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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent and well balanced
Review: There have been many books and comments about Bomber Harris over the years. Even Harris published his own book but didn't cover everything. This book was written using all of Harris's private papers. Not only does the author, Henry Probert, do a great job of presenting Harris's point of view but he presents opposing points of view as well. This book probably does the best job of presenting the most objective view of Harris to date. In some respects it does favour Harris since it is from his private papers. This is an extremely valuable book about Harris and is a must for any student of Bomber Command. The author does a great job of presenting Harris the man from birth until death and deals with such topics as his leadership style, the public's image of him, his contemporaries views etc. The many misperceptions of Harris and how people once meeting him in person said Harris was not anything like the image that has been painted of him. A very excellent book! We need more like this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Profile of One of the Great Commanders of WW2
Review: This book gives an interesting profile of one of the great commanders of World War 2. Although written in a dry style, it brings to light many little-known facts about this most controversial man. Known as Bert to his friends, "Bomber Harris" to the press during the War, and "Butch" (short for "Butcher") to his aircrews, Harris took a demoralized and dispirited RAF Bomber Command in 1942 and built it up into a most formidable force that played a vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The author points out that the policy of night-time area bombing designed to destroys the cities that served as the locations of the German war industries was decided upon before Harris became Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command. Within a few weeks, he put together the extremely risky Operation Millenium, the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne, whose success proved to skeptics the power and effectiveness that Bomber Command was capable of wielding. Although it really took another two years to make the bombing campaign really effective, it has been proven beyond a doubt that German war production was severely damaged by the bombing campaign since it has been shown that German production increased rapidly when Bomber Command was forced to change its targets from the German cities to others in France related to Operation Overlord in the first months of 1944.
It is true that Bomber Command suffered high casualties (a crewman had only a 30% chance of surviving a 30-operations tour of duty) but their sacrifices helped keep Stalin and the USSR in the war in 1942 and 1943 at the time when they were suffering immense losses and the prospect of a Second Front looked far away (Churchill was always afraid that Stalin might secretly make a deal with Hitler and pull out of the War). Harris worked diligently day and night to get the resources and aircraft Bomber Command needed and to keep the morale of his personnel high. Although he refrained from visiting the air fields, probably due to a reluctance to face men who could possibly be flying to their deaths in a few hours, as well as the knowledge that the station commanders could be putting on a "show" for him that masked real problems, he did maintain continuous contact with low-ranking people from the air and ground crews in order to find out help them do their jobs more effectively and comfortably. Probert, although very sympathetic with Harris, does not hesitate to point out flaws in his subject's personality. For example, Harris broke up his first marriage by having an affair while he was away from home and after his divorce he had a problematic relationship with his children. After the War, Harris developed a strange admiration for Hermann Goering who was not the "noble knight of the air" that some may have thought but was one of the most powerful and cruel of the Nazi hierarchy and was one of the key figures in the Nazi terror even before Hitler's rise to power and who played in role in the Holocaust. Similarly, Harris opposed the Nuremberg Trials. He also said he only felt "hatred" for the Germans once, during the bombing of London whereas others like Battle of Britain hero Group Captain Douglas Bader was not ashamed to say years after the War that he hated the Germans for the evil they brought to the world. In any event, perhaps these quirks gave him the personality traits that were needed to cooly, night after night, send thousands of young man on very dangerous missions to bring death and destruction to the German enemy. Maybe someone more sentimental and emotional, both to his family and to the enemy, would not be able to stand up to the strain. We could perhaps compare him to other great commanders like Generals Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur who also had personalities that rubbed many people the wrong way:
Probert also demolishes myths that have sprung up after the War such as:
(1) Harris ordered the supposedly unnecessary bombing of Dresden when Germany was already supposedly defeated out of some sense of blood-lust and vengeance. In reality, he opposed the mission since it was located in eastern Germany and would expose his aircrews to extra danger due to the longer trip, but the allied leaders insisted on having the raid carried out since it was not at all clear at that time that Germany was at the point of collapse and they wanted the Soviet Armies to advance into Germany as fast as possible
(2) Harris had a contempt for "colonials" and sent them on the more dangerous missions as cannon fodder in order to spare "real" Britishers. In reality, Harris moved to Rhodesia as a young man and considered himself a Rhodesian. After the War he went to live in South Africa, so he indeed considered himself a "colonial"
(3) Harris was not given a peerage after the War as were many other senior British military commanders because the Labour goverment felt "embarassed" by the strategic bombing campaign and wanted to forget about it. In reality, there is some truth in the fact that people wanted to forget about the bombing campaign, and it is also a fact that no "campaign decoration" was given to the air and ground crews in Bomber Command, but Harris was indeed offered a peerage, but turned it down, partly as a protest against the refusal to grant a campaign medal, but also for personal reasons in that outside Britain (where he intended to live) a peerage was not necessarily viewed as something desirable. All in all, this book is must reading for someone interested in World War 2, military history, and the characterists of a great military commander.
Rating:
Summary: Profile of One of the Great Commanders of WW2
Review: This book gives an interesting profile of one of the great commanders of World War 2. Although written in a dry style, it brings to light many little-known facts about this most controversial man. Known as Bert to his friends, "Bomber Harris" to the press during the War, and "Butch" (short for "Butcher") to his aircrews, Harris took a demoralized and dispirited RAF Bomber Command in 1942 and built it up into a most formidable force that played a vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The author points out that the policy of night-time area bombing designed to destroys the cities that served as the locations of the German war industries was decided upon before Harris became Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command. Within a few weeks, he put together the extremely risky Operation Millenium, the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne, whose success proved to skeptics the power and effectiveness that Bomber Command was capable of wielding. Although it really took another two years to make the bombing campaign really effective, it has been proven beyond a doubt that German war production was severely damaged by the bombing campaign since it has been shown that German production increased rapidly when Bomber Command was forced to change its targets from the German cities to others in France related to Operation Overlord in the first months of 1944.
It is true that Bomber Command suffered high casualties (a crewman had only a 30% chance of surviving a 30-operations tour of duty) but their sacrifices helped keep Stalin and the USSR in the war in 1942 and 1943 at the time when they were suffering immense losses and the prospect of a Second Front looked far away (Churchill was always afraid that Stalin might secretly make a deal with Hitler and pull out of the War). Harris worked diligently day and night to get the resources and aircraft Bomber Command needed and to keep the morale of his personnel high. Although he refrained from visiting the air fields, probably due to a reluctance to face men who could possibly be flying to their deaths in a few hours, as well as the knowledge that the station commanders could be putting on a "show" for him that masked real problems, he did maintain continuous contact with low-ranking people from the air and ground crews in order to find out help them do their jobs more effectively and comfortably. Probert, although very sympathetic with Harris, does not hesitate to point out flaws in his subject's personality. For example, Harris broke up his first marriage by having an affair while he was away from home and after his divorce he had a problematic relationship with his children. After the War, Harris developed a strange admiration for Hermann Goering who was not the "noble knight of the air" that some may have thought but was one of the most powerful and cruel of the Nazi hierarchy and was one of the key figures in the Nazi terror even before Hitler's rise to power and who played in role in the Holocaust. Similarly, Harris opposed the Nuremberg Trials. He also said he only felt "hatred" for the Germans once, during the bombing of London whereas others like Battle of Britain hero Group Captain Douglas Bader was not ashamed to say years after the War that he hated the Germans for the evil they brought to the world. In any event, perhaps these quirks gave him the personality traits that were needed to cooly, night after night, send thousands of young man on very dangerous missions to bring death and destruction to the German enemy. Maybe someone more sentimental and emotional, both to his family and to the enemy, would not be able to stand up to the strain. We could perhaps compare him to other great commanders like Generals Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur who also had personalities that rubbed many people the wrong way:
Probert also demolishes myths that have sprung up after the War such as:
(1) Harris ordered the supposedly unnecessary bombing of Dresden when Germany was already supposedly defeated out of some sense of blood-lust and vengeance. In reality, he opposed the mission since it was located in eastern Germany and would expose his aircrews to extra danger due to the longer trip, but the allied leaders insisted on having the raid carried out since it was not at all clear at that time that Germany was at the point of collapse and they wanted the Soviet Armies to advance into Germany as fast as possible
(2) Harris had a contempt for "colonials" and sent them on the more dangerous missions as cannon fodder in order to spare "real" Britishers. In reality, Harris moved to Rhodesia as a young man and considered himself a Rhodesian. After the War he went to live in South Africa, so he indeed considered himself a "colonial"
(3) Harris was not given a peerage after the War as were many other senior British military commanders because the Labour goverment felt "embarassed" by the strategic bombing campaign and wanted to forget about it. In reality, there is some truth in the fact that people wanted to forget about the bombing campaign, and it is also a fact that no "campaign decoration" was given to the air and ground crews in Bomber Command, but Harris was indeed offered a peerage, but turned it down, partly as a protest against the refusal to grant a campaign medal, but also for personal reasons in that outside Britain (where he intended to live) a peerage was not necessarily viewed as something desirable. All in all, this book is must reading for someone interested in World War 2, military history, and the characterists of a great military commander.
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