Webb wrote:
Harris was wrong too. Bombing civilians does nothing but kill a lot of civilians.
Except that the area bombing of German cities was not a policy of Harris' own design - it came from government. He just did his job in ensuring it was done effectively. At night there is very little you could do with a bomber in the 1940 except hit "area" targets - the US Army's 8th AF being "fortunate" in having the technology to bomb in daylight and hit precision targets
en-masse (the RAF had the technology, but the Lancaster - as several daylight raids such as the one on the Gremberg Rail Yard proved - was no day bomber. Neither was the Halifax, Stirling etc). Area bombing had a massive effect on German capacity to do "other stuff" (just think of where the '88s would have gone had they not been tied to the cities); it destroyed morale and major industrial and logistical hubs. It sapped the energy and will to continue - and a policy the Germans themselves maybe would have adopted had they steered their technology that way - but their preference was for random, indiscriminate weapons such as the V1 & V2 (which we targeted with our own "superweapons" - weapons that were the 1940s equivalent of the "smart bomb" (but weighing in at up to 22,000lbs)); by the time they had any viable heavy bombers it was too late to have any reasonable numbers.
Harris was just a rather convenient person, thankfully who had broad shoulders, to have the burden apportioned to him post war for what others, particularly the increasingly fashionable and powerful postwar left, considered a distasteful policy. But hey, the alternative in 1940-1944 was a Nazi ruled Europe...
A price worth paying I think.
