inaccurate bombing or actions erroneously taken in retaliation against inaccurate bombing."¹²

The film never questions Britain's right to launch those initial punitive attacks against German cities, and makes it quite clear within the first ten minutes, visually and by narrative, that it was the Germans who "started it." As the film states: "The young men who signed up with Bomber Command saw themselves as avenging angels. In 1940 German bombers were laying waste to the City of London in the siege that became known as `the Blitz'. Forty thousand British civilians were killed."¹³

Nevertheless, when (by 1942) area bombing had progressed to well beyond the tit-for-tat retaliatory stage, the question of ethics became a valid issue; even more so during the final two years of the war when Germany, despite its deadly though haphazard V and V2 rocket strikes, was clearly incapable of launching a major air offensive against England.

Initially, the British concentrated on strategic targets such as power stations, factories, dockyards, ports and marshalling yards in Germany and occupied France. Because the RAF bombers lacked long-range fighter cover, these attacks were primarily flown at night.

In August 1941, Lord Cherwell, Churchill's scientific advisor, instructed D.M. Butt of the War Cabinet Secretariat to conduct a statistical investigation of the results of the RAF bombing campaign. The ensuing report, based on 100 separate raids on 28 targets over 48 nights in June and July 1941, was devastating.

Among its main findings were: "Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within five miles. Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three. Over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four. Over the Ruhr [the heart of industrial Germany] it was only one in ten."¹⁴

Clearly, poor navigation and primitive navigational equipment undermined any hope of creating significant damage to the German war machine. Also, the bombing offensive was squandering a lot of airmen's lives. As the British military historian John Keegan notes: "During 1941, when 700 aircraft failed to return from operations, Bomber Command's crews in short were dying largely in order to crater the German countryside." He adds that as a result of Butt's findings, the RAF "brought itself to accept that the bombers it already deployed must in future be used to kill German civilians, since the factories in which they worked could not be hit with precision."¹⁵

It was largely because of the Butt Report that, on February 14, 1942, the Air Ministry issued Directive No. 22 - a directive which historian Max Hastings calls "the blueprint for the attack on Germany's cities".¹⁶

The directive was issued to Bomber Command by Air Vice-Marshal Norman Bottomley, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. In it Bottomley stated: "You are accordingly authorized to employ your forces without restriction." Appended to the lengthy directive was a list of the primary and alternative targeted cities.¹⁷

The following day (February 15, 1942) the Chief of Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, wrote to Bottomley to clarify the intent of the orders: "Ref the new bombing directive: I suppose it is clear the aiming-points are to be the built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories... This must be made quite clear if it is not already understood."¹⁸

The intent of the British War Cabinet and the Air Staff had now been enunciated. It was a policy that would enthusiastically be carried out by Arthur Harris and Bomber Command for the next three years.

Thus, on St. Valentine's Day, 1942, area bombing became official British policy, despite previous reservations about its moral acceptability. As the British historian A.J.P. Taylor observes: "At the beginning of the war, the chiefs of staff laid down that Great Britain would always observe the principle of `refraining from attack on civilian population as such for the purpose of demoralization', and Chamberlain [had] declared in the House of Commons: `Whatever be the lengths to which others may go, His Majesty's Government will never resort to deliberate attack on women and children, and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.' The British gradually retreated from this high position... So far as air strategy was concerned, the British outdid the German frightfulness first in theory, later in practice, and a nation which claimed to be fighting for a moral cause gloried in the extent of its immoral acts."¹⁹

The February 1942 directive and others which followed (such as the Casablanca Directive of January 1943) were predicated on the belief that area bombing would bring Germany to its knees by dislocating the enemy's civilian factory workers and undermining their `morale'.

British military historian John Terraine accurately states that the term "Morale, in a bombing directive, means either the threat or the reality of blowing men, women and children to bits." And, he charges, the Air Ministry's estimates on the effects of area bombing on the German populace were "a prescription for massacre, nothing more nor less."²⁰

As the bombing offensive progressed, some influential British voices - among them Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, and George Bell, the Anglican Bishop of Chichester - began to publicly question Bomber Command's assault on civilian targets. The question also came up from time to time in Parliament and the House of Lords, but was routinely diffused with lies (see section on The Secrecy of Area Bombing).

One very pointed query was raised in a confidential hand-written note from the Marquess

of Salisbury to Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air. The letter, dated

November 23, 1943, referred to a previous statement by Arthur Harris that the air attack on Berlin would continue "until the heart of Nazi Germany ceases to beat."

Lord Salisbury stated: "This would seem to bring us up short against the repeated Government declarations that we are bombing only military and industrial targets. Perhaps that is all that Harris contemplates, and I shall be delighted if you tell me so. But there is a great deal of evidence that makes some of us afraid that we are losing moral superiority to the Germans... Of course the Germans began it, but we do not take the devil as our example."²¹

In his reply, Sinclair skirted the issue with a vague statement concerning the "progressive dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system." He even had the audacity to inform Salisbury that the Air Ministry "...adhered fully to the principle that we would attack none but military targets."²²

As Max Hastings points out: "The whole thrust of the argument from those who opposed area bombing in Britain at the time was that by behaving as the Nazis had done, we threatened the very moral foundation on which our war effort was based."²³

Eventually, even some military leaders started to distance themselves from the policy of area bombing, particularly from its seemingly pointless pursuit during the final year of the war. The historian and writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft states: "The reaction began early with Churchill's unattractive attempt to disown Harris at the end of the war... Harris was paying the price for his gross insubordination in 1944 and 1945. He had refused to attack industrial and military targets as he was instructed. Instead he continued `browning' one city after another in what had become a very unequal battle after the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1944... What had seemed justifiable, even necessary, in July 1943, seemed inexcusable eighteen months later with the German army in full retreat."²⁴

In summing up the post-war attitude toward the bombing campaign, John Keegan writes: "With their backs to the wall the British people had chosen not to acknowledge that they had descended to the enemy's level. In victory they remembered that they believed in fair play. [Area] bombing, which may not even have been sound strategy, was certainly not fair play. Over its course and outcome its most consistent practitioners drew a veil."²⁵

From the above, it should be clear that the film's producers did not distort or misrepresent the intent and goals of the British War Cabinet, the Air Ministry and Bomber Command. They recorded what is historical fact. Nor were the producers the first to raise questions about the ethics of area bombing. That issue has been actively debated for almost half a century.

The film makes the point that the campaign of area-bombing (as opposed to strategic or precision bombing) did not produce the war-winning effects hoped for and promised by Air Marshal Harris and others. The relentless carpet-bombing of German cities (which cost the lives of countless Allied airmen) did little to soften the morale of the German people and the Nazi hierarchy, much less destroy the German war machine.

Once again, the historical record speaks for itself, despite the wartime myth that apparently is still accepted by some of the film's critics.

In 1917, in response to the Zeppelin bombing of London, Winston Churchill (then Minister of Munitions) stated: "It is improbable that any terrorization of the civil population which could be achieved by air attack would compel the Government of a great nation to surrender... In our own case, we have seen the combative spirit of the people roused, and not quelled, by the German air raids. Nothing that we have learned of the capacity of the German population to endure suffering justifies us in assuming that they could be cowed into submission by such methods, or indeed, that they would not be rendered more desperately resolved by them."²⁶

That remained true in World War II. Captain Carnahan of the U.S. Air Force Academy argues that "the military advantage accruing from [area-bombing] proved to be either minimal or nonexistent... Civilian populations under bombardment on both sides in World War II commonly reacted with anger and resentment towards the enemy. Although the bombings terrorized people, these tactics had little ultimate effect on national war-making ability. Thus, beyond the question of its legitimacy, `terror bombing' has not proven its worth even to the attacker in terms of lost airmen and aircraft."²⁷

Perhaps the last word on the use of area bombing to undermine morale should be left to Air Marshal Harris. In his 1947 autobiography, Harris states: "The idea that the main object of bombing German industrial cities was to break the enemy's morale proved to be wholly unsound; when we had destroyed almost all the larger industrial cities in Germany the civil population remained apathetic, while the Gestapo saw to it that they were docile, and, insofar as there was work left for them to do, industrious. But it seemed quite a natural opinion in 1941."²⁸

As for its contribution to strategic military damage, saturation bombing proved to be of limited value. The doubts first arose in the spring of 1945 when the U.S. government sent a battalion of researchers into the towns and cities of devastated Germany to determine the extent of the damage and the degree to which the offensive had "worked" - i.e., had destroyed the ability and/or will of the Nazi machine and the civilian populace to continue the fight.

The 10-volume report, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), released in 1947, presented the first hard evidence debunking the myth of the strategic success of area bombing. The report cites case after case of urban infrastructures (gas lines, electricity, transportation) and factories being back in place within a few days of a massive Allied raid.

Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith was in charge of the overall economic assessment of the German mobilization effort and the effects of the Allied air attacks. Galbraith and his colleagues were startled by their findings:

Our first indication that something was wrong came in [a captured document entitled] the German Statistical Overview of War Production... In 1940, the first full year of the war, the average monthly production of Panzer vehicles [tanks and self-propelled guns] was 136; in 1941 it was 316; in 1942 it had risen to 516. In 1943, after the bombing began in earnest, average monthly production was 1005, and in 1944 it was 1583. Peak monthly production was not reached until December 1944, and it was only slightly down in early 1945. For aircraft and other weaponry the figures were similar... We were beginning to see that we were encountering one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest miscalculation of the war.²⁹

Similar conclusions were reached in 1946 by the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU), a fact-gathering task force headed by the British biologist Solly Zuckerman.

In his 1978 autobiography, Professor Zuckerman notes that the bombing had little effect on German morale, and he criticizes Bomber Command's "continuation of area attacks on German towns beyond the point where they were necessitated by the operational limitations of inaccuracy in navigation and bombing."³⁰

The findings by both the American and British survey teams were corroborated by high-ranking captured Nazis. In 1945 Galbraith was one of the first to debrief Albert Speer, Germany's Minister of Armaments and War Production during the last three years of the war. In those interviews and in his later writings about the conduct of the war, Speer, according to most historians, was generally candid and accurate.

While Speer admitted that the Allied bombers tied down men and defensive weaponry to defend German cities against the onslaught of the bombers, he viewed the principal intent of the Allied air offensive as a failure.

Area bombing, Speer states, "spurred us to do our utmost. Neither did the bombings and the hardships that resulted from them weaken the morale of the populace. On the contrary, from my visits to armaments plants and my contacts with the man on the street, I carried away the impression of growing toughness. It may well be that the estimated loss of 9 percent of our production capacity was amply balanced by increased effort."³¹

Desmond Morton is equally dubious about the merits of saturation bombing: "In some respects, Harris's strategy was about as futile as the `offensives' of the First World War. Britain's bombers were underpowered, underarmed and an easy prey for Luftwaffe fighters and anti-aircraft artillery. Daylight raids led to intolerable losses. Night bombing was hopelessly inaccurate." Morton adds that although "Germany lost 560,000 killed and 675,000 injured from the Allied bomber offensive, most of them women and children," the country's "war production until the final months was cut as little as 1.2 percent."³²

Those who still support the efficacy of area bombing argue that, despite the above statistics, German production would have risen even higher without the bombing offensive. That is true, but it misses an important point. Galbraith, Speer and others have concluded that more selective targeting would have wrought more damage on the Nazi war machine and might have brought the war to a speedier conclusion.

"The Germans showed great energy and resource in dispersing, reorganizing, and repairing plants and facilities after the air raids," says Galbraith, adding that "The most damaging of the strategic air attacks were on rail transport and the synthetic oil plants."³³

Speer, in several instances, has made a strong case for the effectiveness of Allied precision bombing over area bombing. In one of his 1945 debriefings he was asked by his interrogators whether it was the British or the American attacks which had caused Germany the most concern. He replied: "The American attacks, which followed a definite system of assault on industrial targets, were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry. The [British] night attacks did not succeed in breaking the will to work of the civilian population."³⁴

Twenty-five years later in his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, Speer reiterated the same point: "I had early recognized [that] the war could largely have been decided in 1943 if, instead of vast but pointless area bombing, the planes had concentrated on the centers of armaments production."³⁵

Some who flew those area-bombing raids have come to realize that Speer was probably correct. Canadian bomb-aimer Walter Pacholka agrees that "the Americans did the right thing. They were pin-pointing targets. I think if we'd put as much effort into that, we'd have won the war sooner."³⁶

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.

A case in point is the so-called Oil Plan. A September 1944 directive from the combined Chiefs of Staff placed Germany's refineries and synthetic oil plants at the top of the priority list for strikes by Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force - the reasoning being that without fuel, the Reich's aircraft and tanks would be immobilized, and both the land and air war brought to a quicker conclusion. Area targets were at the bottom of that directive list.

Nevertheless, 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."³⁸

Harris's stubbornness, which bordered on insubordination, found Portal (during a lengthy exchange of memos between the two) pleading and finally demanding that Harris follow the directive. Typical is a letter Portal wrote on January 8, 1945, in which he began: "I gather that you are quite convinced that the attack on oil, or for that matter any other particular target system, is unsound, and that we would have achieved very much better results if both the R.A.F. and U.S. bomber forces had concentrated throughout on the blitzing of industrial centres." Portal then went on for eight pages arguing the merits of selective targeting over area bombing.³⁹

In the closing months of the war Harris begrudgingly directed a few more raids against oil and other precision targets, but it was clear that neither his heart nor the strength of his bomber fleet was in it. As Speer has noted, it was the Americans who were primarily responsible for directly destroying the Nazi armament industry.

A final issue raised by historians in the discussion of the effectiveness of area bombing is its proportionate cost in British war resources. It is estimated (by A.J.P. Taylor and others) that approximately 30 percent of Britain's war effort went into the bomber offensive. Given the limited success of saturation bombing, it is not unreasonable for historians to speculate on whether some of those resources might not have been more effectively employed in the development of technology and production of equipment for Fighter Command, the Army and the Navy.

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 film states that the intent of the post-1942 War Cabinet policy of area bombing was largely hidden from the general public and from the crews who flew the sorties over Germany; that intent being to kill (or, in Air Ministry warspeak, to "dehouse" and "demoralize") as many civilians as possible.

Those who dispute this statement either have not read their history, or else prefer to remain wrapped in the comfort of a disingenuous wartime myth.

Understandably, many veterans were upset by this aspect of the film. No one likes to hear that a role he courageously played in the war was, to some extent, based on a hidden agenda.

As Canadian veteran pilot George Bain stated in May, 1992: "It's not a happy experience to, as I think of it, be portrayed as a dupe; especially so if you happen to have thought and think as I do that this was an honourable cause. Our government said it was. Our media said it was. Our churches said it was."⁴⁰

However, the film never implies that those crewmen were fools or dupes. It simply makes the point that the ordinary airman was misled as to the Air Ministry's full intentions vis-a-vis the saturation bombing of German cities.

Martin Middlebrook, an authoritative chronicler of the bombing offensive, states that "in some ways, area bombing was a three-year period of deceit practised on the British public and on world opinion." The deceit, he adds, "lay in the concealment of the fact that the areas being most heavily bombed were nearly always either city centres or densely populated residential areas which rarely contained any industry."⁴¹

And, says British historian A.J.P. Taylor, "Sometimes the air chiefs implied that they would destroy the enemy's armed forces; sometimes that they would destroy his industry. Essentially they aimed at destroying the enemy's will to fight, and this meant indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population. The British government and the chiefs of staff ... shrank from saying this openly."⁴²

One of the film's most vociferous critics, Cliff Chadderton, Chief Executive Officer of The War Amputations of Canada, suggests in a submission to the CRTC that the bomber crews were well aware of the post-1942 policy to deliberately target German civilians.⁴³

That would come as a surprise to many of those who flew with Bomber Command, including Ken Brown and Doug Harvey, the two veterans featured in the film.

Brown flew with three different bomber squadrons between 1941 and 1944. Some of that tour was spent piloting a Lancaster on raids over Berlin and other major cities. He states in the film: "Basically, we really thought we were putting out the German industry, and we were when we went into places like Essen, Krupps, that sort of thing. We weren't really aware of the strategy of trying to destroy the German people, or the will of the German people, as it was put."⁴⁴

In every pre-operational briefing the airmen were told about and shown air reconnaissance photos of strategic targets in whichever city was being hit that night.

As George Laing, a Canadian Pathfinder, pilot recalls: "Every briefing you went to, you were informed that it was a military target... They moved the target around in big areas like Berlin. But [they said] it was always for military purposes that we were there."⁴⁵

Middlebrook, who interviewed hundreds of veterans in the course of researching several books about the bomber offensive, observes that bomber aircrew "were subject to the same type of press influence and conditioning as the general public, and what they were told at the briefings about the targets they were to attack was often as limited and selective as what the British public were told by the Air Ministry. The industrial importance and the strength of a target's defenses were always stressed." He adds that "Aircrews were rarely told that the Aiming Point and the ensuing bombing areas had been selected to wipe out residential districts."⁴⁶

Obviously, the crews knew that a lot of their bombs were killing noncombatants. But the War Cabinet's policy of specifically targeting civilians, and the enormity of the carnage, came only as post-war revelations to virtually every bomber airman and the British public.

As Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes, "Many who lived through the war will say that they still think the bombing necessary and just." But, he adds, "There is a paradox here. If Bomber Command aircrew knew what they were doing, and if the British public approved of its being done, why was the massive official war of lies needed?"⁴⁷

Why indeed? Webster and Frankland, in their Official History of the bombing offensive note that Sir Archibald Sinclair, Britain's Secretary of State for Air, "invariably suggested that Bomber Command was aiming at military or industrial installations as, of course, it sometimes was. He did not conceal that severe and sometimes vast damage was done to residential areas, but he either implied, or on occasions said, that all of this was incidental and even regrettable."⁴⁸

Sinclair and other government leaders were not above stretching the truth and even lying outright in the House of Commons or in public pronouncements when the prickly subject of area bombing was raised by critics.

Consider the following exchange between Sinclair and Richard Stokes, Labour MP for Ipswich, in a House of Commons debate on March 31, 1943:

Stokes: Have instructions been given on any occasion to British airmen to engage in area bombing rather than limit their attentions to purely military targets?

Sinclair: The targets of Bomber Command are always military, but night-bombing of military objectives necessarily involves bombing the area in which they are situated.⁴⁹

Or, this exchange between Stokes and the Deputy Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, on May 27, 1943:

Stokes: Is the Right Hon. Member aware that a growing volume of opinion in this country considers indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres both morally wrong and strategic lunacy?

Attlee: No, there is no indiscriminate bombing. As has been repeatedly stated in the House, the bombing is of those targets which are most effective from a military point of view.⁵⁰

The government clearly was pursuing an agenda of disinformation designed to hide the truth from anyone morally opposed to the real intent of the bombing offensive.

In an October 1943 letter to Sir Charles Portal, Sinclair explained that the pretense was necessary to "satisfy the inquiries of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and other significant religious leaders whose moral condemnation of the bombing offensive might disturb the morale of Bomber Command crews."⁵¹

The truth behind area bombing was, according to Desmond Morton, as much a wartime secret in Canada as in Britain. "Propaganda insisted that raids were tightly targeted on military and industrial objectives [and] as in 1914-18, Canadians had no chance to debate the strategy or its morality." Morton adds that the "Canadians who had joined the RCAF to escape their fathers' memories of trench warfare found themselves in no less bloody and hopeless a struggle in which their own survival became improbable and their most likely victims were women and children."⁵²

By the spring of 1945 even Winston Churchill appeared to be having second thoughts about the logistical effectiveness (and maybe the moral defensibility) of area bombing. In a March 28, 1945 memo to General Ismay and the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Churchill stated: "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... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives ... rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."⁵³

The "other pretexts" referred to by Churchill was surely a direct reference to the public assurances made by the War Cabinet and Air Ministry that Bomber Command's targets were always military and industrial complexes, never civilians.

This memorandum was issued six weeks after the Dresden firestorm, a pointless area-bombing attack that killed anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 civilians.

According to the British military historian Anthony Verrier: "Dresden was selected for no reason which anyone who fought in the strategic air offensive can justify... and its destruction achieved the rare distinction of having no open partisans at all. In every sense, Dresden exemplifies the dangers of carrying an idea to its logical conclusion."⁵⁴

Sir Charles Portal, and Harris especially, were predictably upset by the tone and implications of Churchill's minute. So much so, that two days later the Prime Minister was persuaded to withdraw the memo and redraft it in softer language, omitting references to "terror", "other pretexts" and "wanton destruction."⁵⁵

Nevertheless, the point remains that Churchill, before bowing to bureaucratic pressure, had expressed disenchantment with area bombing. His motives, of course, may have been purely political.

Historian Max Hastings finds it "impossible to regard this memorandum as anything other than a calculated attempt by the Prime Minister to distance himself from the bombing of Dresden and the rising controversy surrounding area bombing."⁵⁶

Harris's official biographer, Dudley Saward, observes that, as a result of the memorandum incident, "The seeds of criticism of [area-bombing] had now been sown, and were to flourish in the post-war years."⁵⁷

Webster and Frankland's Official History concludes that in his "original minute the Prime Minister was reflecting a growing controversy about the objects of the strategic air offensive which persists to the present day."⁵⁸

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.

The film's depiction of Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris (who took over as head of Bomber Command on February 22, 1942) is based on his 1947 autobiography, as well as on descriptions of him and his professional views by those who knew him or served under him, and by historians who researched his career and wrote about him.

To the film's critics, we can only say that this is an honest and accurate portrayal of a singularly dedicated man who steadfastly and ruthlessly insisted that the saturation bombing of Germany's major cities was the quickest and most effective way to win the war.

It should not be surprising that the recent publicity surrounding the dedication of a statue to Harris produced what John Ezard in The Guardian calls "the most acute diplomatic embarrassment of the past 12 years of international commemorations of the Second World War."⁵⁹

The nine-foot-high bronze statue, commissioned and funded by the RAF Bomber Command Association, was unveiled May 31, 1992, at St. Clement Danes church in London's Strand district. The months of controversy that preceded the event was by no means coming only from places like Dresden and Hamburg. Many Britons were equally uncomfortable with a statue honouring a man who, as the Timeseditorialized, "was a fanatical believer in carpet bombing of civilians" and who enthusiastically carried out a policy that "was a severe blot on Britain's war record."⁶⁰

 

Who was Bomber Harris?

Historian Max Hastings portrays him as a man with "something of the earthy, swaggering ruthlessness of an Elizabethan buccaneer [who] gave no sign of fearing God or man... He had been an early convert to the concept of strategic bombing, and ranked among Trenchard's [Britain's first Chief of Air Staff and an avid bombing enthusiast] most dedicated disciples."⁶¹

Martin Middlebrook, in the course of researching several books on Bomber Command and its operations, interviewed many who knew and served with Arthur Harris. "To the press and the public, Harris was `Bomber' Harris, and to his close associates, Bert. To his crews, however, he was always known as `Butch', short for the Butcher... His men recognized Harris as a hard-driving commander who would not hesitate to send men to their deaths for as long as the war lasted."⁶²

Harris, although he seldom visited an airbase, was held in awe by most airmen. However, some, like Canadian bomber navigator David Dickson, resented the fact that their commander's decisions sometimes needlessly cost airmen's lives. "There were mistakes made. There were bad raids made, raids that shouldn't have been made; the tactics used were bad. There were lots of things that were wrong and that cost lives. And, since it was our lives that were either lost or threatened, that's a spot to put the blame on Harris."⁶³

Another Canadian navigator, Dave McIntosh, puts it more bluntly: "Harris didn't give a damn how many men he lost as long as he was pounding the shit out of German civilians. Butcher was the deserved nickname of the RAF chief of Bomber Command. An Air Force twin for Haig of the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele."⁶⁴

Although, as the film acknowledges in Harris's own words, he followed policies made "by ministries, the Chief of Staffs Committee and by the War Cabinet"⁶⁵, Harris was nonetheless in total agreement with any policy that dedicated the thrust of the bomber offensive against the heart of the German populace.

In the impression of Australian war correspondent Murray Sayle, Harris had "a shrewd mind uncluttered by religion, reflection, military tradition or anything much except the immediate job in hand. Seized by a single idea, such a mind is likely to pursue it with quenchless, fanatical zeal." Sayle adds that "Harris cannot be accused of originating the policy [of area bombing], but it has certainly never had a more enthusiastic exponent."⁶⁶

This sentiment has been more recently echoed by Steve Harris, of the Directorate of History, who, in a letter to Brian McKenna, wrote, "While it is true that Arthur Harris did not originate the area bombing offensive, it is also true that he supported it longer and more vehemently than anyone else - and in this sense I have no difficulty whatsoever with the prominent place you gave him in the film with respect to the conduct of area bombing."⁶⁷

Sir Arthur Harris was appointed chief of Bomber Command eight days after the Air Ministry unveiled its 1942 area-bombing directive. Given his conviction that area bombing could vanquish Germany and its will to fight, he was ideally suited to execute the policy.

Middlebrook states that Harris "had a simple, unquestioning, enduring hatred for what [the Germans] had done to Europe in two world wars, and he was perfectly happy to put into effect the [area-bombing] policy." Consequently, "He resisted to the utmost all outside attempts to divert Bomber Command from this purpose. Every bomber, every bomb, must be directed on a target in Germany on every night that the weather and moon conditions permitted it. That was Harris's simple policy."⁶⁸

However, as British historian A.J.P. Taylor points out, Harris's tunnel-vision focus on area bombing dictated the manner in which the air war would be fought for the next three years.

"The chief of Bomber Command was a fierce fighting man whose passionate advocacy overwhelmed rational calculation," says Taylor. "Harris pressed for indiscriminate, or as he called it, 'barnyard door' bombing on two grounds. He genuinely believed that the German people could be cowed from the air as he had once cowed the tribesmen of Iraq. He also recognized that his hastily trained crews could not bomb with precision and that they must hit a barnyard door if they were to hit anything at all." Taylor concludes that "This argument was self-defeating: the more crews were used on indiscriminate bombing, the more precision bombing was postponed to an indefinite future, indeed to the never-never."⁶⁹

Perhaps Harris's major character flaw was his obstinate refusal to believe in any bombing methods but his own. He consequently spent much of his time arguing against his bombers being used for strategic purposes other than area bombing.

As the Official History describes Harris: "He had a tendency to confuse advice with interference, criticism with sabotage, and evidence with propaganda. He resisted innovations and he was seldom open to persuasion."⁷⁰

This trait of Harris is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his continued reluctance to follow Supreme Allied Command's orders to divert Bomber Command resources to preparations for "Overlord," the planned allied invasion of Europe. Some critics have objected to the narrator's characterization that "Arthur Harris would have none of it,"⁷¹but such words are in fact a fair characterization of the quote that follows:

It is clear that the best and indeed the only support we can give to Overlord is an intensification of attacks in Germany. If we attempt to substitute attacks on gun emplacements, beach defenses, communications or supply dumps, this would be an irremediable error and lead directly to disaster.⁷²

Similarly, other criticisms of the film's portrayal of Harris often take exception to the words spoken by the actor portraying him. They claim either that Harris neither wrote nor spoke those words, or that they distort the intent of those words by not presenting the full picture. We here document that such criticisms are unfounded.

For example, it has been argued that the following words, spoken by the actor portraying Harris, cannot be substantiated by the filmmakers:

We shall destroy Germany's will to fight. Now that we have the planes and crews, in 1943 and 1944 we shall drop one and a quarter million tons of bombs, render 25 million Germans homeless, kill 900,000 and seriously injure one million.⁷³

In fact, to address this concern fairly, one must look at the manner in which this quotation was framed in the transcript of the documentary. The film makes clear that Harris was reciting orders. Says the narrator, "Bomber Command Chief Arthur Harris received new orders: from now on he was free to deliberately target German civilians."⁷⁴ Later, following the quotation from Harris, the script makes clear that the orders originated form Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff.

In addition, Harris was the co-author of the declaration in question, a memo prepared with Sir Charles Portal, entitled: "Note by the Chief of the Air Staff: An Estimate of the Effects of an Anglo-American Bomber Offensive Against Germany".

 

Harris's official biographer, historian Dudley Saward, confirms in Bomber Harris (page 176) that the document was prepared "with the assistance of Harris."⁷⁵

Some critics have also claimed that the depiction in the film of Arthur Harris's view of colonials is a distorted one. Specifically, there have been objections to the following words, taken straight out of Harris's autobiography:

I have been amused to read in almost every history or novel about Empire war what magnificent horsemen and natural good shots the colonial troops were. I have ridden with colonial troops, and shot with colonial troops, and been shot at with colonial troops. And I have no hesitation in saying that colonial, and Dominion troops, are on the average, damned bad horsemen, and damned bad shots.⁷⁶

It has been argued that this picture of Harris is a distorted one because the quote that is used ends before Harris qualifies it by saying that, after proper training, colonial troops "are no better and no worse than the British themselves." We maintain that the view portrayed in the film accurately distils the overall tone of Harris's autobiographical musings on colonials. For lower down on the same page of Harris's autobiography, when writing specifically of the men serving in Bomber Command, Harris claims, "The fact is that an ordinary mixed British crew from all parts of the British Isles is as brave as any crew from any part of the world, and is much better disciplined, and certainly better educated than the average colonial and dominion crew."⁷⁷This statement is one more example of perceived British superiority over the colonial boys.

The portrayal of Arthur Harris in Death By Moonlight is an accurate, and well-researched, portrayal.

Indeed, Harris remained, until the end, consistent in his views. Hastings notes that after the war, "Many of the airmen who wrote their memoirs ... prevaricated about both area bombing and their own part in it. Harris alone never sought prudent cover, nor made any excuse or apology for what his forces had done." Hastings describes the post-war Harris as a man standing alone "on the parapet of his trench, facing the slings and arrows of posterity with the same unflinching defiance with which he had received those of his critics and enemies throughout the bomber offensive."⁷⁸

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."⁷⁹

Harris went to his grave convinced that his direction of the bombing offensive was above reproach. Perhaps his only lasting regret was that the War Cabinet had never supplied him with the 4,000 heavy bombers he'd always wanted to demolish Germany from end to end.

 

As the New York Times noted in its obituary of Sir Arthur: "He was not a man who saw his opponents in any light but as enemies. To him, `a Hun was a Hun'."⁸⁰

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."⁸¹

That is the Arthur Harris who is portrayed in the film Death by Moonlight. The depiction is entirely consistent with who the man was, what he stood for, and how he perceived his mission and that of Bomber Command.

The film describes in some detail the July 24 to August 2, 1943 Battle of Hamburg, during which four massive night raids by Bomber Command (and two smaller daylight sorties by the American Eighth Air Force) virtually devastated Germany's third largest city, killing approximately 42,000 civilians and leaving another 900,000 homeless.

The producers chose to depict that attack primarily because it was a powerfully graphic example of exactly what area bombing was all about - the killing and terrorization of as many German civilians as possible. Although there were important military targets on the outskirts of the city (primarily ship-building and docks), these were targeted only by the Americans (and hit lightly and accidentally by some British `creep-back' bombing).

RAF Bomber Command focused only on the city's heavily populated centre. Not for nothing did Harris and the Air Staff code-name the battle "Operation Gomorrah."

Those who criticize this segment of the film cannot point to any inaccuracies. But they appear discomforted by the fact that this horrifying chapter in the air war should even be introduced. Their arguments fall under two general categories: `We were only doing to them what they had already done to us in the Blitz'; and `The raids were directed primarily against Hamburg's factories and shipyards, with civilian deaths being an unfortunate by-product'.

In response to the first argument, the producers can only reply in the specific to what we have already replied to in the general (see first section) regarding the morality of area bombing.

With respect to the second argument, the facts support the case that it was the people of Hamburg (albeit, many of them factory and dockyard workers) who were the principal target.

Two of the film's principal critics, Cliff Chadderton of the War Amps, and Murray Peden, an amateur historian and former Canadian Bomber Command airman, appear convinced that the Hamburg raid was directed against a strategic military target.

Chadderton argues that "Hamburg was a highly industrialized city, producing armaments and other materiels of war, including submarines." He then concludes that "Historians state that it was a military target."⁸²

Peden asserts that Bomber Harris chose Hamburg as a target "because it was preeminently the most important in the highest-priority category laid down ... at Casablanca in January 1943." Peden notes that "the six target systems in order of priority were: 1- Submarine construction yards and bases; 2- German aircraft industry; 3- Ball bearings; 4- Oil; 5- Synthetic rubber and tires; 6- Military transport vehicles."⁸³

Both men are safe on most of their background facts, but terribly wrong in their conclusions.

Of the several British and German books written specifically about the Hamburg raids, none is as detailed, objective, or thoroughly researched as Martin Middlebrook's The Battle of Hamburg. It is a book that many former airmen and historians regard as the definitive work on that particular chapter of the bombing offensive.

Apart from combing through British and German archival records, Middlebrook interviewed hundreds of persons who were either in the air or on the ground during those raids. His compelling and accurate story (complete with bombing-target maps) makes it abundantly clear that Bomber Command was not on a mission to destroy the city's shipbuilding and aircraft industries.

With respect to the initial raid (by 782 RAF aircraft) on July 24th, Middlebrook says: "Every one of the [targeted] districts was mainly residential. There were no sizeable industrial establishments anywhere in the area that it was hoped to bomb. No part of the attack was planned to fall south of the river [Elbe] where the U-boat yards and other major industries were located. It was pure Area Bombing."⁸⁴

Three nights later, 787 Bomber Command aircraft struck Hamburg with the most devastating blow of the battle; creating an awesome firestorm which killed 35,000 to 40,000 civilians on that one night alone. Again, it was "pure area bombing." The targeting of the four main districts is described by Middlebrook:

Rothenburgsort [contained] the largest children's hospital in Hamburg. Billwarder Ausschlag was a densely crowded working-class area which could claim the distinction of having produced the lowest pro-Nazi vote [22.9 percent] in Hamburg in the 1933 elections... But the greatest weight of the attack [fell on the areas of Borgfelde and Hamm where] street after narrow street was comprised of six-storied buildings, each block usually housing eighteen families. There were many children...These areas were predominantly residential...densely populated with families of the middle and lower brackets of Hamburg society.⁸⁵

Two more Bomber Command raids (plus two daytime attacks by B-17s the U.S. Eighth Air Force) completed the battle of Hamburg.

It was, based on civilian casualties and the destruction of residential property, a huge `success'. Middlebrook estimates that in total, "Approximately 45,000 people died. It is probable that 40,000 of those deaths occurred in the firestorm which took place during the second RAF raid. By contrast, less than one percent of the deaths were caused by the two American raids."

The author then adds that "It might be assumed that the fatal casualties were divided as follows: women, 22,500; men, 17,100; and children, 5,400. A high proportion of the male dead would have been elderly men, above military age."⁸⁶

The literature on Hamburg contains hundreds of accounts by civilians who survived the firestorm; the descriptions by the two women in Death by Moonlight being very typical.

There are also many equally graphic accounts by the crews who flew the Hamburg raids, such as British airman W.G. Hart: "As I looked down, it was as if I was looking into what I imagined to be an active volcano. There were great volumes of smoke and, mentally, I could sense the great heat. Our actual bombing was like putting another shovelful of coal into the furnace."⁸⁷

And, from British airman J.D. Whiteman: "It seemed as though the whole of Hamburg was on fire from one end to the other... When I realized I was looking at a city with a population of two million, or about that, it became almost frightening to think of what must be going on down there... It is a memory which sometimes haunts me, especially when I helped, even if only in a small way, to cause that cataclysmic event."⁸⁸

A week after the war ended, Canadian Wing Commander Chester Hull flew a group of ground crewmen over the city to show them the results of the raids. As he recalls:

Hamburg was a real mess. Nothing but the big black solid towers, sort of pyramids; they were about the only thing standing... I guess the feeling was: How in hell did people survive under those conditions?.. It was pretty hard to describe. It was a mess, just a rubble. Streets were obviously bulldozed through the rubble but there were no houses that you could see that were in one piece at all... There was nothing in England that I ever saw that could even come close to the devastation.⁸⁹

If the Battle of Hamburg succeeded on the civilian front, it achieved precious little in terms of military and industrial destruction.

According to Middlebrook, "Hamburg's most important war industries, particularly her U-boat yards, were not seriously damaged. The RAF bombing had never been directed on to the areas in which such industries were situated, and the Americans were hampered by smoke and had not the numbers of bombers available to achieve the complete destruction of such targets."⁹⁰

Devastating as the raids were, their effect on the morale and productivity of the city's inhabitants was limited at best.

In his post-war memoirs, Albert Speer admits that the battle of Hamburg had immediate "catastrophic consequences" and had "put the fear of God in me." However, he also notes that it didn't take long before the city's war production "by the determined efforts of those directly concerned, first and foremost the factory workers themselves," had almost fully recovered.⁹¹

It could even be argued that in some ways the battle of Hamburg backfired on the Allies. John Kenneth Galbraith notes that the raids "destroyed restaurants, cabarets, specialty shops, department stores, banks and other civilian enterprises." However, "The factories and shipyards away from the centre escaped. Before the holocaust these had been short of labor. Now waiters, bank clerks, shopkeepers and entertainers forcibly unemployed by the bombers flocked to the war plants to find work and also to get the ration cards the Nazis distributed to the workers there. The bombers had eased the labor shortage."⁹²

And, as Middlebrook concludes: "If anything, the bombing was often counter-productive in terms of morale. The news of what had happened in Hamburg, taken back to their units by thousands of servicemen who were allowed special leave, certainly increased the will to fight on to the end by the German forces. In Hamburg itself, though its people may have been sick at heart at the destruction of homes and the loss of life, they pulled together as they had never done before."⁹³

Lastly, some Canadian veterans were upset by the filmed sequence of the meeting between the two Canadian bomber pilots (Doug Harvey and Ken Brown) and the two women who had survived the Hamburg firestorm. Those critics saw the reunion as an act of contrition on the part of the airmen.

It was nothing of the sort. It was, for all four, a chance to meet the other side face to face almost 50 years later, and to reflect on what much of this film is all about: Two young men, who at the time would rather have been anywhere else, raining terror and death on two young women who'd have shared that same yearning. But at that time and that place, none of them had much choice. The war (and the bombing policy) was not of any of their making. No apologies were asked for; none were offered; none were needed.

Death by Moonlight accurately depicts the savage intensity and the limited strategic results of the Hamburg raids.

No single exploit by Bomber Command received more wartime and post-war recognition and applause than Operation Chastise, the May 16-17, 1943 raid by 19 Lancasters of 617 Squadron on the Ruhr Valley dams. It was a daring and dangerous mission, and the 133 participating airmen (30 of whom were Canadians) deserve all of the praise and accolades they received.

However, the 40-percent casualty rate (8 of the 19 participating aircraft and their seven-man crews never made it home) and the limited damage done (only the Mohne and Eder dams were breached) raises questions about the usefulness of the exercise.

The film, supported by much evidence from Britain, Canada and Germany, suggests that the operation proved to be a lot more flash than fire. As the British military historian, Anthony Verrier, states, "The attack on the Mohne and Eder dams, rightly described as one of the greatest feats of precision bombing, was more of a propaganda than a strategic success, and it was achieved at crippling cost."⁹⁴

Those who object to the this evaluation of the dams raid fall back on the myth perpetrated by the wartime media and by John Brickhill's romanticized account (The Dam Busters) and a popular 1954 movie of the same name. As John Sweetman, author of Operation Chastise notes, "In the heady atmosphere of the moment [the attack] gave rise to a legend which was avidly fostered by a publicity machine armed with reconnaissance photographs of the heavy damage caused" to the Mohne and Eder dams.⁹⁵

Unfortunately, the strategic results of the raid - designed to cripple the hydroelectric power source of the Ruhr Valley steel industry - didn't live up to the glamour of the event.

Air Marshal Harris, never a great supporter of the plan in the first place, concluded in a letter to Portal in 1945 that: "The destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams was to achieve wonders. It achieved nothing compared with the effort and loss. Nothing, that is, but a supreme display of skill, gallantry, devotion and technical ingenuity." And, seizing the opportunity to once again promote saturation bombing over precision strikes, Harris added, "The material damage was negligible compared with one small `area' attack."⁹⁶

Verrier concurs that "Because the dams raid fitted no planned or potential pattern of feasible strategy, Harris was right to be tepid about it at the time and to show only recognition of 617 Squadron's sacrifice in his subsequent comments."⁹⁷

(Interestingly, Harris's 1947 autobiography, Bomber Offensive, ignores his 1945 evaluation of the dams raid. But then, the book also omits several other significant incidents, such as Bomber Command's disastrous March 30, 1944 raid on Nuremberg.)

Other post-war writers on the subject are more forthcoming. Even Webster and Frankland's Official History makes it clear that the "effects of this brilliant achievement upon the German war machine were not, in themselves, of fundamental importance or even seriously damaging. The sudden catastrophe which inundated the areas lying below the two dams was local, temporary and largely agricultural."⁹⁸

Albert Speer, although impressed with the scheme's audacity and precision, was puzzled by the choice of targets: "That night, employing just a few bombers, the British came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieved hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers. But they made a single mistake which puzzles me to this day: They divided their forces and that same night destroyed the Eder Valley dam, although it had nothing whatsoever to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr."⁹⁹

Speer, noting that the Mohne and Eder dams were repaired within four months, adds that "while we were engaged in rebuilding, the British air force missed its second chance. A few bombs would have produced cave-ins at the exposed building sites, and a few fire bombs could have set the wooden scaffolding blazing."¹⁰⁰

Summing up the operation, Anthony Verrier points out that "The most important dam, the Sorpe, was undamaged; two others, the Ennepe and the Lister, were not attacked at all; and although the Mohne and Eder dams were severely damaged ... they were repaired within months, after causing trivial damage to the Ruhr's industries."¹⁰¹

The raid may have been a public-relations triumph on the home front, but was it worth the toll of airmen's lives? This question is especially valid in the case of the attack on Sorpe Dam - a point that is raised by Canadian Lancaster pilot Ken Brown who won the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for his skill and bravery during the mission, and who lost many close friends that night.

In the film, Brown concludes that the type of bomb he was given to destroy the massive earth and stone Sorpe dam, which contained the largest reservoir of the four, was a tactical mistake: "We should have had a weapon quite different... The Mohne dam [was] a different construction altogether. It may have worked well there, and did, but on this construction it was really almost useless."¹⁰²

The same point has been made by several historians, including John Terraine: "The trouble was that [the bomb used] was not suitable for attacking the Sorpe dam, whose construction was different from that of the others. All three were, in fact, attacked, but what with the unsuitability of the weapons, and the loss of four-fifths of the detachment attacking the Sorpe, the damage done there was only slight." Terraine adds that "It is difficult to understand why the Air Staff allowed this whole elaborate and expensive operation to be mounted."¹⁰³

All of the above clearly substantiates the film's claim that the Dams raid was significantly more a public relations and propaganda success than a strategic one. Still, some critics have attacked this part of the film, claiming that it depicts the Dams raid as if it were actually planned from the beginning as a publicity stunt needed by Bomber Command to improve its image. That is only partly true; image value was in the minds of the planners, though by no means the sole or most important reason for the daring attack. We document that what the film's narrator actually says is: "The public relations side benefits of the plan were undeniable." And, as the actor representing Dyson says: "The attack was more costly to England than to Germany. But like many other such follies, it was a public relations triumph."¹⁰⁴Dyson is clearly summing up after the fact. Nowhere is it stated or implied that the Dams raid was specifically laid on just for its PR appeal.

It is indeed noteworthy that after viewing Death by Moonlight, Max Hastings wrote of the film's portrayal, "You are, of course, completely correct about the Dams raid."¹⁰⁵

As Death by Moonlight implies, it is difficult to defend the Dams raid by any criteria other than as a tragically expensive technical experiment and a home-front morale booster. 617 Squadron had brought together 133 of the most skilled and experienced airmen in Bomber Command. But on that tragic night, 56 of those daring and courageous men never made it home. Thirteen of those who died were Canadians.

The Nuremberg raid provided an opportunity to tell the story, woven throughout the film, of a typical Canadian/British bomber crew. These valiant young men flew many dangerous missions together before a dramatic and tragic collision, en route home from Nuremberg, took the lives of all but their tail-gunner, Jim Moffat.

The March 30, 1944 operation also marked the end of the use of the massive bomber stream, and of Air Marshal Harris's control over the area-bombing campaign. Two weeks later Bomber Command would be subordinated to the Supreme Allied Commanders under Eisenhower in preparation for the invasion of Europe.

Also, from the point of view of Bomber Command, the raid was the most disastrous of the war. Ninety-six of the 795 participating aircraft, or about 12 percent, failed to make it home. It was an extreme example of Bomber Harris's passion for area bombing gone mad. In a desperate bid to raze yet one more German city before he'd be forced to use his planes to support the D-Day invasion, Harris gambled with the lives of thousands of brave airmen. He lost the gamble.

The Nuremberg raid is one that many believe should not have been carried out, given the moonlit conditions that prevailed on the way to the target and the cloud cover that lay over the city.

For many airmen, that mission, as Doug Harvey and Martin ("Joe") Favreau describe in the film, was the most terrifying of the war, with their lumbering bombers easy prey for the German night fighters who intercepted them in the moonlit sky.

Canadian tail-gunner Jack Routledge was in the air that night: "We could all see the aircraft being shot down. It was pretty disheartening... It was just like hanging out a red flag and saying, `Here I am.' There was a haze above us and a haze below us, too. So it didn't matter what position you were in. We were a silhouette from below and a silhouette from above... You get all wound up and say, `My God, we're next! There's no chance we're going to survive this one.'..You were really uptight saying, `Well, that's it; we're going to get it.' In all the trips we'd made I'd seen planes go down, but not in those numbers."¹⁰⁶

Canadian navigator John Harding also was there: "We were more or less promised fairly extensive cloud cover [on the way to Nuremberg]. And there was none. There was no cloud cover whatsoever... Plus the fact there was no variance in the track; we just went straight in and straight out. We were actually flying right over fighter bases, and it was a clear night... Something was drastically wrong. First, to lose that many aircraft; it was almost three times the normal losses."¹⁰⁷

Indeed, somethingwas wrong. Air Marshal Harris, against the cautioning advice of several of his staff, had ordered the attack to proceed. The Nuremberg raid is a prime example of his obstinacy and his power over the fortunes of Bomber Command.

It is on this last point that a few of the critics disagreed with the film's Nuremberg segment. However, by all accounts, the raid was a serious error in planning and judgement. Why it was made has never been made clear.

Martin Middlebrook says: "The reasons why Sir Arthur Harris chose such a target on such a night will never be known. He did not refer to this operation in his memoirs, even omitted to mark Nuremberg on the map of city targets attacked by Bomber Command, and consistently evaded questions over his selection of such a distant target on a moonlit night. [Thus] we are left with surmise."¹⁰⁸

Even Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Harris's Deputy Air Officer, remained puzzled after the war by his chief's decision: "I can say that, in view of the met. report and other conditions, everyone, including myself, expected the C-in-C to cancel the raid. We were most surprised when he did not. I thought perhaps there was some top-secret political reason for the raid - something too top-secret for even me to know, but now I do not think that this was so."¹⁰⁹

As Middlebrook points out: "Bomber Command was not run by a committee or board, but by one man. Sir Arthur Harris had taken the decision to raid Nuremberg; he had approved the plan and the route; he had decided not to cancel the operation when Saundby showed him the revised weather forecast... On this occasion, he took one chance too many."¹¹⁰

The film, appropriately titled Death by Moonlight, offers a fair and accurate account of what happened that night - a night in which Bomber Command lost 545 men (109 of them Canadians), or more than all the Fighter Command airmen who died during the Battle of Britain.

Some critics are upset by the fact that the film brought up the subject of "Lack of Moral Fibre" (LMF), as it was sometimes applied to airmen who broke under the incredible pressure and the almost impossible survival rates.

As Geoffrey Wheatcroft describes the process: "Bomber Command aircrew were not shot for cowardice as they might have been 30 years before, but the RAF invented the quasi-euphemism LMF, `Lack of Moral Fibre', which was deterred by humiliating punishments of a kind which the Army and Navy no longer used."¹¹¹

Max Hastings estimates that, between the time of initial training and the completion of their tour of 30 missions, as many as one out of seven (or 14 percent) of all airmen were discharged or transferred out of Bomber Command for either medical or morale reasons. He adds, "Few of these cases would be classified by any but the most bigoted as simple `cowardice'... But in 1943, most [of these] cases were treated by the RAF with considerable harshness."¹¹²

Death by Moonlight is clearly sympathetic to the plight of those airmen. As Doug Harvey states in the film, the RAF policy of LMF "was a horrible system. This was your crewmates and your buddies [who might be] branded a coward when you knew they weren't. People can only stand so much stress."¹¹³

Many Canadian Bomber Command veterans share Harvey's condemnation of the LMF system, among them, pilot George Bain, and navigator John Harding.

Bain: It was a terribly cruel procedure... [Some] people perhaps went through a considerable part of their tour of operations, and terrible things happened to them and [they] simply could not face any more... They were sort of mentally unbalanced by their experiences. I should think it would be extreme cruelty to take a person like that and brand them as a coward and to make a public exhibition of them... I have a great deal of sympathy for the person who cracked.¹¹⁴

Harding: I knew that [airmen who broke under pressure] were dealt with harshly, and I knew that perhaps they took your rank away from you and your brevet. But I didn't realize that you were made a public spectacle... Pretty rough. It showed very little understanding of the average man's ability to take this kind of day-in day-out facing death.¹¹⁵

Oddly, one of the film's principal critics, Cliff Chadderton of The War Amputations of Canada, in a submission to the CRTC, takes the producers to task for introducing the LMF issue, and then goes on at some length to support the points made by Doug Harvey, Freeman Dyson, and the narrator in Death by Moonlight.¹¹⁶

Although RAF and RCAF records are incomplete and vague regarding the number of bomber aircrew who were classified LMF, the film maintains that any number would be too high. Those who broke under that extraordinary pressure and terror in the skies over Germany were not cowards and they did not lack moral fibre. They were courageous but mortal men who had reached the limit of their endurance.

Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command is one film in The Valour and the Horror series produced in order to present certain episodes of the Second World War that are little known to the general public, and to depict those stories, as much as possible, from a Canadian perspective.

Death by Moonlight examines the air war as it was; an Allied bombing offensive that was justified, but only up to a point. A documentary about Bomber Command that did not take a hard look at some of its shortcomings would be dishonest and incomplete. There is no way to tell the full story without offending some sensibilities.

The air war was a necessary strategic arm to help rid the world of the Nazi regime and everything it stood for. Nevertheless, some of Bomber Command's offensive tactics, created and supported by political and military leaders, deserve to be scrutinized, judged and commented upon.

As Max Hastings concludes in the final lines of his book, Bomber Command: "The cost of the bomber offensive in life, treasure and moral superiority over the enemy tragically outstripped the results that it achieved." But, he adds, "The aircrew of Bomber Command went out to do what they were told had to be done for Britain and Allied victory, and subsequent judgments on the bomber offensive can do nothing to mar the honour of such an epitaph."¹¹⁷

A serious and balanced film about the bomber offensive could not help but recognize the valour of the men who fought, nor the horror of what some of their leaders' policies had wrought.

Death by Moonlight may have revived some haunting memories, raised some uncomfortable questions, and undermined some wartime myths. But it did so honestly, accurately and fairly.

1. Steve Harris: Letter to Brian McKenna, September 2, 1992.

2. Max Hastings: Letter to producers, May 11, 1992.

3. John Keegan: Letter to producers, June 12, 1992.

4. The Sub-Committee on Veterans Affairs of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Transcript of Evidence, June 25, 26, 1992. Ottawa, p.M-1.

5. Desmond Morton: Canada and War - A Military and Political History; Butterworth & Co., Toronto, 1981. p.136.

6. Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Articles XXV and XXVI; October 18, 1907, 36 Stat 2295, TS No. 539.

7. Morton: Canada and War.p.134.

8. League Doctrine A.69, 1938 IX, League of Nations Office J, Special Supplement 182, p.15-16 (1938).

9. Captain Burrus M. Carnahan, USAF: "The Law of Air Bombardment in Its Historical Context"; The Air Force Law Review, Summer 1975. p.50.

10. John Harding interview with Dan Burke; March 17, 1990.

11. Dallas Laskey interview with Robin Hardman; August 20, 1989.

12. Carnahan, Air Force Law Review. p.60.

13. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.5.

14. Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland: The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-45; Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1961. Vol.IV, p.205.

15. John Keegan: The Second World War; Viking Penguin, New York, 1990. p.420.

16. Max Hastings: Bomber Command; The Dial Press/James Wade, New York, 1979. p.147.

17. Ibid, p.147.

18. Webster & Frankland: Vol.I, p.324. (Ref: hand-written minute from Portal to Bottomley, Feb. 15, 1942).

19. A.J.P. Taylor: English History - 1914-1945; Clarendon Press, Oxford, England, 1965. p.517-518.

20. John Terraine: The Right of the Line; Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1985. p.262 & 507.

21. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.194.

22. Ibid, p.195.

23. Max Hastings: "Authors & Critics"; Encounter, Vol.59, 1982, p.63-64.

24. Geoffrey Wheatcroft: "Aiming To Kill"; Times Literary Supplement,December 26, 1980. p.1461.

25. Keegan: The Second World War. p.433.

26. H. A. Jones: The War in the Air; Oxford Press, London, 1937. Appendix. (See also Hastings: Bomber Command. p.44).

27. Carnahan, The Air Force Law Review. p.50-51.

28. Arthur Harris: Bomber Offensive; Collins, London, 1947. p.78.

29. John Kenneth Galbraith: A Life In Our Times; Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1981. p.205-206. (See USSBS, Oct.31, 1945, p. 278-279, for quoted statistics).

30. Solly Zuckerman: From Apes To Warlords; Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978. Appendix 5.

31. Albert Speer: Inside the Third Reich; The MacMillan Company, New York, 1970. p.278.

 

32. Morton: Canada and War. p.135.

33. Galbraith, A Life In Our Times.p.214.

34. Webster & Frankland: Vol.IV, Appendix 37 (Interrogation of Albert Speer; 18th July 1945) p.378.

35. Speer: Inside the Third Reich. p.280.

 

36. Walter Pacholka interview with Robin Hardman; August 20, 1989.

37. Martin Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg; Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981. p.5.

38. Hastings:Bomber Command. p.385.

39. Portal: Letter to Harris, January 8, 1945. AIR File #8/1020, Public Record Office.

40. George Bain: CBC Radio "Morningside" interview; May 1, 1992.

41. Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg. p.296.

42. Taylor:English History - 1914-1945. p.517.

43. Cliff Chadderton: Submission to the CRTC on "The Valour and the Horror"; May 4, 1992. p.30-31.

44. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.28.

45. George Laing, former 57 and 97 Squadron Pathfinder pilot; CBC Radio "Morningside" interview; May 1, 1992.

46. Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg. p.299.

47. Wheatcroft: Times Literary Supplement. p.1461.

48. Webster & Frankland: Vol.III, p.116.

49. Hastings:Bomber Command. p.192.

50. Ibid, p.192.

51. Webster & Frankland: Vol.III, p.116. (Ref: Letter from Sinclair to Portal, Oct. 28, 1943).

52. Morton: Canada and War.p.135.

53. Churchill minute to General Ismay: March 28/45. Public Record Office; File # PREM 3/12 XC164603.

54. Anthony Verrier: The Bomber Offensive; B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1968. p.301.

55. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.401.

56. Ibid, p.401.

57. Dudley Saward: Bomber Harris; Cassell Ltd., London, 1984. p.297.

58. Webster & Frankland: Vol.III, p.113.

59. John Ezard: "The Firestorm Rages On"; The Guardian, May 18, 1992.

60. Editorial: "Discretion of the Valiant"; Times of London, Oct. 5, 1991.

61. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.149.

62. Middlebrook: The Nuremberg Raid; Allen Lane (Division of Penguin Books Ltd), London, 1973. p.11.

63. David Dickson interview with Robin Hardman; Sept. 24, 1989.

64. Dave McIntosh: Terror in the Starboard Seat; General Publishing Co. Ltd., Don Mills, Ontario, 1980. p.91.

65. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.47.

66. Murray Sayle: "Zeppelin, Fly!" The Spectator; July 28, 1984. p.23-25.

67. Steve Harris: Letter to Brian McKenna, September 2, 1992.

68. Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg.p.17.

69. Taylor: English History - 1914-1945. p.552.

70. Webster & Frankland: Vol.III, p.80.

71. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.34.

72. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.34.

73. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.27.

74. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.27.

75. Saward, Bomber Harris, p.176.

76. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.6.

77. Harris, Bomber Offensive, p.64.

78. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.402.

79. Arthur Harris interview with Gwynne Dyer; London, 1982. "War" Series transcript.

80. The New York Times: April 7, 1984. p. A-19.

81. Arthur Harris letter to Charles Portal, November 1, 1944.

AIR Files, Public Record Office.

82. Chadderton: Submission to the CRTC, p.4.

83. Murray Peden: Letter to Patrick Watson, CBC Chairman; January 30, 1992. p.4.

84. Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg. p.77-78.

85. Ibid, p.216-217.

86. Ibid, p.281.

87. Ibid, p.207.

88. Ibid, p.207.

89. Chester Hull interview with Dan Burke; April 12, 1990.

90. Middlebrook:The Battle of Hamburg. p.284-285.

 

91. Speer: Inside the Third Reich. p.284.

92. Galbraith: A Life In Our Times. p.205-206.

93. Middlebrook: The Battle of Hamburg. p.289.

94. Verrier: The Bomber Offensive. p.19.

95. John Sweetman: Operation Chastise; Jane's Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1982. p.xi.

96. Arthur Harris: Letter to Charles Portal, January 18, 1945. AIR Files, Public Record Office, London.

97. Verrier: The Bomber Offensive. p.221.

98. Webster & Frankland: Vol.II, p.168.

99. Speer:Inside the Third Reich. p.281.

100. Ibid, p.281.

101. Verrier: The Bomber Offensive. p.220.

102. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.24.

103. Terraine: The Right of the Line. p.539.

104. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.23.

105. Max Hastings: Letter to producers, May 11, 1992.

106. Jack Routledge interview with Dan Burke; March 25, 1990.

107. John Harding interview with Dan Burke; March 17, 1990.

108. Martin Middlebrook: The Berlin Raids; Penguin Books, London, 1990. p.304.

109. Ibid, p.305.

110. Middlebrook: The Nuremberg Raid. p.287.

111. Wheatcroft: Times Literary Supplement. p.1461.

112. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.242-243.

113. Death By Moonlight Post-Production Script, p.17.

114. George Bain interview with D'Arcy O'Connor; May 12, 1990.

115. John Harding interview with Dan Burke; March 17, 1990.

116. Chadderton: Submission to the CRTC. p.34-36.

117. Hastings: Bomber Command. p.410-411.

BOOKS AND PERIODICALS :

Beaton, Leonard "Mass Bombing of German Cities." The Guardian, October 2, 1961

Beck, Earl R. "The Allied Bombingof Germany, 1942-1945, and the German Response: Dilemmas of Judgment." German Studies Review, V.5, 1982

Best, Geoffrey "The Bishop and the Bomber." History Today, September, 1983

Bidinian, Larry J. The Combined allied Bombing Defensive Against the German Civilian 1942-1945 Coronado Press, Lawrence, Kansas: 1976

Birch, Stuart "Operation Overkill?" Belfast Telegraph, September 24, 1979

Brickhill, Paul The Dam Busters Evans Brothers Ltd.; London: l951

Brown, Ken "Charles Messenger: Bomber Harris and the Strategic bombing Offensive 1939-1945." Armed Forces and Society, Summer 1986

Burger, Norbert "Bomber Harris: `a tactless choice'" Financial Times, May 2, 1992

Caidin, Martin The Night Hamburg Died Ballantine Books, Inc.; New York: 1960

Carnahan, Captain Burrus M. USAF "The Law of Air Bombardment in Its Historical Context." The Air Force Law Review, Summer 1975.

Cheshire, Lord Leonard "Why we should honour every one of these men." Daily Mail, May 20, 1992

Clarke, Steve "Veterans attack war film." Standard, February 4, 1988

Cooper, Air Cdre G.S. "Flak for Bomber Command." Daily Telegraph, September 27th 1979

 

Crane, Conrad C. "Evolution of U.S. Strategic Bombing of Urban Areas." The Historian, (no date)

Crossman, R.H.S. "Apocalypse At Dresden" Esquire, November, 1963

Daily Mail. Obituary. Sir Arthur Harris. April, 7, 1984

Daily Telegraph. Editorial on proposed statue of Sir Arthur Harris. October 2, 1991

Dienel, Erika "A night in hell." The Independent, May 3 1992

Donovan, Paul "Dresden bombing TV film banned." Today, January 22, 1988

Dyer, Gwynne Interview with Sir Arthur Harris. London, 1982

Dyson, Freeman Disturbing the Universe 1979

Dyson, Freeman "Strategic bombing in World War II and Today. Has anything changed?" Talk given on March 1, 1990 at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC.

Ezard, John "Church snub cheers Harris protesters." The Guardian, May 25, 1992

Ezard, John "The Firestorm Rages On." The Guardian, May 18, 1992

The European. Editorial. "Why Britain bombed civilians." October 4, 1991

Fuller, J.F.C. The Conduct of War 1789-1961 Eyre Methuen; London:1972

Galbraith, John Kenneth A Life In Our Times Houghton Mifflin; New York: 1981

Galbraith, John Kenneth "After The Raids" American Heritage, April/May 1981

The Guardian. Obituary of Sir Arthur Harris. "Wartime head of Bomber Command." April 7, 1984

The Gazette. "Memorial to man who ordered cities destroyed causes furor." January 19, 1992

Gedye, Robin " `Bomber' statue plea by Mayor of Dresden." Daily Telegraph, December 13, 1991

Gedye, Robin "Queen urged to visit Dresden `in reconciliation'" Daily Telegraph, April 30, 1992

Gillie, Oliver "Harris Tribute Raises a Royal Dilemma." The Independent, December 13th 1991

Gow, David "Dresden mayor protests at Bomber Harris statue." The Guardian, December 13, 1991

Harris, Sir Arthur Bomber Offensive Collins; London: 1947

Harvey, J. Douglas Boys, Bombs and Brussels SproutsMcClelland and Stewart Ltd.; Toronto: 1981

Hastings, Max "Authors and Critics: The Controversy over Bombers and Bombing." Encounter, Vol. 59, 1982

Hastings, Max Bomber Command The Dial Press/James Wade; New York: 1979

Hastings, Max "The forgotten victims of Bomber Command." Daily Telegraph, May 4, 1992

Hastings, Max "History rewritten as a political tract." Daily Telegraph, February 10th, 1988

Hastings, Max "Shadow of the bomber." Sunday Telegraph, September 3, 1989

Henriques, Robert "Flare-Path." Review of Sir Arthur Harris' autobiography. Observer, January 19, 1947

Hersey, John "Experience By Battle" Life, December 27, 1943

Hewitt, Kenneth "Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73 (2), 1983

Hill, Patrick "Morse cops a load of flak." News of the World, August 6, 1989

The Independent. Editorial on proposed statue of Sir Arthur Harris. December 13, 1991

Irving, David The Destruction of Dresden William Kimber & Co.; London: 1963

Johnson, Daniel "A blitz for a blitz." The Times, May 25, 1992

Jones, H.A. The War in the Air Oxford Press; London: 1937

Keegan, John The Second World War Viking Penguin; New York: 1990

 

Kinzer, Stephen "Honor to RAF Leader Wakes Dresden's Ghosts." The New York Times, January 6, 1992

Lammers, Stephen E. "Area Bombing in World War II: The Argument of Michael Walzer." The Journal of Religious Ethics, Spring, 1983

MacPherson, Angus "Bomber Harris blasts new foe." Daily Mail, May 2, 1977

Markusen, Eric "Genocide and Total War: A Preliminary Comparison." in Genocide and the Modern Age, eds. Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski. Greenwood Press, New York: 1987

McCrystal, Cal "A butcher in bronze or just an old softie?" The Independent on Sunday, January 5, 1992

McElvoy, Anne "This is the real memorial." The Times, May 26, 1992

McIntosh, Dave Terror in the Starboard SeatGeneral Publishing Co. Ltd.; Don Mills, Ontario: 1980

Middlebrook, Martin The Battle of Hamburg Charles Scribner's & Sons; New York: 1981

Middlebrook, Martin The Berlin Raids Penguin Books; London: 1990

Middlebrook, Martin The Nuremberg Raid Allen Lane (Division of Penguin Books Ltd.); London: 1973

Middleton, Drew "Sir Arthur T. Harris is Dead at 91; Led Britain's Bomber Command." New York Times, April 7, 1984

Morton, Desmond Canada and War - A military and Political History Butterworth & Co., Toronto: 1981

Murray, Ian "`Bomber' Harris still flying into German flak." The Times, September 28, 1991

Newson, Dennis and Martin Delgado "Queen Mother in row over RAF bombing." Standard, April 28, 1992

O'Brien, R. Barry "Tribute to a wartime legend." Daily Telegraph, February 22, 1992

 

Pearce, Edward "We must not let envy turn into hatred." Standard, April 30, 1992

Peden, Murray A Thousand Shall Fall Canada's Wings Inc.; Stittsville, Ontario: 1979

Rais, Guy "RAF's secret war of words over saturation bombing." Sunday Telegraph, January 9, 1991

Reid, David. A. Review of "A Thousand Shall Fall" by Murray Peden. Quill and Quire, February, 1980

Richards, Denis "Task of the bombers." Review of Dudley Saward's biography of Sir Arthur Harris. Financial Times, June 23, 1984

Roberts, Andrew "Why this man's statue should be erected all over Germany." Standard, April 29, 1992

Rumpf, Hans The Bombing of Germany Frederick Muller Ltd.; London: 1963

Saward, Dudley Bomber Harris Cassell Ltd.; London: 1984

Sayle, Murray "Zeppelin, fly!" Review of Dudley Saward's biography of Sir Arthur Harris. The Spectator, July 28, 1984

Schaffer, Ronald "American Military Ethics in World War II: The bombing of German civilians." The Journal of American History, September, 1980

Slim, John "The neglected RAF heroes." Birmingham Post, September 24, 1979

Scott, Nicholas "Bomber Harris' name cleared." Daily Sketch, April 1, 1954

Speer, Albert Inside the Third Reich The MacMillan Company; New York: 1970

Sweeting, Adam "The brutal view of the bomber in the bunker." The Guardian, August 10, 1989

Sweeting, Adam "John Thaw goes to war...as the legendary Air Marshal Bomber Harris whose plans blitzed Nazi Germany." Sunday Mirror, July 30, 1989

Sweetman, John Operation Chastise: The Dams Raids Jane's Publishing Company Ltd.; London: 1982

Sweetman, John Schweinfurt: disaster in the skiesBallantine Books, Inc.; New York: 1971

Sunday Telegraph. "Row breaks over last-war bombing: Sir Arthur Harris's retort to charge of costly failure." October 1, 1961

 

Taylor, A.J.P. English History 1914-1945 Clarendon Press; Oxford: 1965

 

Terraine, John The Right of the Line Hodder and Stoughton; London: 1985

Terraine, John A Time For Courage MacMillan Publishing Co.; New York: 1985

Tilley, Robert "Dismay in a city ruined by Bomber's command." Sunday Telegraph, October 6, 1991

The Times. Editorial on proposed statue of Sir Arthur Harris. October 5, 1991

The Times. Obituary. Sir Arthur Harris. April 7, 1984

Trainor, Bernard E. "Bomber Harris, Bomber LeMay: Not the Way to Wage a War." International Herald Tribune, January 23, 1992

Verrier, Anthony The Bomber OffensiveB.T.Batsford Ltd.; London: 1968

Wainwright, Martin "`Bomber' Harris, hammer of Germany." The Guardian, April 7, 1984

Walzer, Michael Just and Unjust Wars Basic Books, Inc.; New York:1977

Watt, D.C. Britain Looks To Germany Oswald Wolff; London: 1965

Webster, Sir Charles and Noble Frankland The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945 Her Majesty's Stationery Office; London: 1961

Werrell, Kenneth P. "The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments." The Journal of American History (no date)

Wheatcroft, Geoffrey "Aiming to Kill." Times Literary Supplement, December 26, 1980

Wheatcroft, Geoffrey "Devastating and Exterminating." Spectator, September 29th, 1979

Wilson, Andrew "`Bomber' Harris hits out." The Observer, May 1, 1977

Young, Robin "Wraps off `Bomber' Harris." The Times, February 22, 1992

Young, John "Harris's statue to get royal unveiling." The Times, November 16, 1991

Zuckerman, Solly From Apes To Warlords Hamish Hamilton Ltd.; London: 1978

Zuckerman, Lord "The single-minded bomber." Review of Dudley Saward's biography of Sir Arthur Harris. Sunday Times, June 24, 1984

OTHER SOURCES :

AIR Files, Public Record Office; London

Bain, George Interview with D'Arcy O'Connor; May 12, 1990

Chadderton, Cliff: Submission to the CRTC on "The Valour and the Horror"; May 4, 1992.

Dick, Ernest J. Corporate Archivist, CBC. Critical Archival Examination of "The Valour and the Horror", April 3, 1992

Dickson, David Interview with Robin Hardman; September 24, 1989

Harding, John Interview with Dan Burke; March 17, 1990

Harris, Arthur Letter to Charles Portal, January 11, 1944

Harris, Arthur Letter to Charles Portal, January 18, 1945. AIR Files, Public Records Office

Hull, Chester Interview with Dan Burke; April 12, 1990

Laing, George CBC Radio "Morningside" interview; May 1, 1992

Laskey, Dallas Interview with Robin Hardman; August 20, 1989

League Doctrine A.69, 1938 IX, League of Nations Office J, Special Supplement 182. (1938)

Marshall, Sen. Jack Motion to authorize Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to study CBC/NFB film series "The Valour and the Horror" April 1, 1992

Pacholka, Walter Interview with Robin Hardman; August 20, 1989

Peden, Murray Letter to Patrick Watson, CBC Chairman;

January 30, 1992.

Portal, Charles Letter to Harris, January 8, 1945. AIR File #8/1020, Public Records Office

 

Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Articles XXV and XXVI; October 18, 1907, 36 Stat 2295, TS No. 539

Routledge, Jack Interview with Dan Burke; March 25, 1990

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