St. Clement Danes Church was rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London, and destroyed by German bombing during the Blitz of London in 1940.
After the church was rebuilt in the late 1950s, it was designated the central church of the Royal Air Force.
Two statues of prominent RAF officers stand in the front churchyard of St. Clement Danes Church. This waymarked statue of of Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the commander-in-chief of the RAF during WWII.
Air Chief Marshal Harris has been controversial for many decades, owing to his role in implementing a 1942 War Cabinet decision authorizing "area bombing" of German cities in order that 'the civilian population around the target areas must be made to feel the weight of the war.'
From the Baltimore Sun, a paper in the United States: (
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"Britons debate appropriateness of honoring Arthur 'Bomber' Harris
January 05, 1992|By Richard O'Mara |
Richard O'Mara, London Bureau of The Sun
Ian Johnson contributed to this article from Berlin.
LONDON -- The Queen Mother will arrive sometime this spring at a perfect little 10th century church in downtown London called St. Clement Danes, and there she will dedicate a statue to the commander-in-chief of Britain's bomber squadrons during World War II, Sir Arthur Harris.
Or maybe she won't.
It is not something the Queen Mother's spokesmen care to be definitive about. All that one can get out of them is that her participation in a ceremony, whatever form it may take, has not yet been decided.
The guest list for the May 31 ceremony is still a little unfirm, too, as is the appropriateness of the whole idea in some people's minds. Relatives of the 55,573 men of Bomber Command who died in the war have been invited as well as representatives from some of the German cities they bombed.
The statue of Harris is being finished by the sculptor, Faith Winter. She did the 9-foot rendering of Air Chief Marshal Lord Hugh Dowding already standing on the south side of St. #F Clement's cobbled plaza on the Strand.
Lord Dowding headed the Royal Air Force fighter command. His statue was unveiled by the Queen Mother about three years ago in her capacity as commandant of the Women's Royal Air Force.
Over that there was no fuss.
But "Bomber" Harris, as Sir Arthur was known, remains a figure of hot controversy in parts of Europe. He is even controversial here, and Britain's royal family has a strong aversion to controversy.
Thus the indecision at the palace.
Bomber Harris is said to be responsible for killing about 500,000 German civilians during the war. He did this, starting in 1942, by sending thousands of Lancaster and Halifax bombers in night raids over cities such as Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden, Rostock, Luebeck and Wurzburg, turning them into incinerators which consumed their inhabitants.
Forty-thousand people were killed in Hamburg alone. Then, about 100,000 died in Dresden when, in one February night in 1945, "Florence-on-the-Elbe" was firebombed by British bombers. (The Americans hit it the next day.) Another 20,000 civilians were killed in Pforzheim.
Some argue that such assaults were necessary to bring the war to a quicker end, thereby saving more lives in the long run. But not everybody believes the attacks on non-strategic cities were necessary, even justifiable. Said Joachim Becker, mayor of Pforzheim, "It is a disturbing idea to honor a man whose plans did virtually nothing to shorten the length of the war but much to increase its suffering."
The more-in-sadness-than-anger nature of Mr. Becker's reaction to the proposal to honor "Bomber" Harris has been typical of the German response. Many newspapers in the Federal Republic have mentioned the proposed memorial, but there have been no expressions of massive outrage or shrill denunciations. The tone is one of incredulity that anyone could think of honoring him.
Der Spiegel of Hamburg wrote that if Sir Harris is to be criticized, then so too should Sir Winston Churchill. It was the wartime prime minister who ordered the raids on civilian targets after military targets proved too costly to attack. Der Spiegel also observed that this was the same strategy Hermann W. Goering ordered in 1940, when he turned the Luftwaffe away from military installations onto cities,
The defense of "Bomber" Harris here in Britain has not been passionate. In response to a request by Herbert Wagner, the lord mayor of Dresden, that Britain drop the idea of honoring Harris, the Daily Telegraph seemed to attempt to deflect some of the blame for all the civilian deaths in Germany away from Harris by pointing out that the "architect of area bombing" was Churchill, Harris only the instrument of the policy.
Other papers, the Independent and the Times, oppose the memorial. Of Harris, the latter wrote, "He never pretended he was only obeying orders. He was a fanatical believer in carpet bombing of civilians. . . ."
The Telegraph is the conservative newspaper of note here and, more than any other, celebrates traditional values, especially military expressions of them. It argued that Harris, "a notable wartime commander" deserved a memorial.
Paul Oestreicher, a canon at Coventry Cathedral, has been drafted to advise the Queen Mother in the matter and to create a ceremony that will not offend too many people, though clearly his heart is not in honoring Bomber Harris.
The original Coventry Cathedral, an architectural treasure, was destroyed on Nov. 14, 1940, by German bombs. The new cathedral, consecrated in 1963, "has become a symbol of reconciliation" between Germany and Britain, Canon Oestreicher said. Coventry is Dresden's sister city in Britain, both having suffered similar wartime traumas.
"Personally, my feelings are that it is unfortunate that the commemoration of the 55,000 dead men of Bomber Command is being done in this way," said Canon Oestreicher. "But I take the view that to stop it [the memorial] being erected would compound the problem. I wish it had never been commissioned in the first place. But to stop it would create a great deal of anti-German feeling."
The canon hopes to create a ceremony in May that will not be so much a celebration of Bomber Harris as one "of remembrance and grief" for all the bomber crew members who died on both sides."
The statue was unveiled, the Queen Mother was booed by some on the crowd, and it seemed that life would move on.
Then in 2013, 20 years after the statue went up, an old interview resurfaced and the controversy raged anew.
In 1975 Air Chief Harris sat for an interview, that was lost for many years. When it was rediscovered it was aired as part of the aone-off programme on the BBC. That programme was preceded by several news articles examining the bombing of Dresden and Harris's role in it, including this one from the Daily Mail:
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"'I would have destroyed Dresden again': Bomber Harris was unrepentant over German city raids 30 years after the end of World War Two
Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris was the RAF chief of The Bomber Command
Dresden bombings sparked controversy after 25,000 civilians died in attack
But newly-discovered video shows RAF chief saying he would do it again
By SUZANNAH HILLS
PUBLISHED: 09:29 EST, 11 February 2013
The RAF commander who ordered the controversial fire-bombing of Dresden which killed an estimated 25,000 civilians during World War II said he would do it again in a long lost interview filmed 30 years after the end of the conflict.
Former marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, gave the green light for the 1945 bombing which reduced the city in Saxony, Germany, to rubble.
The attack was widely criticised because of 'blanket bombing' which hit civilian areas as well as military targets - killing thousands of innocents.
But the newly-discovered interview with Sir Arthur, which was filmed in 1977 and will be aired for the first time on the BBC tonight, shows the RAF chief defending his decision.
And the chief commander of the Bomber Command tells his interviewer, Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason, that he would do it again if he had to.
He said: 'If I had to have the same time again I would do the same again, but I hope I wouldn’t have to.'
Sir Arthur then adds: 'I hope it’s been of some use, for future generations in keeping them out of these riots. It never does anybody any good.'
During the interview, Mason discusses how many felt the Dresden attack was 'a city too far'.
However Harris stood his ground saying: 'The bombers kept over a million fit Germans out of the German army… Manning the anti-aircraft defences; making the ammunition, and doing urgent repairs, especially tradesmen.'
Harris also countered the myth that area bombing was his idea - claiming it was already Government policy.
He said: 'I lived in a shower of directives from the day I took over to the last day of war.
'The directive when I took over was that I wasn't to specifically aim at anything unless ordered to do so and to blast the German cities as a whole.'
Mason asked Harris why he was ordered to bomb whole cities rather than specific Nazi targets. In response, Harris said: 'They came to the conclusion that they weren’t hitting very much and they didn’t have very much to hit things with…'
Sir Arthur, who died in 1984 aged 91, refused a peerage because his men were denied a campaign medal.
The Bomber Command, which suffered the highest casualty rate of any British unit, losing 55,573 of its 125,000 men, eventually got a memorial last year.
It was erected despite numerous objections from German politicians.
Bomber Command veteran Doug Radcliffe, 89, who is now secretary of the Bomber Command Association, backed his former commander.
He told the Daily Express: 'Our raids meant there were 10,000 88mm anti-aircraft guns pointing up to the sky instead of at our troops and the Russians.
'Dresden was a major centre for the manufacture of opticals, such as gun sights and binoculars.'
He added: 'After Dresden we lost another 700 bombers, and London was being hit by V2s which nobody could fight against.'
It was initially claimed that up to 250,000 civilians lost their lives in the Dresden bombings but an official report released after the war showed the casualty figure was in fact closer to 25,000.
The victims - mostly women and children - died in savage firestorms whipped up by the intense heat of 2,400 tons of high explosive and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs.
The newly-found footage will shed more light on Dresden and the actions of the RAF during World War Two.
Professor Richard Aldrich, University of Warwick, said: 'It’s interesting because it’s not done immediately after the second world war, it’s done at a time when there have already been several waves of interpretation about Bomber Command, about Harris himself and so one not only gets his memories which are still clearly quite fresh, but also is commentary on those different interpretations.
'It’s a multi-layered interview and all the more interesting for it.'
HOW THE BOMBER COMMAND CHANGED THE COURSE OF WORLD WAR II
Sir Arthur Harris was appointed commander-in-chief of The Bomber Command - the unit responsible for defending Britain from aerial attacks and bombing enemy targets - in 1942.
In the early part of the war, the Bomber Command’s raids had little effect.
The bombers only flew at night to reduce the danger of being shot down, but with primitive navigation equipment, this made it difficult to identify and hit a small target.
In 1941, it was decided that The Bomber Command would target entire industrial cities - known as area or blanket bombing.
This policy was endorsed by Churchill and formally adopted in early 1942 as Sir Arthur took the helm of The Bomber Command.
Harris said at the start of the bombing campaign that he was unleashing a whirlwind on Germany.
Working class housing areas were targeted because they had a higher density and firestorms were more likely. This disrupted the German workforce and the Germans capability of producing more weapons.
The plan was highly controversial even before it started, but the Cabinet thought bombing was the only option available to attack Germany directly as a major invasion of the continent was years away. The Soviets were also demanding that the Western Allies do something to relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front.
Dresden was one of the cities targeted with 'area bombings'. Around 25,000 civilians were killed by allied bombs dropped over the course of two days in February 1945.
The tactic has been strongly criticised leading to accusations of war crimes.
The Bomber Command suffered the highest casualty rate of any British unit - losing 55,573 of its 125,000 men.
After opposition from German politicians, a memorial to The Bomber Command was finally unveiled in Green Park, London, last year.
The Arthur Harris interview will be aired on Inside Out on BBC1 West and West Midlands at 7.30pm tonight and on BBC iPlayer."