Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet Quotes

• The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Wind, Bombs

  Statement in 1942. "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won". Book by Victor Davis Hanson, 2017.

  118 Copy quote

• Dresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Real, War, Cities

  88 Copy quote

• There are a lot of people who say that bombing cannot win the war. My reply to that is that it has never been tried. . . and we shall see.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Winning, People

  75 Copy quote

• Attacks on cities are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of allied soldiers.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Cities, Soldier

  62 Copy quote

• We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go in with the war. That is our object, and we shall pursue it relentlessly.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Cities, Order

  Radio address on July 28, 1942. "Bishop George Bell: House of Lords Speeches and Correspondence with Rudolf Hess". Book edited by Peter K. Raina, api.parliament.uk. 2009.

  71 Copy quote

• I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Giving Up, Army, Cities

  Letter to Sir Norman Bottomley on March 29, 1945. "Bomber Harris: The Story of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris". Book by Dudley Saward, p. 294, 1985.

  60 Copy quote

• War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Nice, Dirty

  38 Copy quote

• In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Method, Spite, Bombing

  Statement on the July 1943 bombings of Hamburg. "The Valour and the Horror: The Untold Story of Canadians in the Second World War". Book by Merrily Weisbord and ‎Merilyn Simonds Mohr, p. 107, 1991.

  35 Copy quote

• Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side that employs air power as it should be employed.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Military, Air, Victory

  26 Copy quote

• Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Hair, Land, Victory

  21 Copy quote

• ...HH Beard has perfected ...3 excellent (urine) cancer tests, all of proven accuracy of 95% or better..... in 1942 and onwards.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Cancer, Dark, Age

  21 Copy quote

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