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On 10 June 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet to Arthur Harris. The result of the discussion was moved. |
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I have removed from the lede the section: "The argument Harris continued to adhere to an area bombing strategy due to the inaccuracy of his bomber force, despite the absence of evidence (or even attempts to gather any) of its effectiveness, is based on a misapprehension of the circumstances. He was not dissuaded from it by his seniors, Portal and Churchill, both of whom had access to better intelligence than Harris, nor were there serious misgivings about the campaign expressed by his seniors (or anyone in the Government) at the time."
which strikes me as not the main criticism levelled at Harris. It also fails encyclopaedic style; we should give an account of the controversy, not try to kill it at first mention. Richard Keatinge ( talk) 16:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
This Wikipedia article here does not even mention the controversy. A badly lopsided article. More info here
and more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.158.205.56 ( talk) 00:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
re the inclusion of photos regarding on this matter, an edit war is developing with the other editor insisting that the photo at issue is "POV". This argument misuses WP:NPOV because the Wikipedia principle applies to ARTICLES. An edit can, indeed, make an article biased. But note that this is assessed by looking at the WHOLE article after the edit has been made. If photos themselves were POV then neutrality would be a grounds for deletion over at Wikimedia Commons. I've contributed to and been involved with policy discussions over at the Commons for years and I can assure you that the idea that a photograph is inherently non-neutral is not a generally accepted principle. It follows that "that photo is POV" is an invalid argument.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 19:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Even if such photo was appropriate, the date that this particular photo was taken 23 September 1944, indicates that the victims were not casualties of the RAF (See RSF Campaign Diary September 1944 -- the RAF heavies of Bomber Command was still bombing France in support of the Normandy lodgement).
I think that this debate is sterile. Bomber Harris did not decide policy, but he chose to interpret policy in such a way to favour area bombing. Post the D-Day break, he could have chosen to put more emphasis on the part of the policy that emphasised precision bombing. I find it amassing that he was not informed of the ULTRA secret, and I think an PhD exists in detailing exactly why he was not included. Without the information and the source it came from, he could not make the informed decisions that being a party to ULTRA would have allowed.
It is well known that Churchill distanced himself from the policy of area bombing as detailed in the bombing of Dresden: British wartime response article. One of the interesting points to note is the famous first telegram was one that, if not found in the archives by David Irving, was emphasised in Irving's book The Destruction of Dresden -- as was Operation Thunderclap (another piece of Irving's disinformation that still surfaces from time to time).
Given that Churchill and others distanced themselves, then Harris, the public face of Bomber Command for most of the war, ended up with the buck. To argue that he was responsible for the policy is simplistic, while to argue he was free of all responsibility as his apologists do is equally disingenuous.
The thoughts of Donald Bloxham, one of the historians who has pondered on this, is detailed in " bombing of Dresden: war crime", Bloxham considers Churchill to be the man where the buck should stop, so if the image that starts this belongs in any biography it should be placed in the Churchill biography! I can't see that there would be general consensus for this.
As there has been no more debate about this issue here since February, I am removing the POV template at the top of the article. There is no reason why the subject can not be debated further, but until there are concrete suggestions with sources on how we could improve this article there is no need for a POV template at the top of the article.-- PBS ( talk) 15:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
The article goes, 'In 1942, Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell)...' No, Lindemann had already been ennobled a year before. And the rest of the article's no better. It still makes the false claim that Harris was ordered to stop bombing oil targets in November 1944. In reality, 'From 6 per cent of its bombing total on oil in October, Bomber Command increased the total to 24 per cent the following month.' (Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945, p.385.) Khamba Tendal ( talk) 20:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
The 'dehousing' or 'strategic' bombing policy was first suggested by Frederik Lindemann in a paper presented to Churchil in February 1942. German born, he was the chief scientific adviser to Churchill. He believed in eugenics and seems to have conceived a violent hatred of Germans. He also did not believe in the V2 bombs. Pamour ( talk) 16:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. A move to Bomber Harris can be discussed separately. ( closed by non-admin page mover) CLYDE TALK TO ME/ STUFF DONE (please mention me on reply) 20:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
– For starters, since when do we ignore
WP:CONCISENESS to tack on a bunch of la-di-da awards? A baronet is not even a peer, and you can't swing a dead cat in England without hitting a Sir. Might as well tack on OBE etc to the title if we're going to do this. This title is a dead letter I would say.
My proposal is to move all the other Arthur Harrises to "Arthur Harris (disambiguation)", on grounds that this guy is easily the main topic (I would guess), even against all the other people of that name, who are obscure -- I'm confident that is true, that like 90% of people are wanting to read about this Arthur Harris, and this will be even more true 100 years from now. However, if you want to keep "Arthur Harris" as a
Wikipedia:Disambiguation page, we could go with "Arthur Harris (air marshal)" or maybe "Arthur 'Bomber' Harris". Possibly "Arthur T. Harris" or just "Bomber Harris", altho those not as good IMO. Or something.
Herostratus (
talk) 20:16, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
The author cites ACM Harris as receiving the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM) which did not exist until 1970. Perhaps it should have been the Army DSM, instituted in 1918. /info/en/?search=Distinguished_Service_Medal_(U.S._Army) 2600:2B00:821A:C000:917B:9320:B37B:3618 ( talk) 20:23, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Arthur Harris article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
On 10 June 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet to Arthur Harris. The result of the discussion was moved. |
|
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
I have removed from the lede the section: "The argument Harris continued to adhere to an area bombing strategy due to the inaccuracy of his bomber force, despite the absence of evidence (or even attempts to gather any) of its effectiveness, is based on a misapprehension of the circumstances. He was not dissuaded from it by his seniors, Portal and Churchill, both of whom had access to better intelligence than Harris, nor were there serious misgivings about the campaign expressed by his seniors (or anyone in the Government) at the time."
which strikes me as not the main criticism levelled at Harris. It also fails encyclopaedic style; we should give an account of the controversy, not try to kill it at first mention. Richard Keatinge ( talk) 16:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
This Wikipedia article here does not even mention the controversy. A badly lopsided article. More info here
and more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.158.205.56 ( talk) 00:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
re the inclusion of photos regarding on this matter, an edit war is developing with the other editor insisting that the photo at issue is "POV". This argument misuses WP:NPOV because the Wikipedia principle applies to ARTICLES. An edit can, indeed, make an article biased. But note that this is assessed by looking at the WHOLE article after the edit has been made. If photos themselves were POV then neutrality would be a grounds for deletion over at Wikimedia Commons. I've contributed to and been involved with policy discussions over at the Commons for years and I can assure you that the idea that a photograph is inherently non-neutral is not a generally accepted principle. It follows that "that photo is POV" is an invalid argument.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 19:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Even if such photo was appropriate, the date that this particular photo was taken 23 September 1944, indicates that the victims were not casualties of the RAF (See RSF Campaign Diary September 1944 -- the RAF heavies of Bomber Command was still bombing France in support of the Normandy lodgement).
I think that this debate is sterile. Bomber Harris did not decide policy, but he chose to interpret policy in such a way to favour area bombing. Post the D-Day break, he could have chosen to put more emphasis on the part of the policy that emphasised precision bombing. I find it amassing that he was not informed of the ULTRA secret, and I think an PhD exists in detailing exactly why he was not included. Without the information and the source it came from, he could not make the informed decisions that being a party to ULTRA would have allowed.
It is well known that Churchill distanced himself from the policy of area bombing as detailed in the bombing of Dresden: British wartime response article. One of the interesting points to note is the famous first telegram was one that, if not found in the archives by David Irving, was emphasised in Irving's book The Destruction of Dresden -- as was Operation Thunderclap (another piece of Irving's disinformation that still surfaces from time to time).
Given that Churchill and others distanced themselves, then Harris, the public face of Bomber Command for most of the war, ended up with the buck. To argue that he was responsible for the policy is simplistic, while to argue he was free of all responsibility as his apologists do is equally disingenuous.
The thoughts of Donald Bloxham, one of the historians who has pondered on this, is detailed in " bombing of Dresden: war crime", Bloxham considers Churchill to be the man where the buck should stop, so if the image that starts this belongs in any biography it should be placed in the Churchill biography! I can't see that there would be general consensus for this.
As there has been no more debate about this issue here since February, I am removing the POV template at the top of the article. There is no reason why the subject can not be debated further, but until there are concrete suggestions with sources on how we could improve this article there is no need for a POV template at the top of the article.-- PBS ( talk) 15:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
The article goes, 'In 1942, Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell)...' No, Lindemann had already been ennobled a year before. And the rest of the article's no better. It still makes the false claim that Harris was ordered to stop bombing oil targets in November 1944. In reality, 'From 6 per cent of its bombing total on oil in October, Bomber Command increased the total to 24 per cent the following month.' (Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945, p.385.) Khamba Tendal ( talk) 20:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
The 'dehousing' or 'strategic' bombing policy was first suggested by Frederik Lindemann in a paper presented to Churchil in February 1942. German born, he was the chief scientific adviser to Churchill. He believed in eugenics and seems to have conceived a violent hatred of Germans. He also did not believe in the V2 bombs. Pamour ( talk) 16:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. A move to Bomber Harris can be discussed separately. ( closed by non-admin page mover) CLYDE TALK TO ME/ STUFF DONE (please mention me on reply) 20:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
– For starters, since when do we ignore
WP:CONCISENESS to tack on a bunch of la-di-da awards? A baronet is not even a peer, and you can't swing a dead cat in England without hitting a Sir. Might as well tack on OBE etc to the title if we're going to do this. This title is a dead letter I would say.
My proposal is to move all the other Arthur Harrises to "Arthur Harris (disambiguation)", on grounds that this guy is easily the main topic (I would guess), even against all the other people of that name, who are obscure -- I'm confident that is true, that like 90% of people are wanting to read about this Arthur Harris, and this will be even more true 100 years from now. However, if you want to keep "Arthur Harris" as a
Wikipedia:Disambiguation page, we could go with "Arthur Harris (air marshal)" or maybe "Arthur 'Bomber' Harris". Possibly "Arthur T. Harris" or just "Bomber Harris", altho those not as good IMO. Or something.
Herostratus (
talk) 20:16, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
The author cites ACM Harris as receiving the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM) which did not exist until 1970. Perhaps it should have been the Army DSM, instituted in 1918. /info/en/?search=Distinguished_Service_Medal_(U.S._Army) 2600:2B00:821A:C000:917B:9320:B37B:3618 ( talk) 20:23, 14 October 2023 (UTC)