page_title: Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet / Military career / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris Depicted person&#58; &#32;Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
context_page_description: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC, commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In 1942, the British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris was given the task of implementing Churchill's policy and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks against the German infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of Dresden.
  Harris emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17, but returned to England in 1915 to fight in the European theatre of the First World War.
context_section_description: Harris returned to Britain in September 1939 to take command of No. 5 Group. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 11 July 1940 he was made Deputy Chief of the Air Staff in November 1940 and promoted to the acting rank of air marshal on 1 June 1941.
  The Butt Report, circulated in August 1941, found that in 1940 and 1941 only one in three attacking aircraft got within five miles (eight kilometres) of their target. As part of the response Harris was appointed Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of Bomber Command in February 1942. He was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 11 June 1942.
  In 1942, Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell), having been appointed the British government's leading scientific adviser (with a seat in the Cabinet) by his friend, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, presented a seminal paper to Cabinet advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. It was accepted by Cabinet and Harris was directed to carry out the task (Area bombing directive). It became an important part of the total war waged against Germany.
  At the start of the bombing campaign, Harris said, quoting the Old Testament,
  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.
  — Hosea 8:7
  At first the effects were limited because of the small numbers of aircraft used and the lack of navigational aids, resulting in scattered, inaccurate bombing. As production of better aircraft and electronic aids increased, Harris pressed for raids on a much larger scale, each to use 1,000 aeroplanes. In Operation Millennium Harris launched the first RAF "thousand bomber raid" against Cologne (Köln) on the night of 30/31 May 1942. This operation included the first use of a bomber stream, which was a tactical innovation designed to overwhelm the German night-fighters of the Kammhuber Line. Harris was promoted to temporary air marshal on 1 December 1942 and acting air chief marshal on 18 March 1943.
  Harris was just one of an influential group of high-ranking Allied air commanders who continued to believe that massive and sustained area bombing alone would force Germany to surrender. On a number of occasions he wrote to his superiors claiming the war would be over in a matter of months, first in August 1943 following the tremendous success of the Battle of Hamburg (codenamed Operation Gomorrah), when he assured the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, that his force would be able "to produce in Germany by April 1st 1944 a state of devastation in which surrender is inevitable" and then again in January 1944. Winston Churchill continued to regard the area bombing strategy with distaste and official public statements maintained that Bomber Command was attacking only specific industrial and economic targets, with any civilian casualties or property damage being unintentional but unavoidable. In October 1943, emboldened by his success in Hamburg and increasingly irritated with Churchill's hesitance to endorse his tactics wholeheartedly, Harris urged the government to be honest with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign,
  The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.
  — 
  Many senior Allied air commanders still thought area bombing was less effective. In November 1943 Bomber Command began what became known
caption: Harris, c. 1943
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