Change in Bombing Priorites 1941

[Chris Goss]

Has anyone come across a document which:

- Explains why the attack on London 10-11 May 1941, exactly a year after the attack in the west, was chosen on this date and was so heavy?
- Explains why after 11 May 41, targets were then mainly airfields/nuisance raids, then coastal and shipping targets (Bismarck breakout coincides with this) with the occasional attacks on cities?

Was it simply that Barbarossa was approaching, the tactic was failing or what?

[Larry deZeng]

I just reviewed KTB/OKW from 1 May to 20 May 1941 and found no mention of any conscious decision to make the London raid of 10/11 May the last one on that target (600 aircraft, 12 lost the entry says). But the raids for the 10 days prior to that and the ten days following were clearly on other targets in the U.K. (unless I missed one). The daily entries are mostly about "Marita", the forthcoming mission to Iraq, getting Vichy approval to transit Syria, "Merkur" planning, AOK 12's boast of having "342 Offiziere, 10 340 Mann Engländer gefangen" as of 13 May. On 19 May under the sub-heading "Westen", the entry reads, "Geringe Tätigkeit der eigenen Luftwaffe wegen Erholung." Now one doesn't have to read too hard between the lines to imagine that all this "resting and refitting" in the West may be related to the impending movement of the Luftwaffe's big bomber fleet to the East for "Barbarossa". So the documents you seek may be in the Luftwaffe Annex of the "Barbarossa" planning documents. There it would give a specific date for the termination of large-scale raids on the U.K. so the bomber fleet could be prepared for the transfer. I remember these planning documents from my research many years ago and they do include milestones and termination dates like that.

Larry

[Chris Goss]

Larry: Interesting. For starters, I have just looked at Jun 41 from Luftflotte 3's perspective. For example, 1-2 Jun Manchester was the target (with diversion of Bristol) and involved I/KG 55, I/KG 54, III/KG 27, III/KG 26, KGr 806, II/KG 53, I/KG 28 and II/KG 1 but Brighton, Plymouth, Liverpool, Penzance & Falmouth were also attacked by those that failed to find the target. Similar for 4-5 Jun (Birmingham) with 9 other locations being bombed. Then 6-7 Jun was shipping, 11-12 shipping but also Birmingham with bombs being dropped at 7 other locations. Then 13-14 Jun London, 14-15 Jun was Filton, 16-17 Jun Gloucester, 18-19 & 19-20 shipping and finally 21-22 Jun was Southampton

[Chris Goss]

To reinforce my point, Luftflotte 3 alone tasked 291 bombers in the first wave and 71 in the second wave to attack London on the night 10-11 May 41 then Luftflotte 2 & 3 tasked 241 aircraft the following night to attack airfields all over England

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Chris Goss

Has anyone come across a document which:

- Explains why the attack on London 10-11 May 1941, exactly a year after the attack in the west, was chosen on this date and was so heavy?
- Explains why after 11 May 41, targets were then mainly airfields/nuisance raids, then coastal and shipping targets (Bismarck breakout coincides with this) with the occasional attacks on cities?

Was it simply that Barbarossa was approaching, the tactic was failing or what?

I think you will find both events were a consequence of the planned arrival in Scotland of Hess on May 10, 1941.
The result of his arrival was a secret type of armistice between Churchill and Hitler mediated by the Hamilton and Haushofer groups.
The armistice involved:
- the changes to GAF targeting that you detail
- reduced number of RAF raids on Germany with cessation of attacks on civilians not resumed until after Stalingrad
- cancellation of FDR's speech on May 12, 1941 and its replacement on May 27 by a virtual declaration of war on Germany.

I recommend you read 'Double Standards' by Lyn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior. They concluded;
“It seems that in the aftermath of of Hess' arrival, Churchill played a cunning game by fostering Hitler's belief that his Deputy's proposals were being seriously considered. The reduction of British air raids on Germany might have been, like the German cessation of the Blitz, a gesture of 'good faith'. This ensured that the Fuehrer felt able to concentrate on the USSR in the belief that Britain would no longer be a problem”.
This was also how the Russians understood it. The Soviet judges at Nuremberg argued that Hess's mission had been 'undertaken in the hope of facilitating the aggression against the USSR by temporarily restraining England from fighting'. This seems to be referring to ..... what actually happened” - not to the aims of the mission which was for Britain to make peace with Germany and adopt benevolent neutrality (wohlvolende Neutralität) while Germany defeated Russia.

By the way, Hess arrived without a copy of the peace document – it may have been burnt in his Me-110. According to 'Double Standards', the bulky peace document in German and English versions was personally handed over to an RAF officer by Heinrich Schmitt, who flew a Do-217 from Aalborg to land at Scampton on May 20, 1941. Schmitt later defected in a Ju-88 fitted with the latest radar. In the 1970s, Schmitt said in an interview that the 1941 flight was an official LW mission, adding; “It was all part of the grey war that existed at the time. I wasn't the only German pilot to land, by arrangement, in Britain, and several British pilots made landings in Germany which were known to the people who mattered. It was well known that Hitler was prepared to pay a high price to make peace with Britain, and the secret flights only ended when we attacked Russia, and Britain and Russia became allies”.

Tony

[Larry deZeng]

Explosively sensationalistic stuff! A complete revision of what I have previously known and claims I do not recall seeing in the mainstream media. Where have I been?

Are these claims and de facto charges concerning Hess, Churchill, Roosevelt et all well known and generally accepted now and I am just too dense and poorly read to be aware of it? I have been plugged into daily newspapers, weekly news magazines (Time, Newsweek) and 'round the clock TV news for the past 55 to 60 years, and computer internet news and World War II discussion forums since May 2000 and this is the first I've heard of Luftwaffe aircraft landing willy-nilly all over the U.K. in aid of secret deals being worked out between Churchill, Roosevelt and Der Führer. When did these shocking revelations first become known?

I feel like a total dunce here. Can any one substantiate these claims with rock-solid documentary evidence? I would hate to have to alter my understanding of World War II on the allegations of three authors I've never heard of and a 1970's interview with someone named "Heinrich Schmitt".

The implications to all this are truly incredible. If Churchill and Roosevelt facilitated Hitler's attack on Russia then that makes them both complicit in the Holocaust. If in doubt, see:

Hanyok, Robert J. Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945. United States Cryptologic History Series IV, Volume 9. Ft. Meade: Center for Cryptologic History/National Security Agency, 2005.

This work lays out Bletchley Park's and Churchill's knowledge of what was in store for Eastern Europe's Jewry several months before Barbarossa.

Help!

[Graham Boak]

I also recommend you read The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, the truth behind the faked US landings on the moon, those books which describe that Jesus did not die on the cross, that Hitler knew nothing about the concentration camps and escaped to Brazil after the war to raise an army of clones. Oh, and there is a Lancaster on the moon.

[tcolvin]

Page 510 of 'Double Standards';
"In chapter 15 we saw that when the Foreign Office finally released its files relating to Hess's flight in 1992, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd kept one back on the grounds that it contained 'records which still pose a risk to national security', and we asked what risk a fifty-year-old file could possibly pose to modern Britain. Since the first edition, we have been informed by a senior Foreign Office source with access to this file what really lies behind Hurd's curious statement. The 'file' is in fact a box of several individual files, each of which contains a single sheet of paper stating that the contents have been transferred 'on permanent loan' to the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle.
Obviously we have not been able to verify this for ourselves, but if true it has enormous implications. Unlike government records, the release of material in the Royal Archives at Windsor is not covered by Public Records legislation, but can be made public only on the personal instructions of the Queen. What better way to keep compromising information out of the public domain, and to prevent any future government from releasing it?..........
Our informant also tells us that the documents missing from the Foreign Office files are kept in a special section of the Windsor Archives, together with other docments relating to the activities of the Royal Family during WWII, such as the letters retrieved from Germany by Anthony Blunt in 1945. These include letters written by the Dukes of Windsor and Kent .... to Hess, Goering and von Papen, and their replies, together with letters to the Dukes from Hitler, written on his gold-embossed notepaper - and even Christmas greetings from him!.
We have no way of verifying what our informant told us because the other source of information, the Foreign Office files, are also resolutely closed to the public. The very existence of such carefully cultivated black holes for compromising material is nothing less than a scandal in today's allegedly open and democratic society. Those in power who pour scorn on 'conspiracy theories' have a very simple means at their disposal for killing them off for good; open the files...."

Gradually the effects of Picknett's books (including 'Friendly Fire' and 'War of the Windsors') seem to be having a small but noticeable effect on the 'reputable' historians. A case in point is Sir Max Hastings' new book on Churchill being serialised in the Daily Mail. Yesterday he wrote this about Churchill-FDR relations;
"The key to understanding it is to strip aside the rhetoric of the two leaders and acknowledge that it rested, as relations between states always do, upon perceptions of national interest.

As for the individual personalities involved, there was some genuine sentiment on Churchill's side, but none on Roosevelt's.

The U.S. President had always viewed himself as the senior partner. He paid scant attention to British claims that for years before the U.S. joined the war Britain had played the nobler part, pouring forth blood and enduring bombardment in a lone struggle for freedom.

He paid only lip service to the collective gratitude owed by the democracies to Britain for single-handedly standing up to Hitler.

Churchill liked to assert that, far from owing a huge cash debt to the U.S. when the war was over, Britain should be recognised as a creditor for its lone defence of freedom in 1940-41. This was never plausible.

Polls showed that most Americans - 70 per cent - were implacable in their belief that at the end of the war the British should repay the billions they had received from the U.S. in Lend-Lease supplies. They stuck to the notion that Britain was a wealthy nation. They failed to grasp the extent of her financial exhaustion.

In fact, Roosevelt felt scant sympathy for his transatlantic ally. He had visited Britain several times as a young man, but never revealed much liking for the country."


Tony

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

I also recommend you read The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, the truth behind the faked US landings on the moon, those books which describe that Jesus did not die on the cross, that Hitler knew nothing about the concentration camps and escaped to Brazil after the war to raise an army of clones. Oh, and there is a Lancaster on the moon.

No. I do not recommend those.

Tony

[Nick Beale]

"Obviously we have not been able to verify this for ourselves, but if true it has enormous implications" That says it all really, "we have no actual evidence, but imagine if we had ..."

Also, the second half of what Tony quotes only has a tenuous relationship to the first bit. Whilst it's true that the British Establishment is always concerned to protect the symbolism of the Monarchy, the idea that any Nazi sympathies on the part of any one member of the Royal Family would have been allowed to influence the conduct of the war is laughable. Time and again throughout British history, a group of powerful figures has got together to choose and install the next monarch and that very process suggests that its the idea of the monarchy that is important to them, not reverence for the individual selected or his/her opinions.