The Anonymous Widower

Man’s Inhumanity to Man

I have just watched the story of the Blitzing of Coventry on BBC2. Looking back from nearly seventy years it is possible to say that good triumphed over evil and that it just stiffened our resolve to stand up to the Nazis.

I’ve stood twice in the grounds of the bombed cathedral and it is a place with a quiet significance that moves me deeply. And I’m not a religious person.

Coventry Cathedral

Compared to the later bombing of Hamburg and Dresden, the bombing of Coventry was not as severe.  In the 1960s, I met a woman who had survived the inferno of Hamburg, and she told me that just as it did for those in Coventry, it just made them angry and wanting to fight more.

So was it worth it?

I would argue that it wasn’t on a strategic level, as to bomb important targets accurately has been shown to do more.

But we never learn!

We just tried to obliterate Iraq, when perhaps a more subtle, but more targeted and demoralising approach might have been better.  In Iraq too, we virtually forgot all of the black propaganda methods that we were so good at in the Second World War.  Surely with all the technology we now have from satellites to Hollywood, it could find a place to get messages across and cause chaos. 

But then big explosions play better at home.

October 6, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | World | History, Iraq, Second World War