I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet...HH Beard has perfected ...3 excellent (urine) cancer tests, all of proven accuracy of 95% or better..... in 1942 and onwards.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st BaronetAttacks on cities are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of allied soldiers.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st BaronetWar is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st BaronetThe Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st BaronetDresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities.
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet