HOW SHOULD WE VIEW THE AFTERMATH OF THE FAMOUS RAID? ANDY SAUNDERS ASKS.
Was the sacrifice of Leslie Manser and scores of his colleagues worth it? And was it worth the grief endured by the families of those missing, or indeed of those killed by the bombing in Cologne?
Photographs of the city were eventually taken, showing widespread destruction. Final assessments of the results were most promising for Bomber Command. Sir Arthur Harris had certainly made his statement of intent both to the doubters at home, and, with equal importance, to his enemy across the sea. The Reich’s Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, recorded the disbelief in the results of the raid at the highest levels of the Nazi hierarchy. ‘We were given a foretaste of our coming woes.’ On the morning after the raid both Speer and Erhard Milch, who was overseeing the development of the Luftwaffe, were, by chance, summoned to see the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goering.
