German irritation over British bomber memorial

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

BTW, the Nazis had started with targetting cities. During the conquest of Poland already, at the very beginning of WWII, Warsaw was subject to extremely intense artillery shelling and dive bombing attacks. This later repeated often during the war in Russia.

It goes back further than Poland, the first trials of terror-bombing was in the Spanish Civil War with the particular note of Guernica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

Although it goes back even further than that to World War One and the Zeppelin raids on London, and then joined by the bomber aircraft once they got into service. Mostly ineffective they still managed to kill over a thousand people. The fact that on most occasions the bomber got through lead to the myth 'The bomber will always get through' which affected the thinking of British doctrine and spurred on the development of RADAR and large bomber forces for retaliation, in a form of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Bomber Command practiced bombing in Iraq between the wars, and it became our policy in dealing with Arabic uprisings which reduced the amount of troops needed on the ground, and the Condor Legion practiced in Spain.
Then there's Japanese bombing of Chinese cities which also took place before Poland. It snowballed when the war spread out across Europe though and the raids began.