Armageddon - Max Hastings [225]
In the past 18 months, Bomber Command has virtually destroyed 45 out of the leading 60 German cities. In spite of invasion diversions, 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 now 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?
All that was required to complete his grand design, said Harris, was the destruction of Magdeburg, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, Nuremberg, Munich, Coblenz, Karlsruhe and some undamaged areas of Berlin and Hanover. Harris never wavered in his opposition to attacking oil and transportation—indeed, everything save Germany’s cities. He derided those who advocated such wishy-washy policies. He wrote contemptuously to Portal on 25 October 1944: “During the past few weeks, every panacea-monger and ‘me too expert,’ to many of whom we had already (we hoped) given the quietus in the past, has raised his head again.”
Portal responded on 5 November: “At the risk of your dubbing me ‘another panacea merchant,’ I believe the air offensive against oil gives us by far the best hope of complete victory in the next few months . . .” On 12 November, the Chief of Air Staff returned to the charge, rejecting Harris’s argument for completing the destruction of Germany’s cities: “I know that you have long felt such a plan to be the most effective way of bringing about the collapse of Germany . . . If I knew you to be as wholehearted in the attack on oil as in the past you have been in the matter of attacking cities, I would have little to worry about.”
In November, 24.6 per cent of Bomber Command’s sorties were devoted to attacking oil plants, delivering a larger tonnage of bombs than the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force. Portal wrote again to Harris on 8 January 1945, urging even greater efforts. He pointed out bluntly that, but for the success of the Americans in creating a “favourable air situation,” Bomber Command’s attack on cities might well have ceased to be sustainable. This was indeed a remarkable admission from the head of the RAF: only the success of American air policy had saved that of Britain from humiliating failure. None of these arguments moved Harris, however. He was a man of elemental passions. Churchill observed after the war that Bomber Command’s C-in-C was “a considerable commander,” but he added: “there was a certain coarseness about him.” Harris told Portal defiantly that he would resign if the Air Staff had lost confidence in his direction of the bomber offensive.
In the face of such obduracy, Britain’s Chief of Air Staff retreated. On 20 January 1945, he wrote to Harris: “I willingly accept your assurance that you will continue to do your utmost to ensure the successful execution of the policy laid down. I am very sorry that you do not believe in it, but it is no use my craving for what is evidently unattainable. We must wait until after the end of the war before we can know for certain who was right . . .” This was an extraordinarily feeble letter for the head of the Royal Air Force to write to a subordinate commander. But propaganda had made “Bomber” Harris one of the most celebrated war leaders Britain possessed. At a time when it was plain that the war would end within months, Portal lacked the stomach for the huge row that must accompany Harris’s dismissal. While Churchill no longer revealed much interest in the bomber offensive, he had always displayed respect for Harris’s leadership. It was most unlikely that the prime minister would welcome, even if he was willing to acquiesce in, the dismissal of Bomber Command’s C-in-C when victory was at hand. Harris should have been sacked in the winter of 1944 for his defiance of the policy approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and for his insubordination towards Portal. Contrary to widespread belief, Harris did not invent