Bomber Command (31 page)

Their hearts rose at the red wink of the distant beacon. They heard the comforting thump as the undercarriage locked home, and prayed that no unseen joint in the aircraft’s structure had been fatally damaged, to crumple as they landed. Then they were in the circuit, losing height and power as they slipped on to the runway, bumping heavily as their tired pilot let them down with a moment’s imprecision, then idling along the black rubber-streaked concrete, switching open the bomb doors and gathering up their equipment. After an interminable night’s flying to La Spezia and
back, Stewart Harris clambered out of the fuselage and opened his flybuttons with boundless gratitude above the tailwheel. ‘God, this is good!’ he exclaimed deeply to the shadowy figures beside him in the darkness.

‘Nice to see you back, too, Harris,’ chuckled Sam Patch, stepping aside to reveal the Group commander behind him. The trucks bore them to the headquarters building for debriefing. They climbed wearily out, inhaling the blessed fresh air, then walked into the brightly-lit room with the blinking, dazed look of men woken at the wrong moment of the morning. A young WAAF scribbled her industrious notes about the trip as they lit their cigarettes and drank their tea. A cluster of brass – the station commander, a handful of staff officers, the padre and the doctor – hovered in the background. A WAAF chalked their landing time on the long, wide crew blackboard on the wall of the Ops Room. They had survived. Tomorrow night, or perhaps the one after, they would do it all again.

7 » PROTEST AND POLICY

1942–43

1. Dissent

On 12 October 1942, a memorandum from the Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Policy) was circulated to Command and Group AOCs throughout the RAF. It was a commonplace document in the paperchase of wartime instructions, but it sought to clarify and codify the reality of what had already been taking place over Europe for many months:

1. The following rules govern our bombardment policy in British, Allied or Neutral territory occupied by the enemy:

Bombardment is to be confined to military objectives, and must be subject to the following general priciples:

(1) the intentional bombardment of civilian populations, as such, is forbidden.

(2) It must be possible to identify the objective.

(3) The attack must be made with reasonable care to avoid undue loss of civilian life in the vicinity of the target.

2. German, Italian and Japanese territory:

Consequent upon the enemy’s adoption of a campaign of unrestricted air warfare, the Cabinet have authorized a bombing policy which includes the attack of enemy morale. The foregoing rules do not, therefore, apply to our conduct of air warfare against German, Italian and Japanese territory.

Behind the circumlocutions, therefore, Britain was also pursuing a policy of unrestricted air warfare. On operational grounds
alone, the Prime Minister and the senior officers of the RAF felt no doubt about its advisability, and to the vast majority of the British people the crimes of the Nazi regime across Europe justified the most terrible counter-offensive. Harris, to his credit, was always in favour of telling the British public exactly what he was seeking to do to the Germans, and indeed no one who read his statements in the course of the campaign had much cause to plead ignorance about area bombing. But the Government was more squeamish. From beginning to end of the war, ministers prevaricated – indeed, lied flatly again and again – about the nature of the bomber offensive.

‘Have instructions been given on any occasion to British airmen to engage in area bombing rather than limit their attentions to purely military targets?’ Richard Stokes MP asked the Air Minister in the House of Commons on 31 March 1943.

‘The targets of Bomber Command are always military, but night-bombing of military objectives necessarily involves bombing the area in which they are situated,’ replied Sir Archibald Sinclair.

‘Is the Right Hon. Member aware that a growing volume of opinion in this country considers indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres both morally wrong and strategic lunacy?’ Stokes asked the Deputy Prime Minister on 27 May 1943.

‘No, there is no indiscriminate bombing,’ replied Mr Clement Attlee, amidst rousing cheers. ‘As has been repeatedly stated in the House, the bombing is of those targets which are most effective from the military point of view.’

In the wake of the blitz on Britain, the Government could have made a powerful and popular case for the area bombing of Germany had they chosen to do so, but by taking refuge in deceit they were contributing mightily to the post-war controversy about the bomber offensive. If ministers in 1942 were ashamed of what they were doing, so the argument would go, they must indeed have had something to be ashamed of. But during the war itself, while service departments and scientists mounted a fierce campaign against Bomber Command on strategic and practical
grounds, the civilian opponents of bombing represented only a tiny, articulate minority.

In the House of Commons, Richard Stokes, the Labour MP for Ipswich, was the most determined. His own background was anything but that of an armchair pacifist. A barrister’s son, he was educated at Downside and Trinity College, Cambridge, and had won the Military Cross and Croix de Guerre as a Gunner major in the First War. Stokes never questioned the necessity for tactical bombing in support of military operations, but from 1942 to 1945 he was a constant thorn in the Government’s flesh on the matter of the area bombing of cities and other contentious strategic issues:

‘Will the Secretary of State say whether the policy of limiting the objectives of Bomber Command to targets of military importance has, or has not, been changed to the bombing of towns and wide areas in which military targets are situated? he demanded of the Air Minister in the House of Commons on 1 December 1943.

Sir Archibald Sinclair: ‘I would refer the Hon. Member to the answer which I gave him to a similar question on 31 March. There has been no change of policy.’

Stokes: ‘Within what area in square miles was it estimated that the 350 blockbusters recently dropped on Berlin fell?’

Sinclair: ‘The answer to that question would be of value to the enemy.’

Stokes: ‘Would not the proper answer be that the Government does not dare give it? Does not my Right Hon. Friend admit by his answer that the Government are now resorting to indiscriminate bombing including residential areas?’

Sinclair: ‘The Hon. Gentleman is incorrigible. I have indicated a series of vitally important military objectives.’

Sinclair was rescued from further bombardment on this occasion by a succession of loyal members who asked when there could be more bombing raids on Germany. The House passed on to a question about why airmen were forbidden to send pyjamas to service laundries. The Commons was overwhelmingly hostile to the handful of critics who returned again and again to sniping
attacks on the deeds of the Royal Air Force. When Mr McGovern asked the Air Minister on 6 May 1942 ‘whether instructions to the RAF who raided Lübeck and Rostock included instructions to impede and disorganize the German effort by the destruction of workmen’s dwellings?’ Sinclair set his mind at rest:

The objectives of our bomber offensive in Germany are to destroy the capacity of Germany to make war and to relieve the pressure of the German air force and armies on our Russian allies. No instruction has been given to destroy dwelling houses rather than armament factories, but it is impossible to distinguish in night-bombing between the factories and the dwellings which surround them.

Even among diehard Tories, there was some feeling of repugnance about the destruction of so much beauty and culture in Germany in the course of the bomber offensive. One of the most interesting letters in Sir Archibald Sinclair’s personal correspondence files came on 26 November 1943 from the Marquess of Salisbury, head of the great Cecil family which had played so large a part in English public life for four centuries. It was handwritten, and marked ‘Confidential’:

My dear Sinclair,

Forgive a somewhat critical note. Your praise of the valour and skill of the air force in their attack on Berlin is abundantly deserved. They are splendid. But Sir Arthur Harris’s reply gives one a shake. These attacks are to go on ‘until the heart of Nazi Germany ceases to beat’. This would seem to bring us up short against the repeated Government declarations that we are bombing only military and industrial targets. Perhaps that is all that Harris contemplates, and I shall be delighted if you tell me so. But there is a great deal of evidence that makes some of us afraid that we are losing moral superiority to the Germans, and if Harris means not merely that incidental casualties to women and children cannot be avoided, but also that the residential heart of Berlin is to cease to beat, then a good many people will feel that they have been let down – though in writing this I speak in the name of no committee. Of course the Germans began it, but we do not take the devil as our example. Of course all these criticisms may be groundless, but if not, issue fresh confidential orders, I
hope
.

Yours Very Sincerely

SALISBURY

Please remember that we can say nothing in public for obvious reasons.

This was a difficult letter for Sinclair. Salisbury could scarcely be fobbed off with the usual platitudes about ‘hoping for an early end to the war to end this regrettable destruction’. His eldest son Lord Cranborne was Lord Privy Seal in the Government. Sinclair passed the letter to Sir Norman Bottomley, the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, for comment.

To be strictly accurate [suggested Bottomley], our primary object is the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and
the undermining of the morale of the German people
.
¹³
There is no need to inform Lord Salisbury of the underlined phrase, since it will follow on success of the first part of the stated aim.

Thus Sinclair replied to Lord Salisbury on 29 November 1943:

Our aim is the progressive dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system. I have never pretended that it is possible to pursue this aim without inflicting terrible casualties on the civilian population of Germany. But neither I, nor any responsible spokesman on behalf of the Government, has ever gloated over the destruction of German homes.

We have resisted a policy of reprisals . . . although there were those who wanted us to select certain small German towns and villages for deliberate destruction . . . we refused, and adhered fully to the principle that we would attack none but military targets.

Most of the British Press supported the bomber offensive with gusto. ‘These first blasts of the whirlwind that Hitler, who sowed the wind at Warsaw and Rotterdam, has now to reap have raised the spirits of the fighters for freedom everywhere,’ proclaimed a
Times
leader after the 1,000 Raid on Cologne. On 11 March 1943 Harold Balfour declared emphatically that Britain was bombing only military targets: ‘I can give the assurance that we are not bombing the women and children of Germany wantonly.’ The
Sunday Dispatch
attacked this statement as weak-kneed: ‘It is right that the German population should “smell death at close quarters”. Now they are getting the stench of it.’ To the intense satisfaction of the Air Ministry, the influential American
Time
magazine was calling for a growing air attack on Germany. Some commentators exceeded even the apostolic enthusiasm of the airmen for bombing Germany. The
Sunday Express
criticized the Air Staff when the weight of bombing seemed to be flagging. Peter Masefield, air correspondent of
The Sunday Times
, argued on 6 June 1943 that ‘If the present bomber offensive could be multiplied by four, her war production would be completely halted. That conclusion emerges from a deliberately conservative examination of the damage done by the big bombers.’ The Director of Bomber Operations noted drily on his copy of the cutting: ‘I consider rather a rosy picture is painted, as it assumes that every load falls on the target and does fresh damage.’

Propaganda and public relations had begun to loom large in the minds of the directors of the war. The airmen, even more than the other two services, monitored public opinion intently. A report was sent to the Air Ministry analysing a sample of civilian letters opened by the censor in the wake of the 1,000 Raid on Cologne: ‘There are those who are pleased, and those who regret that so much suffering should have to be inflicted. There are those who fear reprisals. Many of the letters contain two or more of these
elements. Predominant is satisfaction, but many women express regret . . .’ A tiny lobby group calling themselves The Bombing Restriction Committee distributed leaflets on the streets headed ‘STOP BOMBING CIVILIANS!’ Their purpose, they declared, was ‘to urge the Government to stop violating their declared policy of bombing only military objectives and particularly to cease causing the deaths of many thousands of civilians in their homes’. Much more typical of popular opinion was Brigadier Cecil Aspinall-Oglander’s distaste for the media’s raucous delight in the achievements of the bomber offensive.

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 [the Brigadier wrote to
The Times
on 1 May 1942] 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.