PS To: Chuck Pelto
you wrote: “P.S. It was probably one of the best mistakes to happen to England.”
That’s a wildly improper statement, since it seems as if you are saying that the digression of the air war from military targets to civilian areas was a good thing for England and/or Germany?
That makes little sense to me.
Up to July 1940, not one single German bomb has fallen on British towns. Hitler had given orders that no British towns are to be bombed and, above all. bombing of London is completely forbidden and embargoed. Churchill knows this, because he’s reading the German code, he’s reading the German Air Force signals, which I can now read in the German files. Churchill is reading the signals and he knows that Hitler is not doing him the favor.
Hitler is still hoping that this madman in England will see reason or that he will be outvoted by his cabinet colleagues. So he’s not doing Churchill the favor of bombing any English towns. Churchil is frantic because he thinks he’s being outsmarted by Hitler. On July the 20th he sends for Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of Bomber Command. and he says to Sir Charles Portal, as we know from records from Command to the Air Ministry, “When is the earliest that you could launch a vicious air attack on Berlin?” Sir Charles Portal replies to Winston, “I’m afraid we can’t do it now, not until September because the nights aren’t long enough to fly from England to Berlin and back in the hours of darkness. September, perhaps, and in September we will have the first hundred of the new Sterling bombers …” But he also says, “I warn you, if you do that, the Germans will retaliate. At present they’re not bombing English targets, they’re not bombing civilian targets at all and you know why. And if you bomb Berlin, then Hitler will retaliate against English civilian targets.” And Churchill just twinkles when he gets this reply because he knows what he wants.
