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16 - Churchill and the Bombing Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

By
Victoria Taylor
Edited by
Allen Packwood
Allen Packwood
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge
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Summary

Through pinpointing how Churchill’s perceptions of aerial bombardment evolved across his political career, this chapter highlights the ambivalence and incongruence that dogged his bombing policy from its earliest days: ultimately arguing that his vacillating approach towards the Allied bombing campaign – and his eventual calculated detachment from it – was not out of character. The chapter begins by establishing his preliminary beliefs about aerial bombardment; next, it traces how his bombing theory converted into destructive reality, from ‘aerially policing’ the British Empire in the 1920s to the Combined Bomber Offensive; finally, it examines how Churchill attempted to reconcile his incriminating role in the German firestorms with a war-scarred Britain after 1945.

Keywords

airpowerBlitzBomber CommandbombingDresdenArthur HarrismemoryRoyal Air Forcetotal warSecond World War
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Winston Churchill , pp. 316 - 341
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Biddle, T. D., Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar
Blanco, R. L., The Luftwaffe in World War II: The Rise and Decline of the German Air Force (New York: Julian Messner, 1987)Google Scholar
Bowman, M., Bomber Command: Reflections of War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2011)Google Scholar
Everitt, C. and Middlebrook, M., The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book, 1939–1945 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2014)Google Scholar
Garrett, S. A., The Bombing Campaign: The RAF. In Toye, R. (ed.), Winston Churchill: Politics, Strategy and Statecraft (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 19–38Google Scholar
Overy, R., The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War over Europe, 1940–1945 (New York: Penguin, 2013)Google Scholar
Overy, R., Churchill and Airpower. In Toye, R. (ed.), Winston Churchill: Politics, Strategy and Statecraft (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 127–37Google Scholar
Overy, R., The Birth of the RAF (London: Allen Lane, 2018)Google Scholar
Ruane, K., Churchill and Nuclear Weapons. In Toye, R. (ed.), Winston Churchill: Politics, Strategy and Statecraft (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 171–86Google Scholar
Taylor, F., Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2005)Google Scholar
Todman, D., Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)Google Scholar

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