Principle pretext for the terror bombing

[samiaseo222]

Churchill wanted the Blitz and welcomed it when it finally came. De Gaulle was astonished in the summer of 1940 by Churchill's waving his fist at the sky over London and crying "Why won't they <> come?" To the Hungarian ambassador, Gy”rgy Barcza, he is recorded as having said, "You are on good terms with Hitler. You could do me a little favour. The British are still not aware of the danger they are in, the seriousness of their situation. We'll have to do something to wake them up. Would you tell Hitler to start a little bombing over London-that should wake up the most indolent Englishman!" (p.336).

German bomb attacks posed little personal threat to the Prime Minister. Unbeknown to everyone but a handfull of top Allied leaders, the Luftwaffe's Enigma code had been cracked by British Intelligence, which phone number list meant that Churchill always knew in advance when and where German bombers would strike next. "On the afternoon of Thursday November 14th 1940, Churchill, just before taking off from Westminster for the country in anticipation of a massive raid on the capital, was handed a message. As the car gathered speed Churchill slit open the buff envelope, gasped, and at Kensington Gardens told the driver to turn back." (p.463, from the driver's own account to the author).

The raid was to be the (in)famous attack on Coventry. The Prime Minister could remain in London. In that famous raid the Luftwaffe lost one plane; 550 people were killed. Later this raid was to be used as the of Germany. Air raids on Germany took a toll of a not some hundreds or thousands but a million lives, and, as Norman Stone among others have subsequently pointed out (see The Spectator 4th June 1994,) prolonged rather than shortened the war. Churchill had little feeling for the deaths which his policy (no less clear breach of the Geneva convention than Stuka attacks on refugees in France in 1940) would cause. The destruction of German cities reached a scale of which even today many people, and especially the British, have been kept largely unaware. To the extent they are aware however, they generally approve, and if they do so, some of the credit must go to Churchill's oratorical powers.