The campaign made a strong impression on Harris, particularly the long desert marches—some three decades later, he wrote that "to this day I never walk a step if I can get any sort of vehicle to carry me". We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris,[a] was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Together they developed "night training for night operations". Harris's father was disappointed, having had in mind a military or civil service career for his son, but reluctantly agreed. 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[91][92][93], "Bomber Harris" redirects here. Harris divorced his first wife in 1935 and subsequently met Therese ('Jillie') Hearne, then twenty, through a mutual friend, and they married in 1938. [15][16] Intending to return to Rhodesia one day, Harris wore a ".mw-parser-output span.smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}.mw-parser-output span.smallcaps-smaller{font-size:85%}rhodesia" shoulder flash on his uniform. Britain: Bomber Harris speech ("They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind"). [37], The Butt Report, circulated in August 1941, found that in 1940 and 1941 only one in three attacking aircraft got within five miles (eight kilometres) of their target. 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. In October 1943, emboldened by his success in Hamburg and increasingly irritated with Churchill's hesitance to endorse his tactics wholeheartedly, Harris urged the government to be honest with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign. [66] His wartime views were expressed in an internal secret memo to the Air Ministry after the Dresden raid in February 1945. [60] The American official history notes that Harris was ordered to cease attacks on oil in November 1944, as the combined bombing had been so effective that none of the synthetic plants were operating effectively. The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21/22 April, just before the Soviets entered the city centre. It was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother who looked surprised when she was jeered by protesters, one of whom shouted, "Harris was a war criminal." [46] Winston Churchill continued to regard the area bombing strategy with distaste and official public statements maintained that Bomber Command was attacking only specific industrial and economic targets, with any civilian casualties or property damage being unintentional but unavoidable. As an example, quoting Albert Speer from his book Inside The Third Reich, "ten thousand [88mm] anti-aircraft guns ... could well have been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground targets". [50] In November 1943 Bomber Command began what became known as the Battle of Berlin that lasted until March 1944. [65], In his postwar memoirs Harris wrote, "In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method". [17] He finished the war a major. Harris received such a ticket in 1909, and went to see the play during his summer holidays. USA: Declaration of war against Japan on December 8th 1941 ("A day which will live in infamy") [56] Harris was promoted to the substantive rank of air chief marshal on 16 August 1944. The American history also includes information from Albert Speer, in which he points out that Bomber Command's night attacks were the most effective. Radio address (28 July 1942), as quoted by Sir. He said of his service in India that he first became involved in bombing during the usual annual North West Frontier tribesmen trouble. The statue had to be kept under 24-hour guard for a period of months as it was often damaged by protesters and vandals. [57], The historian Bernard Wasserstein notes that the official history of British strategic bombing says, in what Wasserstein describes as 'an unusually sharp personal observation', that "Harris made a habit of seeing only one side of a question and then of exaggerating it. Harris was given the task of implementing Churchill He joined the 1st Rhodesia Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War and saw action in South Africa and South West Africa. He became the architect and chief proponent of nighttime “area bombing” of major German cities. [46][58] Alfred C. Mierzejewski argues that area bombing and attacks against fuel plants were ineffective against Germany's coal- and rail-based economy and that the bombing campaign only took a decisive turn in late 1944, when the allies switched to attacks railway-marshalling yards for the coal gateways of the Ruhr. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. I never engaged in these idiotic pamphlet-dropping exercises. He was promoted to group captain on 30 June 1933. [6] He received a more permanent position in November 1913, when he was taken on by Crofton Townsend, a man from near Cork in Ireland who had moved to Rhodesia and founded Lowdale Farm near Mazoe in Mashonaland in 1903. Bellamy, Alex J. In Operation Millennium Harris launched the first RAF "thousand bomber raid" against Cologne (Köln) on the night of 30/31 May 1942. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance. [53] After the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, visited Harris in May 1944, Southern Rhodesia asked the UK government to appoint Harris as Governor at the end of the year, Huggins being keen to install a self-identifying Rhodesian in that office rather than a high-ranking British figure. Despite his previous reluctance to follow the path his father had had in mind for him in the army, and his desire to set up his own ranch in Rhodesia, Harris felt patriotically compelled to join the war effort. Estimates vary but the city authorities at the time estimated no more than 25,000 victims, a figure which subsequent investigations, including one commissioned by the city council in 2010, support. [85][86], Harris died on 5 April 1984, eight days before his 92nd birthday, at his home in Goring. Statement on the July 1943 bombings of Hamburg, as quoted in. [7] According to Probert, Harris by now regarded himself "primarily as a Rhodesian", a self-identification he would retain for the rest of his life. He felt initially that he had done his part for the Empire, and went back to Rhodesia to resume work at Lowdale, but he and many of his former comrades soon reconsidered when it became clear that the war in Europe was going to last much longer than they had expected. The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. [22] Harris also contributed at this time to the development of bombing using delay-action bombs, which were then applied to keep down uprisings of the Mesopotamian people fighting against British occupation.