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Did anyone see this earlier this evening? I thought it was very interesting, but it angered me aswell. The city had armouments factories but the German airforce wiped out many residential areas of the city, killing many civilians, and they destroyed most of the infastructure of Coventry. They obliterated the 500 year old Cathedral which was to the city what Windsor Castle is to Windsor. Many of the old folk being interviewed especially for the programme were upset when they recounted their memories - especially when talking about the destruction of the Cathedral.

The BBC did a kind of 'glory' bit at the end, a kind of 'we got the bastards back' kind of thing when they detailed how we bombed the crap out of many German cities afterwards and how the death tolls there were well in excess of the number that died in Coventry. One old man from Coventry said on the programme that he hated German people from that day forth and it took him until recently, when his son went to work in Germany and came back and said 'Dad the Germans are actually nice people, they are hospitable and kind' for him to start to forgive them. He said he had to let it go but he had harboured a hatred towards them for about 50 years.

What do people think about all this? Can bombing a largely civilian city ever be justified in a war? Were the Germans right to moan, and still moan to this day, about the bombing of Dresden when they had flattened one of our civilian cities (although, admittedly, the destruction at Dresden was greater and the death toll much higher)? Were the German's being rather cheeky when, in the 1990's (very recently), they complained about the building of a monument to RAF chief Arthur 'bomber' Harris in London, when they were not only the aggressor in WW2 but they also hit our civilian cities first? What do people think?

i find it strange that a country that suffered so much death, destruction and hardship and fought as bravely as Britain to keep its people free and retain its identity and not have a foreign power dictate to it would so meekly surrender so much of its independence ,soverignty and power to a foreign European entity and throw its borders open to strangers from all over the world who have no connection to us and no right to be here and hand them everything on a plate and change our ways to suit them for fear of offending them.i watched that documentary and the people of that generation were a different breed to us now.they had pride and dignity.just as well the do good liberal human rights people werent in charge them.as regards the carpet bombing of Germany i think bomber Harris summed it up when he said "they have sowed the wind now they must reap the whirlwind"

Well done davey. A timely rant against the one entity that has moulded the disparate countries in Europe into more or less a unit that will help prevent a repeat of the tragedies started on that continent twice in the last hundred years and times without number prior to that.

Your Little Englander, blinkered, xenophobic approach is exactly what the world needs at present.

Back to the subject.

During the Spanish Civil War the Luftwaffe had shown that it would not differentiate between civilian and military/industrial targets in pursuit of strategic and tactical advantage. This led to a great fear in the late 1930s that the UK would be hit hard from day one of any war with Germany.

When this did not happen until the bombing of London in 1940, there was a relaxation in the minds of the populace of many cities in the intervening period, so the shock in the civilian population was greater than it might have been had the bombing started on September 3 1939.

By the time Coventry was bombed the bombing of London had given an indication of just what may be in store if a concentrated raid took place on a major British city but the shock, when this happened, was a major coup for the Luftwaffe and German High Command (compare this to the US use of "Shock and Awe" against Iraq) and the demoralisation of the populace that temporarily ensued was seen as a bonus on top of the destruction. "Coventration" and to "Coventrate" became new words in the language of the Luftwaffe - but, of course, what they taught the British was a lesson well learned as many German cities were to find out.

As a war tool this was matched later by the British with, not only Dresden, but the firestorm that destroyed much of Hamburg, the flood that followed the Dambusters raid which drowned many innocent civilians and the 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, all of which were meant to add terror to destruction.

Max says "but they also hit our civilian cities first" This is not strictly true. The RAF bombed Berlin on 25 August 1940 on Churchill's orders in reprisal for an accidental Luftwaffe bombing of some civilian homes in London on the evening of 24 August whilst attacking RAF installations east of London.

Max also states "when they had flattened one of our civilian cities". Again not strictly true. Coventry was a city which produced armaments, vehicles, chemicals and food, all vital to the war effort. As with most European cities in the 19th and 20th centuries, the industrial and housing areas had grown up cheek by jowl. Whilst industrial estates, without housing, existed many "legitimate" targets were alongside housing. Indeed many regimes have deliberately built military and industrial complexes close to housing in the hope that they will be spared attack because of the closeness of innocent civilians.

Today, we have so called smart weaponry which is supposed to be able to avoid civilian casualties yet we have had to coin the term "collateral damage" to cover errors made by technology not performing as it was designed to.

Imagine flying at 200 mph at around 10,000 feet with a 1940s bomb sight, trying to pick out an individual target in darkness whilst having to compensate for your aircraft trying to avoid anti aircraft fire, other aircraft in the bombing stream and bombs from other aircraft. An impossible situation which led the accidental bombing of London in August 1940, to the following raid on Berlin and to Hitler responsponding with the bombing of London in September 1940. From that point on both sides decided to "area bomb".

In total war everything, including the morale of the populace is a legitimate target. This may be morally wrong but it has become endemic in the minds of those who wage war and those, who see a "threat" from others from outside their own country.

Once defending through attack becomes the method of waging war everything becomes possible and becomes acceptable.

Good post mysteryman

Mysteryman, some interesting points there. If it is a case of all's fair in love and war, I don't understand why the German Government complained about the building of a statue to Arthur 'Bomber' Harris in London in 1992, and why we still have the debate going as to whether 'Dresden was a war crime?' If another statue to Arthur Harris was going to be erected in, say, the town of his birth (Cheltenham) 50 years from now, the German Government would STILL be complaining even then. Dresden will still be a live issue 50 years from now aswell.

Bombing innocent civilians was never, and will never, be right.
Unfortunately, history has a nasty habit of repeating itself, and the same carnage is being wreaked by 'super powers' the world over to this day.
Why and how the human race can devote so much of its' time hating its' fellow man has always been a mystery to me.
Life's so short - we should try to enjoy it while we have the chance.

Max said "If it is a case of all's fair in love and war, I don't understand why the German Government complained about the building of a statue to Arthur 'Bomber' Harris in London in 1992"

Let's first deal with the idea of "all's fair in love and war"

Aerial bombardment changed the face of warfare. Previously armies fought battles and though civilian populations were caught up in battles, sieges or massacres, for the most part civilians were to one side of war apart from being hit in the pocket when kings and later governments raised taxes to pay for their adventures.

The advent of the bomber in WW1 immediately raised the spectre of terror bombing as well as the ability to hit the enemy's means of support for war making.

This changed the status of most civilians on both sides, particularly in WW2, where the bulk of the adult population was engaged in vital war work, or support for such.

Thus when waging total war the only "innocent" civilians could be deemed to be children (and Hitler even blurred this distinction by the way he used the Hitler Youth in the latter stages of WW2).

If you want to hit the means of production of war materials, stopping workers sleeping, eating, being able to shelter, travel to work and even living is as "legitimate" as bombing buildings, machinery and infrastructure.

The Dresden raid is likely to go down in history - from the perspective of more than a century when the folk memory starts to dim - as a sop to Joe Stalin.

I have met many aircrew over the years who flew with both the RAF and USAAF on the raids (the assault lasted the best part of 3 days). Many of the aircrew felt the target and ferocity was unjustified but they did what they were asked to do - and, in the case of the RAF Bomber Command, later suffered the indignity of being the only major fighting force not to have a campaign medal struck for them - Churchill, for his own reasons, and the collective national conscience, decided that the horrors of Dresden and area bombing were a blot on the British conscience, not quite cricket and all that. This article by Max Hastings tells the tale extremely well:



So should the Germans have complained about the statue to Harris? In terms of forgive and forget and unity, they have a point, particularly as the statue was erected so many years after the campaign and the average man in the street or strasse sees Harris as the embodiment of the Allies bombing strategy.

The UK politicians tried to make out that the statue was there to remind people of the sacrifice of Bomber Command as a whole - in that case there could have been other ways (including a medal) which would have done the job without offending sensibilities. Let's face it no one in the UK or Germany complains of the Battle of Britain Flight Lancaster being displayed at airshows; the restored Halifax bomber at Canadian Forces Trenton Museum in Ontario, which is a memorial to Canadian and RAF Bomber Command crews, was being looked at by some elderly Germans three weeks ago today when I photographed it and they were listening to stories of the raids those machines carried out, commenting on both the courage of the crews and the madness of the war which brought such destruction on their country.

The Harris statue and the very public ceremony led by the Queen Mother in 1992 was possibly misjudged but, from the perspective of those who suffered from Goering's raids on the UK, who lived through the agony of six years of war, be it on the home front, at sea, in the air or in the deserts of Africa, the jungles of the Far East and the fields of Europe, the bombing of the German homeland and the slowing and eventual crippling of the German war machine at a terrible cost in British and German lives needed some sort of public focal point which Harris's statue gives.

The BBC documentary on Coventry, indeed any historical documentary about war between peoples who are now allies, should serve to remind us of the stupidity of dynasties, politicians and power hungry xenophobes and not be used to rekindle old hatreds.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but back at the time after the carpet bombing of Coventry rather than any attempt to strike only strategic targets even giving the relative inaccuracy of bomb aiming the fear must have been where in the UK would be the next place to be targeted with the same tactic.

Hence while certainly not right, and ultimately with far more citizens of German towns being wiped out in a single raid than in Coventry, at the time the politicians as well as the general feeling in the UK no doubt considered that not retaliating was not an option.

was the statue of Harris ever put up or did german protests prevent it? i'm sure i've read there is no statue and the remaining bomber crews still with us think there should be.
Think itv did a drama about him, possibly john thaw played him, not seen it so maybe worth a look.