Bomber Harris, Criminal or Hero?

World War II British Military
#301

Fair comments Rising sun…

Maybe we could seperate GRAND STRATEGY from GRAND TACTICAL, Churchill having good concepts of the former, and an irresponsible attitude to the latter.

There is no doubt in my mind that Churchill’s policy was aimed fairly and squarely at the “long haul”…He often made the point that England’s long association with warfare was very much a history of “…losing battles and winning wars.”

The Allied bomber offensive is a classic case in point of this attitude…Harris, in a postwar interview, defended this, stating of the Battle of Berlin…

“You must remember that Bomber Command fought a thousand battles during the war. I’m not saying The Battle of Berlin was a defeat; quite the contrary, I think it was a major contribution to the victory of the Allied alliance.”

I detect the hand and mind of WS Churchill in statements like that one. Harris was very much in it for the “long haul”, just as his boss.

Greece is a case of justification after the fiasco. The only redeeming feature we can find for it is the oft cited “delayed Barbarossa”…but, doesn’t Franz Halder state quite catagorically that Barbarossa “waited for the Spring thaw to come and go, for the ground to dry out. We could not have launched it earlier than what we did.”

Malaya suffered from a definate lack of material, if not manpower, and commanders on the spot made little or no effort to study the problems of Jungle warfare, or to put into place proper measures (logistically speaking) for the maintenance of a protracted siege. Yamashita’s Army was very much on a shoestring, bluffing Percival into surrender after using unorthodox methods to overcome Malayan terrain. Troop dispositions in Malaya, too, were more to do with securing airfields. A modern bomber force and a genuine attempt to grasp command of the air may well have made the Japanese advance untenable, since it was achieved not by walking down the peninsula as some assume, but by a succession of amphibious landings further and further down the coast. With all of Bomber Command’s resources hogged to hit Germany, one wonders what might have been achieved with proper air support, or proper allocation of resources full stop.

#302

Yes, that’s the distinction I was driving at.

I agree with that in general, but I’d qualify the comment about Yamashita being on a shoestring. He was offered a much larger force but reckoned, correctly, that he could do it with the forces actually employed, to avoid the LOC etc problems of a larger force. To the extent that it was done on a shoestring, it was intentionally so to maximise mobility and flexibility, and command and control. Not that he was quite able to control the Imperial Guards at times, but he didn’t want them to begin with.

He did, however, plan the operation and assemble his invasion force in a very short time with impressive results. Having air superiority from day one and having tanks when the Commonwealth forces had none didn’t do any harm, either.

The biggest impediment to the British defence at the outset was Churchill, for reasons of grand strategy, refusing to allow Percival into Thailand until the Japanese attacked there, by which time it was too late and the die was pretty much cast, so that he didn’t risk losing American support by being seen as the aggressor. If he’d known what the Japanese were going to do at Pearl Harbor, and later at Bataan, he needn’t have worried. You might find this discussion interesting . http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4781

#303

Nice point about Yamashita…Unprecedented that a commander should refuse a larger allocation of troops for an operation! Yamashita qualifies himself as no fool!

Great post Sun!

#304

He sure wasn’t.

He was allocated five divisions by the high command but decided to use only three.

He reckoned on taking Singapore within 100 days but did it in 70.

#305

Do we have a case for Yamashita being the PREMIER Japanese General of WW2?

#306

oh, and thankyou for thread 4781…a nice discussion and some great links there too!

#307

I don’t know enough about all the others, especially those in China, to make a fair comparison.

He was certainly the most effective in the initial phase of the southward push and was called back in the final phase for the Philippines where he was again effective, given he arrived only a few days before the Americans invaded and had no time to organise his defences as he would have wished. I think his reassignment to the Philippines when it was ‘backs to the wall’ indicates that he was seen as one of the best generals Japan had.

The problem was that he was sidelined by Tojo after Malaya and sent back to China because he was so effective and seen as a bit of a threat, so he didn’t get the opportunity to shine in the SWPA or Pacific during most of the war.

He might be the unluckiest Japanese general as it seems that he wasn’t responsible for the Manila Massacre which earned him the death penalty, while the Parit Sulong Massacre in Malaya was the Imperial Guards off on a frolic of their own. Not too sure about the massacres of Chinese in Singapore. Tsuji was behind it, but I can’t remember the extent of Yamashita’s involvement.

#308

Napoleon said give me a lucky general, or words to that effect.

Yamashita was lucky. he couldn’t have susained his assault for a further 30 days. Fortunately, for him, the British were lacking in many things, particularly leadership and training - actually, their biggest drawback was leadership.

Bomber Harris was a man of his times. Between the two world wars it was always thought that strategic bombing would be the winner of future wars. Britan had been bombed by Zepelins in the first war. Not only Harris, but the commander of the US air forces in the Pacific (his name escapes me now) was of the same opinion, and to some extent it proved to be correct.

Naturally, Churchill and Harris would sound alike, they were both educated in the British boarding school system and would have had a classic education. They understood the necessity of sacrifice and ruthlessness to win wars.

No, Harris was not a criminal, he was doing what he believed necessary to succeed and he was in a position to influence the strategy in which he believed.

#309

The formative experiences of the likes of Bomber Harris should also be remembered. In his case, it consisted of several years in the RFC looking down on the devastation of the trenches.
Postwar, theoreticians like Douhet postulated that it would be quicker, cheaper and more humane to destroy the warmaking potential of the enemy at source (i.e. flatten the factories where their munitions were manufactured) than to destroy it on the field of battle.
To someone who had spent several years witnessing the literal decimation of a generation, that theory has to have a lot of appeal. Indeed, in his memoirs he wrote the following…

#310

Absolutely! And it was Total War. Many civillians were killed when caught up in the ‘battlefield’. Killed by their own troops and allies on numerous occassions. The Germans set the standard, as Harris remarked with his now famous ‘reap the whirlwind’ remarks. He was also well aware of the terror bombing of Warsaw, the Lowlands and France.
Having stood on the roof of the Air Ministry and witnessed the devastation of the ‘Docklands’ and many of its civillian population, he wasn’t inclined to be sympathetic towards German casualties. On the contrary, he considered such casualties as being a psychological weapon to put pressure on the German leadership by lowering the morale of the population and the front-line troops.

One of the things about Harris that impresses me is that, at the time of his comment, Britain had not the capacity to launch a ‘whirlwind’. However, he was obviously aware of the state of British aero technology and new that there were people such as Chadwick, who designed the Lancaster (from his earlier design of the underpowered Manchester), who would ‘deliver the goods’ so to speak.

#311

Total War, is total war…

that said thetargeting taretting of cultural heritage targets has little merit in the way of serving the end game.

the blitz on london, ironically showed that a nations psyche and moral could not be impaired by bombing of civilians, but the converse… indesriminate bombing of cilvilians strengthens the morale againt the oppresser

#312

…that said, in 1940-194 what else dd we have?
…come 1944-1945 did we need to?

i still think overall he IS as british hero, and as i pass his monument on the way to work each morning I am glad of Harris and Dowdings work - on balance!

afterall, who of use has had aperfect carreer at work? we have all made mistaked, albeit perhaps without such terrifying results or impact?

#313

Firstly I think it important, to understand German war aims.

1 Germany was not fighting a War over a disputed territory, unless one would consider the entire planet as a disputed territory.

2 Germany was engaged in a policy of industrialized extermination of whole races and peoples.

As it so happened, Hitler considered the British an Aryan race but given that the Third Reich was essentially a Hitler and his dog one man production in terms of authority and that long term policy in the Third Reich was whatever Hitler said it was, whenever he said it, there would be no reason that had the United Kingdom been occupied by the Third Reich, that Hitler might not have decided that the British were one of the lost tribes of Israel and have then decided to exterminate the entire British population.

In Germany, Hitler was hugely popular and his popularity only started to wane when the War started to go seriously wrong for Germany. Therefor to make a distinction between a civilian and soldier in the case of the Third Reich is I would argue a somewhat false one, in that the German soldier crushed under the tracks of a Soviet T-34 might well have been somebody who hated Hitler and all that he stood for and only was in the army because he would have been shot had he refused to serve in the military, whilst the housewife blown to bits by an RAF bomb in Dresden might have baked Hitler a cake in celebration of the defeat of France in 1940 and would have been worried that the Nazi authorities were being too soft in their treatment of the Russians and the Poles. Given that the British were fighting an exterminationist regime, that had popular support, the use of area bombing becomes a legitimate tool of War. The question mark over Harris’ actions is that, from what little I know of the subject is that he pursued massed bomber raids on German cities towards the later part of the war with a single minded purpose when in fact there were other targets, which would have produced as great and perhaps greater military advantage for the cost of less German lives. In his defense, a problem which Harris would have had, but today historians and commentators do not, is that he could not have seen the exact results in terms of German morale which area bombing would have had and therefor a continuing attempt to break German morale by area bombing may have seemed rational and even humane. One factor which must have influenced German policy at several levels is that after what the German authorities had got up to in Russia, is that a ferocious response would have been expected in the event of a Russian occupation of Germany and with that in mind, even after the War had gone seriously wrong for Germany it was not an un-rational choice for Germans to take their chances with RAF bombing in the hope that something would turn up, rather than surrendering and being occupied by the Soviet Union. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and with that in mind, I can’t see there is anything the RAF could have done in the policy of the area bombing of cities which would have forced the Germans to surrender, short of having dropped a few nuclear weapons on German cities in 1944/45.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#314

You’re only a war criminal if you’re side loses, think about it.

#315

A few facts.

Arthur Harris did not command policy the war cabinet did and passed orders through under air vice marshal portal. Harris was given a list of targets and choose himself what was the best target for that day.

Dresden was attacked after Churchill needed to show Stalin the American’s and British were still aiding the Russians.Harris was given the choise of three citys.Dresden was choosen because it was the main german supply link facing the red army.

Unknown by many the American air force attacked Dresden by day while bomber command at night.The disproportionate blame for the massace was put on Bomber command simply because the Lancaster bomber could at that time carry a maximum of roughly Three times more bomb load than the B-17,s.

Bomber command crews were the only branch of the British armed forces that fought from the first till the last day of the war.

Of the 125,000 bomber crews 55,000 did not survive.

Not a single bomber command member received a campaign medal at the end of hostilitys.

There is no war memorial to the lost crews.Where as even the U boat crews have a war memorial.

The estimated 20-40,000 civilian deaths in Dresden was horrific but it should be put next to the Tokio fire raids which killed an estimated 80-200,000 casualtys

Bomber Harris should be judged on his full service and not by the worst possable scenarios.

My apoligies in advance for what appears to be snobery over bomber command i just feel very strongly that they were and are still not getting the just recognition for the exceptional bravery they volunteered to give night after night over the Enemy skys of Germany.

best regards blu3bottle.

#316

And if you put children in gas chambers, turn entire families out of their homes into the Russian winter (after you’ve stolen their winter cloths), or sponsor beheading and raping contests…

#317

Actually, it was the other way around. The RAF attacked at night and the AAF finished off what wasn’t yet cinders. But the sequence matters little…

As far as assigning blame, the Americans bear just as much guilt. It was all a matter of timing; and anyone implying that the American bomber generals such as Spaatz and LeMay weren’t “our bastards” as much as Harris was are severally deluded…

In the end, they were as responsible for the policy of attacking cities as Harris was. They were just as at fault for the blunder of burning cities rather than armies --with the brief exception for the window of the period around the D-Day landings (much to the chagrin of both Harris and Spaatz)…

#318

Thread returned for discussion…

#319

Sir Arthur Harris-WAR HERO FOR ALL TIME!

#320

Would not call Harris a war hero but by the standards of the time he did what he could to end the war.

The axis forces tried to do what Harris did but they never developed strategic bombing forces to the extent that they were useful or numerous enough. The Germans tired the hardest with medium bombers in the Blitz on British Cities followed by the V1 and V2.