This book by prolific and lauded British writer Max Hastings argues -- successfully, I believe -- that there was no consensus among British leaders in World War Two about what strategy to pursue in the aerial bombing of Germany. Throughout the war, different strategies were proposed at different times by different people, based on various theories of what makes aerial bombing effective, which metrics to use for evaluating its efficacy, and how best to employ the weapons in Bomber Command's hands. Some advocated precision bombing; others area bombing. Different methods of area bombing were advocated, some targeting buildings, others people. Of course, if you target buildings, and those buildings are people's houses, then you also target the people who live in those buildings, especially if you're bombing at night while they are asleep.
Amidst this lack of consensus, a de facto strategy of civilian terror-bombing prevailed, in which the targets were whole cities, chosen primarily for their susceptibility to night area-bombing, employing fire and high explosives, by setting huge swathes of a city on fire and creating massive fire storms. This strategy was due largely to the autocratic leadership of Air Marshal Arthur Harris (a.k.a. "Bomber" Harris in the British press, "Butcher" or "Butch" Harris in the RAF), who was the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Bomber Command from 1942-45. Harris developed his own particular method of civilian terror-bombing, which involved targeting easy-to-locate cities containing built-up areas of densely packed buildings made of wood, using pathfinders, master bombers, and electronic navigational aids like H2S and Oboe, and dropping bombs containing a unique mix of high explosive and incendiary devices of various sizes. Harris measured efficacy using visual analysis of aerial reconnaissance photos to count the damage done to buildings. He claimed, quite falsely, that this was more effective at defeating Nazi Germany than the entire Soviet war effort. He clung to this strategy long after the USAAF began targeting oil production, sometimes to the point of disobeying orders, although he was never sacked from his command, either. This was the British "de-housing" strategy, advocated at various times by scientists, civil servants, RAF officers, politicians, and for the entire war by Harris.
What this book does not explicitly discuss, but nonetheless is implicit at every step, is the rhetoric of semantics, in which the "intended" target is not civilians, but nonetheless the method employed is designed to be as effective as possible at killing city residents. The de facto result is the terror-bombing of civilians, but with plausible (or implausible) deniability, as the "intention" is merely to destroy buildings. This is usually presented along with the justification that they started the war, they did it to us first, this is the way war works, civilians are just regrettable collateral damage, etc.
Author Max Hasting's chapter about the RAF's Darmstadt raid on the night of 11-12 September, 1944, demonstrates how irrelevant such justifications are. Whatever else you call it, this is still war waged against civilians, killing as many as possible. It culminated in the infamous attack on Dresden in the final weeks of the war, which caused many in Britain to question the morality of such raids, and which seemed to have little relation to hastening the end of the war. In the end, Winston Churchill criticized and distanced himself from Bomber Command, while no campaign medal was awarded to them by Parliament, and Harris was rejected as a candidate for leading the post-war RAF, instead moving to Rhodesia to command their small air force in the fight to retain white minority rule in southern Africa.
In the decades since the war, some historians, leaders, veterans and pundits have denied there ever was any strategy by the RAF to terror-bomb civilians -- a claim which the author successfully refutes -- while others have defended Air Marshal Harris. Readers who share these opinions would do well to read this book, as it lays out the opportunity costs of terror-bombing, which preempted other successful strategies like targeting energy, industry, transportation, communications, and reserves, which demonstrably did help cripple Germany's war-making ability. It is tragic insofar as this detracts from the heroism of Bomber Command personnel, whose crews suffered an average mortality rate of 44.4%, higher than that of British infantry officers on the Western Front in World War One. Author Max Hastings provides good detail of their perspective on the war, as the people tasked to carry out Harris' strategy. Often it is the tragedy of war that the ultimate sacrifice is expected of those who must carry out the most odious ends.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the war in the air during World War Two, or in the history of aerial warfare. It is a case study in the moral ambiguity and lack of consensus that attends aerial warfare against civilian populations, whether they are the primary targets or merely "collateral damage."
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