I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. Statement on the July 1943 bombings of Hamburg, as quoted in. "Facts and myths about Bomber Harris". Harris sailed for England from Beira at the Company administration's expense in August, a member of a 300-man party of white Southern Rhodesian war volunteers. In 1936 Harris commented on the Palestinian Arab revolt that "one 250 lb. Having learnt to bugle at Allhallows, he successfully applied for the bugler slot and was sworn in on 20 October 1914. I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris was the RAF chief of The Bomber Command "The ethics of terror bombing: Beyond supreme emergency". [40], In 1942, Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell), having been appointed the British government's leading scientific adviser (with a seat in the Cabinet) by his friend, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, presented a seminal paper to Cabinet advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. Estimates vary but the city authorities at the time estimated no more than 25,000 victims, a figure which subsequent investigations, including one commissioned by the city council in 2010, support. Harris tended to see the directives to bomb specific oil and munitions targets as a high level command "panacea" (his word) and a distraction from the real task of making the rubble bounce in every large German city. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. The campaign made a strong impression on Harris, particularly the long desert marches—some three decades later, he wrote that "to this day I never walk a step if I can get any sort of vehicle to carry me". [33], In this period Harris, and others, pressured senior staff for large strategic bombers, which could bomb German targets from England. This page was last edited on 27 November 2020, at 21:25. [53], After the war, Harris was awarded the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta First Class on 12 June 1945,[70] advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 14 June 1945[71] and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil on 13 November 1945. In the same year, the British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. [54] Huggins replied that he was sympathetic, but that none of these ideas was practical: Harris would be too old by the time a new Governor was needed; it might take years for Harris to enter Southern Rhodesian politics as he would first need to meet residency requirements, then cultivate support in a constituency; and Huggins felt he could not make promises about aviation posts with a general election coming up the following year. "We cut a hole in the nose and rigged up our own bomb racks and I turned those machines into the heaviest and best bombers in the command". Harris retired on 15 September 1946 and wrote his story of Bomber Command's achievements in Bomber Offensive. The last big strategic raid was the destruction of the oil refinery in Tønsberg in southern Norway by a large group of Lancasters on the night of 25/26 April. With regard to this period, Harris is recorded as having remarked "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand. Having acquired the skills necessary to ranch successfully in Rhodesia, Harris decided that he would start his own farm in the country as soon as Townsend returned. The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21/22 April, just before the Soviets entered the city centre. 44 Squadron on Home Defence duties, Harris claimed five enemy aircraft destroyed and was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC) on 2 November 1918. Although severe general damage was inflicted, the city was much better prepared than Hamburg and no firestorms were ignited. Born in Gloucestershire, Harris emigrated to Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17. In 1915, Harris returned to England to fight in the European theatre of the war. They were reluctant to join the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, which was being raised to serve in East Africa, perceiving the "bush whacking" of the war's African theatre as less important than the "real war" in Europe. Harris remained in the Air Force through the 1920s and 1930s, serving in India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. He became the architect and chief proponent of nighttime “area bombing” of major German cities. Havers 2003, p. 69. Harris divorced his first wife in 1935 and subsequently met Therese ('Jillie') Hearne, then twenty, through a mutual friend, and they married in 1938. [61], Harris was awarded the American Legion of Merit on 30 January 1945. bomb in each village that speaks out of turn" would satisfactorily solve the problem. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. [72] He was also awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the United States on 14 June 1946[73] and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 1 January 1946. The idea of a country where one was judged on ability rather than class was very inspiring to the adventurous Harris, who promptly told his father (who had just retired and returned to England) that he intended to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia instead of going back to Allhallows for the new term. [80], In 1974 Harris appeared in the acclaimed documentary series The World At War produced by Thames Television and shown on ITV. Harris received such a ticket in 1909, and went to see the play during his summer holidays. [54], Before the D-Day invasion in 1944, Harris was ordered to switch targets for the French railway network, a switch he protested because he felt it compromised the pressure being applied to German industry and using Bomber Command for a purpose it was not designed or suited for. [46] Winston Churchill continued to regard the area bombing strategy with distaste and official public statements maintained that Bomber Command was attacking only specific industrial and economic targets, with any civilian casualties or property damage being unintentional but unavoidable. The mission of the strategic air forces remained "the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the direct support of Land and Naval forces". 'I would have destroyed Dresden again': Bomber Harris was unrepentant over German city raids 30 years after the end of World War Two. [83] She later married the Hon. [5], In early 1910, Harris senior paid his son's passage on the SS Inanda to Beira in Mozambique, from where he travelled by rail to Umtali in Manicaland. or 500 lb. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. [74], Within the postwar British government there was some disquiet about the level of destruction that had been created by the area-bombing of German cities towards the end of the war.
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