Arthur Harris
Air Marshall Arthur Travers Harris (April 13, 1892 - April 5, 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris, is widely regarded as the inventor of area bombing.
In 1915, he joined the Royal Flying Corps. In 1919 he entered the newly founded Royal Air Force serving in different functions in India, Iraq, and Iran. Since 1930 he was member of the air staff in the Middle East (1930-1932).
Harris contributed at this time to the development of terror bombing, gas attacks and delayed action bombing, which were then applied to keep down uprisings of the Iraqi tribes fighting against British occupation.
In spite of the many civilian victims of these air raids, Harris is recorded as having remarked that "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand."
During World War II he ordered the bombing of nearly all of the big German cities including the city of Dresden. Dresden, full of refugees from the former German east, was bombed over three days (February 13-15, 1945) resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed a large but widely disputed number of people. (See Bombing of Dresden in World War II.)
Many critics of Harris believe that the bombing was a war crime, and that Harris was a war criminal who, due to his luck to be part of the winning party in an act of "Siegerjustiz" was not held accountable at the Nuremberg Trials (Predecessor of the International criminal court ICC) for his deeds.
There is no doubt that due to modern standards of international law bombings ordered by Harris were a war crime, and that therefore he should have been blamed for this.
However, apologists for Harris claim that he was responding to the German policy of total war, declared 1943 in the Berlin speech of Josef Goebbels and that the German use of strategic bombing against Guernica in 1937, and later in the Blitz pre-dated the Allied use.