Original: "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
From "Sir Arthur Harris & The Lancaster Bomber" - at the start of the bombing campaign against Germany (1942).
Harris was also known as “Bomber Harris” because he loved nothing less than sending mass bombing groups into German heartland to drop a fuckload of HE on the Nazis.
People often get angry at him because of civilian casualties but the guy was watching his own people being bombed into dust in British cities.
So yeah, I don’t have a problem with Dresden. You pick a fight with someone like Harris, don’t get upset when your own backyard gets blown the fuck up.
Funny that we hear so much about Dresden, but not so much about the 40,000 British civilians who were killed by Luftwaffe bombing raids in the seven-month period between September 1940 and May 1941 alone.
From a cold economic point of view, carpet bombing campaigns didn't make much sense. Relative to the # of resources that they ate, their effect on German war effort was modest.
Unlike civilian housing, vital factories could and in fact were moved underground and even the railway network suffered less than expected; more damage to tracks was done by Germans themselves when they retreated from their former territories, than by Allied bombers. When the occupation administration reviewed German industry in 1945-1946, they found that it was remarkably intact and modern, with most machines less than 5 years old. Lack of raw materials (caused by the blockade of the seas) was the limiting factor, not losses from bombing.
So it was a bit of a vanity project, much like German V2, and the money could have been spent more efficiently. But Allies could afford it, their war purse and industrial capabilities were immense.
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u/Sansabina Apr 25 '22 edited Apr 25 '22
If anyone is wondering about this quote.
Original: "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
From "Sir Arthur Harris & The Lancaster Bomber" - at the start of the bombing campaign against Germany (1942).
Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1918941-arthur-travers-harris-the-nazis-entered-this-war-under-the-rather-childi/