Bombing of Berlin

[Lang]

The elephant in the room of course is the morality question of carpet bombing civilian populations. It is very difficult 80 years later to put ourselves into the shoes of those at the time.

The British offensive was primarily aimed at the cities and inaccuracy of individual night bombing guaranteed the target of a "ball bearing works" resulted in vast areas of urban dwellings being obliterated. Fire storms caused by incendiary attacks in such places as Hamburg and Dresden could not be interpreted as anything other than a public slaughter. Churchill and Harris freely advertised their aim to terrify the civilian population into submission.

If the jolly British singing Pack Up Your Troubles in the London underground could not be demoralised and in fact were made more determined, the Germans were highly unlikely to have been reduced to submission. It is hard to escape the modern concept of terrorism.

Few of the crews going out day after day allowed these questions to affect their duty but many carried the guilt for the rest of their lives. They are all gone now but those of us who knew and talked with the WW2 crews know a lot of them struggled to justify many missions. Guilt played a big part in many post-war mental problems.

Wars are a rotten business as the people of Syria, Libya, Gaza, Afghanistan,Yemen, half of Africa etc etc can tell you this very moment.

Lang