The Boy's Toy's Question

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I think that played a large part in thinking and planning. I wouldn't say it's the entire reason, though. When you look at the arrival of Harris at Bomber Command, he was very keen to impress as soon as possible. He scraped together every aircraft he could lay his hands on for the first thousand bomber raids. That was as much a propaganda and publicity stunt as it was an act of war. So, yeah, there was an element of that in it. But if you can drop an atomic bomb and justify it to end a war... Well, that's my move into separate terrain. OK, we've got time for two more questions and two more questions only. The

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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