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By Root 900 0

“In the full tilt of war,”1074 observed Churchill in old age, “it was the only means of hitting back. I was of course ultimately responsible … But later I was not so sure of the effectiveness of the bludgeon.” Until June 1944, however, when great Allied armies became committed to the battlefield, the prime minister found it convenient to promote the view that strategic bombing was making an important contribution to the defeat of the enemy. If it was not, then many people—among whom Stalin was the most important—would have asked whether Britain was playing anything like a large enough part in fighting the war.

In attempting to distance himself from the bombing of Dresden, as Churchill did on March 28, 1945, he ignored his own request to Sinclair at the Air Ministry, just before Yalta, to launch major air attacks in eastern Germany, to assist and impress the Russians, who expressed an eagerness for such support. Dresden had featured for years on Bomber Command target lists. It had been left unscathed only because it was a low priority, and a long haul from British airfields. Throughout the war, none of Britain’s senior airmen showed much aesthetic sensitivity. Portal had advocated heavy bombing of Rome1075 when the city still belonged to Mussolini. Harris had assured the chief of the Air Staff that he had “no false sentiments” about dispatching his bombers against one of the greatest cultural centres in the world. Only American opposition deflected attacks. Churchill’s personal intervention was responsible for causing Dresden, together with Chemnitz and Leipzig, to be pushed up the February target schedule, and largely destroyed on the night of February 13–14. It is unsurprising that no one at Bomber Command headquarters voiced concern about the fate of baroque churches before unleashing the Lancasters.

The prime minister, however, had not thought much before making his own, almost casual request to Sinclair. Throughout the war, a host of matters briefly engaged his attention, then receded. It is implausible, but just possible, that by March 28 he had genuinely forgotten that he had urged the RAF to attack eastern German cities. The key to understanding the destruction of Dresden, so often misinterpreted as a unique atrocity, is that amid daily global carnage, the attack order had much less significance to those responsible than it seems to posterity to have merited.

In the aftermath of Dresden, however, the raid was the subject of widespread comment—and some criticism. Following a press conference at Eisenhower’s headquarters about bombing policy on February 16, an AP correspondent named Howard Cowan filed a dispatch stating: “The Allied air commanders have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hastening Hitler’s doom.” This story received prominent play in American newspapers, though it was censored in British ones. U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson demanded an enquiry into Dresden, which prompted Gen. “Hap” Arnold of the USAAF to respond: “We must not get soft. War must be destructive and to a certain extent inhuman and ruthless.” In Britain, though there was no widespread outcry, questions were asked in the Commons by the government’s inveterate critic Labour MP Richard Stokes. For the first time in many months, Churchill addressed himself seriously to the issue of area bombing. He perceived that it was indeed wanton to continue the destruction of great cities, when the Germans were so close to collapse. With his usual instinct for mercy towards the vanquished, he wished to halt the process. This was both right and humane. The prime minister injured himself, however, by attempting in his draft minute to Portal to make this judgement retrospective, to condemn the Dresden decision to which he had been an implicit, if not absolutely explicit, party.

He also gave a formidable hostage to history, by declaring that Bomber Command’s campaign was terroristic. No one in the upper reaches of Britain’s war machine had ever privately doubted