Why the disastrous Nuremberg raid?

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 25

Why the disastrous Nuremberg raid?

The Nuremberg Raid. By Martin Middlebrook. Penguin, 1987. 367 pp. $14.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by David Gun by.) On the night of 30-31 March, 1944, R.A.F. Bomber Command attacked the German city of Nuremberg. The raid was planned as a routine “maximum effort” of the kind by then possible to a greatly strengthened and expanded bomber force. 779 bombers took part — Lancasters and Halifaxes — supported by several squadrons of night fighters whose task was to seek out and destroy German night fighters before they could attack the bombers. They, and the air gunners defending the Lancasters and Halifaxes, shot down 10 German fighters. The German defences — fighters and flak — brought down 96 bombers. It was to be Bomber Command’s heaviest loss of the war. By way of putting it in perspective, we may note that more allied aircrew died on this one night 545 then perished during the entire Battle of Britain. Such a loss was in itself a disaster, but the debacle was made all the greater by the fact that Nuremberg itself was little damaged. The aiming point had been the Altstadt, the old town centre, beloved of Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy, but few bombs fell there and those that did caused little damage. More damage was caused in the suburbs, but very little in the industrial areas, which the raid had been designed to hit also. Instead bombs fell over a wide area to the north of the city, with many landing in small towns and villages. Ironically, a good number also fell in Schweinfurt, the centre of the German ball-bearing industry — a target that Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Commander in Chief of Bomber Command had declared was too difficult for his force to find. What might have been a valuable compensating error was diminished, however, by the fact that though the three ball-bearing works were hit and buildings burnt out, no significant damage was done to the machinery in the factories, so that production was little affected. In every respect, therefore, the Nuremberg raid was a failure, so far as Bomber Command was concerned — a hideous waste of men and aircraft. As with all disasters of this magnitude the question then has to be asked, how did it happen? It is this question which Martin Middlebrook sets out to answer, in all

its complexities, as he gives us, m “The Nuremberg Raid,” what was immediately recognised, upon its appearance in 1973, as a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and analysis. There is no need in a review of this kind to go into all the factors which combined to create a disaster. Suffice it to say that a calculated risk did not come off, and a combination of circumstances (some of them due to the weather and some to planning decisions made at Bomber Command HQ) led to the bomber stream flying in conditions of clear visibility for much of the way to Nuremberg, while wind changes threw out the navigational plans. The one led to massive losses and the other to widely scattered and ineffective bombing. For the latter no-one could be blamed. For the former the C-in-C, Butch Harris, must take responsibility, since he was made aware, late in the afternoon, that a Mosquito crew, on weather reconnaissance, had encountered conditions which would make the operation extremely hazardous. Harris’s second in command, Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, who showed Harris the weather report, himself expected the operation to be cancelled. When it was not, he wondered whether there was a political reason, unknown to him, compelling enough to ensure that the raid took place. There was not. Or was there? In a book entitled “Bodyguard of Lies,” published in 1975, Anthony Cave Brown advanced the view that the Nuremberg raid had been part of an elaborate intelligence ploy to ensure that a “turned” German agent was still felt by his superiors in Germany to be reliable. According to Cave Brown the details of the target were leaked to the Germans in advance, enabling them to meet the bomber force in full force. By Cave Brown’s account, therefore, those Bomber Command men who died on the Nuremberg raid were sacrificed for a greater gain — deceiving the Germans about the planned invasion of Normandy. One of Martin Middlebrook’s aims, in this revised paperback edition of his book, is to examine in detail Cave Brown’s allegations, which not surprisingly made headline news at the time of their appearance, and caused much distress to those who had taken part in the raid or who had lost ■loved ones that night. Middlebrook’s conclusions, reached after a most careful and scrupulous

examination oi me eviuence presented by Cave-Brown, is that the latter’s story is without foundation. “Butch” Harris himself, in a letter to Martin Middlebrook, dismissed the story out of hand, while Sir John Masterman, who ran the Double Cross Committee, has stated categorically that no information was ever leaked if it might cost Allied lives. Cave Brown’s story has its appeal for those who prefer a conspiracy to a foul-up. Yet all the hard evidence — and there is a mass of it in Martin Middlebrook’s book — points to the latter rather than the former. Though less colourful, and less capable of creating headlines, the foul-up story is the more powerful, in human terms. A conspiracy costing so many lives would, above all, anger the reader. But the emotions aroused by Middlebrook’s book, with its meticulous documentation of every phase and facet of the raid reinforced by the recollections of survivors, are rather those of sadness mixed with admiration. The book contains many accounts of great courage, dedication and self-sacrifice. That so many should die for so little, on this occasion, seems tragic. That so fine an historian as Martin Middlebrook chose to tell their story is cause for gratitude. Lost rhapsody The Soloist. By Nicholas Christopher. Pavanne/Pan, 1987. 306 pp. $12.95 (paperback). A story of the life, loves, divorces and soul-searching of Max, the onetime child-prodigy pianist, is saved from fluffy lightness by the sub-plot. This is of a concert pianist who has lost his faith in musical interpretation through his constant disappointments in lasting sensual Involvements. The discovery of a lost Hungarian Rhapsody score of Liszt gives him the spur to attack a piece of music that nobody has ever played in a concert hall before. The author knows a good deal about music, and tells us about it without labouring the subject, and the difficulties of a performer who consistently has to maintain his high standard night after night — and intermittently he is talking about piano playing. Immature in relationships, Max finally finds his climaxes in his music and the consequent public acclamation. An entertaining, unpretentious, fairly realistic fragment of a gifted but guilt-ridden individual’s life. —Ralf Unger.

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