Strategic Bombing

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I don't think there was a feeling that the continued bombing of cities was in any way linked to the prevention of an atomic bomb. I didn't think of being saved in that particular way which he mentioned. And Steve, was it a decent alternative? Why wasn't it used? Well, I'm not sure that there was when one looks at what Richard was suggesting. The way that, for example, almost imitating the Luftwaffe actually does a sort of close support arm to the German army. That was Richard never much on the table,. It goes back as I think he mentioned to 1918 and sort of the RAF's desperation to be a sort of separate strategic arm.

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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