A Brief History of the War on Terror

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We must ask ourselves is how would the war have turned out if we had not used our heavy bombers against Nazi Germany. The Nazis invented total warfare in the brutal invasion of Poland in September 1939. A military weaker Britain could hardly hope to achieve anything against such atrocities with conventional land and sea warfare. Once again, I would like to emphasize that we must understand the situation as it really was at the time. We should be careful when indulging in the luxury of moral judgement with the hindsight of 70 years. Please put up your hand, people who have questions to ask.

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...

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