The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

When a German raid on the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow in March 1940 killed a nearby cottager (the first civilian casualty of the war), Churchill angrily berated the Air Ministry for not giving it maximum publicity as the likely start of “deliberate horror raids on civilians,” for which the Germans would carry the blame.45 In April the propaganda department of the new Ministry of Economic Warfare recommended describing German reconnaissance missions as frustrated bombing raids—“driven off before they were able to drop their bombs”—so as to justify any British retaliation.46 In May 1940 one of the arguments for bombing Germany was that sooner or later German leaders would do the same when it suited their strategic interests. “Do [the government] think,” wrote one bombing lobbyist, Marshal of the RAF Sir John Salmond, “that Hitler, who does not consider for a moment the slaughter of thousands on the ground and of devastating countries with which he has no quarrel, will shrink from killing civilians in this country?”47 In the cabinet discussion on May 15, Sir Hugh Dowding, commander in chief of Fighter Command, argued in favor of anticipatory attacks because he felt convinced that sooner or later the German Air Force would start indiscriminate bombing.48 Yet very soon the argument that Germany started the bombing became the standard version, both among the wider public and in the RAF, and it has remained firmly rooted in the British public mind ever since.