"The Greatest Force" by Marcus Gibson

[Nick Beale]

According to the author's website:

"This book is the first-ever full analysis of the impact of RAF Bomber Command on Nazi Germany, proving it was the foremost military force in securing victory.

New research at last dispels the many myths about Bomber Command’s true effectiveness in crippling Germany’s industrial output.

How Bomber Command gave little-known but vital support to the Royal Navy against the U-boats and to Allied armies from Italy, Normandy and deep into Germany

It was deputy PM Clement Attlee who ordered the raid on Dresden—not Air Marshal Harris.

Tragically 55,000 RAF airmen died in the bombing campaign but this book confirms their selfless sacrifice was not in vain.

… overturns all previous histories of RAF Bomber Command in WW2, is destined to become the standard work on one of the war’s most controversial subjects: the bombing campaign against Germany and Italy.

The book forensically challenges the widely repeated claims that the campaign was “ineffective, costly and even a war crime” and goes on to show, with painstaking analysis of British, American, and German archives, that it was in fact an undoubted game-changer in ensuring the ultimate defeat of the Nazi Regime.

• Why Air Marshal Harris was right to bomb German city centres?
• How the RAF diverted around 80% of AA guns and fighters from frontlines.
• How did the RAF also help smash the Kriegsmarine and the Wehrmacht?
• Why were small parts factories far important to Germany than big ones?
• And what were Bomber Command’s greatest errors?
• Why there were no refugees in Dresden? Why did this manufacturing city get off so lightly compared to the Russian cities bombed by the Luftwaffe?
• In 1945 which British politicians betrayed Bomber Command?
• How did General James Doolittle rescue the US 8th Air Force from its disastrous start?

This book will be the very first, truly encyclopaedic analysis that profiles the full spectrum of RAF Bomber Command’s achievements—and it will fundamentally change our view, once and for all, of the immensity of their contribution."

If the foregoing was too modest to convince you, there's part 1 of a ww2tv interview online now, with the second bit to come later this week. I can't say I've bought his argument so far, despite his two years' research (he talked as if he thought that was a lot, by the way).