Today marks the 80th anniversary of the start of Operation GOMORRAH, the 10-day Anglo-American campaign of day and night bombing of Hamburg. It’s an anniversary that ought to be remembered and mostly won’t be. A thread. The theory of area bombing was that the destruction of residential areas would indirectly disrupt industrial output by killing and ‘dehousing’ workers, and also that it might reduce German civilian morale to breaking point – though the latter aim was not universally agreed upon.

Today is an important day in British military history for reasons that have nothing to do with the Somme.

July 1, 1942 was the first day of the First Battle of Alamein, a far more consequential engagement than the more famous one that took place in October there. In June, Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika had broken through the Gazala line, taken Tobruk, advanced into Egypt and smashed 8th Army again at Mersa Matruh. General Auchinleck held at Alamein with what was left of his force to defend the Nile base. On July 1 that was ‘not much.’

POLICY BLITZKRIEG ON COST OF LIVING

https://twitter.com/goodwinmj/status/1533923273817444364

All the V-1s targeting London were specifically aimed at Tower Bridge. None ever hit it, though one was reported to have passed between the towers before landing in the Thames. V-1s did not impact deep enough in the ground to damage utility mains or sewers but they did tremendous blast damage esp. with flying glass. They did not kill at the same rate as bombs but maimed more.

“The best historians don’t make moral judgments.”

Can we pause for a moment to consider what horseshit this truism is?

For one thing, it’s not practiced by the Reclaiming History folks themselves. Consider e.g. Andrew Roberts’ biography of Churchill. It’s a good history by a talented author - and replete with moral judgments, expressions of praise and blame, accusations and compliments.

But more fundamentally, the practice of history itself is interwoven with moral judgments.

Nobody just ‘tells the facts’ because the …

Well ok then Ok, straight off, something I’m confused about.

About 130,000 African-American military personnel were stationed in the UK by June 1944. The US military brought with it to Britain the same system of rigid racial segregation that it employed at home.

The response of ordinary Britons to this has become a small but important ... ... bit of folk myth in the ‘People’s War’ narrative. The story goes that the British were shocked by the US military’s racial apartheid and responded by rejecting colour bars and welcoming Black GIs more warmly than white Americans. In other words, American intolerance ...