NEVER IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT

DRESDEN’S MAYOR, Helma Orosz, is on a visit to London to open an exhibition detailing the bombing of London, her home city of Dresden, and Coventry. She is being pressured by the press at home, in particular by Blind, to try and persuade the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, not to go ahead with a planned memorial to Bomber Command set to be created in Green Park, London.

The bombing of Dresden in 1945, which killed 25,000 civilians, including women and children, would no doubt be seen in the febrile liberal atmosphere we live in today, as a ‘war crime’. After the war, the numbers killed were, in the light of the latest evidence by German historians, greatly exaggerated. At the time the numbers believed killed amounted to 250,000 and this figure was quoted as fact for many years as an accurate, and definitive one.

The allies have been criticised for such an attack toward the end of the war, and many reasons have been given for such censure , most of them criticising Air Vice-Marshal Arthur ‘bomber’ Harris, who believed the war against Germany could be won by a campaign of heavy bombardment, a theory much disputed. However Churchill allowed Harris to prove his worth in the certain knowledge that any failure would be placed on Harris’s shoulders.

Where Harris was wrong was in presuming that bombs would prove to be of greater value than that of mere adjutant status to the war at sea and on the ground. He, like many high ranking officers throughout history, made many unsubstantiated claims upon the politician’s ear, and found little reward for their efforts.

‘Bomber’ Harris was not, as some would like to suggest today, a war criminal; but, like Air Chief Marshal Dowding in the Battle of Britain, was a national hero. He was a man faced with the overrunning of his country by Nazism and took whatever measures that were needed to prevent such an intrusion – an intrusion that, had it been successful, we would be living with today – what then for a multicultural Britain?

My guess is that the events of the Dresden raid in 1945, was meant as a warning to Germany. Remember, Germany had been responsible for two world wars in the 20^th century that almost destroyed Europe and caused some 40 million deaths on all sides; the need to put Germany in its place must have been a great temptation to the allies.

IF GERMANY HAD HAD our heavy bombers then she would no doubt have caused greater havoc than she managed to do on her bombing raids. But Germany was used to the tactics of the blitzkrieg against countries that had little to defend themselves with. Indeed, were it not for Churchill and his ‘war mongering’ on the British peoples’ behalf in parliament during the 1930s, we would also have been in the position (and nearly were) of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France and Holland.

Nazi Germany cared little for human life while creating their Thousand Year Reich: anything the allies did was very small beer in comparison to what Nazism did, and had in store for world had she won. So if Mayor Helma Orosz does what she has been asked to do by Germany’s most popular paper; then I hope she will be given short shrift for her efforts. We, as a nation, have nothing to feel ashamed about. Nazi Germany was a cancer that required radical surgery to remove it from the continent of Europe, and if the modern political representatives of that nation cannot grasp the obvious then so be it. But if we in any way succumb to their overtures for the abandonment of this memorial; then our politicians will had to their reputation with another layer of shame.

BUT BY WAY OF A KIND OF FOOTNOTE, I would like to remind the mayor of London, Boris Johnson , that he should remember that our capital city which he represents was bombed by the Nazis for 57 consecutive nights, and should, if the subject of the abandonment of the Bomber Command memorial, be mentioned by Mayor Helma Orosz, then I hope he will stand by the 70,000 bomber crews that served and died for this country.

Let me give him a few statistics to counter Helma Orosz’s argument, if she makes it. Almost 43,000 civilians were killed and 71,000 injured in the blitz on London, and, as I have referred to above; if the German Luftwaffe had had heavy long range bombers, they could have devastated London and would have done so for no other reason than by doing so they would have advanced the ambitions of Third Reich.

So I hope Boris will not take any lectures, if she feels obliged to give them, from Helma Orosz. This country behaved like any country would with the capabilities it had at hand, when confronted by such a behemoth of the Nazi variety.

What we did between 1939-1945 never reduced us to our enemies levels despite the popular wisdom of today. We are not a nation of Nazis because we had to use their measures to guarantee our survival as a democracy. Nazism, just like communism and socialism, was driven purely by ideology. All of which sought to suppress human freedom.

The monument to Bomber Command should go ahead. If not, then how long will it be before the French asks for the removal of Nelson from his plinth in Trafalgar Square, and for the same reasons as those given by Helma Orosz for the cancellation of the monument to Bomber Command.

Having lost some 70,000 of our airmen in the raids over Germany, it would be the grossest form of insult to abandon this memorial. For the Second World War was fought for the freedom of all European nations, including those currently enjoyed by modern Germans.