QUESTION: Hi Marty,
May I ask your indulgence? Am trying to come to terms with my own ignorance of real history and figured that if someone as smart as you made the same error as I, wouldn’t feel as bad (good company and all that).
The German Blitz, the bombing of London, is a classic historical reference to the evil Hitler and the stoic peaceful Brits. Some claim that Churchill ordered the bombing of German cities first, and Hitler retaliated.
So here goes (no peeking):
Which of Great Britain or Germany was the first to bomb the cities/civilians of the other country during WWII?
Now, you may infer the answer b/c of the setup, but did you know that? I sure didn’t. Feeling a bit gaslit.
How about you?
All the best,
Greg
ANSWER: Yes. History is written by the victor – not the loser. It is not politically correct, to tell the truth. The only way to confirm the truth is to resort to contemporary reports before history is assembled. As I have explained, governments will engage in physiological warfare and this goes back to ancient times.
Augustus’ confrontation with Mark Antony was sold to the people that Antony was under some spell of the evil Cleopatra. He was actually telling the truth, for Cleopatra funded Mark Antony and pushed for civil war so that Egypt would thus conquer Rome. When Augustus (Octavian) defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium and invaded Egypt, he issued a coin announcing his victory. Look closely. It simply displays a crocodile on the reverse announcing Egypt is captured – not that he defeated a fellow Roman. Emperor Claudius was born to Drusus, brother of Emperor Tiberius, and Antonia Minor, the daughter of Mark Antony.
Perhaps the most daming confirmation of Cleopatra’s plot was that she struck Roman denarii with her and Antony’s portrait. These were certainly not struck in Rome or by any official Roman mint. They were part of her campaign to conquer Rome just as the West has always been seeking to conquer Russia which had the largest gold reserves of any nation up until the Communist Revolution of 1917.
We must always look closely at war for indeed the first casualty is always the truth. There was a gentlemen’s agreement that all sides would only bomb military targets and not cities at the start of WWII. Yes, Hitler also agreed. Modern history portrays Hitler as just evil in every respect. There were rules to warfare that everyone adhered to at the beginning of the war.
The first air raid on the German capital city of Berlin was actually carried out at night by an antiquated French bomber which had been a cargo plane converted for bombing. As it approached Berlin at midnight on June 7th, 1940, the city was fully illuminated thanks to the gentlemen’s agreement. The pilot, Henri Yonnet, pretended to act as though they were landing at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. As they neared the field, they overflew and headed at a very low altitude to the real target – the Siemens factory. It was a daring maneuver for the plane was vulnerable and could even be impacted by the blast at such a low altitude.
On August 17th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe dropped bombs on a factory in Southwestern London which was unfortunately in a residential neighborhood. On August 25th, 1940, the British RAF launched its first raid on Berlin in retaliation for the German bombing of London apparently using the excuse that some residential properties were hit. The gentlemen’s agreement was null-and-void. Hitler responded by unleashing the Blitz, (September 7th, 1940–May 11th, 1941), with a relentless intense bombing campaign of London. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. The attacks were authorized by Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (“lightning war”).
