Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by john dem (i) on May 29, 2001 at 06:03:22

In Reply to: Supposedly........ posted by Chris Garrett on May 29, 2001 at 02:21:44:

Well, I was really suggesting that Winston Churchill was desperately trying to get the Luftwaffe to shift their attacks north. The deceptively vengeful attack on London did the trick.

Coventry was bombed in November 1940 with the loss of some 380 lives, but at least 12 munitions factories were destroyed. Dresden was destroyed as part of Operation Thunderclap, with attacks on Berlin, Magdeburg (Feb 3 1945), Chemnitz, Magdeburg (Feb 6) and Magdeburg again (Feb 9). These attacks had more to do with destroying infrastructure and preventing relief than destroying military capability.

Churchill was not the architect of Thunderclap. *"Eventually, even Churchill, who had been a wholehearted supporter of THUNDERCLAP, went so far as to comment to the British Chiefs of Staff that 'the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."

Air Chief Marshal (Sir Arthur T) Harris said he did not regard "the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier".

"From Irving, D., The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963). McKee. A., Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox (London, 1982). Messenger, C, 'Bomber' Hands and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 1939-1945 (London, 1984).

Regards,

john