England's Palmyra

ISIS use power tools to destroy 3000 year old monuments before blowing the entire site up.

ISIS use power tools to destroy 3000 year old monuments before
blowing the entire site up.

The recent events in Syria regarding the destruction of ancient Assyrian monuments, it is a terrible thing for the World to see and reflect upon. In videos shown across the world, images showed Islamists attacking the Assyrian city ruins which still contained priceless artifacts, some of which were over 3000 years old. Those taking part are apparently inspired by their prophet Mohammed's violent behavior as documented in the Quran, in tales where he is said to have torn down pagan idols in Mecca "with his bare hands". (I know right, this guy must have been strong, huh!)

The issue seems to be more widespread than just ISIS though, so this isn't an issue of just one group of extremists. It seems that there is an inherent issue within Islam over it's protection of historically important sites. In Saudi Arabia for example, the Government there has completely turned a blind eye to even Mecca's heritage, with one Time Magazine article saying as much as 98% of the heritage sites there have been bulldozed for modern development. 

There were even calls last month from ISIS and extremist Islamic preachers to destroy what is left of the Sphinx and the pyramids in Giza. Of course this wouldn't be the first time as the nose of the Sphinx and many statues across Palestine and Turkey were defaced (quite literally) by religious nutters throughout history. They weren't just Muslim though, as Iconoclasm has been used quite extensively across history as a method of erasing the cultural stamp of a previous civilization when conquering land or subjugating a group of people.

Whilst the practice has been used since the dawn of time, the main offenders across history have tended to be those from an Abrahamic religious persuasion, and although we might think of these acts as occurring in exotic locations in the middle-east or on some isolated Mediterranean island, it may shock some to hear that similar practices happened in England. And fairly recently too.

The religious extremism that occurred in England is fairly unheard of. The last large scale destruction of monuments started during the reign of Puritanism. From as far back as the late 1500's during Elizabeth I's reign, Puritans had tried to steer the Church of England in a certain direction. For around hundred and fifty years or so they pushed for extreme reform. Although they never appeared to achieve full domination of the religious and political fabric of the nation, they got pretty close to it with the Parliamentarian victory of the second Civil War. Cromwell was an unabated Puritan who even sought to ban Christmas celebrations. Because of histories bias towards Cromwell (the reasons of which must wait for another time,) most of this has been mostly forgotten.

Whilst the overall story of Puritans and English-come-British history is obviously a little too complex for a few paragraphs, the overall image is of a fragmented society split between three pillars of Traditionalism, 'Enlightenment' and Religious Extremism expressed by some elements in English society.

So what is it that I've dubbed "England's Palmyra"?

Well it sits approximately twenty-odd miles north of Stonehenge and despite being a World Heritage Site (and the entire area being in the region of twenty times the size of Stonehenge,) its actually fairly unheard of. Avebury: a neolithic monument of such epic proportions that it pretty much contains an entire village quite comfortably within its earthen banks.

Like Stonehenge, nobody is one hundred per cent sure of its purpose, but one thing that we do know is that throughout the medieval period, the huge sarsen stones were broken up for use in construction on farm walls and buildings. Now despite what I've suggested previously about the Puritans, the method of using the stones for building material was not something new, and this is obvious when you look at the villages architecture. However, the sites destruction seemed to accelerate around the late 1600's for a brief time.

That been said, a vast amount of damage had already been done to the monument through the 14th century when the population was more or less fully converted to Christianity. The population were brainwashed into associating the once sacred monuments with the Christian concept of Satan, and this is still evident today with many neolithic sites bearing a daemonic name. This ideological obsession (spurred on by the clergy) convinced men to go out and dig the stones foundations out, and bury or burn them. Fortunately (or perhaps with some divine influence from the land wights) one man taking part in the destruction of the henge was crushed under a falling stone and may have been the reason why the destruction stopped for some time. The tales told have it that the man who was buried under the stone was a barber by trade, and his death was seen as an omen by many, so the remaining sarsens were left alone. As it happens, an excavation in the early 20th century actually proved this old tale as being historically correct, when a skeleton was found under a buried sarsen with a coin dating to the 1300's, and with his barbers scissors still in a pouch. 

Today, a fair amount of the monument still exists, however the magnitude of its grandeur would not be possible today without the illustrations made by John Aubrey and by William Stukeley during the 17th and early 18th century. The full extent and size of the monument far exceeded what we see today, as much of the existing stone avenue was destroyed, along with two inner-rings and a large 'phallic' monolith which was destroyed apparently when Stukeley was present. Credit where it's due, there would be nothing there today at all had it not been for John Lubbock who purchased the estates in 1871 in an attempt to preserve the site, or had it not been for the efforts of Alexander Keiller during the 1930's to dig up and re-erect the buried stones. 

Artist impression of the henge in it's original state

One of the 'accepted views' about the destruction of this site during the 1600's is that this was not religious in nature, and was merely due to an increasing population in the village. They support the theory that in many cases, villagers wanted the stones removed in order to make ploughing fields easier, or to use the huge stones as building material for new homes. The main reason that I would object to this idea is because of Stukeley's own words which read:


Just before I visited this place... the inhabitants were fallen into the custom of demolishing the stones, chiefly out of covetousness of the little area of ground, each stood on. First they dug great pits in the earth, and buried them. The expence of digging the grave, was more than 30 years purchase of the spot they possessed, when standing. After this, they found out the kanck of burning them, which has made most miserable havock of this famous temple. One Tom Robinson the Herostratus of Abury,* is particularly eminent for this kind of execution, and he very much glories in it. The method is, to dig a pit by the side of the stone, till it falls down, then to burn many loads of straw under it. They draw lines of water along it when heated, and then with smart strokes of a great sledge hammer, its prodigious bulk is divided into many lesser parts. But this Atto de fe** commonly costs thirty shillings in fire and labour, sometimes twice as much. They own too 'tis excessive hard work, for these stones are often 18 foot long, 13 broad, and 6 thick, that their weight crushes the stones in pieces, which they lay under them to make them lie hollow for burning, and for this purpose they raise them with timbers of 20 foot long, and more, by the help of twenty men, but often the timbers were rent to pieces. 

Stukeley goes on to write that a single stone could provide enough pieces to build an ordinary house, but that because of the nature of the stone, but explain such a house:

 "is always moist and dewy in winter, which proves damp and unwholesome, and rots the furniture. The custom of thus destroying them is so late, that I could easily trace the obit of every stone; who did it, for what purpose, and when, and by what method, what house or wall was built out of it, and the like."

Now reading that passage, to me it looks like the method is out of date for even the 1600s. It is clearly labour intensive, expensive and produced homes of inferior quality which remained cold and damp. Religious reasons have to come into this in some way or another. Lets not forget that at the same time that this was occurring, we had issues with the puritans in Government and even the Witchfinder General wandering around the land in search of commission. They gained very little land in destroying the stones, and as Stukeley states, this has more to do with Tom Robinson's ideological beliefs than for any practical reasoning.

In any case, I think its safe to say that the monument at Avebury has received a second wind. It is now a vibrant place to visit with a deep spiritual and cultural connection for hundreds of thousands of people. It receives a huge number of visitors, and is a destination for a worldwide pagan pilgrimage, which is something we can only dream of for places like Nimrud and Palmyra which have been spectacularly blown up with plastic explosives in the last few months.

Avebury today.

Whilst there is a case to judge Islam and its more extreme elements for the damage done to historically invaluable monuments across the Middle East, we have to remember that it is only through the chance really that the same fate did not also befall some of Europe's most treasured sites. The true enemy of civilization and culture is unshakable religious dogma. It has been shown time and time again to turn back humanities development, and ISIS is just another reverberation of that repeating history. Avebury survived by the skin of its teeth and through the hard work of conservationists spanning a hundred years or more. It's new position as a culturally important destination today is merely good luck. Unfortunately, the sites in Syria luck had ran out.

Thing is, it's probably pertinent to point out the sites in England which didn't make it. Places like Stanton Drew which would have been as impressive as Avebury once upon a time, or a multitude of other sites which were deliberately targeted for being pagan sites by church builders like in Rudston for instance. 

Now ask yourselves this question. If ISIS and other other Islamic groups considered less 'extreme' were left to run amok throughout the English countryside, what do you think would happen to our beloved pagan sites? Our parish churches and cathedrals? Or our war monuments, or castles? They have no interest in even their own history, yet many in society which to import in hundreds of thousands of migrants from overseas.

If you've read my last post on the immigration situation you'll understand then that not only will our culture disappear under a overwhelmingly changing demographic, but Europeans will ultimately have the added kick in the face that there won't be anything left of us left behind either. To think that there are no formal checks to immigrants and refugees coming into Europe from places where there are extremists like ISIS is all a bit worrying. 

Libya: Order Out of Chaos

(The following post was taken from a previous blog of mine, written back in June. It has since been updated to include links and information on the refugee crisis.)

This is the first part in what is hopefully to become a set of three or four articles about why the world's geopolitics are in such a mess. Admittedly, this I'm only going back as far as the fall of Gaddafi. To fully appreciate the full demise of the World into economic slavery you would have to go back centuries, but given that I haven't got six years to write a full and comprehensive re-write of popular history this will have to do.
I am also painfully aware that there may not be much time to write this for reasons that may become clear towards the end of the set of associated blog posts over the coming weeks. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that by writing this that the mere act of doing so may bring about a change in the world's zeitgeist.

In any case, the reason why I've decided to write this is because the mainstream news point-blank refuses to do proper investigative journalism on the most important issues. One of the greatest geo-political problems, which I'm sure you'll agree, are the Islamist uprisings that have happened across the Middle East. The Libyan crisis was certainly not necessarily the starting point of ISIS and Islamic militancy, but it was the first glimpse into the problems which were to come.

Do you remember how the consortium of British, French and American air forces were called in to impose a no-fly zone in order to stop the nasty Gaddafi from killing innocent civilians?

Sounds all very noble doesn't it. The image portrayed of us in the media, of riding in on silvery flying steeds firing laser guided bombs of justice, is not only wrong though, its an insult to every free thinking person on the globe.
I'll try and explain why, but bare in mind that this is very in depth. I'm not asking you to believe me on all of this, but I do ask that you check out the claims yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Everyone seems to accept that originally, the reason why the civil war in Libya began was because of protesters against Gaddafi's rule were being killed or brutalised by the Libyan armed forces. Now I don't dispute that there probably was genuine protests which saw innocents being killed or injured, but one thing that is clear is that it didn't take long for these 'protesters' to become well armed. I remember it quite well, (although worryingly it was quite a few years ago now!) one week the BBC et al were discussing how civilians were being murdered by Gaddafi's regime, the next week we saw videos of Toyota Hilux trucks with heavy weapons welded on their flatbeds parading through towns and engaging in full combat with the Libyan state. One of the reasons for the rapid military ability of those 'rebels' is attributed to Qatar who are said to have funded the initial uprising, supplied weapons for the 'rebels' and later, was even prepared to do business with local leaders who were selling crude oil before the war was even over. 

In fact, Qatar have been funding Islamist's all over the region for reasons unknown (although we can certain have our suspicions.) This started with Libya, but also spread to include support for Syrian 'rebels' too, and presumably also those operating in ISIS now. But more on that in a minute. Just to give you some kind of insight into the workings going on here, Qatar has even admitted that in actual fact, it had sent it's own military personnel into Libya to assist the Islamist's in capturing Tripoli. 

At this point you're probably thinking, "hey, why did the rest of the world sit idle whilst Qatar destabilised an entire region". This is real question. America in actual fact is a major ally of Qatar and whilst it's hard to believe, America houses it's U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center in the country. Interestingly, even as far back as 2012, there were alarm calls that a lot of the weapons going to rebels in Libya from Qatar were falling into the hands of Islamists. In fact, despite this concern, America still approved Qatar sending US made weapons into the region. Read here if you don't believe me. Ironically, Gaddafi himself even claimed that those rebels he was fighting were terrorists. The claim originally was met with laughter in our main media, but as we later found out, the guy was right!
Even more mind blowing is the fact that despite Qatar's obvious influence in inflaming the situation in the middle east, just last year in 2014 the US signed an $11bn arms deal with the gulf state.
So whats going on here?!
I don't have all the answers. I mean so far, ( and nor am I going to) I've not said anything which has not come out of the media. The main point though is that these news stories come and they go. They are forgotten very quickly, and very rarely is it that the general public get to really scrutinize long-term news trends in a way that reveals a true agenda. The evidence is there, clear as day, it's not hidden, but the way in which it is reported in broken chunks fails to educate a busy public into truly understanding about what is at stake.

So in Libya's case, violent protests broke out which turned into armed conflict, armed indirectly by the United States and it's key allies. Why? Well Libya was not an Islamist state. It was a relatively free society by the Arab world's standards. Women were educated and held property. There was state healthcare for example. Whilst I certainly don't think he is the model leader for a free society, I think we can all agree that he was certainly the only kind of leader that is capable of keeping a nation in that region from falling into mayhem. Like it has.

The real reason one assumes is really rather simple. Money. In 2007, Tony Blair attended a special envoy to meet Gaddafi in a yurt, in the middle of the desert to do a business deal. In that business meeting there were a few things worthy of note:

• BP was to be granted drilling rights to oil wells off the coast of Libya. BP themselves stated that it was "BP's single biggest exploration commitment" and "a welcome return to the country for BP after more than 30 years".

• Blair introduced Gaddafi to US bankers, and got an investment plan underway with Goldman Sachs. Within 12 months, following the financial crash, 98% of the investment fund Libya had deposited had been "lost".

• Libya was to give up all NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons to peacekeepers, in return British special forces were to train the Libyan Army, and it also seems that as an added sweetener deal, Libya would become the UK's terrorist interrogation service.

Following the financial crash where Gaddafi's investments moneys 'disappeared' it was clear that there was a change in tact from Libya's leader. He obviously realised in hindsight that he'd done a deal with the devil and gotten himself bitten, so in retaliation for this act of financial sabotage, Gaddafi campaigned for a new currency across the African continent named the Gold Dinar, and the rejection of US dollar for trade. By the way, Libya had a lot of gold pre-invasion. Some estimates had the stockpile of the precious metal as up to $6bn worth. Which is a huge amount if you consider the size of the country and its population.
Without going into the details of why, the short explanation is that if a gold backed currency had taken off across Africa (and there were a few nations that were quite keen on the idea) then it would have damaged the World's dollar backed economy, and badly too. The proxy US led invasion then was nothing more than the US protecting it's own interests, at the same time as making a mint in military deals, re-contruction works (like Iraq was) and as it seems, they must have begun purchasing the oil off of 'rebels' and the newly formed puppet Government for a fraction of what the original agreements were.
So these essentially are the reasons why the Anglo-Franc alliance bombarded Libyan forces and assisted in an Islamist overthrow. And by the way, despite the 'no boots on the ground' assertion by our leaders, our own special forces teams were all over Libya like a rash directing and providing reconnaissance for Allied bomber aircraft. (You know, they had to make sure that their weapons investment was going to pay off.) It meant bigger profits for corporate interests in that region, but has had absolutely no pay off for those living in the region.

The legacy of our intervention in Libya is that:

• Taking Gaddafi out of the equation has caused such a power vacuum that now, even the leaders appointed by Allied interventionists have been ousted by Islamists. As early as a few weeks after the capture of Tripoli, the black Islamist flag was seen flying over a major buildings. Ironically, rather than thank the US for their hand in assisting with an overthrow, the US embassy was attacked, and a number of US diplomats were killed in the process.

• The corporate rape of Libya has bankrupted the Libyan people and left only anarchy in its wake. The general population in Libya has in no way benefited from the expulsion of Gaddafi. 

• The likely case that the golden nest egg Libya had been sitting on has been raided. News reports stated back during the intervention, that in order to pay for staff during the war, Gaddafi was forced to use 20% of the gold reserves. I suspect that this was just the initial take home from the 'liberators'. I've tried to look for figures of gold stocks in Libya today but to no avail, but my bet is that it's non-existent now.

• The 'rebel' fighters who had been operating in Libya later left to go and fight in Syria, and have in many cases had a direct hand in creating ISIS. Even in an official capacity, the new Government of Libya, only a few weeks old at this point, was doing arms deals with Syrian insurgents. In actual fact, even the US started doing it openly, with Qatar once again offering military services.

• With things so bad in the region due to deliberate destabilisation, thousands of refugees are attempting to claim asylum within the European Union.

On the subject on asylum seekers, it's clear now that Gaddafi's prediction of Libya and the Mediterranean becoming a refugee nightmare have come totally true. Destabilizing Libya has opened up access to the Mediterranean sea to refugees from all over Africa who are pouring into the sea on the understanding that our leaders will pluck them from the water and give them EU citizenship. Why?

On the issue of the refugees, (or the so-called refugees) do not let the liberal bleeding hearts trick you. Many of these people crossing the sea are not as poverty stricken as some may tell us, many are spending thousands on getting transport out to sea where our tax-paid EU navies are ready to rescue them. The funniest thing is that these people are paying good money to militant Islamists who are using these funds to buy weapons and proliferate acts of barbarism across the rest of the Middle East and Central Africa.

With these illegal migrants passing through Italy and France now desperate to reach the UK in Calais, Britain is now suddenly accepting that it has a "migrant crisis" (despite having had one for many, many years.) The truth is we have no idea how many of these people making their way into Europe have criminal records, or whether they are returning combatants from ISIS and other Islamist groups. If you've read this far into the article you will probably accept that ISIS themselves are rather suspicious with their connections to various international elements.

Finally, mass immigration into Europe is an act of warfare by the forces of international Globalism on European national identities, culture and ethnicities. They do not want a Europe identifiable as Greek, or Danish or English. Their goal is to create such chaos that Europe ceases to be a collection of traditional sovereign states. It is genocide. Or Ethnocide. Whatever you call it, it is certainly putting the future of the white population in Europe in danger. If you doubt this, there was an article back in 2012 by the BBC which highlighted the UN's battleplan to Europe, informing the European Union that they had to "undermine national homogeneity". Which translated means"undermine national race". By using an 'aging population' as an excuse, (like they are now trying to do with Japan,) they hope to encourage ever greater numbers of immigrants. Thing is, the markets could quite easily be reworked in order to work for European families, so that they themselves would be more inclined to have more kids, but one of the added bonuses to immigration is wage suppression.

All these points bring us to the last fact that ties it all together. The reason why Allied forces have not stamped out the more extreme elements within Libya's Government and bring about stability is because the situation at the moment favours destabilisation. They have engineered this crisis. Order out of chaos.

For more on the refugee crisis, you can read the next post entitled "The Economic Accident".

Battle Of Britain: Unnecessary Death and Destruction?

So this year has marked the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and as per usual when it regards things of a historical nature, the general public suffers from a grotesque form of collective amnesia. When we consider the second world war though, you can expect that the hive-mind delusion will be multiplied by at least a factor of ten. 

The Battle of Britain is a strange one. As a country we romanticise the idea of a few Spitfires holding back an entire invasion. We perpetuate the tale of us good-guy underdog British beating the evil Germans on our own turf, and whilst it was the British that won it, the true reasons for why we won are not always revealed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm by no means belittling the role of the airmen and ground-crew responsible for defending Britain during WWII. Nor am I however prepared to call the Germans evil for their role in the war either, it is what it is at the end of the day, but the Allied war-time propaganda needs to be dispelled, and the mentality of our leadership (Churchill included) at the time of war needs to be exposed. I have no doubt in my mind that if modern day international law is applied, we could quite easily have put the RAF Bomber Command and many of the War Cabinet on charge for crimes against humanity for reasons which will be explained. 

This is a difficult one for me to write about. I love aviation, and like for most English people, the image of a Spitfire or Hurricane has a huge emotive response for me. They're much less a flying machine, and more like Nationalistic art-pieces. It's Britain's version of what the Longboat must have been like to a Norse peoples, it's almost in our blood. When you start reading into WWII though, and the intricate details of why certain things happened, the sound of Rolls Royce Merlin engines becomes more of a swan song for the hundreds of thousands that needlessly lost their lives, rather than a National Anthem I once knew it as.

So what is 'the truth' regarding this air war? Well here is where it becomes fairly difficult to pin point exactly where to start writing from. Do I write from the fall of France? Or do I write about the circumstances that led to the invasion of Poland? Or perhaps international finance's outrage at Germany's economic miracle as Hitler led the country out of crippling debt? You could in theory even go back a hundred years ago previous to give a truer detailing of why certain events were happening. In order to keep this post short enough to read in one sitting though, I think we must take the Battle of Britain at face value.

It's fairly prudent to point out though that before the Battle of Britain Hitler had twice offered peace to Churchill which obviously wasn't taken up on. So the entire war by 1940 was totally needless.

So why was the Battle of Britain won by the British? What was the cost of that victory? If you know any of your history you'll understand that the first stage of the battle was Germany's plan to attack the merchant fleet supplying food, fuel and munitions from America and Canada.

The second stage involved the Luftwaffe bombing airfields and factories relevant to the on-going British war effort. It's often stated that had Germany not stopped its tactical bombing of genuine military targets, then the RAF would have been neutralized and Britain would have had to have launched fresh peace-talks with Germany. Arguably it would have been the best outcome that would have saved the lives of millions on both sides of the conflict.

The third stage of the Battle of Britain though is now so ingrained in the psyche of the English, that it makes impartiality rather difficult. Especially for those English who's family lived in London like mine. People tell the tale about the Luftwaffe suddenly stopping its bombing of airfields and aircraft factories, and instead begun the now infamous Blitz of London. The suffering of the British civilians therefore became a turning point for the war because it did two things. First, it took the strain off of the battle-weary Fighter Command and secondly, it silenced the anti-war lobby in Britain and gave Churchill and the War Cabinet justification for perpetuating a war which the politicians were so keen to wage.

So why did the Germans start bombing English cities then?
At the start of the campaign against Britain, Hitler had at first wanted to prevent as much destruction to civilian property as was feasibly possible. His original orders were:

The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets which have weak defensive forces ... The most thorough study of the target concerned, that is vital points of the target, is a pre-requisite for success. It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population. 

~Adolf Hitler

Officially, the British had also had the same rules of engagement initially, but the the disastrous day-time bombing results early in the war with out of date aircraft like the Bristol Blenheim had meant that indiscriminate night bombing raids were the only option left to Bomber command. It is clear that British propaganda at the time tried its utmost to justify all future operations against Germany's civilian population by manufacturing outrage in the British public.

The 'gloves came off'  in regards to Britain's bomber targets when Germany had sought control of the strategic city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, shortly after the fall of much of France. The British war cabinet used the German bombing of Rotterdam and the death of Dutch civilians to justify the deliberate bombing of German cities later on, but the facts about the German assault on the city were totally twisted by the World media.

In reality, Germany had wanted to take Rotterdam without the need of any unnecessary violence, but the Dutch leadership at the time refused to hand the city over or accept surrender, despite having no anti-aircraft capabilities, fighter aircraft or armoured fighting vehicles to defend the city from the German forces. The Dutch were asked a second time on the 14th of May 1940, and given an ultimatum, but due to a communication break-down, a squadron of He.111's bombed the city earlier than what they should have (some of the bombers had received a stand-down message and returned, whilst others didn't.) All in all, 900 dutch civilians and armed forces were killed in the bombing. The World media however deliberately gave false reports on the bombing, claiming that 30,000 civilians had died when in fact most of the civilians had already fled days before any bombs fell anywhere near the city. Whilst 900 deaths is a tragedy, it is a far-cry from the carnage that had been reported in the news.

The Rotterdam raid had given the British War Cabinet the justification needed to launch an offensive bombing campaign against the German mainland. Since daylight bombing operations had proved unsuccessful during initial attacks 1939 and early 1940, Bomber command instead concentrated on night attacks. On the 15th of May 1940, a day after the bombing of Rotterdam, 99 bomber aircraft, most likely a large component of Hampden bombers, started the first of many night-time raids on Germany. This initial raid saw the RAF striking industrial regions in the Ruhr area, but due to the difficulties acquiring targets in the dark, many of the bombs that would have been dropped would have failed to have hit anything of military value. The lack of aiming capabilities would have seen a great deal of civilian collateral damage. The RAF that night were given orders to return home by flying over Rotterdam, presumably to drive home the"30,000 deaths" propaganda to the bomber crews and to avoid the RAF aircrews from feeling guilty about their own hand in killing German civilians. Fires were still visible in many areas of Rotterdam for a few days after the raid, and would have left and impression on those young men.

‘The attack on the Ruhr was therefore an informal invitation to the Luftwaffe to bomb London. The primary purpose of these raids was to goad the Germans into undertaking reprisal raids of a similar character on Britain. Such raids would arouse intense indignation in Britain against Germany and so create a war psychosis without which it would be impossible to carry on a modern war.’

~The Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, The Fight at Odds, p. 122. Dennis Richards, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

As you look at the raiding timeline for both countries throughout the battle of Britain, a pattern emerges.

The RAF dropped bombs in a totally haphazard way in pitch black, often inflicting civilian deaths in Kiel, Wilshelmhaven, Dortmund, Bremen, Gelsenkirchen, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Wismar, Hamm, Soest and Essen. These raids all occurred before the 1st of August 1940, happening before the blitz on civilian targets like those on London and Coventry. The Germans did not start deliberate attacks on civilian targets arguably until 24th of August, and not in earnest until the 7th of September when the Luftwaffe swapped over completely to night-time city raids like it's RAF opponent.

The problem is, whilst it would be easy to say that the British establishment regretted the deaths of German civilians, the truth is actually rather more insidious. Rather than the German civilian deaths being regrettable, it was actually mostly the War Cabinets ultimate goal.

Whilst the Luftwaffe for the most part used day-time raids for accurate attacks on legitimate targets like airfields, shipping and radar towers, the RAF were bombing in the dead of night on highly populated areas, albeit in the pursuit of hitting legitimate targets. As the weeks went on however, the losses the Luftwaffe was suffering with did mean some bombing operations were now taking place at night. In the early hours of the 24th of August, a small number of German bombers dropped their bombs over a London suburb killing a number of civilians. There are still debates about whether or not this attack was accidental or not, but judging by the small number of bombs dropped, it seems unlikely that Londoners were the deliberate target. This situation seems to have been the catalyst that enabled the British war cabinet to unleash attacks on Berlin without any real consideration for, or premise of finding legitimate targets once over Germany. On the 25th of August, the RAF sent around a 100 aircraft to bomb Berlin in retaliation for the handful of He111s which had dropped bombs on London the day before. 

Despite the Luftwaffe's attempts to minimise civilian casualties, the RAF bomber command had a totally different strategy up until that point in late August 1940. Granted, civilian deaths had taken place on both sides of the conflict, but you have to consider the fact that it was the German forces that were launching day-light raids throughout most of the Battle of Britain whilst the RAF had launched attacks inefficiently at night-time. You cannot really compare the daylight carpet bombing of an airfield, or a precision strike from a Stuka on a radar base with that of random night-time raid over a populated area.

Although the plan adopted by the Luftwaffe early September had mentioned attacks on the population of large cities, detailed records of the raids made during the autumn and the winter of 1940–41 does not suggest that indiscriminate bombing of the civilians was intended. The points of aim selected were largely factories and docks. Other objectives specifically allotted to bomber-crews included the City of London and the governmental quarter round Whitehall.

~Basil Collier

Churchill and his advisers like Frederick Lindemann became blood thirsty in their vendetta against not the National Socialist state, but the German people themselves. The tactic for Allied bombing was not to directly bomb the enemy factories, but instead to bomb the residential area where the factory worker lived, thus creating not only disruption to the factory but also a psychological element against the local communities, and the disruption caused by the need to dig out and relocate the survivors from such attacks.

‘I am in full agreement [with terror bombing]. I am all for the bombing of working class areas in German cities. I am a Cromwellian – I believe in slaying in the name of the Lord!’


~Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary for Air.

Beliefs like Sinclair's were not uncommon in the War Cabinet and bomber command, and the process of wiping out entire residential areas by Allied bombers only got more prolific and efficient throughout the war.Throughout the Battle of Britain, the British Government went out of their way to create a situation where civilians on both sides of the war paid the price for the ineptitude of their statesmanship. Over the course of three months, they eventually goaded Germany into retaliating with indiscriminate attacks on London and other English cities for two reasons. Firstly, to create a war-frenzy in the British people and in sympathetic countries such as America and secondly, to use British civilians as a form of shield for the RAF and war factories. It it often quipped that had the Luftwaffe continued its campaign against key military targets instead of swapping to 'the blitz', that the Royal Air Force would have been defeated and Operation Sealion a legitimate concern the UK.

‘Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets reluctantly three months after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets. Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement confining the action of aircraft to battle zones... Retaliation was certain if we carried the war into Germany... there was a reasonable possibility that our capital and industrial centres would not have been attacked if we had continued to refrain from attacking those of Germany... We began to bomb objectives on the German mainland before the Germans began to bomb objectives on the British mainland... Because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic bombing offensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May 11th, 1940, the publicity it deserves.’ 


~J.M. Spaight, CB, CBE, Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry, Bombing Vindicated.

The real cynical realisation is that the good vs evil mantra portrayed by mainstream history, media and even the education system is still totally falsified. We believe we won the Battle of Britain through grit and determination, the underdog succeeding on its own merit where little hope remained, but if the truth about the mentality of our leaders at the time ever became known by the majority, 75 years of propaganda would could come crashing down under the weight of the truth.

Whilst the war was totally avoidable, the civilian losses incurred by both sides in the war (and it has to be said, the German's losses far exceed our own) were even easier to negate had both sides been capable of restraint and diplomacy. The reasons why our own Bomber campaign during the Battle of Britain is seldom mentioned, and the role Fighter Command romanticised beyond all comprehension is merely to keep up the victim mentality. This victim complex to this day still brainwashes the World into believing'reprisal' attacks like those committed against Dresden and Berlin were justified, when in reality such actions could never in any way be considered morally defensible.

Once again, in writing this it is not my intention to belittle the efforts of those RAF servicemen who gave or risked their lives in defence of their country. Or even those bomber crews who no doubt were tricked into believing that what they were doing was justified. My intention is to put the record straight, to point out that Governments lie and also to point out just how powerful propaganda can be even several decades later.