Informant38

Davis says Dead Cities is a study of "�the radical contingency of cities,� as well as the Urban West." One of the book�s "dead cities" is the German Village, whose remains still stand at the Dugway Proving Ground. The U.S. Army Air Corps constructed the German Village during World War II to determine the best way to bomb Germany. "Best" in this context means "most destructive," and "Germany" means "German civilians."

And this is where Churchill enters the story.

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Winston Churchill was an enthusiastic proponent of bombing civilians, as Davis amply documents. Specifically, Churchill was a proponent of bombing poor and working-class neighborhoods. The "mansions of the Nazi political and industrial elites" were off-limits because, as Davis neatly puts it, "this risked retaliation against Burke�s peerage"�that is, the British aristocracy and landed gentry, including Churchill�s own family. Middle-class neighborhoods were considered poor targets because the space between the homes made it harder for bombs to produce maximum damage. But the crowded conditions of working-class neighborhoods were perfect.

Churchill even had preferences when it came to selecting the working-class targets to be bombed: he liked targeting maps that flagged neighborhoods known to have voted communist before the war. The communists were, of course, Hitler�s traditional enemies, but then again, they were also Churchill�s. From the beginning of his political career to the boozy twilight of his life sponging off rich friends, Churchill maintained a suspicion of and hostility toward working-class radicals. (His famously inflexible stand against the Nazis lacked that lengthy pedigree. As the historian David Dutton notes in his recent study of Neville Chamberlain, "As late as 1937, he [Churchill] even seemed willing to give Hitler the possible benefit of the doubt. Accepting that history was full of examples of men who had risen to power by �wicked and even frightful methods� but who had gone on to become great figures, enriching the �story of mankind,� he held out the possibility that �so it may be with Hitler.�" Note to those of you who slept through history class: 1937 was four years after the Nazis seized power, 12 years after the publication of Mein Kampf, and 14 years after Hitler first appeared on the world scene in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch.)