Quote:
Originally Posted by Kutscha
Dresden was a legitimate military target being a major rail hub. There was many other military targets such as the Zeuss optics works.
Luebeck was a port and had submarine construction yards.
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Dresden has been analysed to death. It was not a legitimate military target, but the last unburned city.
But I can assure you that Luebeck had no submarine construction yards. The 'justification' put out by the British was that it was the main port for iron ore imported from Sweden and was home to a U-boat training station.
But everybody knew that its timbered mediaeval buildings were a temptation for coventrieren.
Luebeck was destroyed on 28 March, Exeter in retaliation on April 23, and the following day Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm said; "We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedecker Guide". Rostock (the Heinkel works were not the target) was another mediaeval city destroyed next in three raids from 23 to 26 April; then it was York, then it was Bath, and then the 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, etc etc etc.
By the way, it is important to know why the the Bomber Command War Diaries failed to record the raid on Munich that led to Coventry's destruction.
I don't have Middlebrook, but wonder whether he analysed the War Diaries for examples of bowdlerisation. And who made the decision to leave Munich out and why.
The only example I know of deliberate falsification of records was by Doenitz over the Athenia sinking by Fritz Julius Lemp on September 3, 1939, which the Germans denied and suggested the RN had done in order to drag the USA into the war like the Lusitania event. Doenitz ordered that the U-30's log be altered.
Tony