The BBC will be ‘celebrating’ VE Day over the next few days and you kind of know the narrative they will be pushing, apparently celebrating the men and women who defeated the Nazis but the real message will be ‘how terrible it all was’ with copious amounts of equivocation and ‘balancing’ the narrative with tales of Allied ‘war crimes’ such as Dresden or Hamburg…..in one interview I heard the BBC managed to find three people from the era who were entirely negative about VE Day and claimed either not to have been excited about the war ending and VE Day, or who said they saw no celebrations…the newspapers must have been reporting from a different London apparently….and h/t Doublethinker, the BBC ran a programme a couple of days ago about VE Day which ended up as a piece of propaganda for the Labour Party…the ‘creators of the NHS’….which is a lie…Labour merely, and reluctantly, implemented plans put in place by a Tory PM and a Liberal, William Beveridge.
The old soldiers, sailors and airmen who made all those sacrifices must wonder if it was all worth it as they look on at an ever more undemocratic European Union that pays lip service to democracy making people vote again and again until they get the ‘right’ result, the import of an ideology into Europe that bears remarkable similarities to Fascism and yet is pandered to by politicians and Media types of all creeds, and the final insult is a British Broadcasting Corporation that besmirches all they achieved and itself supports that ‘fascist’ narrative and helps raise the old spectre of anti-Semitism across Europe once again with its very one sided and unbalanced portrayal of Israel…not that the BBC was held in high esteem during the war….often then thought to be too friendly towards the Nazis if you read the ‘Mass Observation’ reports of the time.
The BBC is infamous for its line that the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg were war crimes….
BBC’s insult to hero pilots: Veterans rage over Dresden coverage that attacks Britain as being ‘worse than the Third Reich’ but ignores RAF’s sacrifice
So in light of that below is a report from the Mail in 1945 that tells of, and celebrates, the massive bombing campaign against Berlin…it makes a fascinating contemporary read….before the BBC has had the chance to rewrite history to suit their own verdict on how the war was won…….
Note just how massive the bombing was, how Berlin was not just a city but a factory for the war effort and how private homes had been turned into mini-factories turning out equipment for the German war machine….and just how much the bombing was deemed to have helped win the war…….
How RAF’s awesome bombing of Berlin ended in …
45,000 TONS OF VICTORY
- BY OUR DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
Some 850 bombers did not come home
THE last bomb has fallen on Berlin. Pathfinder crews of the RAF have planted their last zig-zag trail of skymarkers across Europe to guide the bomber streams to Hitler’s capital.
The flak guns, hundreds of them, that girdled the city with a curtain of steel have ceased to bark. Groping searchlights have been turned out for the last time.
As news of these tremendous truths came from the loudspeakers in RAF messes at scores of isolated airfields, our bomber crews could be excused a feeling of jubilation. To many of them the news had a poignant personal meaning.
Their minds went back to nights of high adventure and terrible danger high over the nerve centre of the Reich — nights of unbelievable ack-ack fire, with Nazi fighters lying in ambush, friends going down in flames, awful moments as searchlights found their mark and nerve-racking anxiety as bombers limped home with engines knocked out and petrol tanks drained too soon.
For these young men, old before their time, the capture of Berlin was a moment of personal triumph.
Without their help — they and the comrades who never returned — the German capital might still be flying the Swastika.
They are the soldiers who fought their Berlin battle thousands of feet above the Earth, months before even the Normandy beach-head was established.
Already the Russians, first to reach Berlin by land, have paid tribute to the fruits of Bomber Command’s courage.
It is not the physical possession of Berlin’s ravaged streets that is so important. What the experts want to find out from inspection of the debris and analysis of the factory timesheets is the precise extent to which our strategic bombing aided the land armies on both Eastern and Western fronts by cutting off enemy supplies.
Their report will be the definitive textbook of strategic bombing, destined to become a classic among the manuals of military science. For, apart from its many great war factories, this city of 4,400,000 people was the world’s capital of home working.
Under the Nazi’s vast dispersal plan, hundreds of private Berlin homes became miniature factories. The Germans have a word for it –—Heimarbelt. It means ‘ industrial homework’. Lathes and benches were set up in dining rooms and bedrooms.
One traveller has described his amazement when, passing along a Berlin street during an RAF raid, the wall of a private house collapsed to reveal a workman’s bench in the living room.
Bomber Command has been hammering at Berlin since August 25, 1940, when twin-engined aircraft dropped 22 tons of bombs. But the Battle of Berlin proper did not begin until the night of November 18, 1943, when 444 bombers went out and dumped 1,594 tons among the city’s factories.
Since the war started, Bomber Command has blasted and burned Berlin with close on 45,000 tons of incendiaries and high- explosive bombs. There have been 22 major raids of 500 tons and over.
The Battle of Berlin proper lasted four months, during which more than 30,000 tons were showered on the city, most of them in 13 monumental attacks.
Berliners had their worst night on February 15, 1944, when Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris sent 750 planes carrying 2,500 tons.
When the battle ended, 326 factories had been destroyed or damaged, including five classified as ‘priority one plus’.
The effects of this continuous blitzing spread through Germany’s war economy like the everwidening ripples of a pond into which a pebble has been tossed.
You can even trace part of the enemy’s recent disastrous oil shortage to the destruction of electrical engineering plants during the air Battle of Berlin.
Heavy electrical equipment needed for the completion of some of the enemy’s synthetic oil plants never arrived, and those plants failed to go into production.
So, when you see pictures of Red Army troops planting the Russian flag on Berlin’s bomb- scarred chancelleries, give a cheer for the RAF flyers who made possible that symbolic act of conquest.
Also cheer the ‘erks’ — or aircraftsmen — who sent out our Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings with engines running smoothly and gadgets working right.
And do not forget the boffins who gave our bombers their ‘magic eye’ radar and devised ways of foxing the Luftwaffe night fighters.
In all, Bomber Command has flown well over 20,000 sorties against Berlin.
The cost has not been light. More than 850 bombers did not get back. The rate of loss for the whole of Bomber Command’s other operations is just half that figure.
Isn’t that a BBC reporter on the left, (naturally), the one with the ringed finger?
Was it worth the effort? Not really, it only put off for seventy years what the Third Reich couldn’t achieve with invasion, bombing and death. The only difference now, is the method – cheating, stealing and subterfuge.
The end result is the same.
It’s politics by other means. Sad that the EU ,possibly protecting us from more of the same, is being soon undermined these days.
Man on the crap bus, have you signed here yet ? We are almost there …..
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
Tell your workmates to do the same
It’s politics by other means?? wow Clausewitz just remember Manonaclackybus one of the real truths of history
‘Impressed yet befogged, they grasped at his vivid leading phrases, seeing only their surface meaning, and missing the deeper current of his thought’
MOCO – How do you feel about Germany breaking the EU surplus rules for the fifth consecutive year, without any prospect of sanction from the EU, which is basically ballsing up the economies of the southern Europe members, who are also trapped in the Euro. which is also slowly strangling their economies.
In all probability leading to a rise of doubtlessly horrible to contemplate for you “nationalistic” parties.
Hey, I’m just glad it isn’t anyone in UKIP who’s parroting talking points first thought up by Dr Goebbels and still popular with neo-nazis today. The BBC would clear the schedules for round the clock coverage.
The BBC’s famed non-judgmentalism has always been a little patchy in application. They aren’t sure that we can really say that gunning down cartoonists is ‘wrong’ or that Boko Haram taking slaves is ‘bad’ but when it comes to Britain, and especially our ancestors, just look at them go.
No context required for Dresden, and certainly no requirement to ask what they did to provoke the RAF to bomb them. No, siree, Jack: grandad’s generation were evil, evil, evil!
The one certainty is that in all times and all circumstances the BBC will ally themselves with whichever side is against western civilisation.
There was vast sacrifice. It was worth it. It won’t be forgotten.
The difference between warfare then and now is apparent in these few quotes from Diana West, regarding the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan:
“The lives of allies under fire are of no greater value or significance than the lives of enemy sympathizers. Such rules and restrictions, the product of politically correct developments in Western culture, foster a non-combative theory of combat.
Total war. It’s ugly and barbaric, but it leads to total pacification, not to mention total victory, which is supposed to be the point.
Limited war is ugly and barbaric, but it just leads on and on. And where is the moral purity in war unending?”
once the liberals infected the military were done. We are held to some imaginary higher standard than the people that want to kill us – it is beyond parody and when it comes to wet liberals (who would wet themselves at the first sign of trouble) they are happy to support the enemy and watch people who are ten times the men they are be killed
Reminds me of the Star Trek DS9 episode called Rocks and Shoals with a ridiculous debate about the “rules of war” involving a bloodthirsty enemy. A Cardassian and the captain of the group end up saying how “when it comes between a choice between them and us, there is no choice”…liberals are the Starfleet officers having that ridiculous debate (although they wouldn’t even be there in the first place)
Certainly the rules of engagement get ever more suicidal.
I’d be very wary of anyone I cared about being under the command of today’s leadership, military or political, especially with a BBC snoop embedded anywhere near, if a few paces behind.
Speaking of Sc-Fi soaps, there’s one on catch-up called ‘The 100’.
I almost breezed by as it looked like another teen-angst snogathon in the wild (still is in parts), but glad I stuck with it.
A few mis-steps, but overall it has been a worthy provoker of debate in the house on ethical vs. survival decision-making. And, crucially, the concept of shades of grey when black and white is not on the option list.
Great line (paraphrased by memory) from the ‘heroine’ with a bunch of equivocating whingers trying to have things all ways: ‘Unless someone has a better idea that gets us out if this in two minutes, we do it my way’. Too many of the current crop of statesweasels will be still arguing as the final red line in the sand being crossed is their own arterial spray.
We’ve also just decided that the hokum that is ‘Gotham’ and ‘Atlantis’ can be supported no longer.
Equally violent, but in both cases the moral nobility of the supposedly smart heroes each week just seems to get everyone around them dead.
Maybe a more accurate metaphor for the current situation, but for sofa purposes I rather need pragmatic common sense prevailing too at regular intervals.
Nice to see Alan popped down the archive to dredge up some of Bomber Harris’ good work. Sadly a bit out about the BBC though. It wasn’t the BBC that took all their handy work of the British agenda for donkey’s years. Otherwise that commemorative statue would have been erected with Government money many decades ago. the issue about war crimes was not of the beers making either.
Tell me, are we going to see similar in the Sun Tommorow?
The BBC are currently attempting to smear the “Nope not Hope” website for their beloved Labour masters, so I would very much doubt that they’d give a damn about our heroes and war dead who were “hideously white”..
http://nopenothope.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/doing-labours-work-bbc-list-of-dodgy.html
Was it worth it? HELL NO!! I have a feeling that the VE day celebration will be more a propaganda exercise for the BBC..’look how important we are, the war wouldn’t have been won if not for us’.
Was it worth it to give the likes of manonacrapbus a voice, to give Ed milipede and his loony lefty cronies another chance at finishing what they started with Tony Bliar..not for me.
Was it worth it to replace one form of European totalitarianism for another..not for me. It makes me laugh how the media are bigging up voting day without once mentioning that it means nothing, it is a token vote to make people think we control our country when we clearly don’t, the EU control everything.
I go to the Duxford airshow every year, it is a great day out and it is a fantastic sight to see the warbirds that helped to save us still gracefully flying.
Whilst there you can go and visit an ever dwindling band of flying heroes, you can chat to them and they sign books and paintings, an autograph that is truly worth collecting. I often wonder if they think it was worth it, the horror and loss that they saw was a sacrifice that was supposed to make our lives better, i look around my home town of Manchester at times and feel ashamed and disgusted and I don’t think it was worth it.
The bbc and lefty scum are constantly telling us how we are being dragged back to the 1930s, well I’ll tell you…take me back there now and I’ll tell every one of those brave men and women to stay at home and leave Europe to burn because the result of their actions and the loss of millions wasn’t worth it.
There are countless book on the war as fought by Bomber Command, but I think the best remains Harris’ own book “Bomber Offensive”. The only (inevitable) weakness is that the early days of the war are covered from his perspective as head of No 5 Group, but in 1940 he became Deputy Chief of the Air Staff so from then on he is able to give a fuller account of policy.
I wonder if the BBC’s coverage will give him any credit for his great achievements?
I am afraid you will hardly get an unbiased account if you only read Bomber Harris’s defence of his actions. The “Battle of Berlin” of 1943/44 was meant to knock Germany out of the war, instead it almost destroyed Bomber Command, and really he ought to have been relieved of his command after it.
The strategic bombing offensive only began to work in 1944, when Mustangs meant that the 8th Air Force, which had been completely beaten by the Luftwaffe in 1943, could now bomb the synthetic oil infrastructure of the Reich. The strangulation of the flow of oil from coal, allied to the loss of the Romanian oil fields in August 1944, meant that the defeat of Germany was inevitable.
I don’t care how many lathes the Mail man claims to have seen in houses in Berlin, the fact is that industrial production in Germany in 1944 was higher than in any other year of the war, but that without fuel, the Panzers and Luftwaffe were going nowhere. Yet Harris dismissed the “Oil Plan” as a “panacea”, and insisted that Bomber Command had to destroy cities by night to ruin the enemy’s morale. In so doing he lost half of his men, and if WWII had an equivalent of Field Marshall Haig, it would have to be Air Marshall Harris.
Was it worth the sacrifice? I don’t know how such a question can be asked.
Had it not been for my father’s generation, brave patriots who risked life and limb and endured many years of hardship and near famine, our once proud and independent nation would be little more than an unimportant appendage on the western edge of Europe. Our streets would be crawling with arrogant foreigners who have no love for our country, English would be an alien tongue in some of our larger cities, we would have most of our laws made abroad and a dominant Germany would hold sway over Europe.
We just couldn’t allow that to happen…
Jeff, you missed out the bit on how Britain would be administered by someone like Petain or Quisling, trying to hide the fact that they are obeying orders from abroad.
Study the ‘government’ of Edward Heath. He was as close as we’ve yet got.
Our streets would be crawling with arrogant foreigners who have no love for our country, English would be an alien tongue in some of our larger cities.
Like Bradistan. It’s time to put a stop to this.
Stu, vote here and tell your mates …
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
I have just returned from the crash site of a R.C.A.F crewed Halifax Bomber, VE day meant nothing to these 8 men but I believe knowing all they had to loose they still would have flown that day , but in BBC land only one side deserves note !
Was it worth it? Well from the point of view that the Soviet Union would have ‘liberated’ nearly all of Western Europe if we hadn’t, yes it was.
Had the British not helped Stalin, then it’s probable the Soviet Union would not have been able to mount a credible defence of Moscow at all, and Hitler would have won.
One thing that the BBC won’t be telling anyone though is that Fascism arose as a construct of Socialism. Of Mussolini’s Socialist writings or his membership of the Italian Labour party, nor Hitler’s trade unionist roots and his left wing policies, much less his hatred of Christianity and admiration of Islam. Haj Amin Al Husseini and the Islamic worlds links to the Holocaust will never be mentioned.
And although they might mention the internment of Oswald Moseley, but they will never mention his origins as a Minister in the Labour government.
There will be no mention of the active support Muslims gave to the Fascist cause from Franco’s Spanish Civil War to Hitler, and which still continue to this day.
All the inconvenient facts which certainly don’t fit the modern narrative.
Off to visit , Leipzig , Colditz & Dresden , next week , will report back afterwards .I guess a Ryanair Flight from Stansted won`t be as bad as a Lancaster bombing mission , with flak & fighters on you most of the time above enemy territory .
You flown Ryanair recently?
I agree with the article. But am I alone in also thinking that this generation, to some extent, was weak and disappointing and, when neglected later on, got an undeserved but predictable lesson in socialist morality? I can’t help but reflect on how those who fought had an unprecedented insight into what fascism really meant, versus the value of dignity and freedom.: The socialist narrative – from Hitler to Milliband – has only ever represented a barely concealed appeal to envy and victimhood. The bargain is that the government wipes your ar** for you, makes you feel better about your failures and in return, gets your silence, acquiesce, compliance, taxes and freedoms. Where was this generation’s fight when the state came creeping back? The evils of socialism, after all, don’t live only in Germany, but rather are the presumption of authority and superiority that lurk in the brains of a sub-set of our species; a presumption to own your lives, words and beliefs.
the media and education teach that conservative values are somehow wrong so it isn’t surprising that most kids come out without the ability to think for themselves
Were the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg and London and Coventry and Tokyo and Hiroshima war crimes? History shows that no one was ever charged.
Part of the reason could be that the rulebook with the exception of chemical weapons, the Hague Convention, was written before planes, rockets (and drones) existed. There are no laws about strategic bombing to break.
The general rule that the force used has to be proportional to the military objective. This gives a huge amount of wiggle room to the bombers.
Not surprisingly there are no specific rules about drones.
Sadly, this wasn’t a subject discussed at the recent Towards a New Law of War conference in Jerusalem. The BBC, true to form, ignored the conference.