reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Said to Kennedy, you watch when Adolf Hitler begins bombing London and towns in Britain like Boston and Lincoln, towns with their counterparts in The United States. You Americans will have to come in, won't you? You can't just stand aside and watch us suffering. But he knew from code breaking. He knew from reading the German Air Force signals, which we had broken on March or 05/26/1940, that Hitler had given orders that no British town was to be bombed. London was completely embargoed. German air force was allowed to bomb ports and harbors and dockyards, but not towns as such. And Churchill was greatly aggrieved by this, and he wondered how much longer Hitler could avoid carrying on war like this. But Hitler, as we know, carried on until September 1940 without bombing any English towns. The embargo stayed in force.
You can see it in the German archives now, and we know from the code breaking of the German signals that Churchill was reading Hitler's orders to the German Air Force, not on any account to bomb these towns. So there was no way that we could drag in the Americans that way unless we could provoke Hitler to do it, which is why on 08/25/1940, Churchill gave the order to the British Air Force to go and bomb Berlin. Although the chief of the bomber command and chief of staff of the British Air Force warned him that if we bomb Berlin, Hitler may very well lift the embargo on British towns. And Churchill just twinkled because it was what he wanted, of course. At 09:15 that morning, he telephoned personal bomber command himself to order the bombing of Berlin, a 100 bombers to go and bomb Berlin.
They went out to bomb Berlin that night, and Hitler still didn't move. Hitler ordered another aid on Berlin, and so it went on for the next seven or ten days until finally on September 4, Hitler lost his patience and made that famous speech in the Sport Palace in Berlin in which he said, this madman has bombed Berlin now seven times. He bombs Berlin once more than I shall not only just attack their towns, I shall wipe them out. A very famous speech. Of course, German school children are now told about the Hitler speech. They're not told about what went first. They're not told how Churchill sent out deliberately to provoke the bombing of his own capital. And on the following day, Churchill ordered Berlin bombed again. And the result was the German air force started bombing the docks in London, the East End Of London, finally, city Of London and the West End on the September 1940. In September 1940, 7,000 Londoners were killed in the bombing as a result of Churchill's deliberate provocation.
The files are there. The archives are there. No wonder Harold Macmillan didn't want my book published.