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    'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing'
    'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing'
    'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing'
    Ebook54 pages44 minutes

    'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing'

    By Dr. Christopher C. Harmon

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    About this ebook

    This historical reassessment of the World War II British bombing campaign notes that though in 1940 Churchill declared that he was waging “a military and not a civilian war” to destroy “military objectives” and not “women and children,” within eighteen months both types of targets would be struck by Bomber Command. The author searches for the reasons in “three contiguous realms” of strategic influence: moral (and legal), political, and military. The study concludes that although for much of the war “area bombing” of cities was a “tragic necessity” meeting the ‘reasonable man’s’ standard of what was decently allowable given the blunt weapons the Allies had” and the evils they faced, nonetheless Allied leaders could have and should have abandoned indiscriminate bombing in the last phases of the conflict, when more precise means were at hand and “Nazi power had been overmatched.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLucknow Books
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781782897293
    'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing'

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      Book preview

      'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing' - Dr. Christopher C. Harmon

      This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – picklepublishing@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 1991 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      Are We Beasts? — Churchill and the Moral Question of World War II Area Bombing

      By

      Christopher C. Harmon

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

      ABSTRACT 5

      THE AUTHOR 5

      The Moral Case For 8

      The Political Motives for Mass Bombing 15

      The Operational Realities and the Military Rationale 19

      Conclusions 26

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 33

      ABSTRACT

      This historical reassessment of the World War II British bombing campaign notes that though in 1940 Churchill declared that he was waging a military and not a civilian war to destroy military objectives and not women and children, within eighteen months both types of targets would be struck by Bomber Command. The author searches for the reasons in three contiguous realms of strategic influence: moral (and legal), political, and military. The study concludes that although for much of the war area bombing of cities was a tragic necessity meeting the ‘reasonable man’s’ standard of what was decently allowable given the blunt weapons the Allies had and the evils they faced, nonetheless Allied leaders could have and should have abandoned indiscriminate bombing in the last phases of the conflict, when more precise means were at hand and Nazi power had been overmatched."

      THE AUTHOR

      Dr. Christopher C. Harmon, formerly foreign policy advisor to a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has served since 1988 as an associate professor of strategy at the Naval War College.

      Are We Beasts? Churchill and the Moral Question of World War II Area Bombing

      THE BRITISH PUBLIC OF A HALF-CENTURY AGO knew several things about its bulldog prime minister, Winston S. Churchill. One was that he could be moved to tears by the bomb damage the Nazi air forces did to English neighborhoods; the homeless planted Union Jacks in their smoking rubble piles and called out their support to him as he made his inspections. What the British also knew, from his many public statements, was that Churchill did not merely respond to but fully shared in the public’s cries for retaliation against the German homeland. It was in large part at his direction-for he was simultaneously prime minister, minister of defense, and a leader of the Anglo-American coalition-that fully one-fifth of German homes were flattened or burned by strategic bombing. Seven and a half million people were rendered homeless, and these must be considered luckier than the one million other German civilians who were killed or wounded in bomber attacks.{1}

      The moral burdens of these lethal attacks on the largely unarmed were accepted by Mr. Churchill as a grim necessity of a just war. To

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