That's why there are wars: the men at command, who gives the bloody orders, always find someone to carry on these orders with maximum effort. Arthur Harris was this guy, ruthlessly obeying the directives to Bomber Command during WW II, and enjoying every piece of his tasks (which was destroy German cities). A good book.

Saward presents eye-opening evidence for the efficacy of Allied bombing in WWII. He proves that the lost productivity of a carpet-bombed city was much more significant than the lost productivity of a destroyed munitions factory (which was very difficult to hit anyway). Albert Speer makes this clear. Had Arthur Harris been listened to, perhaps Nazi Germany would have collapsed at least a year sooner than it did.

This book is an apology for Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris (or "Butcher" Harris, depending on your point of view), head of Britain's Bomber Command in WWII. Harris was the notorious architect of Britain's bombing policies in the War, which helped to add about half a million non-combattants to the Mount Everest of dead from that conflict. But it is a hopelessly flat and superficial treatment of the subject that manages to do a disservice to both Harris and his critics, not to mention the civilian targets of his policies. Harris's actions are catalogued and heartily approved without developing any significant arguments to justify them. And there is almost no attempt to engage Harris's many critics. An opportunity not only lost, but not even noticed by the author! The chapter on "Dresden--The Truth" is as moving as reading a train schedule. In response to the 30,000 killed in that attack, Saward simply offers a grisly catalogue of other war casualities, to "put it in perspective", as if high casualty rates in the War overall somehow justified the destruction of Dresden just a few months before the end of the war in Europe. Again, no real attempt is made actually to defend the bombing policy. The author's narrow perspective reveals a startlingly simple, black-and-white view of things (akin to Harris's outlook), betraying not the slightest trace of the moral complexities and tragedy of the events he writes about. A greater tragedy than the deaths of hundreds of thousands German civilians (mostly women and children), the author seems to think, is that Harris wasn't given a peerage after the war. Now that WAS a crime! That sums up the limited moral horizon of the author, whose identification with his subject is easy to understand. If this is the best defence of Harris there is, then his critics can lay down their weapons.