The following was written in May of this year. It is a summary of the bombing campaigns carried out during The Second World War based on Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War. It is divided into two parts: a chronological account of the major bombing campaigns carried out by the Nazis, and a chronological account of the major bombing campaigns carried out by the Allies. The justification for being so organized is plain: it was simply the quickest way to bring the information together. All citations are from The Third Reich at War unless otherwise indicated.
Nazi Germany and Bombing
When a left-wing government came to power in Spain in February 1936 a right-wing rebellion broke out and a civil war ensued that lasted until 1939, when General Francisco Franco came to power. Mussolini and Hitler threw their support behind the right-wing Nationalist uprising while Stalin backed the Republicans. In November 1936, 11,000 Germans troops arrived in Spain, organized as the Condor Legion under General Sperrle. Nazi support was motivated by the fear that Spain might unite with France to oppose German expansion. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 638-641)
The civil war provided the Nazis with an opportunity to experiment with new weaponry, including bombers. Condor Legion's bombers were the first to subject a European town to "intensive bombing". This was the town of Durango on March 31, 1937. 248 people were killed. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 639-40)
On April 26, 1937 the Nazis bombed Guernica, a town of 7,000. Many refugees had also settled in Guernica by this time. The center of the town was completely destroyed and 1,600 people were killed. "The raid confirmed the widespread fear in Europe of the devastating effects of aerial bombing." Fear of bombing was a factor in Neville Chamberlain's agreement to allow Germany to occupy the Czech Sudetenland in 1938 with the infamous Munich Agreement. "At the height of the crisis, indeed, the British government issued gas-masks to the civilian population and ordered the evacuation of London." It was believed there was simply no defense against bombing, and that if the Nazis bombed London poison gas would likely be used. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 640, 6701-2; Evans, Third Reich at War, 437)
Many expected the British to sue for peace following the rapid defeat of France in June 1940. (136) However, Hitler's peace offerings were dismissed by Churchill. "With a reluctance that was obvious to his entourage...Hitler began preparations for the invasion of Britain." (139)
The Royal Navy dominated the English Channel and the German navy could not hope to challenge its dominance. (138) On the other hand, if the German air force could win air superiority over the Channel, an invasion would be possible. "...in order to clear the way for the invasion, Britain's aerial defences had to be destroyed." (138, 140) Germany had begun bombing targets in Britain as early as June 5-6, 1940 and these bombings increased in scale over the following months. To prepare the way for the invasion, beginning in mid-August Germany focused its bombing on British airfields. (140) During this first phase of the German bombing campaign, from June 1940 through the end of August, German losses were significantly heavier than British losses. In addition, British production of fighter-planes significantly outpaced German production. (141) It seems Germany was already losing.
"...the German air force commanders...received very different intelligence about the outcome of the battle." (141) Believing they had defeated the British air force, the decision was now taken at the beginning of September to begin bombing British cities in order to undermine morale and in order to destroy industry and transport. (142) In the middle of September, apparently realizing Germany had not gained control of the air, Hitler postponed the invasion. (144) From September 1940 to February 1941 the bombing focused on military and economic infrastructure, and was also hoped to damage morale. (142) Beginning in February 1941 the bombing was focused on seaports. This proved ineffective. (145) In May 1941 German bombing raids over Britain halted. (145, 439) While 40,000 civilians had been killed, British morale did not collapse, the British air force had not been defeated, and the planned invasion had been effectively abandoned. "For the first time, Hitler had lost a major battle." (145, 760) Evans does not say for how long after the postponement in September 1940 of Operation Sealion Hitler held out hope for an invasion of Britain, but it seems obvious enough that Hitler had completely given up on this possibility by May 1941. Indeed, in June Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of the Soviet Union--would begin. While a long-intended endeavor for the Nazis, "the primary initial reason for launching the invasion in 1941" was the hope that it would force Britain to capitulate. Hitler also believed that Germans would not support the invasion of the Soviet Union if it was launched subsequent to a British capitulation; in other words, it was preferable to launch the invasion while still at war with Britain. (160, 162) That Hitler believed this strikes me as curious: up until at least September 1940 he had intended to invade--and presumably defeat--Britain prior to invading the Soviet Union.
The next bombing campaign carried out by the Nazis that Evans discusses is the Baedeker Raids that began in April 1942. For all their genocidal verve, until this time the Nazis do not seem to have engaged in large scale bombing of non-military targets. This seems to be true even during the bombing of Britain from September 1940 until May 1941, during which time the damaging of British morale was an objective. (144) The Baedeker Raids were a response to British bombing of non-military targets and involved relatively small attacks on "undefended historic towns. They caused little damage to the British war effort and achieved nothing of military significance. They were an entirely emotional response on Hitler's part." (439)
Finally, Evans discusses German bombing on the Eastern Front. The campaign destroyed a large quantity of aviation fuel and many US-supplied bombers, and thus prevented Germany from facing significant bombing raids from the east in addition to from the west. (436-7)
Evans does not discuss any other German bombing campaigns in the East, but mentions on page 463 that raids of significant scale took place on "Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, Leningrad, Stalingrad and other European cities.". Furthermore, his discussion of this campaign is vague. It took place in "1943-4". And while its objectives were "Soviet industrial targets and communications", the only example provided is that mentioned above--namely, the destruction of bombers and aviation fuel parked on an airfield: a military target. (436)
Evans characterizes Nazi bombing campaigns as largely tactical, and writes that "The idea of destroying the enemy heartland by a persistent, long-term and large-scale bombing campaign was not entertained in Berlin." (436) I wrestled with this characterization for a while. If the Nazis weren't interested in strategic bombing of that nature, why did they continue to bomb Britain after postponing an invasion? At some point after the postponing of Operation Sealion in September 1940 hadn't the German bombing campaign taken on the character of strategic bombing? And wasn't it abandoned because it was a failure; in other words, wouldn't it have become long-term if Britain had not so successfully defended itself? Likewise, Evans attributes the Nazi abandonment of strategic bombing on the Eastern front to a shortage of fuel and the necessity to shift production to fighters in order to defend from Allied bombing. (437)
Evans' account of German bombing campaigns simply does not provide enough information--such as precisely when Operation Sealion was definitively abandoned, or what precisely were the objectives of the bombing campaign on the Easter front--to resolve such questions. Nevertheless, Evans makes perfectly clear how the German bombing campaigns themselves contrasted to those of the Allies. In scale, frequency, breadth of targets--in every dimension Allied bombing dwarfed that of the Nazis.
Allied Bombing
May 1940 to January 1943 seems to have been a period of experimentation for the Allies in regard to bombing. Hamburg, Germany's second largest city with a population of 2 million, was the first large German city to be bombed. The first raid took place on May 17-18 1940 and increased in frequency over the following year. Berlin was also being bombed in 1940. (436)
In March 1942 the British bombed Lubeck. The purpose of this raid was to test the effectiveness of their "new tactic of mass bombing raids on large urban targets". 234 bombers were involved. The city was "virtually undefended" and had no industrial or military targets "worth mentioning". The following month the British bombed targets along the Baltic coast that Evans implies were also lightly defended and not relevant to war production. It was these raids in March and April 1942 that provided the impetus for the Nazis' Baedeker Raids. (438-9) In May, a raid on Cologne involving 1,000 bombers "proved that large fleets of bombers could reach their targets without mishap and overwhelm local defences." (440-1)
This strategy of massive raids on major cities, innovated over the course of the war heretofore, was the strategy that Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to in January 1943 when they met in Casablanca. (441) A variety of improvements had also increased the effectiveness of bombing. By the end of 1940 Germany "had set up a line of radar stations stretching from Paris to Denmark, backed by Me110 night-fighters directed by a central control room and supplemented by ground-based searchlights and anti-aircraft guns." German defenses took their toll on British bombers. The advances in technology and tactics over the course of 1942-43 increased the British advantage however. This included the introduction of Lancaster bombers, the use of radio navigation, the use of pathfinders to set targets on fire in order to make them more visible to bombers; radar and radio "target-finders" that increased navigability in conditions of poor visibility; a "bomber-aimer" crew member in each plane, and the use of "Window"--the dropping of aluminum foil out of the plane to disorient the enemy's radar. The German air force developed counter measures, including it's own use of radar and increased production of anti-aircraft weaponry. It also shifted the majority of its fighter planes to the west. In fact, by April 1944 the Nazis confronted a Soviet fleet of 13,000 planes with a measly 500 of its own. (439-440, 461)
The first raids following the meeting at Casablanca were on the Ruhr region in the west of Germany where much of Germany's industry was concentrated. 5,000 people were killed in a single raid on Cologne on the night of June 28-9. 15,000 were killed in total in this series of attacks. Serious damage had been inflicted on German war production. Albert Speer, Armaments Minister, "was seriously alarmed." "If the raids on Germany's industrial centres continued, he warned Hitler, then Germany's arms production would come to a total halt." (441-2)
In July and August the Allies carried out four massive raids on Hamburg. The raids took place on the nights of July 24, 27, 29 and August 2. In between the major attacks, smaller attacks took place. (443-5) The Allies evidently still innovating tactically, "the assault on Hamburg was a new kind of operation, not a single raid but a series of raids designed to destroy the city in stages." It was also the first time "Window" was used, proving its effectiveness at disrupting enemy radar. (443) While the fourth major assault encountered a lightning storm and was largely unsuccessful, in all "The devastation was staggering." 40,000 people were killed. The damage to military production "was reckoned to have amounted to the equivalent of nearly two months' output from the city as a whole." (445-6)
Beginning in November 1943 the Allies focused their massive bombing tactic on Germany's capital itself, which "was also by some distance the largest industrial centre in Germany." These continued through at least May 1944. Evans attributes 9,000 deaths to this serious of raids. Attacks were also carried out on Schweinfurt and Nuremburg, both well behind Germany's western border. However, Allied casualties were significant, in part because Berlin was "beyond the range of the most effective navigational aids"; the distance between Allied airfields and Berlin gave the Germans time to locate the bombers; and Allied fighters were not able to accompany bombers on such long distances. (459-60)
P-51 Mustangs, maneuverable fighter planes that could carry enough fuel to accompany bombers to targets well inside Germany, appear to have clinched for the Allies the definitive advantage in the air. In December 1943, when the P-51 first entered the combat zone, German fighter plane losses had become unsustainable. By June 1944, though the Allies still confronted heavy Germany anti-aircraft defenses, "the German air force had effectively been defeated...". (461)
The Allied bombing campaign during the Second World War "caused between 400,000 and half a million deaths in Germany's towns and cities, the overwhelming majority of them civilian." 80,000 Allied airmen were killed, and 60,000 British civilians were killed, and many East Europeans as well. (462-3) One hesitates to second guess the judgments made by those on the Allied side who were called upon to make difficult decisions in a war that pitted them against a regime that was truly an abomination. And Evans (understandably) appears to not wish to bog his narrative down in an evaluation of the morality of Allied bombing. Allied bombing hindered German war production, drained German military resources, and undermined German support for the war effort. "It has been argued...that bombing helped save lives by shortening the war, and in particular that it saved Allied lives by weakening German resistance." (462-3) And yet, "Undermining civilian morale, even wreaking revenge on Germany and the Germans, unquestionably belonged among the aims of the strategic bombing offensive...". Such attacks are "customarily...regarded as a war crime."
Nazi Germany and Bombing
When a left-wing government came to power in Spain in February 1936 a right-wing rebellion broke out and a civil war ensued that lasted until 1939, when General Francisco Franco came to power. Mussolini and Hitler threw their support behind the right-wing Nationalist uprising while Stalin backed the Republicans. In November 1936, 11,000 Germans troops arrived in Spain, organized as the Condor Legion under General Sperrle. Nazi support was motivated by the fear that Spain might unite with France to oppose German expansion. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 638-641)
The civil war provided the Nazis with an opportunity to experiment with new weaponry, including bombers. Condor Legion's bombers were the first to subject a European town to "intensive bombing". This was the town of Durango on March 31, 1937. 248 people were killed. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 639-40)
On April 26, 1937 the Nazis bombed Guernica, a town of 7,000. Many refugees had also settled in Guernica by this time. The center of the town was completely destroyed and 1,600 people were killed. "The raid confirmed the widespread fear in Europe of the devastating effects of aerial bombing." Fear of bombing was a factor in Neville Chamberlain's agreement to allow Germany to occupy the Czech Sudetenland in 1938 with the infamous Munich Agreement. "At the height of the crisis, indeed, the British government issued gas-masks to the civilian population and ordered the evacuation of London." It was believed there was simply no defense against bombing, and that if the Nazis bombed London poison gas would likely be used. (Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 640, 6701-2; Evans, Third Reich at War, 437)
Many expected the British to sue for peace following the rapid defeat of France in June 1940. (136) However, Hitler's peace offerings were dismissed by Churchill. "With a reluctance that was obvious to his entourage...Hitler began preparations for the invasion of Britain." (139)
The Royal Navy dominated the English Channel and the German navy could not hope to challenge its dominance. (138) On the other hand, if the German air force could win air superiority over the Channel, an invasion would be possible. "...in order to clear the way for the invasion, Britain's aerial defences had to be destroyed." (138, 140) Germany had begun bombing targets in Britain as early as June 5-6, 1940 and these bombings increased in scale over the following months. To prepare the way for the invasion, beginning in mid-August Germany focused its bombing on British airfields. (140) During this first phase of the German bombing campaign, from June 1940 through the end of August, German losses were significantly heavier than British losses. In addition, British production of fighter-planes significantly outpaced German production. (141) It seems Germany was already losing.
"...the German air force commanders...received very different intelligence about the outcome of the battle." (141) Believing they had defeated the British air force, the decision was now taken at the beginning of September to begin bombing British cities in order to undermine morale and in order to destroy industry and transport. (142) In the middle of September, apparently realizing Germany had not gained control of the air, Hitler postponed the invasion. (144) From September 1940 to February 1941 the bombing focused on military and economic infrastructure, and was also hoped to damage morale. (142) Beginning in February 1941 the bombing was focused on seaports. This proved ineffective. (145) In May 1941 German bombing raids over Britain halted. (145, 439) While 40,000 civilians had been killed, British morale did not collapse, the British air force had not been defeated, and the planned invasion had been effectively abandoned. "For the first time, Hitler had lost a major battle." (145, 760) Evans does not say for how long after the postponement in September 1940 of Operation Sealion Hitler held out hope for an invasion of Britain, but it seems obvious enough that Hitler had completely given up on this possibility by May 1941. Indeed, in June Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of the Soviet Union--would begin. While a long-intended endeavor for the Nazis, "the primary initial reason for launching the invasion in 1941" was the hope that it would force Britain to capitulate. Hitler also believed that Germans would not support the invasion of the Soviet Union if it was launched subsequent to a British capitulation; in other words, it was preferable to launch the invasion while still at war with Britain. (160, 162) That Hitler believed this strikes me as curious: up until at least September 1940 he had intended to invade--and presumably defeat--Britain prior to invading the Soviet Union.
The next bombing campaign carried out by the Nazis that Evans discusses is the Baedeker Raids that began in April 1942. For all their genocidal verve, until this time the Nazis do not seem to have engaged in large scale bombing of non-military targets. This seems to be true even during the bombing of Britain from September 1940 until May 1941, during which time the damaging of British morale was an objective. (144) The Baedeker Raids were a response to British bombing of non-military targets and involved relatively small attacks on "undefended historic towns. They caused little damage to the British war effort and achieved nothing of military significance. They were an entirely emotional response on Hitler's part." (439)
Finally, Evans discusses German bombing on the Eastern Front. The campaign destroyed a large quantity of aviation fuel and many US-supplied bombers, and thus prevented Germany from facing significant bombing raids from the east in addition to from the west. (436-7)
Evans does not discuss any other German bombing campaigns in the East, but mentions on page 463 that raids of significant scale took place on "Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, Leningrad, Stalingrad and other European cities.". Furthermore, his discussion of this campaign is vague. It took place in "1943-4". And while its objectives were "Soviet industrial targets and communications", the only example provided is that mentioned above--namely, the destruction of bombers and aviation fuel parked on an airfield: a military target. (436)
Evans characterizes Nazi bombing campaigns as largely tactical, and writes that "The idea of destroying the enemy heartland by a persistent, long-term and large-scale bombing campaign was not entertained in Berlin." (436) I wrestled with this characterization for a while. If the Nazis weren't interested in strategic bombing of that nature, why did they continue to bomb Britain after postponing an invasion? At some point after the postponing of Operation Sealion in September 1940 hadn't the German bombing campaign taken on the character of strategic bombing? And wasn't it abandoned because it was a failure; in other words, wouldn't it have become long-term if Britain had not so successfully defended itself? Likewise, Evans attributes the Nazi abandonment of strategic bombing on the Eastern front to a shortage of fuel and the necessity to shift production to fighters in order to defend from Allied bombing. (437)
Evans' account of German bombing campaigns simply does not provide enough information--such as precisely when Operation Sealion was definitively abandoned, or what precisely were the objectives of the bombing campaign on the Easter front--to resolve such questions. Nevertheless, Evans makes perfectly clear how the German bombing campaigns themselves contrasted to those of the Allies. In scale, frequency, breadth of targets--in every dimension Allied bombing dwarfed that of the Nazis.
Allied Bombing
May 1940 to January 1943 seems to have been a period of experimentation for the Allies in regard to bombing. Hamburg, Germany's second largest city with a population of 2 million, was the first large German city to be bombed. The first raid took place on May 17-18 1940 and increased in frequency over the following year. Berlin was also being bombed in 1940. (436)
In March 1942 the British bombed Lubeck. The purpose of this raid was to test the effectiveness of their "new tactic of mass bombing raids on large urban targets". 234 bombers were involved. The city was "virtually undefended" and had no industrial or military targets "worth mentioning". The following month the British bombed targets along the Baltic coast that Evans implies were also lightly defended and not relevant to war production. It was these raids in March and April 1942 that provided the impetus for the Nazis' Baedeker Raids. (438-9) In May, a raid on Cologne involving 1,000 bombers "proved that large fleets of bombers could reach their targets without mishap and overwhelm local defences." (440-1)
This strategy of massive raids on major cities, innovated over the course of the war heretofore, was the strategy that Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to in January 1943 when they met in Casablanca. (441) A variety of improvements had also increased the effectiveness of bombing. By the end of 1940 Germany "had set up a line of radar stations stretching from Paris to Denmark, backed by Me110 night-fighters directed by a central control room and supplemented by ground-based searchlights and anti-aircraft guns." German defenses took their toll on British bombers. The advances in technology and tactics over the course of 1942-43 increased the British advantage however. This included the introduction of Lancaster bombers, the use of radio navigation, the use of pathfinders to set targets on fire in order to make them more visible to bombers; radar and radio "target-finders" that increased navigability in conditions of poor visibility; a "bomber-aimer" crew member in each plane, and the use of "Window"--the dropping of aluminum foil out of the plane to disorient the enemy's radar. The German air force developed counter measures, including it's own use of radar and increased production of anti-aircraft weaponry. It also shifted the majority of its fighter planes to the west. In fact, by April 1944 the Nazis confronted a Soviet fleet of 13,000 planes with a measly 500 of its own. (439-440, 461)
The first raids following the meeting at Casablanca were on the Ruhr region in the west of Germany where much of Germany's industry was concentrated. 5,000 people were killed in a single raid on Cologne on the night of June 28-9. 15,000 were killed in total in this series of attacks. Serious damage had been inflicted on German war production. Albert Speer, Armaments Minister, "was seriously alarmed." "If the raids on Germany's industrial centres continued, he warned Hitler, then Germany's arms production would come to a total halt." (441-2)
In July and August the Allies carried out four massive raids on Hamburg. The raids took place on the nights of July 24, 27, 29 and August 2. In between the major attacks, smaller attacks took place. (443-5) The Allies evidently still innovating tactically, "the assault on Hamburg was a new kind of operation, not a single raid but a series of raids designed to destroy the city in stages." It was also the first time "Window" was used, proving its effectiveness at disrupting enemy radar. (443) While the fourth major assault encountered a lightning storm and was largely unsuccessful, in all "The devastation was staggering." 40,000 people were killed. The damage to military production "was reckoned to have amounted to the equivalent of nearly two months' output from the city as a whole." (445-6)
Beginning in November 1943 the Allies focused their massive bombing tactic on Germany's capital itself, which "was also by some distance the largest industrial centre in Germany." These continued through at least May 1944. Evans attributes 9,000 deaths to this serious of raids. Attacks were also carried out on Schweinfurt and Nuremburg, both well behind Germany's western border. However, Allied casualties were significant, in part because Berlin was "beyond the range of the most effective navigational aids"; the distance between Allied airfields and Berlin gave the Germans time to locate the bombers; and Allied fighters were not able to accompany bombers on such long distances. (459-60)
P-51 Mustangs, maneuverable fighter planes that could carry enough fuel to accompany bombers to targets well inside Germany, appear to have clinched for the Allies the definitive advantage in the air. In December 1943, when the P-51 first entered the combat zone, German fighter plane losses had become unsustainable. By June 1944, though the Allies still confronted heavy Germany anti-aircraft defenses, "the German air force had effectively been defeated...". (461)
The Allied bombing campaign during the Second World War "caused between 400,000 and half a million deaths in Germany's towns and cities, the overwhelming majority of them civilian." 80,000 Allied airmen were killed, and 60,000 British civilians were killed, and many East Europeans as well. (462-3) One hesitates to second guess the judgments made by those on the Allied side who were called upon to make difficult decisions in a war that pitted them against a regime that was truly an abomination. And Evans (understandably) appears to not wish to bog his narrative down in an evaluation of the morality of Allied bombing. Allied bombing hindered German war production, drained German military resources, and undermined German support for the war effort. "It has been argued...that bombing helped save lives by shortening the war, and in particular that it saved Allied lives by weakening German resistance." (462-3) And yet, "Undermining civilian morale, even wreaking revenge on Germany and the Germans, unquestionably belonged among the aims of the strategic bombing offensive...". Such attacks are "customarily...regarded as a war crime."
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