Bombing - The Biggest Offensive of All Time

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British morale did not break. Nor was the British economy affected much by the bliss. In 1944, absenteeism rates as a result of bombing rang back 4% of all absenteeism. Churchill was told that the evidence from Harlem and Liverpool and the Zongzong made it to leave you bomb heavy enough so workers would stay at work. It wasn't true in Germany. But Bonnetonand had to say they persisted in the teeth of great illicriticism in the army and the navy.

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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