What Would It Change Your Mind?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

We're going to have our four speakers each delivering a speech of ten minutes. I'm going to be ruthless in cutting them off at their ten minutes, because I know they will all want to go on for longer. When they finished, I'm then going to announce the vote that you all made as you came into this room. We will then open the debate up to you, the audience, and we'll take questions which you can direct at the panel or just a general question. And then we will have summing up speeches and discover how, if at all, you have changed your mind during the course of this evening. All right, let us begin this evening with our first speaker

No one doubts the bravery of the thousands of men who flew and died in Bomber Command. The death rate was an appalling 44%. And yet until the opening of a monument in Green Park this year they have received no official recognition, with many historians claiming that the offensive was immoral and unjustified. How can it be right, they argue, for the Allies to have deliberately targeted German cities causing the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians? Even on a strategic level the offensive failed to bring about the collapse of civilian morale that was its intention. Others, however, maintain that the attacks made a decisive contribution to the Allied victory. Vast numbers of German soldiers and planes were diverted from the eastern and western fronts, while Allied bombing attacks virtually destroyed the German air force, clearing the way for the invasion of the continent. In this debate from October 2012, philosopher and author A C Grayling and Professor of History at Exeter University Rochard Overy...

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices