Perry at 'Samizdata' on the slow dawning of reality that you're on the wrong side of history:
"But then in late July for an entire week, the RAF and USAAF filled the sky over Hamburg by day and by night. And although Hannelore did not know it at the time, it was called Operation Gomorrah. She told me that on one night in particular, her father called the whole family outside. It was bright as day, the entire skyline to the south a line of incandescent light. By morning, white dust entirely covered their home and farmland, with a constant rain of ash still falling from the sky. 40,000 people had burned to death in a firestorm in a single day in Hamburg. And only then, our friend’s grandmother said, did they finally realise everything was not going to be alright and the war had been a catastrophic mistake. Only then, and from then onwards, did everything they read in the newspapers or heard on the radio ring hollow."
I'm also reminded of the wonderful Mitchell and Webb sketch with the two nazi officers: "Hans? Are we the baddies?"
ReplyDeleteSteven
Gomorrah and the associated attacks on Cologne and the Ruhr might have ended the war. The dislocation of the civilian population was a greater danger than the results of the bombing itself. The German countryside was relatively untouched until the ground offensive.
ReplyDeleteHarris made the mistake of thinking he could end the war by destroying Berlin itself, but it was in so many ways the wrong target. Also at that stage in the war neither the RAF nor US 8th Air Force had the results to follow it all through.
One if the great 'might have beens'.