Perhaps the worst aspect of this policy is that it removed all the traditional distinctions between combatants and civilians. There has to be some line over which military men will not cross, even if it is an arbitrary one. The problem with the Allied air strategy during the Second World War was that it removed the line without even attempting to draw a new one. The failure to do so opens the door to the nightmare of unlimited warfare, where anything is allowed provided it gets the job done – war without rules, without principles, without conscience. I hesitate to make the comparison with the amorality that led to the Holocaust, as several historians before me have done, because that would be going too far. But, ethically speaking at least, we are only a few steps away.
* * *
It would be reassuring to report that the British people of the time at least considered these issues before they lent their support to the bomber war, but this was by no means the case. Few people ever spoke out against the bombing of German cities like Hamburg. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, was one, as was the Labour politician Richard Stokes – but their speeches in Parliament were largely dismissed by the British press as unpatriotic. Basil Liddell Hart was another who objected: after writing enthusiastically about the theory of bombing he was much less enamoured with bombing in practice. As early as 1942 he claimed that it would be ironic if the so-called defenders of civilization could only defeat Hitler by depending on ‘the most barbaric, and unskilled, way of winning a war that the modern world has seen’. 8
Beyond those lone voices, however, the atmosphere was less one of regretful determination than of pure triumph, with ever-increasing superlatives emblazoned across the front pages of all the newspapers. The men who flew the bombers were regarded as heroes: several British and American airmen have told me that they would often spend a night in a pub without ever having to buy a drink for themselves. Those who were recruited for morale-raising tours round British factories were treated like celebrities, and their descriptions of the huge fires created by Allied bombs were always greeted with enthusiastic cheers. 9
By the end of the war, however, things had begun to change. Britain was already turning its back on the deeds of Bomber Command. After six long years of conflict the appetite for German blood was no longer what it had been in 1943, and nobody wanted to be associated with a policy that had killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. One by one, politicians, planners and even the Prime Minister distanced themselves from the decisions that had led to the ‘blanket bombing’ of German cities. The only senior figure who openly accepted responsibility for the policy was Sir Arthur Harris, who had always been its outspoken champion. At the end of the war he became something of a pariah, and there are numerous examples of how the political establishment tried to distance themselves from him. 10Rightly or wrongly, his reputation remains severely tarnished to this day – as the defacing of his statue makes clear.
In the USA the tide was also turning. The American people had always opposed the wholesale bombing of cities, so their reaction to the supposedly indiscriminate bombing of Dresden in February 1945 was of outrage. Across the country front-page reports appeared claiming that American airmen were engaged in the ‘deliberate terror bombing of great German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler’s doom’. 11The people, and the media, were not pacified until General Arnold stepped forward to insist that the USAAF had not departed from its strict policy of bombing only military targets. Unlike in Britain, this assertion was generally accepted, and the idea that American involvement in bombing Germany had been anything less than exemplary did not really resurface until the 1960s. 12Even today, Americans tend to reserve their distaste either for the way the British conducted the air war, or for how they themselves acted in the subjugation of Japan.
As popular revulsion for bombing has grown, the men who flew the planes and dropped the bombs have gradually become the scapegoats for our communal sense of shame. And since it was the British whose bombing was apparently more indiscriminate, it is the RAF who have received most of the blame. Almost every British veteran I interviewed for this book expressed indignation over the way the world has come to judge their actions since 1945. Indeed, I have often found it difficult to secure interviews with them in the first place, because many were worried by my intentions. They assumed that my wish to show the German side of the story meant that I was likely to do what countless people have done: that is, to blame them personallyfor the suffering that British bombs caused ordinary Germans. In short, they were worried that I would treat them in the same way as the protesters treated them at the unveiling of Harris’s statue.
This is one of the saddest legacies of the bomber war. While I admit that I have a small measure of sympathy for someof the beliefs held by those protesters, I deplore their abuse of Bomber Command veterans. If it is wrong to punish German civilians for the sins of their political leaders, then it is equally wrong to attack British airmen for the planning decisions of their superiors. British bomber crews were almost always told at briefing that they were attacking military or industrial targets. They were motivated by a sincere desire to help their country, and to rid the world of a profoundly evil regime. Whatever we think of the way the bomber war was conducted, those men, who faced death daily, and witnessed the deaths of countless friends and comrades, deserve our utmost respect.
It seems fitting here to record what the veterans themselves have to say about the part they played in the Hamburg bombings. Most of the men I have interviewed seem to have demonstrated an understandable lack of imagination while they were actually flying over Germany: they were young, some still in their teens, and they pursued war with all the enthusiasm of youth. As they flew over the fires at Hamburg the typical reaction was not ‘Oh, those poor devils down there!’ but ‘Cor, this is a damn good show tonight!’ 13They rarely spared a thought for the people beneath the bombs, and even if they did it was usually only to register the notion that Germany had asked for it. For those who had lived through the Blitz on Britain, the Germans thoroughly deserved what they were getting.
Some of the veterans I have spoken to are unrepentant to this day. One who sees no reason to regret the part he played in the bombing says: ‘I don’t care about their cities. I was glad to see them burning… My only regret was that we got shot down when we did, because I would much rather have done a lot more.’ 14
Others seem to have softened over the years, if only to acknowledge the suffering of those who were, nevertheless, still legitimate targets. A few have taken the process further, and seem genuinely troubled by the thought of those who had to fight their way through the firestorm. In the years since the war they have had time to reflect on the terrible consequences of the fires, and even to question the part they played in events.
Colin Harrison of 467 Squadron is one such man. Some time after the war he came across a photograph of an old man and his wife, dead, on the street in Hamburg, and the image haunts him to this day. ‘I often thought about those two old people,’ he says. ‘The street was clear – all the rubbish had been pushed to one side. There was no rubble on the road. And I often wondered whether they had anything to do with me… I wondered if I’d done it.’ 15
If we are ever to lay this painful subject to rest, we could do worse than take a leaf out of Colin Harrison’s book. I do not wish to imply that he is right to feel any guilt for his part in the Hamburg bombings – far from it – only that his capacity for empathy is to be praised. The legacy of the last war will never be left behind until both sides learn to acknowledge the consequences of their actions, as he has done, regardless of whether or not we believe that those actions were justified.