British and the RAF Started the Second World War With a Hand That Had Been Handed

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Britain and the RAF started the Second World War with a hand that had been dealt in the interwar years. Its whole aerial strategy was based on having a bomber fleet that would reach out, either deter Germany from attacking or do fatal damage to Germany's war industries. In 1942, when this wasn't working, but the big bombers were coming along, they were where they were. They only really had one course of action, and that was to go and bomb Germany if we were to show defiance. If we were actually going to hurt the enemy in any meaningful way, that was really the only choice we had.

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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