Why was Coventry 'coventriert'?

[tcolvin]

A controversial letter appeared in today's Guardian.

"Letters, The Guardian, Friday 9 October 2009
This week's BBC film about the second world war Coventry blitz repeated a misleading myth. Coventry was not selected because it was an industrial city, as claimed in the film. Coventry had a medieval city centre regarded at the time as the best preserved in Europe. Hitler took revenge on Coventry for the bombing of Munich by the RAF. He was incensed at the attack on the city known as the birthplace of his Nazi party. His revenge was to entirely remove from existence the medieval city centre of Coventry as a demonstration of his ruthlessness and insane power.
The factories were not the main target as they were on the outskirts of the city. Only those within the city centre were affected. The centre of the raid was meant to be the cathedral, and a cross was drawn over the city to this effect. The obliteration of the medieval city centre was so complete that nothing of it seems to remain in the national memory of the British people. In this way Hitler seems to have achieved his aim.
It may be for reasons of morale that this utter destruction of a historical centre was underplayed, although at the time the British government was outraged at the attack on a "non-military target". The hatred engendered, however, by this demonstration of the mind of a dictator to remove history at will changed the nature of the war. The bombing of Dresden was Britain's reply in kind. That Dresden has been preserved but Coventry forgotten is something which is hard to explain, except the cost of winning the war was so high that Britain wanted to remove its bomb sites and move on.
Jackie Litherland, Durham"

But is Litherland correct?
There is no mention in the BC War Diaries of any attack on Munich in the months before November 1940, although attacks on unspecified targets are mentioned which may have included Munich, and BC aircraft were notorious for getting lost and bombing anywhere which could have included Munich.
Many of the 437 GAF aircraft attacking Coventry were given specific military targets; I./LG I the Standard Motor Works and Coventry Radiator and Press Co; II./KG 27 the Alvis aero-engine works; I./KG 51 the British Piston Ring Co; II./KG 55 the Daimler Works; and KGr 606 the gas holders in Hill Street. Most of these targets suffered significantly together with twelve important aircraft component plants and nine other major industrial works in or near the city centre.
But it is true that the shadow factories on the outskirts of the city were untouched, including the shadow factory on Banner Lane making Bristol aero engines.

The destruction of Coventry in Unternehmung Mondschein-Sonate was significant because it,
1.had a profound effect on the British government, as the TV film made clear, when Herbert Morrison and the BBC reported that the population was traumatised and had fled the city, leading to demands for the BBC to be taken over by the government. People interviewed on the TV programme burst into tears at the very memory of what they had endured nearly seventy years earlier. The destruction of Coventry removed any British compunction about traumatising Germans, and this utterly inhumane bombing policy continues to this day in Gaza and Afghanistan
2.gave the British a worldwide propaganda coup, and especially in the USA where there were many towns named Coventry, eg Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. 'Remember Coventry' became the new 'Remember the Alamo'
3.became the final nail in Dowding's coffin. He was blamed for the incompetence of the RAF in failing to destroy a single one of the attacking 437 GAF bombers, despite their flying at height under a full moon, over a period of 12 hours, through an area lit by searchlights, from known bases (which were supposed to be harassed by the RAF in Operation Cold Water) to a target identified as soon as it was marked at 2015hrs by the He-111s of K.Gr.100 using X-Geraet. Three main streams crossed Lincolnshire/East Anglia, Selsey Bill to Portland, and Selsey Bill to Dungeness
4.led to ineffectual retaliation by 134 RAF bombers on Mannheim (Abigail-Rachel) on December 16, 1940 for a loss of 10 aircraft
5.resulted in the adoption by Harris of the technique of fire-raising that had been shown to be effective in Coventry. Harris wrote of Luebeck, where the same technique was first tried out by 234 bombers, of which 191 claimed to have bombed, killing 1,000 people, “On the night of 28/9 March 1942, the first German city went up in flames”. BC implemented the Air Staff Directive issued on February 12, 1942; “The primary object of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population, and in particular of civilian workers”
6.sold Churchill on the theory that killing/traumatising civilians was a war-winning policy. Half the British gross domestic product was given to Bomber Command to burn out cities. Consequently the British army was starved of modern equipment and recruits, which resulted in US dominance of the alliance and Britain becoming second-rate.

It is of interest to know why the GAF destroyed Coventry, and surprising there appears to be room for debate on the matter.

Tony

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

A controversial letter appeared in today's Guardian.

"Letters, The Guardian, Friday 9 October 2009
… Hitler took revenge on Coventry for the bombing of Munich by the RAF. He was incensed at the attack on the city known as the birthplace of his Nazi party. His revenge was to entirely remove from existence the medieval city centre of Coventry as a demonstration of his ruthlessness and insane power…"

But is Litherland correct?

Tony

Shouldn't think so. The writer offers no source but, like any paper, the Guardian seems to publish its quota of fact-free letters. According to Max Hastings' "Bomber Command" the first Main Force attack on Munich was in September 1942.

[tcolvin]

Sorry, Nick, I should have mentioned this, but it was German propaganda that said the reason for bombing Coventry was to take revenge for RAF bombing of Munich.

The question is why would the Germans have said that the reason if it was not true?

Tony

[Don Pearson]

Found this:

"On the evening of November 8, 1940, just at the time Hitler was to have addressed the old guard of the Nazi Party in the Lowenbraukeller of Munich to commemorate the seventeenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 -- Hitler's first attempt at revolution, which collapsed in a gunfight with police -- the RAF made a small, provocative raid on Munich"

More inclined to believe that Coventry was an industrial target, one of several selected for Moonlight Sonata, that suffered excessive collateral damage.

Don

[Stig Jarlevik]

Guys

BC certainly bombed Munich on the night on 8/9 Nov 1940. It is stated by John Foreman in Battle of Britain, the forgotten months, that 43 aeroplanes from 3rd and 5th Groups made the attack. In Chorleys Bomber Command losses 1940, two aircraft are listed as lost belonging to the Munich Force.
Foreman states Hitler talked about a revenge raid after BC raid, and at least mentally makes the connection with Coventry. I don't know myself and perhaps the answer is somewhere in between....

B Rgds
Stig

[tcolvin]

Thank you. That clears the matter up.

The operational orders for Luftflotten 2 and 3 truthfully described Coventry as "an important centre of the enemy armament industry", according to Cajus Bekker, who mentions nothing about retaliation for Munich. That's probably the source for our erroneous impression that the motives were strictly military.
Bekker goes on; "The usual cheers that greeted a direct hit stuck in our throats", wrote one of the bomber pilots. "The crew just gazed down on the sea of flames in silence. Was this really a military target?"
BC pilots were later assured untruthfully that Luebeck and Dresden were important military targets. Pilots accepted what they were told. Flying high above the carnage they never saw the burning bodies, although they could imagine them, and sometimes smelled them as they did over Hamburg.

I wonder if any pilots refused to carry out orders to burn civilians. William Douglas-Home did, refusing to operate his Crocodile flame-thrower during the capture of Le Havre; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Douglas-Home

Tony

[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.

[Nick Beale]

"Coventry had a medieval city centre regarded at the time as the best preserved in Europe"

What about Carcassonne, Nürnberg, York, Prague … and doubtless many other contenders?

"That Dresden has been preserved but Coventry forgotten is something which is hard to explain"

No it isn't. Look at what happened to London, Plymouth, Exeter, Birmingham, Southampton … the list goes on. Maybe it's differing national attitudes, maybe a desire to make a new and better world, maybe the fact that so many of Germany's modernist architects had fled to Britain and the USA before the war.

[tcolvin]

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.

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

[Bruce Dennis]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

...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.

Tony, out of curiosity, why the dismissive rejection of the target as legitimate? The iron ore trade was vital, and at that time was actually described by MEW analysts as capable of halting Germany’s war production on it’s own if disrupted sufficiently. Later this was proved wrong, but at that time there was sufficient evidence before the Air Staff to justify an all-out offensive against iron-ore targets had they felt capable of mounting one.

Bruce