Coming back to the Blitz, briefly, Catfish does have a small point, although I don't think he realised it.
Initially, London targets outside of airfields was off bounds, on orders by Hitler, I think the two main reasons for this was fear of retaliation since he knew that the RAF had its own dedicated strategic bombing wing which was protected by the English Channel, so unlike the French strategic bombing wing (which wasn't that brilliant, tbh) it couldn't have its airfields overrun, and the second main reason was that it wasn't necessary to the goal of destroying the RAF. The main targets were RAF airfields, and Kent infrastructure as a prelude to the infamous sea mammal.
In return, the RAF was bombing primarily coastal cities along the French and German coastline as well as industrial targets in the Ruhr. Then came the famous Croydon cock-up, and as a response Bomber Command went after Tempelhof airfield in Berlin. The damage was minimal, but it made the Luftwaffe change targets from RAF airfields to London.
This much most people know, but one must take a look at London to see what the Luftwaffe were after. Fortunately, we have a device for that:
http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900
Now, it's often said that the East End of London suffered the worst in the Blitz and it's not incorrect, because the East End were the primary compenents of Londons industry were located. Gas stations, the docklands, railway yards, it was all around there, and it was all bombed on a regular occasion throughout the Blitz. The other targets were mainly symbolic at first, and usually the bombs missed. Generally speaking though, the Luftwaffes targets were industrial in nature, but bombing accuracy as it was in 1940 meant that the factories plus everything around them were hit.
Even Coventry, the infamous attack which destroyed the cathedral, the main targets were industrial in nature, but since it was done at night and with incendiaries, then accuracy was minimal. Likewise the RAF raids on Germany were aimed at industry and generally failed miserably at achieving anything of value.
So, as the wikipedia article on the Blitz puts it:
Quote:
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Although official German air doctrine did target civilian morale, it did not espouse the attacking of civilians directly. It hoped to destroy morale by destroying the enemy's factories and public utilities as well as its food stocks (by attacking shipping). Nevertheless, its official opposition to attacks on civilians became an increasingly moot point when large-scale raids were conducted in November and December 1940.
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The Luftwaffe switched from trying to accurately bomb industrial targets to just blanketing the whole area with bombs and hoping that one of them actually hit the target. If the homes of industrial workers were hit, then that was all the better too since it would help disrupt industrial activity.
The RAF took a not dissimilar objective in their attacks against coastal cities and industrial targets in the Ruhr, but officially was not aiming against clusters of civilian housing until 1942 and the Raid on Lubeck.
1942 was when things changed, 'Bomber' Harris became head of Bomber Command, and the 'Area Bombing Directive' was issued, and RAF Bomber Command decided to go down the same failed route as the Luftwaffe had tried.
As a result the Luftwaffe launched their Baedeker Blitz which focused on cultural rather than industrial targets, but with most of the Luftwaffe tied up in the Soviet Union it didn't really have much of an effect.
Personally, I think that Strategic bombing of cities in an attempt to undermine civilian morale was a pointless and failed objective. Even trying to bomb industries in an accurate manner was a difficult proposition but we were working on methods to increase night bombing accuracy and had more effort been put into them and the Pathfinder force then we might have been able to avoid the whole tactic of flattening entire cities just to destroy twelve factories, thus giving the enemy free propaganda.
Still, as Betonov put it, war is a crime, a crime against humanity, and sadly that's a lesson that we still haven't fully learnt as a race.