One of my Relay friends recently posted a link to a BBC programme about the bombing of Coventry during WWII.
Boring, you may think. I did too at first to be honest. How interesting can a programme about a city I’ve never even been to or know anything about be? It’s near Birmingham for heaven’s sake. My only response to his comment of ‘What a city!’ was ‘It’s not as good as Sheffield though, is it?’.
But it was actually really interesting. It was quite shocking to see the ruthlessness of the Luftwaffe as over 400 planes flew over in one night and dropped their load on the terrified city below. Some of the stories from people that witnessed and lost friends, family and neighbours during the bombardment were even more shocking. I found myself almost shedding a tear at one woman’s story. She herself was still horrified and upset about it even after all these years. An entire city, people’s lives, homes, businesses, schools, churches were all part of the mass target and there was no care for the lives of anyone involved.
The remarkable thing about the story of Coventry was the resilience of the people. Despite what they had been through they carried on, started to rebuild and ended up quadrupling their factory output as part of the war effort.
When it’s Hitler sending the bombs over, it’s easy to look at the evil of it and condemn it as awful. The thing is, the British Air Forced retaliated, and still it is talked about as a kind of triumphant victory over the Germans. Doesn’t that just show human nature and selfishness? The horror for the people of Coventry was real and awful, but I can’t help but fell slightly angry at the British response. I understand it was ar time, Britain and Germany were enemies, they were fighting. But the fact remains that I don’t see how we can condemn the Luftwaffe for that when our response was FAR worse.
The bombing in Coventry killed around 500 people. By the end of the war, the Royal Air Force was dropping three times the amount of bombs the Germans dropped on Coventry onto German cities night after night after night. When the Allies bombed Dresden, they killed 35,000. In Hamburg, 50,000. You can’t even compare it, it’s sickening. What is worse is that there will have been many more dead than they could count because many people were left as nothing more than burnt ashes or scattered lumps of flesh. Isn’t that just disgusting?
The city where I grew up in Germany, Osnabruck, had its fair share of bombing during the war too. The majority of the old city was destroyed and they are still finding unexploded British bombs all over the place; under school playgrounds and houses, in streets, on building sites… Some people have even died from them exploding unexpectedly as they begin to corrode and break up.
I know the Nazi regime was evil, but I can’t help but wonder if there was another way that the war could have been won, because this makes us as bad as they were in my opinion. Especially seeing as most Germans were not Nazis, but innocent civilians, undeserving of almost everything they got. Maybe we should listen when the Bible says “It is mine to avenge; I will repay” (Deut 32:35). Only God can serve up sufficient justice for this. Human efforts only end in more death, hurt and sorrow.
The only amusing thing I found from thinking about this whole thing was this picture:
.jpg "Germsn soldiers in Roberts Barracks, Osnabruck.")
Why is it amusing, you ask? The building in the background is where I went to the dentist! The barracks (called Roberts Barracks) were taken over by the Brits when the war was over and I never once thought about the fact that the Nazis used to march in the square where we parked our car…
I think people forget that as bad as Coventry was, in the whole war the Germans killed 40,000 British civilians through bombing. The RAF killed that many in a single week in Hamburg in 1943.
There were also several raids on Osnabruck in the war, many of which killed a lot more than in Coventry. Coventry is famous because it was one of the first cities to be bombed in that way but by the standards of the rest of WW2 it was quite small. Scary stuff.
We’re so detached from it all over here. The first few months I was in France it was really overwhelming for me, war memorials and plaques everywhere. Still being able to see bullet holes in some walls, etc. All of that daily strife and struggle and death in Europe was just a headline here, for those who didn’t go.
I’m taking National Security Law this fall and, shockingly, we talk a lot about war. In undergrad I took a class titled simply “War” and one of our books was called “Morality of Contemporary Warfare” or something like that. When I see numbers like these, where it’s a few hundred compared to many many thousands, I wonder how that’s a proportional response? I’m sure it’s all been justified by scholars by now, but thinking about it makes me uncomfortable.
I’m glad it still makes me uncomfortable.
{btw, I like your new blog design, chérie!}
Dear Beakybeaky
I was moved to tears by the BBC programming highlitghing the distruction of Coventry. My tear were of pride, pride in the spirit of my English brother and sisters.
I was also frustrated by the persistent use of the word Nazi to describe the people responsible for the planing and executing the raid on Covdntry. In 1940 the people and Goverment of Britain were at war with the Germany and the German goverment, not the Nazi party. When my mother relays stories of her childhood and speaks of running to the air raid shelter which was Boroughs underground station in London, she has always speaks of the terror caused by the threat of the German bombers.
I’m concerned history is being rewritten slowly changing history to future genration
You say that the 500 killed in Coventry can’t compare to the 50,000 deaths in Hamburg.
Using your logic that simply reduces life to a set of numbers, you can’t compare German deaths to those suffered by the Japanese in WWII.
It is all very well to wonder if there were another way to end the war but no-one (including you) seems to have come up with an answer. Perhaps Hitler should have surrendered?
“They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.” – Book of Hosea
If you did not know, Roberts barracks is no more and has been pulled down….many good memories lie in the rubble…