- published: 26 Oct 2012
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Allied bombing refers mostly to strategic bombing during World War II, as conducted by the Allies of World War II. Targets were places under control by the Axis powers, which included e.g. the French Atlantic coast city of Lorient, the German city of Dresden, the Italian metropolis of Milan...
Much of the allied bombing during World War II was focused on damaging the production centers of the Axis Powers. During 1944 a look at the upcoming production levels for some of Germany's most important war articles including tanks and aircraft showed a dramatic decrease in numbers due to the previous four years bombing efforts. While these numbers do show a decrease, there were problems with the bombing of Axis industrial centers. Firstly, war production could be shifted easily from major industrial centers to other areas such as churches and schools. Moving production due to allied bombing also allowed the Axis powers to arrange their new production under better management and efficiency as well. Most allied bombing consisted of two different strategies taken by the British and American forces. British bombing came during the night and targeted central cities, and American bombing came during the day and targeted the production plants.
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.
Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.