CKNW Editorial
for February 17, 2000

It's interesting how Winston Churchill, in this last year of the century and millenium, has come in for much comment. He is clearly the man of the Century for all who really think about it ... Time Magazine picked Albert Einstein but it's interesting to note that for their man of the half century in 1950 - again a year early - they picked Churchill even though all Einstein's achievements had been before this time.

But the raging issue now, sparked by the appointment of the far right to high office in Austria, is whether or not Churchill was a war criminal for permitting the bombing of Dresden in 1945, a bombing that destroyed an historic city and took perhaps 100,000 civilian lives or more.

It was a dreadful act and cannot be dismissed simply on the basis that there was a war going on any more than can the fire bombing of Hamburg and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That there were all crimes against humanity seems beyond debate.

The question really is, how do we judge these things?

All war is immoral. War by definition takes innocent lives and wreaks destruction indiscriminately. But the actions of individuals must be judged in the context of the times.

The serious bombing of cities started in the Spanish Civil War when the German Condor division of the Luftwaffe, supporting General Franco, bombed Guernica in Spain. This was terror bombing of a civilian population. Upon reflection one might go back to Zeppelin raids by the Germans on London during World War I but it's difficult to call bombing indiscriminate when it's done be airmen throwing bombs over the side of an airship.

The next major terror bombing occurred in May 1940 when the Nazis bombed Rotterdam in a strict act of terror in order to end Dutch resistance. Within days they started bombing the endless lines of refugees leaving French and Belgian towns in order to reduce civilian morale and thus have pressure brought on Allied leadership.

When the Luftwaffe took on London in 1940 and 1941 in what became known as the Blitz, the bombing of cities became a regular part of war and there was no getting off the tit for tat that was bound to occur. In fact, the RAF actually conducted a minor raid on Berlin before the Germans bombed London.

From then on it was an epidemic. London was by no means the only city bombed in a serious way. There was Plymouth ... Portsmouth ... Southampton ... Birmingham ... Bristol ... Belfast ... and of course the famous raid on Coventry. German bombers who did not make their targets regularly dumped their bombs on London suburbs like Chislehurst, Bromley and Greenwich.

In the midst of the Blitz Churchill made a speech at the Lord Mayor's luncheon at the badly damaged London Guildhall and said that if Londoners were asked to consent to an agreement where all bombing of cities would be banned they would say "no .. we will mete out the measure and more than the measure the Germans have meted out to us."

Unchristian? Perhaps. But here was a country enduring the first sustained bombing of cities in history. The Londoner survived on morale and it was Churchill's job to sustain that morale. There was, put simply, a war to the death going on.

The tide turned and Britain and later the US began to dish it out to Germany. And, without question, they meted out the measure and more than the measure meted out to them.

But Dresden wasn't a military target. And that is a difference even though many small centers in England had been bombed in what was known as the Baedeker raids, so named because the cities were featured in Baedekers travel guide. But again, this must be seen in context.

The allies, both the western allies and the Russians, were continuing to sustain enormous losses to the German Wermacht. Russia especially had been raped by German forces losing some 20 million innocent civilians. Germany was being called upon to submit to the inevitable and stop the war and were stubbornly refusing. But here is perhaps the key to the equation - at the time Dresden was bombed, the Germans were raining V1 and V2 rockets on London without any pretence of aiming at strategic targets. Hundreds of Londoners were dying and there was no defence. With the V1, it could be heard and, when the noise stopped, some effort at self protection could be made. But the V2 was supersonic and there was simply a deadly explosion.

Added to this was the fact that Hitler - a man who wash the embodiment of all that's evil - had developed jet planes and was within perhaps six months of developing an atom bomb.

This is the context in which the decision to bomb Dresden and later Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be viewed, not from the safety of a scotch and water in a living-room of the year 2000 but in the context of a war which truly was against a monstrous evil that simply would not give up.

It was not Churchill's finest hour to be sure - but what person fighting for freedom ... what mother or dad of a serviceman or woman ... what wife or sweetheart ... what Londoner ... would have had Churchill make any other decision?