Reprisals

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I've now finished my (somewhat piecemeal) post-blogging of the Blitz. It's time to step back and see if there is anything to made of the whole thing.

I'll start with the things I wish I'd done differently. I had intended to use a greater diversity of sources, especially the Popular Newspapers during World War II microfilm collection, which includes the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror along with some Sunday papers. I only managed to do this for the period around the bombing of Coventry. You can see from there that these papers were much more visceral, shall we say, in their reactions to German air raids than the more staid Times, Manchester Guardian or even the Daily Mail. My coverage of the Mail anyway ends after early October so that meant much of the last few rounds of post-blogging relied on the old standbys of The Times and the Guardian, and was less interesting because of it. (Though fewer sources did make them easier to write, not unimportant given I was trying to get each day's post up before midnight!) The exception was for the Clydeside blitz, where I used only a single source, the Glasgow Herald. My aim there was to try and see how the local press covered its own blitz, rather than just taking in the usual views from London (or Manchester). But I think it might have been more valuable had I contrasted the Herald's coverage with, say, The Times, to see if there were differences or whether they in fact were similar (whether because of censorship, the pressure of events or conformity to now-established stereotypes of how blitzes went).
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Manchester Guardian, 20 May 1941, 5

For the first time in a while, The Times and the Manchester Guardian differ in their lead stories. The latter (above, 5) focuses mainly on the surrender of seven thousand Italian soldiers in northern Abyssinia, but also notes a repulse of German armoured columns near Sollum and a new RAF attack on Vichy aerodromes in Syria. The Times deals only with Syria. There's surprisingly little crowing in either paper about this victory; perhaps because Gondar and Gimma are still holding out, or perhaps because, as a leading article in the Guardian says, 'As a nation [...] we are more disturbed by our defeats than excited by our victories' (4). But the The Times does rub salt into Italian wounds with a little article which points out that while it took the Italians 'seven months to march 425 miles' in their conquest of Abyssinia in 1935-6, 'Imperial Forces have covered a distance of 1,500 miles in 94 days' in order to free it (3).
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Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1941, 7

Ten aircraft failed to return from Bomber Command's operations over Germany on Thursday night. Those losses are quite small in relation to the number of British aircraft involved in the raids on Hamburg and Bremen, between three and four hundred, 'certainly the largest number ever used in one night' according to page 7 of the Manchester Guardian.

Moon and weather favoured the attack, and the submarine and shipbuilding yards of both ports were heavily damaged. Pilots' individual reports speak of areas a mass of flames, in which it was impossible to distinguish separate fires, and of great explosions caused by our most powerful bombs being dropped into the heart of the fires.

The report in The Times (4) is more vivid and evocative, which seems to have inspired even the subeditor ('cities seared by fire').

In other industrial quarters of both towns there were widespread fires as well, and many other marks of devastation. At Hamburg a whole wharf was blazing as a single stick of bombs was seen to split open a row of buildings. Here smoke was rising to 10,000ft., and in another part of the town smoke rolled in black eddies and suggested the destruction of great stores of oil.

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The title of this post is something which Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris did not say. There are an uncountable infinity of things Harris didn't say, but this particular one is of interest because during the Second World War it was widely believed that he did say it, and was taken to represent his aims and the aims of Bomber Command. It's part of a propaganda broadcast made to the German people in Harris's name, telling them what Bomber Command had in store for them if they did not overthrow their Nazi leaders:

Soon we shall be coming every night and every day, rain, blow, or snow -- we and the Americans [...] We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end if you make it necessary for us to do so. You cannot stop it, and you know it.

You have no chance.

The broadcast was picked up in Britain too, translated and printed in the daily press. In his memoirs, Harris says that he never said any of it, or even approved it; he had agreed that his name could be used on leaflets to be dropped into Germany, but this had somehow mutated into a radio broadcast. As Harris pointed out, he couldn't even speak German. Having said that, he nowhere disavows the substance of the speech, only that it understated the 'pains and dire penalties' which were 'actually meted out' to the German people by Bomber Command.1 Nor was he able to disavow authorship during the war. So this speech, though false, was more or less accurate and accepted as such. As I'm always looking out for ways to explore attitudes towards strategic bombing, the episode of the speech not made by Harris seems worth looking at.
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  1. Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005 [1947]), 115. [↩]

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The Times, 2 January 1941, 4

The Mediterranean theatre of war has seen a lot of action in recent days, as these headlines from The Times (4) show. While the Italian outpost at Bardia is besieged from land, sea and air, British armoured units are approaching Tobruk, 70 miles to the west. On Monday night, Italian warships at Taranto were bombed by the RAF: '11 bombs were seen to burst around the target' (though without such striking success as attended the Royal Navy's raid last November). The Greek army is continuing its slow and stubborn advance, though 'the present line of Italian defence shows no clear sign of cracking'.
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Daily Mirror, 21 November 1940, 1

I was going to end this section of the post-blog with yesterday's post, but who could resist a front page like this? It's so emotive and manipulative. The scene itself is tragic enough: the mass burial and funeral of 172 men, women and children killed in the blitz on Coventry last Thursday night. Another seventy will be buried today. But to that the Daily Mirror adds (1) portentous capitalisation ('the Tragedy of Coventry'); (2) a rousing declaration ('WE SHALL REMEMBER!') combined with a graphic of Coventry in flames; (3) the archaic insults ('HUNS RAID', 'the Hun's massacre'). There's more on page 7, along with photographs of the open grave, and on the back page. The Mirror is milking Coventry for all it's worth. And who knows, maybe it's worth a lot.
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I have an embarrassment of Sunday papers now: the Observer, the Sunday Express, News of the World and The People. The last named (which has sales of more than 3 million per issue) has Coventry on the front page, but halfway down and underneath a photograph of a pig (I couldn't say why). US-British cooperation, the brave HMS Jervis Bay and the Italian evacuation of Koritza in the face of the Greek advance are the stories which are given top billing instead.

Sunday Express, 17 November 1940, 1

The other three have chosen Coventry as their lead story. The Sunday Express has this banner headline stretching the entire width of the front page. The story, written by Geoffrey Winn, continues on the back page where the headline is explained as a conversation overheard in the Cathedral (12):

Round me there are old folk, three generations together, grandfather, daughter, son. All of them week have not only looked on the cathedral as the centre point of their city. But have entered there to pray.

AT MY SIDE I HEAR SOME ONE SAY, IN A QUIET VOICE TO A BOY IN AIR FORCE UNIFORM: "PLEASE GOD, YOU WILL AVENGE WHAT WAS DONE TO US AND OUR BEAUTIFUL CATHEDRAL ON THURSDAY NIGHT."

He nods, too moved to speak. Then another voice said to some one else near-by: "Excuse me. But please remember this is still a church."

With a murmur of apology the man at once removes his hat.

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Reprisals: all mentions, 1939-1945

The word 'reprisals' popped up during my 1940 post-blogging quite frequently. After one post I had the idea of checking whether it could be used as an index of British attitudes towards the bombing of Germany throughout the rest of the war. The short answer is: not really. But it was still worth trying.

With The Times and the Manchester Guardian/Observer databases I can luckily do this in a semi-automated fashion. Automated because I can do keyword searches on the full text of the newspapers, semi because the interfaces are crude and require manually stepping through the date range to bin the data. For example, searching for the word 'reprisals' in The Times database between 1 and 31 July 1940 gives 16 articles; doing the same between 1 and 31 August 1940 gives 18 articles; and so on. I then put these numbers together and plot the results.
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Daily Mail, 7 October 1940, 1

'RAF PREPARING A GREAT NEW BOMBING OFFENSIVE', Daily Mail, page 1:

POWERFUL new R.A.F. bombers now being produced in great numbers and an amazing new long-range fighter are likely to be used, in the immediate future, for a greatly intensified bombing offensive over Germany.

Hitler's people can look forward to more than a taste of the medicine their Luftwaffe is administering over here.

'Shortest Raid. LONDON ALERT LASTS 20 MINS.':

LONDON had its usual air-raid warning half-an-hour than usual last night. It proved to be the shortest after-dark "Alert" since the blitzkrieg began, lasting barely 20 minutes.

And it was followed by the longest period of quiet.

'2-TONS OF BOMBS RAIN ON KRUPPS':

TWO tons of bombs were rained on the great Krupps arms works at Essen during a lightning high-altitude attack by the R.A.F. in Saturday night.

[...]

They started a trail of fire across Germany's oil plants and railway yards, blasting the docks in Holland, and set the French coast aflame from Dunkirk to Boulogne.

'Nazis Lose More Than They Kill':

LORD CROFT of Bournemouth, Under-Secretary for War, revealed yesterday:

"It is believed that ten days ago a single British submarine sent more German soldiers to their doom than all the British deaths caused by German airmen in the whole month of August.

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"It is highly probable that far more German war factory workers have lost their lives than the total losses inflicted on our civilians from air attack."

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Daily Mail, 4 October 1940, 1

Politics intrudes onto the front page of the Daily Mail today, in the form of a Cabinet reshuffle. But this being wartime, people are perhaps more likely to invest these normally mundane ministerial changes with great significance. The Mail certainly does, leading with the story that Sir John Reith, former Director-General of the BBC (and more recently chairman of Imperial Airways, Minister of Information and Minister of Transport) has been given the job of planning for the post-war reconstruction of Britain, or at least its buildings -- though the 'large-scale slum clearances' envisaged would certainly have a social impact. Reith will also be looking at more immediate repairs for those buildings which can't wait, and 'in all probability start[ing] an immediate investigation into the question of providing more and better air-raid shelters'. But it's the optimistic 'Planning now for day of victory' angle which the Mail plays up.

The other big change is probably the promotion by Churchill of Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, into the War Cabinet in order to 'represent the trade unions'. The reshuffle was occasioned by the resignation of Neville Chamberlain as Lord President of the Council, on the grounds of ill health. He may be up for a peerage.
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