On rewriting history
The Phantom Observer takes on the ongoing Canadian War Museum / Bomber Command dispute, and offers a compromise solution by simply fiddling with the existing wording a bit:
Personally, I think it's a fair start.
So, the new paragraph is due to be replaced around October, but while we’re waiting...I wonder if the existing paragraph could be fixed by whittling it down a little?
For starters, we could take out the word “bitter.” Because it relates to our sense of taste, it’s an emotional adjective and thus can be removed.
Second, we could remove the second sentence. It’s a mission statement, and it could be relocated elsewhere in the exhibit. By removing the mission, we also remove motive, with its emotional connotations.
Now let’s adjust the wording a bit more, and see how our result reads:
The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany is still disputed to this day. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war.
I think that’s a bit more emotionally neutral than the original. What do you think?
Personally, I think it's a fair start.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 9:31 a.m.
6 Comments:
"the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."
Still not accurate. An incorrect statement. The bombing campaign caused massive disruption and losses in German war production according to Albert Speer - he should know he was in charge.
The bombing campaign also forced the Germans to deploy millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of heavy and light AAA pieces, thousands of searchlight & radar batteries and hundreds of thousands of repair and restoration staff to the Home Front and away from the Russian Front, the African front, the Italian Front, the Atlantic Front, etc.
How many young Allied soldiers didn't die because there were fewer Germans, with fewer weapons and munitions in front of them ??
Would Russia have stayed in the war ?? What weapons would Germany been able to develop if the bombing campaign hadn't flattened their rocket research sites. How much sooner would Germany have had jet fighters in the air ?
It is still a terribly misleading, inaccurate statement.
It can be argued/discussed how much impact the bombing campaign had, but saying it was "small" is an academic "stuck on stupid" moment.
I'm with Fred. Like I noted in the comments at the Phantom's place, actual strategic bombing (i.e. hitting industrial targets likely to degrade German war capacity) did a terrific amount of damage.
Going after civilians had negligible value, and certainly not the mass dislocation and civil unrest that Arthur Harris envisioned.
But attacks on oil and petro facilities, for instance, impeded Germany's ability to maneuver, train and prosecute the war. They had greater importance during the latter stages of the war because targeters gave them greater importance at that stage. The Allies figured (correctly) that less oil for Germany meant less ability to counter the now-landed invasion forces.
Strat bombing may not have impacted production of armaments a whole lot, but it certainly limited German options as to where, when and how frequently those arms were employed.
OK, fair points. So how would you word it?
"while controversial after the war, the raids caused massive disruption to the German war economy, forced them to deploy huge quantities of equipment, material and munitions and use millions of soldiers that could have been deployed in the Front Lines to stay home and defend the Home Front and was a significant factor in shortening the war, keeping Russia fighting and saving Allied soldier's lives."
longish, but call for the editor :)
I think I would try to draw a distinction between Arthur Harris' "area bombing" of civil populations and strat-bombing of actual strategic targets.
Something like "While Sir Arthur Harris' "area bombing" of German civil populations had little effect on the war effort, strategic bombing of specific industrial and petrochemical targets greatly hampered the mobility and effectiveness of German combat arms."
Makie the point that "area bombing" and "strategic bombing" are not one and the same. They get conflated a lot these days, but bombing civilians and bombing industrial chokepoints are not the same animal. One has clearly-demonstrated effectiveness while the other does not.
I'm not one to put moral lessons right in the text because people are going to have radically different ideas on what are and are not acceptable combat tactics in total war doctrine. People are naturally going to filter yesterday's combat tactics through today's moral context; I don't think we need any official encouragement to do that.
German war production actually increased throughout most of the bombing campaign, though not to the full extent of Germany's potential industrial capacity and certainly not the same extent as the capacity of the Allies. How much effect did the bombing campaign have on limiting industrial growth? I don't know. That's not a question that's easily answered, and it is a disputed matter so the War Museum's write up is accurate.
It was only later in the war when Allied bombing increased by an order of magnitude and began specifically targeting critical infrastructures (especially oil production) that a distinct and reliably measured damage to German industrial strength can be claimed.
This article has a quick run-down of the numbers.
It should be noted that area bombing of civilian areas was a major strain of thought in the development of strategic bombing from the 20s through the 40s. It would be a disservice to history to draw an artificial distinction between area bombing and strategic bombing since at the time one was just a subset of the other. It is also not a matter of hindsight evaluation since the Allies had ample evidence of the folly of area bombing from the Battle of Britain.
I think the existing existing text is factually accurate and positionally neutral, and I by no means consider the strategic bombing campaign to have been without strong merit (with the exception of area bombing).
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