The RAF Bombs Germany

In the spring of 1940, after the German bombing of Rotterdam and the invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium, the United Kingdom stands before a threshold: should it in turn carry the air war onto German soil, and under what doctrine of strategic bombing?

The British command had to choose its targets and its method. To strike strictly military and industrial objectives (factories, refineries, railways, communication hubs, the industries of the Ruhr), in accordance with the laws of war, despite the imprecision of bombing at the time. To extend the campaign to cities in order to break German morale, in reprisal for the bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam, and soon British cities. Or to limit the raids so as to preserve forces and avoid escalation.

The issue was as much moral as strategic: where to draw the line between a military target and the civilian population, when precision was lacking and the logic of reprisal was taking hold? The decision taken in this spring of 1940 would set the starting point of a doctrine destined to weigh on all the rest of the war.