INTERNATIONAL JEWRY'S HELLSTORM

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• published: 03 May 2015
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Hellstorm: the Death of Nazi Germany 1944-1947 by Thomas Goodrich: “The targets of Bomber Command are always military,”Air Minister Sir Archibald Sinclair assured the House of Commons in early 1943. “There is no indiscriminate bombing,” chorused Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee a short time later. “As has been repeatedly stated in the House, the bombing is of those targets which are most effective from the military point of view.” Added political leader Harold Balfour: “I can give the assurance that we are not bombing the women and children of Germany wantonly.” “To bomb cities as cities, deliberately to attack civilians, quite irrespective of whether or not they are actively contributing to the war effort, is a wrong deed, whether done by the Nazis or by ourselves,” announced George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester. “It will be ironical,” added the preeminent British historian, Basil Liddell Hart, “if the defenders of civilization depend for victory upon the most barbaric, and unskilled, way of winning a war that the modern world has seen. . . .We are now counting for victory on success in the way of degrading it to a new level—as represented by indiscriminate (night) bombing.” “The ruthless mass bombing of congested cities is as great a threat to the integrity of the human spirit as anything which has yet occurred on this planet . . . ,” author Vera Brittain later protested. “There is no military or political advantage which can justify this blasphemy.” Evidence that the much dreaded moral demise of Great Britain had already arrived was provided by many RAF bomber crews themselves. To many airmen, the almost total lack of Luftwaffe opposition in the skies over Germany made the bombing of cities less and less like war and more and more like murder.While open criticism of government policy could have earned a reprimand, court-martial, imprisonment, or worse, the turmoil raging within many a young flyer occasionally surfaced. During one pre-flight briefing for yet another carpet bombing raid, an anonymous voice from the back of the room cried out, “women and children first again.” “There were people down there,” another crewman confessed,“being fried to death in melted asphalt in the roads, they were being burnt up and we were shuffling incendiary bombs into this holocaust. I felt terribly sorry for the people in that fire I was helping to stoke up.” Surprisingly, though duty-bound to obey orders, members of the military hierarchy occasionally gave vent to personal anger and outrage at their government’s actions. Incensed by the British media’s bloodthirsty gloating over the massacres—“all germans are guilty!” ran one headline; “no pity! no mercy!” screamed another—Brigadier Cecil Aspinall-Oglander at last lashed out in a letter to the London Times: Britain and her Allies and well-wishers must all be devoutly thankful that the RAF is at last able to repay Germany in her own coin and to inflict upon her cities the same devastation that she has inflicted on ours. But it must offend the sensibilities of a large mass of the British population that our official broadcasts, when reporting these acts of just retribution, should exult at and gloat over the suffering which our raids necessitate. . . . Let us at least preserve the decencies of English taste. An Englishman does not exult when a criminal is condemned to the scaffold, nor gloat over his sufferings at the time of his execution. While Arthur Harris was the man planning and implementing the bombing campaign, and did so with undisguised glee, Winston Churchill was the individual responsible for its onset and, ultimately, its outcome. Far from bending to the cries of mercy and humanity, the prime minister pursued the bomber offensive with a dogged determination that brooked no deviation. Even so, the enigmatic British leader was not without his moments of doubt and on occasion, pangs of conscience surfaced in an otherwise stubborn demeanor. “In the course of the film showing the bombing of German towns from the air, very well and dramatically done,” a guest of the prime minister jotted in his diary, “W. C. suddenly sat bolt upright and said to me: ‘Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?’” Music used here in documentary: "Adagio For TRON", performed by Daft Punk