SO HERE we have David “Ratface” Cesarani — who like the armed Israeli ambassador was a frequent gloating visitor in the public gallery during the Lipstadt Trial — becoming the first of a new wave of conformist historians trying to justify the Churchill government’s air raid on Dresden, which burned alive over one hundred thousand people, mostly civilians, in the space of two hours on February 13, 1945 fifty-nine years ago tonight. Cesarani’s thesis: They had it coming to them.
   If anybody were to suggest the same of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, he would now be hauled off to jail. But here we have Cesarani criticizing my book, written forty-five years ago, on the basis of a book written years after the event by a leftwing British author, who has made not a little use of my own 1960s records and research, while giving me scant credit.
One detail should suffice to show who was correct: Cesarani scoffs at the “obscene” notion that the British government’s aim was to teach the Russians a lesson on the strength of the RAF bomber hordes   In his seminal history of RAF Bomber Command, author Max Hastings used a document, a two volume British internal monograph, Review of the Work of Int I, which had eluded even my researches — and this quoted verbatim the briefing notes sent by teleprinter to every squadron of RAF Bomber Command taking part that night.
To quote my book Apocalypse 1945: the Destruction of Dresden: “Bomber Command head- quarters had issued by teleprinter identical briefing instructions to every bomber airfield. The wording, which has survived, makes odd reading now. The seven thousand British airmen were to be told that afternoon that they were about to attack Dresden, ‘far the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got.’ ‘The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most,’ the telex said; it then added words pregnant with other implications: ‘And incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.’

The sporting phrase which occurs to me right now is, I think, Game, set and match.

INCIDENTALLY, Henry Stimson reveals in his diary that one useful purpose of the Hiroshima bombing would be to show the Russians the strength of this new weapon. Here is a passage from vol.iii of Churchill’s War (as yet unpublished, of course):

“It was Stimson who formally suggested employing the Bomb. The body-count would be Japanese, but it was the effect on the Russians that counted on him and other statesmen now. As early as May 14, 1945, after talking over this ‘hot potato’ with General Marshall, he had dictated into his files an opinion that the way to deal with Russia now was to ‘let our actions speak for words.’ The Russians, he felt, would understand actions better than anything else. ‘We (Americans) have got to regain the lead and perhaps do it in a pretty rough and realistic way.’ This time, he had reminded Marshall, Washington held all the cards — ‘a royal straight flush,’ was how he put it. ‘We mustn’t fool about the way we play it,’ he had said. ‘We have coming into action a weapon which will be unique.’

 The order to drop the A-bomb