Targets of enemy bombers and our own demolition men

Area bombing reduced historic buildings to rubble - with a little help from local politicians.

In the spring of 1942, European architecture came suddenly and deliberately into the firing line. Historic buildings had been bombed during the early months of the war - Coventry Cathedral was gutted by incendiary bombs in November 1940 and the City of London, with its Wren churches, was blitzed the following month. However, by the rules of engagement tacitly agreed by Britain and Germany, these were legitimate targets. Coventry was a legitimate target because it was a centre of engine production and the City of London because it was the financial and distributive hub of the Empire. But, in March 1942, the RAF took an initiative which shifted the war in a new and sinister direction, and one that was to have immense architectural consequences.

During 1941 it became painfully evident to the RAF and the British government that Bomber Command could not do the job for which it had been designed. Its bombers were too vulnerable to attack specific German military targets by daylight. They had to operate by night, which meant that although darkness concealed bombers from the enemy, it also hid targets from the bombers. This problem spawned a new and brutal policy which was to become known as "area bombing". Instead of attempting the nearly impossible task of finding and bombing key targets by night, the new aim was to blanket a target with bombs, and the most rewarding target for this type of attack was the city centre. This meant that defenceless civilians had become a target along with factories and military installations.

This new policy was outlined in an Air Ministry Directive of 14 February 1942 issued by Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Air Staff. It pointed out that the "primary object of operations ... should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civil population and, in particular, of the industrial workers". Just over a week later, Sir Arthur Harris became Commander-in- Chief of Bomber Command and his contribution to this policy was to develop the attack on German cities with a single-minded commitment that daunted or ignored all opposition.

Among the first, and certainly the most effective, of the new type of area bombing attacks was the raid on the Baltic port of Lubeck on the night of 28 March 1942. Lubeck was chosen because it was vulnerable. As Max Hastings explains in his authoritative book Bomber Command: "Lubeck did not attract the attention of the bombers because it was important, but became important because it could be bombed." Located near the coast on the Trave See, Lubeck was easy to find, lightly defended, of no military importance and, best of all, was an ancient town packed with timber houses. It would burn well. As Harris observed in his biography with characteristic dispassion, the ancient city centre was "more like a fire-lighter than a human habitation". Lubeck was raided by 234 RAF bombers; 312 people were killed and its historic heart was burnt out.

The raid had an extraordinary effect in Germany. In his diary, Josef Goebbelsmakes it clear that he and Hitler believed that the raid on Lubeck and the follow-up attack on Rostock meant that the British were moving towards a new form of cultural warfare. "No German city ever before has been attacked so severely from the air. Conditions in parts of Lubeck are chaotic ... 80 per cent of the old part of the city must be considered lost. Stupendous numbers of works of art have fallen victim to the British craze for destruction." German press analysis of these RAF raids took the same line: they were clearly intended as an attack on historic German culture. There is, however, no evidence that German culture was the RAF's target; Bomber Command chose Lubeck and Rostock as targets because they were sitting ducks and would burn well.

Goebbels and Hitler called for revenge; the RAF's new policy of attacking lightly defended targets of little or no military significance justified the Luftwaffe in attacking those soft British targets which the eroding rules of war had so far spared. When German bombers launched their destructive attack on Exeter on 4 May 1942, their main target was the medieval cathedral, which was seriously damaged. As Goebbels confided in his diary on 26 April, "like the English we must attack centres of culture, especially those with little anti-aircraft. Such centres should be ... levelled to the ground." A German press officer made this view public - and infamous - on the following day when he announced that the targets in Britain were being chosen from the Baedeker guidebook; thus the Luftwaffe raids on Britain in spring 1942 became known as the "Baedeker Blitz".

Hitler had taken up the theme the day before in a speech in the Reichstag. After accusing Churchill of initiating the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, he promised to "repay blow with blow". Which he did; between 23 April and 1 June 1942, attacks were made on Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. The destruction was, in the cases of Exeter and Canterbury, grievous, with the consequences being only too visible to this day. Yet what the Luftwaffe did to British cities pales when compared with the destruction that Bomber Command, with the US Eighth Air Force, wrought upon the fabric and population of German cities during the following three years.

The cataclysmic consequences of aerial bombardment on historic buildings had not been entirely unforeseen. In November 1940, Sir Kenneth Clarke, cultural live-wire and director of the National Gallery, attended a meeting organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to discuss "action to prevent damage to historic buildings" which had been hit by bombs. The fear was that if heavy-duty demolition teams were let loose on bomb-damaged buildings and historic areas, then a lot that could be saved might be swept away through urgency, heavy-handedness and ignorance.

This begged the question of what was of historic importance. The meeting resolved that the RIBA and SPAB would organise 300 architects to prepare a list that would define and describe the nation's historic buildings, and that these "listed" buildings would be recorded photographically. Clarke secured the support of Lord Reith, the Minister of Works, and the list was compiled under the supervision of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments and funded by the Treasury. The young architectural historian and journalist John Summerson was put in charge of the photographic recording side of the enterprise, which became known as the "salvage scheme". The immediate challenge was to compile the list and issue it to local authorities and they, it was assumed, would protect buildings on the list from casual or needless demolition after bombing. Since the list had no statutory backing, its success depended on the goodwill and intelligence of local government officials.

The list was produced in less than a year and was available at the time of the Baedeker Blitz. The official publication telling the tale of the salvage scheme - Works and Buildings, published by HMSO - records that arrangements for the Baedeker cities were "judged to have been made with care" with "one exception". That exception was Exeter; a letter to the City Surveyor from an inspector of ancient monuments dated 1 July 1942 makes depressing reading. Referring to buildings on the list, we read: "The Old Black Lion, South Street: here the real damage has been done by the demolition gang ... this is the worst case of vandalism which I have known to be perpetrated after a raid anywhere in England under the aegis of a local authority." The inspector also requested that a fine early 19th century neoclassical facade in the high street and the substantial remains of Exeter's late-Georgian gem Bedford Circus be retained so as to be "incorporated in a new design after the war". Neither was.

Similar problems beset Canterbury. Anthony Swain, surveyor to the cathedral at the time of the raid, remembers the near impossibility of saving historic buildings from the eager grasp of the demolition- hungry local authority. Even those with only superficial damage were unsafe - the late-Georgian St George's Terrace, damaged but far from destroyed by bombs, was swept away, as was the Georgian Longmarket, which Swain remains adamant could and should have been restored.

The threat that insensitive local politicians and officials could be almost as destructive as the bombs they were combating was also real in Germany. As Albert Speer records in his autobiography, "there was a threat springing from the quality of the Gauleiters [who] saw the devastation of the cities as an opportunity to tear down historic buildings which to them had little meaning" and which most of them viewed as "only a hindrance to the modernisation of the city". In the realm of conservation, it would seem that Nazi Gauleiters and Britain's wartime local governments had much in common.

The British and German bombing campaigns of spring 1942 marked a turning point in the Second World War. A boundary of new savagery was crossed, and the intentional destruction of non-military targets, civilians (as a matter of course) and great works of architecture became official policy. Yet something creative did emerge from this descent into total war. In Britain, the mechanism that the authorities were prompted to set up to identify, record and assess historic buildings - humble and grand - provided the basis for post-war listed building legislation. Since the end of the Second World War, this legislation has saved more historic buildings from wilful demolition than were destroyed by bombing. So, perhaps, the devastation that took place in some British cities in 1942 was not entirely in vain, for it focussed attention on the need to protect historic buildings, not just from destruction by foreign powers but from the enemy within.

The author presents 'Baedeker Blitz' on BBC2 on Thursday at 9.30pm.