All I'm saying, Don, is that the Luftwaffe had been given very specific instructions in 1940 NOT to bomb London. They were to avoid doing so at any cost. This could have been for a number of different reasons...I don't think it was because Hitler was a notable humanitarian! ;-) I think it was mainly because Hitler was still hopeful of reaching some kind of negotiated settlement with the British to end the fighting, and then getting them perhaps to join him in attacking Russia at some point which was what he had always hoped to do, and he didn't want to alienate them beyond a certain point by bombing their capital.

(this could also be why he held back the Panzers at Dunkirk the same year and allowed most of the B.E.F. to escape.)

It was probably also because he didn't want to cause them to retaliate by bombing Berlin and other major centres in Germany...which they obviously could do if they decided to.

I am not saying the British are to blame for the German Blitz. I am saying that the German Blitz on London did not begin as a policy until after the British had deliberately bombed Berlin...and Hitler then went berserk, made a big speech about how he was going to bomb the hell out of London (just like Bush would do if someone were to bomb Washington or any other big American city)...and WHAMMO! Pandora's box was then well and truly opened.

I'm sure it would have happened at some point anyway. These things always do in wartime. The unthinkable rapidly becomes thinkable in the heat of action. And the fact is, both sides always feel 100% justified in what they are doing, because they are both under the rock solid impression that THEY and they alone are the "good guys" and the defenders of civilization!

That's how the human mind functions. It is forever justifying its own actions to itself (and to anyone else who can stand listening...).

If the Germans had won that war, we'd all still be reading about their "heroic" deeds on behalf of humanity till the more cynical or skeptical among us were heartily sick of it, I assure you. And we would never hear a peep about the concentration camps either...unless it was Soviet ones perhaps.

And the less skeptical among us? Oh, they'd be repeating the official line as gospel, and Churchill and Stalin would be their standins for "Hitler".

Nothing conforms like conformity. Nothing succeeds like success.