Why was Coventry 'coventriert'?

[tcolvin]

Bruce and Kutscha.

I say Lübeck was not a legitimate target because Harris wrote that Lübeck “went up in flames" because "it was a city of moderate size of some importance as a port, and with some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it. It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city".

Lübeck was attacked because it would burn. In Harris' words, “Lübeck was built more like a fire-lighter than a human habitation”. The Official History stated that the choice of Lübeck showed “the extent to which a town might become a target mainly because it was operationally vulnerable”.

Harris was right about everything except his belief that area bombing could end the war by collapsing civilian morale and thereby reducing war production.

However, I need to apologise to Kutscha. Lübeck did contain a U-boat yard. Flender Werke AG, was one of 19 yards in 11 cities making U-boats. Flender manufactured 3.6% of the total (42 out of a total of 1153 U-boats). So Harris was technically correct that Lübeck had “some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it”.

Harris was correct only technically because neither the submarine yard nor the port was either targeted or hit. His mention of these genuine military targets was disingenuous because he did not target them. In Lübeck, “damage to the German war effort was very slight”, according to John Terraine in 'The Right Of The Line”. “A factory making oxygen apparatus for U-boat crews was completely destroyed, together with 8 others of less importance”.

The conclusion is that the existence of iron ore unloading facilities and a U-boat yard was a rationalisation needed for public consumption, especially in the USA which rejected area bombing, and to motivate the bomber crews. I cannot believe Harris and Churchill believed that traumatising civilians would reduce war production, since both of them could visit Coventry to see for themselves that production steadily increased after a short-term reduction.
On the other hand they could and did delude themselves into believing that since area bombing was all that they could do to end the war, then it must be capable of ending the war.
The wish was father to the thought.

Tony