{"id":23133,"date":"2014-03-25T12:30:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T20:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=23133"},"modified":"2014-03-25T12:35:42","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T20:35:42","slug":"the-myths-behind-the-allied-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/25\/the-myths-behind-the-allied-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myths Behind the Allied Bombing Campaigns of WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Ben Macintyre reviews the new book by Richard Overy The Bombers and the Bombed<\/em>. Macintyre gives a summary of Overy’s myth-busting about the Allied bombing of Germany. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, instead of sticking to military targets, is usually defended as (1) a response to similarly indiscriminate bombing campaigns by the Germans, like in the Blitz, and (2) the only way to completely bring down the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n

\"Lancaster_I_NG128_Dropping_Blockbuster_-_Duisburg_-_Oct_14,_1944\"“Overy demonstrates, however, that the tactic of bombing urban areas had been put into action by the British before the Blitz,” Macintyre reports. And as for the second justification:<\/p>\n

[T]hough the devastation left ordinary Germans demoralized, exhausted and frightened, the bombs did not provoke internal collapse or social implosion; the German people were not bombed into revolution. In the cruellest irony, the hardship and terror may even have solidified the Nazis\u2019 grip on the populace: \u201cThe effect of the bombing was not, in the end, as the Allies hoped, to drive a wedge between people and regime, but the opposite, to increase dependence on the state and the party.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this is by no means to say that the Allies were in the wrong while Nazi Germany was somehow better behaved. WWII was a massive conglomeration of evil acts of mass murder on all sides, and Nazi Germany was the epitome of that evil. But there is a valuable lesson in reviewing Allied war policy critically in this fashion.<\/p>\n

The staying power of Allied propaganda has proven remarkably durable. Most people nowadays think back to WWI and frame it as a needless\u00a0conflagration in which millions were used as cannon fodder for the small-minded and narrow self-interests of competing European states. Very little moral compulsion remains attached to the war effort on any side in that conflict.<\/p>\n

WWII, however, is different. Most people still consider the Allied war effort a saintly battle for the freedom of the world. Political and military leaders of the time are still revered as heroes. Purging Europe of Nazis and fascists was, uncontroversially, a welcome result. But this shouldn’t delude us into framing the conflict as a purely Manichean, good vs. evil dichotomy, as it is so often framed in the public.<\/p>\n

As U.S. General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Tokyo fire bombing operation, admitted, there were war criminals on all sides. “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal,” he said. “Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”<\/p>\n

If Overy’s scholarship on this is right, and the two main moral and strategic justifications for Allied indiscriminate bombing of civilians don’t hold up to scrutiny, it may represent the beginnings of a broader understanding of WWII that is closer to the one we have about WWI, or closer to LeMay’s characterization. And that is for the better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the New York Times, Ben Macintyre reviews the new book by Richard Overy The Bombers and the Bombed. Macintyre gives a summary of Overy’s myth-busting about the Allied bombing of Germany. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, instead of sticking to military targets, is usually defended as (1) a response to similarly indiscriminate bombing campaigns by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23133"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23138,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23133\/revisions\/23138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23133"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}