The Illusion of Victory: Standard World War II History Examined - LewRockwell

 ....In addition to the concessions made to the Soviet dictator at Yalta, it is the Potsdam Agreement (August 1945) which Hitchens examines most critically. One of its central protocols—insisted on by Stalin and acceded to by the Western Allies—directed the forcible population transfers of some thirteen or fourteen million German civilians living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and in other Eastern European countries, countries in which they had lived for centuries, to Germany. These population expulsions were to be made, according to the wording at Potsdam, in an “orderly and humane” fashion. Yet, most of those transfers were accomplished during the frigid 1945-1946 winter, quite brutally, with civilians taking almost nothing with them, save the clothes on their backs. During the painful transit, often by foot or wagon cart, thousands were massacred by Communist guards and partisans, hundreds of thousands of others died of the cold or starvation, as many as 1.5 million by some estimates.....

...Indeed, as Hitchens discusses in his critical appraisal of the English program of indiscriminate night bombing aimed at civilians, directed by Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, it is indeed one thing to argue that the Allies engaged in tactics and actions that sometimes crossed the line, but a close examination reveals that both the English and Soviets engaged in explicit assaults on civilians as part of their overall strategy. He carefully examines the firebombing of Hamburg, “Operation Gomorrah,” which practically devastated the entire population center of that city. He follows with a list of major cities where similar destruction and misery were mercilessly inflicted, including Dresden in February 1945, an act of barbarism committed long after the result of the war was settled. It was a strategy that failed, save in the incredible misery it inflicted on the most helpless and defenseless of the German civilian population.

It is now pretty much beyond debate that Harris’s air campaign really did not shorten the war, did not slow down perceptibly German arms production (which was dispersed into rural areas), and did not put much of a dent in German morale. Only the actual capture of German ground in 1944 and 1945 did that.

In defense of such tactics, the German bombing of Coventry and the Blitz are cited, as if those attacks somehow justify the later massive incineration of dozens of German cities. (p. 170) To the response that such action was needed to fend off a potential German invasion, Hitchens points out that most of the attacks came after such an invasion was a moot point, that is, after the German failure at Stalingrad made German defeat more or less inevitable:

“Even if you believe that Hitler seriously intended to invade this country in 1940 or later, which the evidence shows he did not, the choice was out of Hitler’s hands before the main bombing campaign began in 1942….The final outcome of the German-Soviet war was not altered by the British bombing of Germany, which was relatively minor before the 1942 raid on Cologne and did not become intense until well into 1943. By the time significant and sustained bombing had begun, Hitler had been irreversibly defeated at Stalingrad, and the USA was in the war.” (p. 178).....

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/07/boyd-d-cathey/the-illusion-of-victory-standard-world-war-ii-history-examined/ 

...It has now been over eighty years since the end of the war.  With the triumph of the Internet and the radical decentralization of the ways we receive information and our understanding of the past, older accepted verities and assumed truths about World War II and its aftermath—despite the furious efforts of establishment gatekeepers—have come under fire.

Peter Hitchens’ volume is one cannonade in that battle and raises significant questions which need to be addressed.