BOMBER COMMAND

Bomber Command's offensive against the cities of Germany was one of the epic campaigns of the Second World War. 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and something like 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF's attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle began in 1939, with a few score primitive Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons groping blindly through the darkness over Europe. It ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes, equipped with the cream of Britain's wartime high technology, razing whole cities in a single night.

Max Hastings has traced the development of area bombing, through the fierce disputes between Churchill and his air marshals and scientists to the great raids on the Ruhr, Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, with a wealth of contemporary documents, letters and diaries - many of them hitherto unpublished. He has interviewed key surviving witnesses, including Sir Arthur Harris and his staff officers and Group commanders, to assemble a remarkable portrait of the C-in-C of Bomber Command and his direction of the campaign. To tell the story of the aircrew, Max Hastings chose six squadrons at different periods of the war, and sought out more than a hundred survivors to reconstruct their memories.

Bomber Command is the first book to bring together in one volume the strategic and moral debate with the story of the commanders and aircrew, using their own accounts and the wartime files now released to the Public Record Office. It inevitably renews the intense controversy which has surrounded the bomber offensive since 1945.

Winston Churchill, September 1940 :

« We must... develop the power to carry an ever-increasing volume of explosives to Germany, so as to pulverize the entire industry and scientific effort on which the war effort and economic life of the enemy depend. . . . In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany. »

Sir Arthur Harris, November 1944 :

« In the past eighteen months, Bomber Command has virtually destroyed 45 out of the leading 60 German cities. We have so far managed to keep up and even to exceed our average of 2 cities devastated a month. There are not many industrial centres of population left intact. Are we going to abandon this vast task, which the Germans themselves have long admitted to be their worst headache, just as it nears completion? »

Bishop Bell of Chichester, February 1944 :

« I desire to challenge the Government on the policy which directs the bombing of enemy towns on the present scale, especially with reference to civilians who are non-combatants... It is of supreme importance that we, who are the Liberators of Europe, should so use power that it is always under the control of Law. It is because our bombing of enemy towns – this "area bombing raises this issue of bombing unlimited that such immense importance is bound to attach to the policy and action of His Majesty's Government. »