On Wed, 08 Oct 2003 06:11:40 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

FWIW, Hough and Richards state the following, after describing Hitler's speech
on 4 September:

"This public intimation of fresh work for the Luftwaffe followed a meeting
between Huitler and Goering on 30 August. There the Fuehrer had withdrawn his
ban on bombing London [Guy note; after several nights of RAF raids on Berlin
on/subsequent to 25/26 August] and expressed an ardent desire for attacks on the
British capital in retaliation for Bomber Command's raids on Berlin. An
appropriate directive from Goering followed." They then discuss the meeting of
3 September.

There are two issues at stake here, the second is the actual German
decision-making process that lead to the deliberate bombing of London
after the withdrawl of Hitler's ban on attacking it. As the Luftwaffe
had been bombing targets in British urban centres at night* since
June, I feel adding London to the target list was only a matter of
time, regardless of what impulses drove the decision at the time.

[*And the night was significant: the Luftwaffe dropped a lot more
tonnage on London by night than they did by day: Hitler's apparent
desire for a retributional policy against London did not begin and end
in the first deliberate daylight attacks on the city, whatever the
peripheral consequences were for Fighter Command)

More important is the issue of whether the first daylight raids on
London were a critical watershed in enabling the RAF to recover from
incipient defeat at the beginning of September. The hard facts are
that they weren't at the position of imminent crisis and defeat, and
the attritional exchanges continued much on the existing basis.

All the Luftwaffe targetting change did was reduce the pressure on
selected forward airfields and their infrastructure. However, the
success or failure of Fighter Command in totality did not rest on the
status of Biggin Hill, Hornchurch and Kenley and their hosted
squadrons in isolation.

What really interests me about this assertion are the emotional
well-springs that fuel it. These seem to be very deeply embedded, and
involve satisfying the basic desire to provide a simplistic
revisionist narrative that appropriates success or failure in the
Battle of Britain to German agency alone, and specifically Hitler in
particular. Surely it is long since time that this myth was laid to
rest, and for it to be understood in the light of the emotional
impetus that created it.

A similar myth is the one about Churchill protecting Enigma by letting
Coventry be bombed. These myths say more about popular prejudices in
regard of the leaders concerned than they do about anything else.
They are resiliant to factual refutal because their primary basis
stands outside factual debate.

Gavin Bailey

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