It is now known for certain that during the Second World War, Anglo-American aircraft deliberately bombed peaceful German cities. The statistics of the consequences of the "air war" gives the following data: in all age groups, losses among women exceed those among men by approximately 40%, the number of dead children is also very high - 20% of all losses, losses among older ages are 22%. Of course, these figures do not mean that only the Germans became victims of the war. The world remembers Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and another 1,650 concentration camps and ghettos, the world remembers Khatyn and Babi Yar... It's about something else. How did the Anglo-American methods of warfare differ from the German ones, if they also led to the mass death of the civilian population?
Churchill's go-ahead
If you compare pictures of the lunar landscape with photographs of the space that was left of the German city of Wesel after the bombing of 1945, then it will be difficult to distinguish between them. Mountains of uplifted earth, interspersed with thousands of huge bomb craters, are very reminiscent of lunar craters. It is impossible to believe that people lived here. Wesel was one of 80 German target cities subjected to total bombardment by Anglo-American aircraft between 1940 and 1945. How did this “air” war, in fact, a war with the population, start?
Let us turn to the previous documents and individual "programmatic" statements of the first persons of the states that participated in the Second World War.
At the time of the German invasion of Poland - September 1, 1939 - the entire world community knew the document "Rules of War", developed by the participants in the Washington Conference on Arms Limitation in 1922. It says literally the following: “Aerial bombardments for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, or destroying and damaging private property of a non-military nature, or causing harm to persons not taking part in hostilities, are prohibited” (Article 22, Part II).
Moreover, on September 2, 1939, the British, French and German governments announced that "strictly military targets in the narrowest sense of the word" would be bombed.
Six months after the outbreak of war, speaking in the House of Commons on February 15, 1940, the British Prime Minister Chamberlain confirmed the earlier statement: “Whatever others do, our government will never vilely attack women and other civilians just to to terrorize them."
As a result, the humane concept of the leadership of Great Britain lasted only until May 10, 1940 - the day Winston Churchill came to the post of Prime Minister after the death of Chamberlain. The next day, at his go-ahead, the British pilots began to bomb Freiburg. Assistant Secretary of Air J. M. Speight commented on this event as follows: “We (the British) began bombing targets in Germany before the Germans began bombing targets in the British Isles. This is a historical fact that has been publicly acknowledged ... But since we doubted the psychological impact that the propaganda distortion of the truth that it was we who launched the strategic offensive could have, we did not have the courage to publicize our great decision taken in May 1940. We should have announced it, but of course we made a mistake. This is a great solution." According to the well-known English historian and military theorist John Fuller, then "it was at the hands of Mr. Churchill that the fuse that triggered the explosion - a war of devastation and terror, unprecedented since the Seljuk invasion" went off.
After eight British raids on German cities, the Luftwaffe bombed London in September 1940 and Coventry on 14 November. According to the author of the book "Air War in Germany", Major General Hans Rumpf, it is this raid on the center of the British aircraft engine industry that is considered to be the beginning of an all-out air war. Then, in addition to the plant, half of the city buildings were destroyed to the ground, several hundred civilians died. Official German propaganda called this raid a "giant aerial bombardment", which greatly helped the official British propaganda, which accused the Luftwaffe of "barbarism." After that, the German bombing stopped somewhat, and the British until the beginning of 1942 were engaged in so-called "precision" bombing, which was carried out mainly at night. The impact of these raids on the German economy was extremely insignificant - the production of weapons not only did not decrease, but also steadily increased.
British bomber aviation was in a clear crisis. In August 1941, Cabinet Secretary D. Butt presented a report proving the absolute ineffectiveness of bomber raids that year. In November, Churchill was even forced to order Bomber Commander Sir Richard Percy to limit the number of raids as much as possible until the concept of using heavy bombers was worked out.
The Debut of the Possessed
Everything changed on February 21, 1942, when Air Marshal Arthur Harris became the new commander of the RAF Bomber. A lover of figurative expressions, he immediately promised to "bomb" Germany out of the war. Harris suggested abandoning the practice of destroying specific targets and bombing city squares. In his opinion, the destruction of cities should undoubtedly undermine the spirit of the civilian population, and above all the workers of industrial enterprises.
The use of bombers thus underwent a complete revolution. Now they have become an independent tool of war, not requiring interaction with anyone. Harris, with all his indomitable energy, began to turn bomber aircraft into a huge machine of destruction. He quickly established iron discipline and demanded the unquestioning and prompt execution of all his orders. "Tightening the screws" was not to everyone's taste, but this was the least of Harris's worries - he felt the powerful support of Prime Minister Churchill. The new commander categorically demanded that the government provide him with 4,000 heavy four-engine bombers and 1,000 high-speed Mosquito-type fighter-bombers. This would give him the opportunity to keep up to 1 thousand aircraft over Germany every night. With great difficulty, the ministers of the "economic" bloc managed to prove to the frantic marshal the absurdity of his demands. English industry simply could not cope with their implementation in the foreseeable future, if only because of the lack of raw materials.
So on the first "raid of a thousand bombers", which took place on the night of May 30-31, 1942, Harris sent everything he had: not only a few Lancasters, but also Halifaxes, Stirlings, Blenheims , Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys. In total, the diverse armada consisted of 1,047 vehicles. At the end of the raid, 41 aircraft (3.9% of the total) did not return to their bases. This level of loss alarmed many then, but not Harris. Subsequently, among the British Air Force, the losses of bomber aircraft were always the largest.
The first "thousand raids" did not lead to noticeable practical results, and this was not required. The raids were of a "combat training" nature: according to Marshal Harris, it was necessary to create the necessary theoretical basis for bombing and reinforce it with flight practice.
The whole of 1942 passed in such "practical" exercises. In addition to German cities, the British bombed the industrial sites of the Ruhr several times, targets in Italy - Milan, Turin and La Spezia, as well as German submarine bases in France.
Winston Churchill assessed this period of time as follows: “Although we gradually achieved the accuracy we needed so much at night, the German military industry and the moral strength of the resistance of its civilian population were not broken by the bombing of 1942.”
As for the socio-political resonance in England regarding the first bombings, for example, Lord Salisbury and Bishop George Bell of Chichester repeatedly condemned such a strategy. They expressed their opinion both in the House of Lords and in the press, focusing the attention of the military leadership and society as a whole on the fact that strategic bombing of cities cannot be justified from a moral point of view or according to the laws of war. But such sorties nevertheless continued.
In the same year, the first formations of American Boeing B-17 and Flying Fortress heavy bombers arrived in England. At that time, these were the best strategic bombers in the world, both in terms of speed and altitude, and in terms of armament. 12 Browning heavy machine guns gave the crew of the Fortress a good chance to fight off German fighters. Unlike the British, the American command relied on targeted bombing in daylight. It was assumed that no one could break through the powerful barrage fire of hundreds of B-17s flying in close formation. The reality turned out to be different. Already in the first "training" raids on France, the squadrons of the "Fortresses" suffered significant losses. It became clear that no result could be achieved without strong fighter cover. But the Allies were not yet able to produce long-range fighters in sufficient numbers, so that the bomber crews had to rely mainly on themselves. In this way, aviation operated until January 1943, when the Allied conference was held in Casablanca, where the main points of strategic interaction were determined: to military resistance.
On June 2, speaking in the House of Commons, Churchill declared: "I can report that this year German cities, harbors and centers of war industry will be subjected to such a huge, continuous and cruel test that no country has experienced." The commander of the British bomber aviation was instructed: "Start the most intensive bombing of industrial targets in Germany." Subsequently, Harris wrote about it this way: "Practically I got the freedom to bomb any German city with a population of 100 thousand people or more." Without delaying the matter, the English marshal planned a joint air operation with the Americans against Hamburg, the second most populous city in Germany. This operation was called "Gomorrah". Its goal was the complete destruction of the city and its reduction to dust.
Monuments to barbarism
In late July - early August 1943, 4 night and 3 day massive raids were carried out on Hamburg. In total, about 3,000 Allied heavy bombers took part in them. During the first raid on July 27, from one in the morning, 10,000 tons of explosives, mainly incendiary and high-explosive bombs, were dropped on densely populated areas of the city. For several days, a firestorm raged in Hamburg, and a column of smoke reached a height of 4 km. Even the pilots felt the smoke of the burning city, it penetrated into the cockpits of aircraft. According to eyewitnesses, asphalt and sugar stored in warehouses were boiling in the city, glass was melting in trams. Civilians burned alive, turning to ashes, or suffocated from poisonous gases in the basements of their own houses, trying to hide from the bombing. Or they were buried under the ruins. In the diary of the German Friedrich Reck, sent to Dachau by the Nazis, there are stories about people who fled from Hamburg in nothing but pajamas, lost their memory or became distraught with horror.
The city was half destroyed, more than 50 thousand of its inhabitants died, over 200 thousand were injured, burned and crippled.
To his old nickname "bomber" Harris added another - "Nelson of the air." So he was now called in the English press. But nothing pleased the marshal - the destruction of Hamburg could not decisively bring the final defeat of the enemy closer. Harris calculated that the simultaneous destruction of at least six of the largest German cities was required. And for this there was not enough strength. Justifying his "slow victories", he declared: "I can no longer hope that we will be able to defeat the largest industrial power in Europe from the air, if for this I am given at the disposal of only 600-700 heavy bombers."
British industry could not replace the losses of such aircraft as quickly as Harris wished. Indeed, in each raid, the British lost an average of 3.5% of the total number of participating bombers. At first glance, it seems to be a little, but after all, each crew had to make 30 sorties! If this amount is multiplied by the average percentage of losses, then we get 105% losses. Truly deadly math for pilots, scorers, navigators and shooters. Few of them survived the autumn of 1943
And here is the other side of the barricades. The famous German fighter pilot Hans Philipp described his feelings in battle as follows: “It was a joy to fight with two dozen Russian fighters or English Spitfires. And no one thought at the same time about the meaning of life. But when seventy huge "Flying Fortresses" fly at you, all your former sins stand before your eyes. And even if the lead pilot was able to gather his courage, then how much pain and nerves were needed to make every pilot in the squadron cope with himself, right down to the very newcomers. In October 43, during one of these attacks, Hans Philipp was shot down and killed. Many shared his fate.
Meanwhile, the Americans concentrated their main efforts on the destruction of important industrial facilities of the Third Reich. On August 17, 1943, 363 heavy bombers attempted to destroy ball bearing factories in the Schweinfurt area. But since there were no escort fighters, the losses during the operation were very serious - 60 "Fortresses". Further bombardments of the area were delayed for 4 months, during which the Germans were able to restore their factories. Such raids finally convinced the American command that it was no longer possible to send bombers without cover.
And three months after the failures of the allies - on November 18, 1943 - Arthur Harris began the "battle for Berlin". On this occasion, he said: "I want to incinerate this nightmarish city from end to end." The battle continued until March 1944. 16 massive raids were carried out on the capital of the Third Reich, during which 50 thousand tons of bombs were dropped. Almost half of the city turned into ruins, tens of thousands of Berliners died. “For fifty, a hundred, and perhaps more years, the ruined cities of Germany will stand as monuments to the barbarism of her conquerors,” Major General John Fuller wrote.
One German fighter pilot recalled: “I once saw a night raid from the ground. I stood in a crowd of other people in an underground metro station, the ground trembled with each explosion of bombs, women and children screamed, clouds of smoke and dust came through the mines. Anyone who did not experience fear and horror should have had a heart of stone." At that time, a joke was popular: who can be considered a coward? Answer: a resident of Berlin who volunteered for the front
But still, it was not possible to completely destroy the city, and Nelson Air came up with a proposal: “We can completely demolish Berlin if the American Air Force takes part. This will cost us 400-500 aircraft. The Germans will pay with defeat in the war." However, Harris's American colleagues did not share his optimism.
Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with the commander of the bomber aviation was growing in the British leadership. Harris's appetites increased so much that in March 1944, Secretary of War J. Grigg, presenting the army's budget draft to Parliament, said: “I take the liberty of saying that as many workers are employed in the manufacture of heavy bombers alone as in the implementation of the plan for the entire army ". At that time, 40-50% of British military production worked for one aviation, and to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of the main scorer meant to bleed the ground forces and navy. Because of this, the admirals and generals, to put it mildly, did not treat Harris too well, but he was still obsessed with the idea of "bombing" Germany out of the war. But with this just nothing worked. In addition, in terms of losses, the spring of 1944 was the most difficult period for British bomber aircraft: on average, losses per flight reached 6%. On March 30, 1944, during a raid on Nuremberg, German night fighters and anti-aircraft gunners shot down 96 out of 786 aircraft. It was truly a "black night" for the Royal Air Force.
The British raids could not break the spirit of resistance of the population, and the American raids could not decisively reduce the output of German military products. All kinds of enterprises were dispersed, and strategically important factories were hidden underground. In February 1944, half of the German aircraft factories were subjected to air raids for several days. Some were destroyed to the ground, but production was quickly restored, and the factory equipment was moved to other areas. The production of aircraft continuously increased and reached its maximum in the summer of 1944.
In this regard, it is worth noting that in the post-war report of the American Office for the Study of the Results of Strategic Bombing there is a surprising fact: it turns out that in Germany there was a single plant for the production of dibromoethane - for ethyl liquid. The fact is that without this component, which is necessary in the production of aviation gasoline, not a single German aircraft would have flown. But, oddly enough, this plant was never bombed, just no one thought about it. But destroy it, the German aircraft factories could not be touched at all. They could produce thousands of planes that could only be rolled on the ground. Here is how John Fuller wrote about this: “If, in our technical age, soldiers and airmen do not think technically, they do more harm than good.”
under the curtain
In early 1944, the Allied Air Force's main problem was solved: Fortresses and Liberators were defending the excellent Thunderbolt and Mustang fighters in large numbers. Since that time, the losses of the Reich air defense fighter squadrons began to increase. There were fewer and fewer aces, and there was no one to replace them - the level of training of young pilots was depressingly low compared to the beginning of the war. This fact could not but reassure the allies. Nevertheless, it became increasingly difficult for them to prove the expediency of their "strategic" bombing: in 1944, the gross industrial output in Germany was steadily increasing. A new approach was needed. And he was found: the commander of US strategic aviation, General Carl Spaatz, proposed to focus on the destruction of synthetic fuel plants, and the chief marshal of British aviation Tedder insisted on the destruction of German railways. He argued that the bombing of transport is the most real opportunity to quickly disorganize the enemy.
As a result, it was decided to bomb the transport system first, and the fuel plants second. From April 1944 Allied bombing did become strategic for a short time. And against their background, the tragedy in the small town of Essen, located in East Frisia, went unnoticed. On the last day of September 1944, bad weather prevented American planes from reaching a military factory. On the way back, through a gap in the clouds, the pilots saw a small city and, in order not to return home with a full load, decided to get rid of it. The bombs hit the school exactly, burying 120 children under the rubble. It was half the children in the city. A small episode of the great air war... By the end of 1944, the German railway transport was practically paralyzed. The production of synthetic fuel fell from 316,000 tons in May 1944 to 17,000 tons in September. As a result, neither aviation nor tank divisions had enough fuel. A desperate German counter-offensive in the Ardennes in December of that year bogged down in large part because they failed to capture Allied fuel supplies. The German tanks just stood up.
Carnage from friends in arms
In the autumn of 1944, the Allies faced an unexpected problem: there were so many heavy bombers and cover fighters that they lacked industrial targets: they couldn’t sit idle. And to the full satisfaction of Arthur Harris, not only the British, but also the Americans began to consistently destroy German cities. Berlin, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Freiburg, Heilbronn were subjected to the strongest raids. The apogee of the massacre was the destruction of Dresden in mid-February 1945. At this time, the city was literally flooded with tens of thousands of refugees from the eastern regions of Germany. The massacre was started by 800 British bombers on the night of February 13-14. 650,000 incendiary and high-explosive bombs were dropped on the city center. During the day Dresden was bombed by 1,350 American bombers, the next day by 1,100. The city center was literally razed to the ground. In total, 27 thousand residential and 7 thousand public buildings were destroyed.
How many citizens and refugees died is still unknown. Immediately after the war, the US State Department reported 250,000 deaths. Now the generally accepted figure is ten times less - 25 thousand, although there are other figures - 60 and 100 thousand people. In any case, Dresden and Hamburg can be put on a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “When the fire from the burning buildings broke through the roofs, a column of hot air about six kilometers high and three kilometers in diameter rose above them ... Soon the air heated up to the limit, and all that could ignite, was engulfed in flames. Everything burned to the ground, that is, there were no traces of combustible materials, only two days later the temperature of the conflagration dropped so much that it was possible to at least approach the burnt area, ”an eyewitness testifies.
After Dresden, the British managed to bomb Würzburg, Bayreuth, Zoest, Ulm and Rothenburg - cities that have been preserved since the late Middle Ages. Only in one town of Pforzheim with a population of 60 thousand people during one air raid on February 22, 1945, a third of its inhabitants were killed. Klein Festung recalled that, being imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he saw the reflections of the Pforzheim fire from the window of his cell - 70 kilometers away. Chaos settled on the streets of the destroyed German cities. The Germans, who love order and cleanliness, lived like cave dwellers, hiding in the ruins. Disgusting rats scurried around and fat flies circled.
In early March, Churchill urged Harris to end the "area" bombing. He literally said the following: “It seems to me that we need to stop the bombing of German cities. Otherwise, we will take control of an absolutely destroyed country.” Marshal was forced to comply.
"Guaranteed" peace
In addition to eyewitness accounts, the catastrophic consequences of such raids are confirmed by many documents, including the conclusion of a special commission of the victorious powers, which immediately after the surrender of Germany investigated the results of the bombing on the spot. With industrial and military facilities, everything was clear - no one expected a different result. But the fate of German cities and villages shocked the members of the commission. Then, almost immediately after the end of the war, the results of the "areal" bombing could not be hidden from the "general public". In England, a real wave of indignation arose against the recent "hero bombardiers", the protesters repeatedly demanded that they be brought to justice. In the United States, everything was treated quite calmly. But such information did not reach the broad masses of the Soviet Union, and it would hardly have become timely and understandable. There were so many of their own ruins and their own grief that it was up to someone else’s, to “fascist” - “so that it was empty for them all!” I didn't have the energy or the time.
How merciless this time is ... Literally after a few months after the war, her victims turned out to be useless. In any case, the first persons of the powers that defeated fascism were so preoccupied with the division of the victorious banner that, for example, Sir Winston Churchill hastened to officially disclaim responsibility for Dresden, for dozens of other German cities wiped off the face of the earth. As if nothing had happened and it was not he who personally made the decisions about the bombing. As if, when choosing the next victim city at the end of the war, the Anglo-American command was not guided by the criteria of "lack of military facilities" - "lack of air defense systems." The generals of the allied armies took care of their pilots and planes: why send them to where there is an air defense ring.
As for the hero of the war, and later the disgraced Marshal Arthur Harris, he immediately after the military battle began to write the book "Strategic Bombing". It came out already in 1947 and was sold in a fairly large circulation. Many were wondering how the "chief scorer" would justify himself. The author did not do this. On the contrary, he made it clear that he would not allow all responsibility to be dumped on himself. He did not repent of anything and did not regret anything. Here is how he understood his main task as commander of bomber aviation: “The main objects of the military industry should be looked for where they are in any country in the world, that is, in the cities themselves. It should be especially emphasized that, except in Essen, we never made any particular plant the object of the raid. We have always considered the ruined enterprise in the city as an additional good luck. Our main goal has always been the city center. All old German cities are most densely built up towards the center, and their outskirts are always more or less free from buildings. Therefore, the central part of the cities is especially sensitive to incendiary bombs.”
US Air Force General Frederick Anderson explained the concept of all-out raids this way: “Memories of the destruction of Germany will be passed from father to son, from son to grandson. This is the best guarantee that Germany will never start another war again." There were many such statements, and all of them seem even more cynical after reading the official American Strategic Bombing Report of September 30, 1945. This document, on the basis of research conducted at that time, says that the citizens of German cities lost their faith in a future victory, in their leaders, in the promises and propaganda to which they were subjected. Most of all they wanted the war to end.
They increasingly resorted to listening to “radio voices” (“black radio”), to discussing rumors and actually found themselves in opposition to the regime. As a result of this situation, a dissident movement began to grow in the cities: in 1944, one out of every thousand Germans was arrested for political crimes. If German citizens had the freedom to choose, they would have long ago ceased to participate in the war. However, under the conditions of a tough police regime, any manifestation of discontent meant: dungeons or death. Nevertheless, a study of official records and individual opinions shows that during the last period of the war, absenteeism increased and production declined, although large enterprises continued to work. Thus, no matter how dissatisfied the people of Germany were with the war, “they did not have the opportunity to openly express it,” the American report emphasizes.
Thus, the massive bombing of Germany as a whole was not strategic. They were only a few times. The military industry of the Third Reich was paralyzed only at the end of 1944, when the Americans bombed 12 factories producing synthetic fuel and disabled the road network. By this point, almost all major German cities had been aimlessly destroyed. According to Hans Rumpf, they took the brunt of the air raids and thus protected industrial enterprises until the very end of the war. “Strategic bombardments were aimed mainly at the destruction of women, children and the elderly,” emphasizes the major general. Out of a total of 955,044 thousand bombs dropped by the British on Germany, 430,747 tons fell on cities.
As for Churchill's decision on the moral terror of the German population, it was truly fatal: such raids not only did not contribute to victory, but even pushed it back.
However, for a long time after the war, many well-known participants continued to justify their actions. So, already in 1964, retired US Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Eaker spoke as follows: “I find it difficult to understand the British or Americans, weeping over the dead from the civilian population and not shedding a single tear over our valiant soldiers who died in battles with a cruel enemy. I deeply regret that British and American bombers killed 135,000 inhabitants of Dresden in a raid, but I do not forget who started the war, and I regret even more that more than 5 million lives were lost by the Anglo-American armed forces in a stubborn struggle for complete destruction of fascism.
English Air Marshal Robert Sondby was not so categorical: “No one will deny that the bombing of Dresden was a great tragedy. It was a terrible misfortune, such as sometimes happen in wartime, caused by a cruel set of circumstances. Those who authorized this raid did not act out of malice, not out of cruelty, although it is likely that they were too far removed from the harsh reality of military operations to fully comprehend the monstrous destructive power of aerial bombardments in the spring of 1945. Was the English air marshal really so naive as to justify the total destruction of German cities in this way. After all, it is “cities, not piles of ruins, that are the basis of civilization,” wrote the English historian John Fuller after the war.
You can't say better about the bombings.
The birth of the doctrine
The very use of the aircraft as a means of warfare was a truly revolutionary step at the beginning of the 20th century. The first bombers were clumsy and fragile-looking structures, and flying them to the target, even with a minimal bomb load, was not an easy task for pilots. There was no need to talk about the accuracy of hits. In the First World War, bomber aircraft did not gain much fame, unlike fighters or ground-based "wonder weapons" - tanks. Nevertheless, the “heavy” aviation had supporters and even apologists. In the period between the two world wars, perhaps the most famous of them was the Italian General Giulio Due.
In his writings, Douai tirelessly argued that one aircraft could win a war. The ground forces and the navy must play a subordinate role in relation to it. The army holds the front line and the navy defends the coast while the air force wins. First of all, cities should be bombed, and not factories and military installations, which are relatively easy to redeploy. Moreover, it is desirable to destroy cities in one raid, so that the civilian population does not have time to take out material values and hide. It is necessary not so much to destroy as many people as possible, but to sow panic among them, to break them morally. Under these conditions, enemy soldiers at the front will think not about victory, but about the fate of their loved ones, which will undoubtedly affect their fighting spirit. To do this, it is necessary to develop bomber aviation, and not fighter, naval or any other. Well-armed bombers themselves are able to fight off enemy aircraft and deliver a decisive blow. Whoever has the most powerful aircraft will win.
The "radical" views of the Italian theorist were shared by very few. Most military experts believed that General Douai overdid it by absolutizing the role of military aviation. Yes, and calls for the destruction of the civilian population in the 20s of the last century were considered outright bad manners. But be that as it may, it was Giulio Due who was among the first to understand that aviation gave the war a third dimension. With his "light hand", the idea of unrestricted air warfare firmly settled in the minds of some politicians and military leaders.
Losses in numbers
In Germany, bombings killed, according to various estimates, from 300 thousand to 1.5 million civilians. In France - 59 thousand killed and wounded, mainly from Allied raids, in England - 60.5 thousand, including victims from the actions of V-projectiles.
The list of cities in which the area of destruction amounted to 50% or more of the total area of buildings (oddly enough, only 40% fell to Dresden):
50% - Ludwigshafen, Worms
51% - Bremen, Hannover, Nuremberg, Remscheid, Bochum
52% - Essen, Darmstadt
53% - Cochem
54% - Hamburg, Mainz
55% - Neckarsulm, Soest
56% - Aachen, Münster, Heilbronn
60% - Erkelenz
63% - Wilhelmshaven, Koblenz
64% - Bingerbrück, Cologne, Pforzheim
65% - Dortmund
66% - Crailsheim
67% - Giessen
68% - Hanau, Kassel
69% - Düren
70% - Altenkirchen, Bruchsal
72% - Geilenkirchen
74% - Donauwörth
75% - Remagen, Würzburg
78% - Emden
80% - Prüm, Wesel
85% - Xanten, Zulpich
91% - Emmerich
97% - Julich
The total volume of the ruins was 400 million cubic meters. 495 architectural monuments were completely destroyed, 620 were so damaged that their restoration was either impossible or doubtful.
1943 was the time when a massive air attack on German cities began. At this stage, the power of bombing attacks increased; the bomb load on each aircraft increased first from one ton to more than two tons, and then to 3.5 tons. In addition, some specially built aircraft were capable of carrying up to 10 tons of bombs. By the end of the year, the British Royal Air Force had up to 717 heavy four-engine bombers at its disposal for long-range raids. In addition, by this time, an American Air Force grouping of up to 100 four-engine bombers had been deployed in England.
Attacks became more massive and more destructive; Allied bombers penetrated deeper and deeper into German territory.
The relative loss of bombers was getting lower, although it was still at a high level. In 1942, the Royal Air Force was losing one bomber for every 40 tons of bomb cargo dropped. In 1943, the situation improved significantly: this figure began to be one bomber per 80 tons of bombs. During 1943, the number of aircraft in the British Bomber Command increased by 50%. Accordingly, until October, the average number of vehicles participating in operations in Germany increased significantly.
During 1943, the British Air Force dropped 226,513 tons of bombs on the territory of Germany and the countries of Western Europe occupied by it, including 135,000 tons of bombs on Germany itself. During the 30 most powerful raids, from 500 to a thousand tons of bombs were dropped on objects; in 16 operations - from a thousand to 1500 tons; in 9 - from 1500 to 2 thousand tons; in 3 - over 2 thousand tons of bombs.
Beginning with the raid on Lübeck during 1942–1943. 60% of all bombs dropped were in residential areas.
Since June 1943, US Air Force aircraft began to regularly strike during the daytime on the most important industrial facilities, primarily engineering and aviation industries. A concomitant purpose of the American air raids was to call in German fighters, since the American bombers were also escorted by long-range fighters capable of reaching the Elbe. It was assumed that as a result of such battles of attrition, dominance in the sky would eventually pass to Allied aviation.
Despite strenuous efforts, great expenditure of material and manpower, British Bomber Command was unable to carry out the dual task assigned to it by the Casablanca directive. As a result of the “air offensive”, the German military industry was not only not destroyed, but its volumes were not even significantly reduced. Nor did it succeed in undermining the morale of the civilian population. From the point of view of achieving these goals, the battle for the Ruhr was lost, because, despite all the efforts of the bomber command, despite all the losses, the volume of military production in the areas under attack continued to grow steadily. Massive bombing raids on the cities of the inner regions of Germany, of course, caused great material damage, but on the whole they also had little effect on production. In carrying out massive raids on Berlin, the actions of the attacking aircraft from the very beginning were hampered by adverse weather conditions, which significantly reduced the effectiveness of the strikes.
Daytime raids by American bombers into the interior of Germany (at first they were carried out without effective fighter cover) cost the attacking side heavy losses, despite the well-armed Flying Fortress aircraft. However, these losses in equipment and people, no matter how high they were, could easily be replenished at the expense of the huge resources of the United States. In the second half of the year, during daytime raids, 14 fighter factories located in various parts of Germany were attacked and heavily damaged.
No matter how perfect and effective the German air defense system was, it was not able to repel the Allied air strikes. However, these strikes did not have a significant impact on the state of the country's economy. The number of bombers shot down remained approximately the same, but the number of raids on German territory increased by 4 times. This means that the country's fighter forces are constantly and increasingly dwindling. In 1943, the total number of German fighters shot down or seriously damaged in air battles was 10,660.
"Little Lightning"By the beginning of the fifth year of the war, Germany was increasingly suffering from intimidation raids deep into its territory, and now the Luftwaffe tried to make a last desperate attempt to retaliate against enemy territory and force the enemy to reduce the number of raids. For this retaliatory operation, which was destined to go down in the history of the air war under the name "Little Lightning", up to 550 aircraft were collected from all fronts. The operation was supposed to involve everything that was capable of flying, including half-worn equipment, as well as a large number of fighter-bombers. This impromptu air squadron, after a three-year break, resumed raids on England. From the end of January to the end of April 1944, 12 raids were carried out, during which 275 tons of bombs were dropped on London, and 1,700 tons on other targets in southern England.
The stock had to be discontinued due to extremely high levels of losses, sometimes as high as 50%. And all this happened at a time when the bombers were especially needed in order to prevent the landing of troops in Europe, which was being prepared by the allies. During the operation, the British suffered losses, they suffered damage, but this did not really affect the course of the war. It was impossible to get even one photo to assess the damage caused to London, since daytime flights over England were no longer possible. The Luftwaffe adopted the tactics of the British Air Force and switched to night raids. Targeting areas were designated by missiles launched by target designation aircraft, most of the bomb load was incendiary bombs. By dropping heavy mines and high-explosive bombs, the Germans hoped to interfere with the work of firefighters and help spread the fire. Some of these raids resulted in between 150 and 600 fires, but thanks to the well-organized national fire service and the work of volunteer firefighters, the fire rarely spread to large areas.
The strike of the "Small Lightning", in the words of the representatives of the British administration, was short and intense. Losses in southern England reached 2,673. In addition, it was noticeable that the inhabitants react to the raids more painfully than it was in 1940-1941. during the operation "Lightning" ("Blitz") by the Germans.
In Germany, the Luftwaffe command center, established in 1941, was renamed the Reich Air Fleet. It was reorganized according to new tasks. Approximately one third of the Luftwaffe was now engaged on the Eastern Front and another sixth in the Mediterranean. The remaining aircraft were used on the Western Front and to defend German territory. Air defense aviation forces almost entirely consisted of fighters. In constant battles with the Americans for dominance in the sky, they were rapidly melting away. In January, the number of downed and damaged aircraft was 1115 aircraft, in February - 1118, in March - 1217. The Germans had the opportunity to find replacements for the lost aircraft, but their reserves of trained flight personnel were exhausted. Thus, by the spring of 1944, the results of the battle for dominance in the skies of Germany were practically a foregone conclusion, and the resistance of the day fighter forces was almost completely broken. As Churchill writes in the fifth volume of his memoirs, "this was the turning point of the air war."
The forces of the Anglo-American aviation involved in air strikes on German territory began to increasingly use the tactics of "double strikes": the first raid was carried out in the afternoon, and the bombers participating in it returned to their bases in the evening under cover of darkness. At this time, they were already replaced by night bombers. They easily found targets by dropping bombs in the areas of fires formed at the sites of daylight bombing.
The first daytime raid on Vienna took place in March 1944. The Allies were now able to carry out strategic bombing of Germany almost around the clock. Thus, at last, the goal was reached, which Marshal of the Air Force Harris had so persistently strived for since he took command of the bomber aircraft in 1942.
At the end of March 1944, Bomber Command was reorganized in connection with the upcoming landing in Europe. For a while, it lost its independence. Despite all the opposition from the Bomber Commander, the Royal Air Force was placed under the control of the Supreme Commander of the invasion forces, General Eisenhower. After that, the massive air attack on the German cities, which had been going on for nine months, starting from June 10, 1943 and until March 25, 1944, was temporarily suspended. German cities got a temporary respite. During the period two months before and two months after the start of the Normandy landings, no massive strikes were carried out against them.
At that time, the British Bomber Command had at its disposal for operations in its own interests only 15% of the previous forces and means. These greatly reduced resources were used to continue raids on the enterprises of the German aviation industry, as well as strikes on the cities of the eastern part of the country (Koenigsberg, Marienburg, Gdynia and Posen (Poznan). At the end of June 1944, after striking the synthetic fuel enterprises in Cottbus American bombers landed at Soviet airfields at Poltava and Mirgorod, and the next day they went from there to bomb the oil fields in Galicia and then at Italian airfields. Southern France, covering a total of 12,000 kilometers, was the beginning of a new tactic that no one had ever used before.
The second massive offensive on the cities of GermanyNo sooner had British bomber power been relieved of the task of supporting the invasion of Europe after the victory of the Allied armies in Normandy, Marshal Harris once again focused the full power of his now more numerous squadrons of day and night bombers on his cherished goal: the devastation and destruction of the cities of Germany. And this goal was now much closer to being realized, since the allied aviation completely owned the initiative in the sky. A new hail of bombs hit the already dilapidated German cities. Since there was no longer anything to burn there, high-explosive ammunition was now used first of all, the caliber and effectiveness of which increased markedly. The new goal of the bombings was to force the population of the cities, left without a roof over their heads, to leave the cities.
In August 1944, for the first time, it was possible to say that the actions of Allied bomber aircraft were linked to combat operations on the ground. For example, the advance of American troops through Trier to Mannheim and further to Darmstadt seemed inevitable, since American aircraft raids on the cities of South Germany, which lay in the path of the supposed advance of the troops, became more frequent. Further, during the attack on Aachen and beyond, cities that were in the way of the advancing cities, for example, Jülich and Düren, were also attacked. Jülich was bombed by 97%, and Düren was practically wiped off the face of the earth: 5 thousand people were killed, only 6 buildings remained in the city.
At the start of this second air offensive, British Bomber Command received new instructions. At the end of September, the Joint Goals Planning Committee assigned him tasks in order of priority:
1. Further carpet bombing with intensive day and night raids.
2. Regular pinpoint strikes on fuel plants in Germany.
3. The destruction of the transport system of West Germany.
4. As an auxiliary task - striking at various major industrial facilities.
Since that time, the Royal Air Force began to conduct part of the operations in the daytime. Now they could afford it without putting the bomber crews at risk, since by that time the German fighters were practically swept out of the sky. And, despite the fact that warning radars continued to regularly report on almost all raids, there were so many of them that ground-based air defense systems had even less ability to repel air strikes than before.
Simultaneously with the continuation of terror raids on urban areas, the Royal Air Force began to carry out raids against individual industrial sites. During the last 18 months of the war, British aviation had at its disposal almost all modern means of air warfare, such as radar and radio guidance and target designation devices, which significantly increased the accuracy of bombing even at night, although carpet bombing was still the favorite weapon of the British. The Americans also began to practice night flights, but their strikes were directed primarily at industrial targets. In October 1944, 42,246 tons of bombs were dropped on German cities, compared to 14,312 tons dropped on industrial plants.
During the last few months of the war, the tactics of American and British aviation, which were originally different in theory and practice, became almost the same. The commonly held opinion that the British acted mainly against the cities, and the Americans simply cleared the way for the advancing troops, is a clear simplification of the problem. Long painful experience taught the inhabitants of German cities to consider the raids of the Royal Air Force of England as a greater evil than the daylight raids of American bombers, but soon everyone realized that there was not much difference between them.
For a while, a directive issued in Casablanca in 1943 established a division of labor: the US Air Force attacked industrial facilities during the day, while the British Air Force destroyed cities and residential areas at night. However, closer to the end of the war, the tactics and goals of the allies became similar, both sides, as it turned out, began to adhere to a single concept of using bomber aircraft. According to official data from the US Air Force, as a result of the actions of American aircraft under the cover of night or dense clouds, 80,000 Germans died and about 13,000 residential buildings were destroyed in German settlements.
Fuel delivery and military industryIn July 1944, Germany's 12 largest synthetic fuel plants were each subjected to powerful air strikes at least once. As a result, production volumes, which used to be 316,000 tons per month, have been reduced to 107,000 tons. The production of synthetic fuel continued to decline, until in September 1944 this figure was only 17,000 tons. Production of high-octane gasoline, that "blood that supplied the heart of the Luftwaffe," fell from 175,000 tons in April to 30,000 tons in July and to 5,000 tons in September.
Beginning in May 1944, the needs significantly outstripped the supply possibilities, and within six months all fuel supplies were exhausted. The Luftwaffe planes could not take off due to lack of fuel. At the same time, the moving parts of the Wehrmacht also lost their mobility. The targets of air strikes were also plants for the production of artificial rubber "buna", as well as enterprises for the production of bound nitrogen, which is necessary both for the production of weapons (explosives) and for the needs of agriculture. The main burden of fighting the fuel plants (up to about 75%) was borne by the US Air Force, but the British Air Force was also involved in these tasks.
The second direction of aviation activity in suppressing the military and industrial power of Germany was the destruction of the transport network. Until September 1944, the German transport network did not experience significant difficulties from air attacks, so the efficiency of the functioning of highways and railways remained at a fairly high level. However, by the end of October 1944, the weekly number of rolling stock was reduced from 900,000 wagons to 700,000, and by the end of the year it fell to 214,000 wagons. The damage caused to the country's water transport began to make itself felt. In particular, this concerned the possibilities for the delivery of coal from the mines of the Ruhr basin to industrial enterprises located in various parts of the country. At the end of October, the Dortmund-Ems canal, which is very important for the country, was subjected to a powerful attack using special 5-ton bombs. As a result, for more than 20 kilometers, he was disabled.
In August 1944, Allied aviation began to strike at tank factories. By the autumn of 1944, the volumes of monthly production at these enterprises fell from 1616 to 1552 tanks. However, the effect of these bombings was not long-lasting, and by the end of the year, production increased again to more than 1,854 tanks per month. Important sites were also large factories producing engines for the needs of the Wehrmacht, such as Opel in Brandenburg, Ford in Cologne and Daimler-Benz in southern Germany.
Since November 1944, Allied aviation has been attacking shipbuilding enterprises, primarily shipyards where the latest submarines were being built. Nevertheless, the Germans managed to produce about 120 of these boats before the end of the war. (Apparently, this refers to the submarines of the XXI series (the lead one is U-2501), the most advanced submarines of the Second World War. They had exceptionally powerful batteries and a high underwater speed (17.2 knots, that is, 31.9 km / h), displacement: 1621 tons surface and 1819 tons underwater, 6 torpedo tubes, 2 twin 20-mm guns. Ed.) From time to time raids were carried out on power plants, factories for the production of optical instruments, machine-building enterprises, as well as factories for the production of army uniforms.
Data for 1944In the division of tasks between the Allied aviation units, the British Air Force continued nightly carpet bombing, which began in the spring of 1942. By the end of 1944, about four-fifths of German cities with a population of 100,000 or more were destroyed. As the end of the war approached, the bombardment areas moved further and further east. In total, 70 major cities were bombed, of which 23 percent of the destruction was 60%, and in the rest - "only" 50%.
In turn, the Americans continued daytime raids on the most important industrial facilities, while at the same time joining the fight against the Luftwaffe for air supremacy. The rapid increase in the number of raids by heavy bombers indicated that the air offensive was gaining momentum and becoming more and more devastating. Starting in February 1944, long-range fighters were able to accompany bombers in combat missions to almost any depth of German territory. At the same time, the average number of bombers participating in such raids increased from 400 to 900 vehicles, and their maximum number increased from 550 to 1200. During the year, 680,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany.
In 1944, the average number of heavy bombers of the British Air Force operating against targets in Germany reached 1120 vehicles, and light high-speed bombers - up to 100 vehicles.
As for the capabilities of the Luftwaffe to counter Allied aircraft, the forces of the German side were dwindling every day. This happened not so much due to a lack of equipment, but due to exorbitant losses in the trained flight crew, as well as due to a shortage of high-octane aviation gasoline. In 1944, the average number of casualties in the officers and enlisted personnel of the Luftwaffe was 1,472 per month.
With each passing day, the difficulties with the tactical deployment of German aviation forces became more and more significant. Of the approximately 700 fighters that could be used in the fight against US Air Force raiding aircraft, only about 30 aircraft could enter the battle. Batteries of anti-aircraft artillery were gradually knocked out. Germany did not have the opportunity to replace obsolete and worn-out guns, the range of which was insufficient to destroy aircraft at altitudes from 7.6 to more than 9 kilometers. By the beginning of September 1944, the anti-aircraft batteries were armed with only 424 large-caliber anti-aircraft guns capable of firing at such a height. According to German official data, in order to shoot down one heavy bomber, small-caliber anti-aircraft batteries had to spend an average of 4940 shells worth 7.5 marks each and 3343 shells of 88-mm anti-aircraft guns worth 80 marks per shell (that is, a total of 267,440 marks ).
Operation "Small Lightning" carried out at the beginning of the year against England was the last desperate attempt to loosen the stranglehold of the incessant air offensive against German cities. But she didn't get any results. The total number of bombs dropped on the territory of England amounted to only one-thirtieth of the bomb load dropped in 1944 on the cities of Germany. The approximately five months of respite that Germany had received while the Allies were preparing to invade Europe was spent largely on trying to repair the damage caused by the Allied air raids.
1945 Final defeatThe last major offensive operation of the Luftwaffe was the support of the offensive in the Ardennes at the end of 1944. In the course of it, in the fight against the many times superior forces of the Allied air forces, Germany lost 320 combat aircraft out of 750 involved in the operation, or 43%. And by the beginning of 1945, the German Air Force practically ceased to exist as a branch of the armed forces.
The masses of refugees from the East, fleeing the advance of the Soviet troops, were now mixed with refugees from the West, who were trying to escape from the advancing allies. Both of them often mixed up on the roads with army columns. In this case, civilians were often targeted by enemy aircraft, both from the East and the West, as German territory was rapidly shrinking from both directions.
On the Rhine, the Allied forces were preparing to deliver the last "blow of mercy" (as in the Middle Ages they called the blow that finished off the mortally wounded). They methodically built up their already superior forces, both on the ground and in the air. After 18 massive raids on cities that lay in the path of the advancing armies, the Allies crossed the Rhine River in the Wesel region, losing only 36 people (March 24. Liddell Hart wrote about this: “... The crisis caused by the threat from the Russians forced the Germans to accept the fatal the decision to sacrifice the defense of the Rhine for the defense of the Oder in order to delay the Russians ... The advancing Anglo-American troops were facilitated not only access to the Rhine, but also its forcing "( Liddell Hart B. The Second World War. Per. from English. M., 1976. S. 624). - Ed.).
East of the Rhine, the air confrontation reached its maximum tension, despite the disproportionate strength of the opposing sides and the hopeless situation in which one of them was. One air strike followed another, the planes methodically knocking out everything that still remained undestroyed on the ground, regardless of whether these were targets for attack or not. At the last stage, the air strikes seemed to get out of control, and the bombing took on an apocalyptic character. The last blows, like a natural disaster, fell on the head of an already desperate population. F. Jünger wrote: “The road of destruction pointed to the path that the victors followed. It was marked by the ruins of numerous cities and towns. The incessant bombardment was like the exercise of a hapless wizard apprentice who was unable to stop after a test of strength. It was also reminiscent of an uncontrolled flow that had nothing to stop or at least localize, and it rolled across the country at a catastrophic speed, devastating it.
Obviously, one of the parties simply forgot about any borders, beyond which, under no circumstances, it is impossible to go even when conducting hostilities. The people who commanded the bombers seemed to feel omnipotent and unlimited in means. From their point of view, any form of destruction was justified and had no boundaries. Densely populated urban areas in Germany were completely plunged into this whirlwind of destruction. Even the smallest village became a military target. Small towns that had no economic and political significance were destroyed in succession, without any military necessity. Except sometimes there was a railway station.
The British military historian Professor C. Falls stated after the war: “Perhaps the most concise and apt comment that could be made about the whole policy in the field of the use of bomber aircraft would be that those who were supposed to control the activities of aviation, in fact couldn't even control themselves."
The times when massive air strikes were at least countable, when another German city was subjected to a devastating raid every day, have sunk into oblivion. Now destruction and annihilation has become a continuous process, the most powerful air strikes succeeded each other. People did not even have time to be horrified by the gloomy news, as they were immediately replaced by new ones.
And it seemed that this hell, in which death and destruction reigned, did not touch the hearts of the leaders of the country at all. The total war they had once boastfully proclaimed was now knocking at the door of their own home. And it was much worse than what they were able to imagine. The German people had to reap the harvest of the hatred systematically sown by their leadership. The bills had to be paid by ordinary people, men and women, as well as their children. And those who liked to swear on any occasion that love for Germany moved all their actions, suddenly, throwing off their covers, appeared in all their disgusting egoism. The war was lost, lost long ago, and they knew it. They could stop her with a single word, thereby saving the German people from unnecessary suffering. But instead, they sought to ensure that their now inevitable disastrous fate was shared with them by as many innocent people as possible.
It was during this period that the most devastating of all firebomb attacks occurred.
On February 14, 1945, the city of Dresden suffered a catastrophe of such terrifying proportions that its details will never be known. And on the night of March 17-18, the beautiful small town of Würzburg, built in the Baroque style, was destroyed as a result of a massive firebomb attack. The fire consumed everything and everyone. After the raid, Bishop Matthias Ehrenfried wrote a memorial address, or rather, an epitaph. The city was in his diocese, and the bishop himself was struck to the very heart by the thought of "the death of this beautiful splendor" and even more so that "many and many found their death here."
On March 22, as a result of a powerful, truly devastating air strike, carried out in the daytime, another ancient diocese perished. The fire consumed the beautiful medieval city of Hildesheim with its four churches and priceless art collection.
In March alone, the Royal Air Force launched 24 day and 9 night air strikes on German cities.
On the night of April 3-4, as a result of two powerful raids, the city of Nordhausen, which had a thousand-year history in the north of Thuringia, was almost completely destroyed.
On April 14, Potsdam was turned into ruins with its historical monuments and the magnificent royal palace.
After the German grouping in the Ruhr was surrounded (April 1, capitulated on April 17-18), the Allies began new acts of terror. High-speed twin-engine fighter-bombers began raids on small towns, villages and even individual farms. It was no longer safe even to work in the fields or travel along the roads from one village to another: at any moment one could become the target of a surprise attack from the air. These individual lightning raids quickly developed into a kind of violent sport. Everything that moved - farmers' carts, people - immediately became targets.
On April 6, Bomber Command received orders from now on to attack cities only in order to provide close support to the advancing ground forces. Marshal Harris wrote about this: “After the Allies crossed the Rhine and entered deep into German territory, we were ordered to stop all strategic bombing, since the end of the war was about to come. But we continued day and night to strike strongholds where our troops were resisted, highways, railway junctions, which could still be used against the actions of our advancing armies.
The ancient small and medium-sized towns were reduced to dust and ashes under the sole pretext of "more actively disorganizing the German rear." As a rule, so much time elapsed between devastating air strikes and occupation that it would be ridiculous to try to explain these raids as military necessity, as numerous authors in the West try to do. For example, the city of Jülich was destroyed on November 16, 1944, but was not occupied until February 23, 1945. Freiburg was heavily bombed on November 27, 1944, and the Allied troops entered it only at the beginning of April 1945. Heilbronn was wiped out land on December 4, and was occupied by the Allies only at the beginning of April 1945.
Dresden also suffered the most severe air strikes on February 14, 1945, but was not occupied until April of that year. Ulm was destroyed on December 17, 1944, and occupied only on April 24, 1945. Würzburg was subjected to a devastating raid on March 16, occupied on April 1, Bayreuth was severely bombed from March 5 to March 10, and occupied only on April 18, 1945.
On April 20, Hitler's birthday, one of the most powerful raids on Berlin took place, in which up to a thousand bombers took part. On April 25, 318 four-engine Lancaster bombers, many of which were converted to specially designed super-heavy 10-ton bombs, destroyed Hitler's official residence, sometimes used for government meetings, in the Obersalzberg area, near Berchtesgaden (in southern Bavaria). On the same day, US Air Force planes made their last daytime raid on the Skoda factories in the Czech Republic.
On April 26, the British Bomber Command received instructions to stop strategic bombing. However, sporadic strikes, using bombers in small groups and especially fighter-bombers for tactical purposes, continued until the day of the German surrender.
On the night of May 2-3, RAF bombers carried out their last massive night raid on railway junctions in Central Germany.
On May 3, as a result of a raid by Royal Air Force bombers on the bay of the city of Lübeck, the Cap Arkona and Tilbeck ships were sunk, which led to the death of 7,000 political prisoners from 24 countries who were on them.
The last bombs of that war fell on the island of Heligoland. Thus, a vicious circle was closed: it was here, five and a half years ago, in September 1939, that the story of a total bomb war began.
From January to the end of April 1945, 404 raids by heavy bombers were carried out against military and civilian targets in Germany. At the same time, 340 thousand tons of bombs were dropped. During the same period, another 148,000 tons of bombs were dropped in support of ground forces on the battlefield.
Air Marshal Sir Arthur Travis, 1st Baronet Harris, whom even his subordinates called "The Butcher" ("Butcher Harris"), aircraft of the British Air Force scattered over the territory of the country along with millions of bombs (from 1939 to 1945, Anglo-American aircraft dropped them on Germany in the total amount of 1 million 620 thousand tons).
British science at the service of mass murderers
During the Second World War, Arthur Harris was the main ideologue of the strategy of carrying out carpet bombing of German cities (hence his other nickname - "Bomber Harris", - "Bomber Harris"). But the "authorship" of this idea does not belong to him - he only fanatically implemented it. According to Harris, "massive bombardments should have as their goals the destruction of German cities, the murder of German workers and the disorganization of civilized life throughout Germany"
The British concept of a bomb war against the civilian population, applied against Nazi Germany, was only a development of the doctrine of the Marshal of the Royal Air Force during the First World War, Hugh Trenchard, developed by him back in 1915. According to Trenchard, "in the course of an industrial war, enemy residential areas should become natural targets, since the industrial worker is as much a participant in the hostilities as a soldier at the front."
Acting on the well-known principle “the new is the well-forgotten old”, the British physicist of German origin Frederick Lindemann, as a leading scientific adviser to the British government, proposed the concept of “homelessness” of the German workforce through the bombing of German cities. Lindemann's concept was approved by the Cabinet of Winston Churchill, which was partly caused by the inability of the RAF to hit or even simply find targets smaller than cities - initially even finding cities was difficult for them.
The British authorities approached the development of carpet bombing methods thoroughly. A whole scientific consortium was created from venerable mathematicians and physicists, chemists and civil engineers, experienced firefighters and public utilities. In the course of the work, this “synclite” came to the unconditional conclusion that for the mass destruction of the population, it is preferable not to use high-explosive, but incendiary ammunition, since the old German cities, in which half-timbered buildings predominated (a type of building structure made of wooden beams, the space between which is filled with adobe material, brick or also wood) were extremely susceptible to fire. The technology of such bombardments, which received the code name "Firestorm", looked as follows.
The first wave of bombers drops a special type of land mines on the city, the task of which was to create the most favorable conditions for the effective treatment of the target with incendiary bombs. The first air mines carried 650 kg. explosives, but already in 1943 the British used mines containing from 2 to 4 tons of explosives. Cylinders 3.5 meters long pour out onto the city and, touching the ground, explode, sweeping roofs and knocking out windows and doors in houses within a radius of up to a kilometer from the epicenter of the explosion. "Prepared" in this way, the city becomes an ideal target for incendiary bombs.
The development of medieval German cities with their narrow streets contributed to the spread of fire from one house to another. The simultaneous ignition of hundreds of houses created a monstrous thrust over an area of several square kilometers. The whole city became a huge fireplace, sucking in oxygen from the surroundings. The resulting draft, directed towards the fire, caused a wind blowing at a speed of 200–250 km. /hour. The gigantic fire sucked oxygen from the bomb shelters, dooming even those who survived the bombs to death.
Moral Sir Harris
This technology had the only disadvantage: it was ineffective against defensive structures and military enterprises. But it was conceived for the destruction of residential areas! That is, the extermination of the population was not a "side result", as Anglo-American historians claimed after the war. Sir Arthur Harris was appointed to the practical task.
Already on February 14, 1942, the British Air Force received the bombing directive signed by him on the squares. The directive stated:
"From now on, operations should be focused on crushing the morale of the civilian population of the enemy - in particular, industrial workers."
On January 21, 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, which was attended by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States and Great Britain (I.V. Stalin was also invited, but he could not be present at the meeting responsible for USSR, the moment of the victorious end of the Battle of Stalingrad), it was decided to start strategic bombing of Germany by joint Anglo-American forces. The targets of the bombing were to be not only objects of the military industry, but also the cities of Germany proper.
The operation was codenamed Pointblank (Eng. "Resolute"). Its task was the systematic destruction of the military industry and the economy of Germany, as well as "undermining the morale of the German people." Air strikes were to be carried out around the clock. At the same time, American aircraft were supposed to operate in the daytime, inflicting targeted strikes on military targets, while the British pilots were left with nights, which they used for carpet bombing of cities.
The list of the British Air Ministry included 58 German cities to be destroyed. These bombings were codenamed Moral bombing (English "moral bombing"), since their main goal was to "break the will of the civilian population of the enemy."
Looking ahead, I note that these bombings had the opposite effect. Just as the will of the British people to resist was not broken during the early German bombing of the war, so was the will of the German population not broken by strategic bombing, which was carried out on a much larger scale than the German bombing of Great Britain.
There were no surrender riots in Germany, and German workers continued to keep war production at the highest possible level. The loyalty of German civilians to the Nazi regime, although shaken by the bombings, remained until the end of the war. As the British military theorist and historian, Major General John Fuller of the Armored Forces, noted in his memoirs, "the barbarous destruction of the British-American strategic bombing proved to be of little military and psychological effectiveness."
But back to "The Butcher" Harris.
Senseless and ruthless
On May 27, 1943, Arthur Harris signed order No. 173 on Operation Gomorrah (Operation Gomorrah; “And the Lord rained brimstone and fire from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah”; Genesis 19:24.). Her target was Hamburg. Omitting the details, I will summarize it.
During the operation carried out by the aviation of Great Britain and the United States from July 25 to August 3, 1943, up to 50 thousand residents of Hamburg died from carpet bombing and the gigantic fire they caused, about 125 thousand people were injured and burned, about a million residents were forced to leave city, 250 thousand city buildings were completely destroyed.
The same fate befell many other large and medium-sized cities in Germany. As the British newspapers then jubilantly wrote, “during the bombing, the city of Bingen am Rhein was destroyed by 96%, Magdeburg by 90%, Dessau by 80%, Chemnitz by 75%, Cologne by 65%”, and so on.
And from the first months of 1945, when this had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the war, the British Air Force set about destroying the most important cultural centers in Germany.
Previously, they were practically not bombed, since they had neither military nor economic significance. Now their time has come.
Bombings destroyed palaces and churches, museums and libraries, universities and ancient monuments. This vandalism can only be explained by the fact that, unlike I.V. Stalin, who said that “Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain,” the allies did not destroy Nazism, but Germany - its roots, history, culture.
On February 13-15, 1945, the British and US Air Forces committed one of the worst crimes in the entire Second World War. The whole city was literally burned by them. This city was Dresden - the cultural center of Germany, which did not have military production.
From a memo to the Royal Air Force issued in January 1945 under the heading "For Official Use":
“Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany, is not much smaller than Manchester. This is the largest enemy center that has not yet been bombed. In the middle of winter, when refugees are heading west and troops need homes to stay and rest, every roof counts. The purpose of the attack is to hit the enemy in the most sensitive place, behind the line of the already broken front, and prevent the use of the city in the future; and at the same time show the Russians, when they come to Dresden, what Bomber Command is capable of.
This is how the destruction of Dresden happened.
At the time of the first bombing on February 13, about 100 thousand refugees and the wounded were in the city with a population of 640 thousand people (in the last months of the war, Dresden was turned into a hospital city).
At 22.09 h. the first wave of British bombers dropped 900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on Dresden, which set the entire old city on fire.
At 01.22, when the intensity of the fire reached its climax, a second wave of bombers hit the city, dropping another 1,500 tons of lighters on the burning Dresden.
Another 9 hours later, the third wave followed: the pilots - this time already American - dropped about 400 tons of bombs on the city in 38 minutes. Following the bombers, fighters appeared, who began to "process" the city from cannons and machine guns. The target of one of the attacks was the bank of the Elbe, where thousands of refugees and wounded from hospitals escaped from the conflagration.
The exact number of victims of the bombings of February 13-14, 1945 has not yet been established. According to the International Research Group of Historians, which worked in 2006-2008, 25 thousand people died as a result of the bombing, of which about 8 thousand were refugees (charred corpses were removed from the basements of houses back in 1947). More than 30,000 more people received injuries and burns of varying severity. The vast majority of casualties and wounded were civilians. The area of the zone of complete destruction in Dresden was four times the area of the zone of complete destruction in Nagasaki.
Lies of the "allies" and a monument to the killer
Contrary to popular belief in the West, the destruction of Dresden - this architectural pearl of Europe - was not only an action carried out at the request of the Red Army command. It was not even coordinated with the command of the Red Army, the advanced units of which approached the city directly.
As follows from the declassified documents of the Yalta Conference, during its work, the Soviet side handed over to the Allies a written request to bombard the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig. There were no documented requests for the bombing of Dresden from the Soviet side.
Every year on February 13 at 10:10 pm, church bells ring in East and Central Germany in memory of the victims. After this began to be practiced in the western part of the country after the unification of Germany, the US State Department stated that the bombing of Dresden was carried out at the request of the USSR.
“Most Americans have heard a lot about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but few know that more people died in Dresden than were destroyed in any of these cities,” writes American historian and publicist David Duke. - Dresden had no military significance, and when it was bombed, the war was almost already won. The bombing only strengthened the German opposition and cost more Allied lives. I sincerely ask myself, was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? Was it a crime against humanity? What were the children guilty of, who died the most terrible of deaths - burning alive? .. "
After the end of World War II, bombing methods and Harris himself were criticized, but these bombings were never recognized as war crimes.
In Britain, Sir Arthur Harris was the only military commander not to have received a peerage, although in 1946 he was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Due to massive complaints, he was forced to leave for South Africa in 1948, where he died in 1984 at the age of 92.
Unlike many British pilots who felt guilty about what happened and called February 13, 1945 the worst day of their lives, Harris never regretted the bombing of German cities, and even more so did not repent of his deed. Back in February 1945, he wrote about this:
“Attacks on cities, like any other act of war, are intolerable as long as they are not strategically justified. But they are strategically justified, since their goal is to hasten the end of the war and save the lives of Allied soldiers. Personally, I do not believe that all the remaining cities in Germany are worth the life of one British grenadier.
And in 1977, four years before his death, Harris confidently stated in an interview with the BBC: “The bombings prevented more than a million Germans from serving in the front-line units of the Wehrmacht: these people were enrolled in air defense units, or made ammunition for these units, or were engaged in repair work after the bombings.
In 1992, the British veteran organization Bomber Harris Trust, despite the protests of Germany and part of the British public, erected a monument to Sir Harris in London. This monument to the mass murderer still stands to this day, and under police protection - shortly after its installation, "offensive" graffiti began to appear on it, and in order to prevent vandals, the monument is under police control.
It has been documented that during the strategic bombing of Germany by Anglo-American aircraft, vast areas of the country were completely devastated, over 600 thousand civilians died, twice as many were injured or maimed, 13 million were left homeless.
In addition, it was widely believed that there was no effective defense against bombers (hence the famous quote: "A bomber will always make it to the target"). This, combined with the fact that the RAF did not have enough bombers with the right range to carry out sensitive air strikes against Germany, was an important factor in the British government's policy of appeasing Hitler during the 1930s. Destruction from strategic bombing, using conventional weapons and poisonous agents, was expected to be at a level that was actually achieved only in atomic bombings.
Gradually, due to significant losses from the actions of the British fighter aircraft, the Luftwaffe switched to night bombing. Targeting was also a problem in the daytime; at night, it was almost impossible, which ultimately gave an accuracy of about the "city". Losses among the civilian population were significant. The expected decline in the will to resist, however, did not occur; moreover, according to popular belief, the bombings had the opposite effect.
During 1941, the air forces of the parties were drawn into the radio navigation war. German scientists developed a range of radio navigation aids designed to assist Luftwaffe pilots in targeting at night over British territory, while the British worked on countermeasures (of which the development of airborne radar, decoy beacons and radio jammers deserves special mention).
Despite the significant damage inflicted by the German bombing and significant loss of life among the civilian population, Britain's air defense gradually improved, and the need to transfer all possible parts of the Luftwaffe to the Eastern Front led to the gradual transformation of the bombing from massive to rare harassing raids.
British counterattack
Britain launched its own strategic night bombing campaign in 1940 and built it up to impressive proportions by the end of the war. The impact of strategic bombing on the enemy was poorly understood at the time and greatly exaggerated. Especially in the first two years of the campaign, very few realized how little the damage was and how quickly the Germans made up for lost production, despite the obvious lessons that Britain could learn from its own experience of surviving German air attacks earlier.
Toward the middle of the campaign, the British command slowly began to realize that the results of the bombing had little effect on the Germans. Despite the increasing tonnage of bombs being dropped, the inaccuracy of the bombing was such that if a bomb fell within five miles of the target, it was considered a "hit" for statistical purposes, but even so, many bombs were considered to have missed the target. Sometimes, analyzing the purpose and effectiveness of the British raid, the Germans could not determine which city (not to mention a specific structure inside the city) was the original target of the raid, the spread of craters from bomb explosions was so great.
To solve this problem, the British command abandoned the idea of point bombing of key industries (in particular, ball bearings) and switched to the practice of carpet bombing cities.
Allied air raid on Germany
Large-scale round-the-clock bombing—by the US Air Force during the day, the British air force during the night—were subjected to many industrial areas in Germany, mainly the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Kassel, Pforzheim, Mainz and the oft-criticized Dresden raid. Phosphorus bombs were used in the bombardment of civilian cities.
The US Air Force bomb tonnage figures in the final table should be taken with caution, as they may refer to the global results of US Air Force actions. The tonnage dropped by the US Air Force in Europe was much less than the RAF, as the latter had larger bombers and bombed over a longer period (see table below).
Allied bombing statistics in 1939-45
Efficiency
Despite their popularity among the military and politicians, strategic bombing has been criticized on practical grounds, since it did not always give a reliable result, and on moral grounds, due to significant civilian casualties. Thus, the bombing of Berlin (a total of 540 thousand tons of bombs were dropped during the war) at the end of the war practically did not stop - the Americans bombed during the day, the British - at night. The amount of destruction increased almost hourly and reached staggering proportions. The bomb blasts desolate over ten square miles of development - ten times the area of London destroyed by the Luftwaffe. Nearly half of Berlin's 1,562,000 buildings suffered some form of damage, with one in three buildings either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. The casualties were so high that they can never be accurately calculated, but at least 52,000 people died and twice as many were seriously injured (that's five times more dead and seriously injured than in the bombing of London).
The US Air Force held firm to the claim of "precision" bombing of military targets for most of the war, and denied claims that they were simply bombing cities. In reality, daytime bombings were "accurate" only in the sense that most of the bombs fell somewhere in the vicinity of a specific target, such as a railway station, while night bombings targeted the city as a whole. However, the total tonnage of bombs dropped day and night was ultimately enough to cause widespread damage, and, even more important from a military point of view, to force the Germans to divert resources to eliminate it. This was the most important consequence of the Allied strategic bombing: the redistribution of German resources.
Impact on German industry
Also, German observers noted the contribution of Allied bombing to limit the ability of German industry to deploy new types of weapons. Speer repeatedly noted (both during and after the war) that the bombing had caused significant difficulties in industrial production. A specific example comes from Admiral Karl Dönitz, who noted in his memoirs the failure of industry to produce the revolutionary Class XXI submarines that could completely change the balance of power in the Battle of the Atlantic), which was attributed entirely to the effect of strategic bombing. However, the US Government Strategic Bombing Effectiveness Review concluded that the delay in deploying new submarines could not be attributed to the effect of aerial bombardment.
The effectiveness of the bombings is disputed based on that. that German industrial production increased during the war. While this is true, it should also be mentioned that production also increased in the USA, UK, USSR, Canada and Australia, and in all these countries the production growth was much higher than in Germany. Up until the later stages of the war, German industrial production was not fully committed to the war effort and German factories operated in one shift. By simply switching to three-shift production, industrial output could be tripled without any investment in infrastructure. However, the infrastructure was under constant attack. The bombing of the German canals and railways made the transport of war material difficult to say the least. The growth of industrial production, in the presence of a destroyed transport system, turned out to be ineffective.
Psychological impact
Although the strategic bombing was intended to "break the will of the enemy," it backfired.
The will of the British English people to resist was not broken by the German bombing in the early stages of the war.
In Germany, the will to resist was also not broken by strategic bombing, which was carried out on a much larger scale than the German bombing of Great Britain. In Germany, as well as in Japan, there were no surrender riots, and German workers continued to maintain war production at the highest possible level; the loyalty of German civilians to the Nazi regime, although shaken by the bombing, remained until the end of the war. Most of the German civilians, mostly women and children, were evacuated from the cities in the later stages of the war. Workers in some, but not all, factories were replaced by concentration camp prisoners with low work motivation, who were brutally repressed by their SS guards if their productivity declined. Committed suicide, after the bombing of Hamburg at the end of July 1943, the chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, Hans Jeschoneck ( Jeschoneck, Hans), who did not find support for his demand to significantly strengthen air defense.
British military theorist General John Fuller called the British-American strategic bombing "barbarous destruction" that was militarily and psychologically ineffective and undermined "the foundations of the post-war world."
Luftwaffe - countering raids
Day raids
| Fighting two dozen Russian fighters just waiting to be stung, or English Spitfires was a joy. No one thought at the same time about the meaning of life. But when seventy huge "Fortresses" fly at you, your whole sinful life flashes through your memory in a matter of seconds. |
To increase the effectiveness of the Fw 190 as an interceptor, the number of cannons on the aircraft was increased to four, while increasing the ammunition load, later the Fw 190 received a powerful 30 mm MK 108 cannon, a few shots of which were enough to destroy a bomber.
Studies conducted in 1943 showed that more than half of the bombers were shot down after the loss of protection from their group. To solve this problem, the command of the US VAK developed a system Combat box, in which the bombers were staggered, providing each other with defensive weapons. As a result, attacking large groups of bombers became a very difficult task for the pilots of the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe fighter pilots who participated in the attacks of American bombers compared their formation with a flying porcupine (it. Fliegendes Stachelschwein). However, in order to maintain fire interaction, the bombers had to strictly maintain their place in the ranks, which prevented anti-aircraft maneuvering, making them vulnerable to German anti-aircraft fire. In addition, the German fighters developed a new tactic for attacking groups of bombers: they attacked the group at high speed, firing at the group as a whole, trying to inflict as much damage as possible with minimal risk, instead of attacking individual aircraft.
As a result, the loss of B-17s in individual missions exceeded 25%, for example, in the second raid on Schweinfurt, 60 out of 291 aircraft were lost. High losses persisted until the bombers received effective long-range escort fighters (especially the P-51 Mustang), which led, between February and June 1944, to the degradation of the Luftwaffe as an effective interceptor.
From the summer of 1944, the Luftwaffe fighter aircraft began to receive jet aircraft, both Me 262 and the more exotic Me.163 Komet, which fired vertically upwards, at the signal of a photo sensor when flying under enemy aircraft. The latter made only a few sorties, while 11 vehicles were lost, while they were able to destroy only 9 Allied aircraft (according to other sources, 16 Allied aircraft were shot down with 10 lost vehicles). It was also supposed to use, to counter the bombers, such an exotic weapon as a fighter glider (BV 40).
The Minister of Armaments of the Third Reich, Albert Speer, later wrote in his memoirs:
Ridiculous idea. In 1944, for several months, armadas of enemy bombers dropped an average of 300 tons of bombs a day, and Hitler could have rained down three dozen rockets on England<Фау-2 >with a total capacity of 24 tons per day, which is the equivalent of a bomb load of just a dozen Flying Fortresses. I not only agreed with this decision of Hitler, but also supported it, having made one of my most serious mistakes. It would be much more productive to concentrate our efforts on the production of defensive surface-to-air missiles. Such a rocket was developed back in 1942 under the code name "Wasserfall" (Waterfall) ...
Since we subsequently produced nine hundred large offensive missiles each month, we could well have produced several thousand of these smaller and less expensive missiles each month. I still think that with the help of these missiles, in combination with jet fighters, we, since the spring of 1944, would have successfully defended our industry from enemy bombing, but Hitler, “obsessed with a thirst for revenge, decided to use new missiles (V-2) for bombardment of England.
Night raids
To counteract night raids, night fighter aviation was created in the Luftwaffe, which, as it developed, incorporated such latest technical achievements as early radar detection systems, centralized guidance of fighters by tracking stations, electronic navigation systems and automatic fire control, infrared sights (Spanner I, etc. .), recognition systems "friend or foe" . Night fighter pilots were considered the elite of the Luftwaffe.
From October 1943, night fighter aviation received a new machine - a specialized Heinkel He 219 Uhu (268 units in total). It became one of the most effective aircraft of the Second World War (for example, the group commander, Captain Manfred Meirer, had 65 victories in collisions with Lancasters, Major Streib on an experimental aircraft was able to shoot down 5 bombers in one sortie, Oberfeldwebel Morlock shot down 6 in 12 minutes aircraft).
Kurt Welter became the first night fighter pilot to fly the Me.262 jet. He became the most productive pilot (about 30 victories) who fought on it (in total, he accounted for 51 enemy aircraft).
Losses
Fighting with armadas of heavy bombers and Mustangs led to heavy losses of German fighter pilots: over a thousand of them died in the first four months of 1944. Often these were irreparable losses if experienced expert pilots died.
Starting in the spring of 1943, the Luftwaffe kept 2/3 of all its forces on the western front; by mid-1944, about 70% of German fighter pilots were engaged in air defense inside the country.
The massive bombing of German territory led to the adoption by the Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM) in July 1944 of the "Urgent Fighter Program" (production of Me.262, He 162, Go.229, etc., with a complete cessation of the production of bombers).
In Asia
Japanese bombing of China
Japanese strategic bombing was mainly carried out against such Chinese cities as Shanghai, Wuhan and Chongqing. In total, about 5,000 raids were carried out from February 1938 to August 1943. The bombing of Nanjing and Guangzhou, which began on September 22 and 23, 1937, caused large-scale protests, which led to the adoption of a special resolution by the Far East Committee of the League of Nations. According to one of the British diplomats,
“These raids were directed against places far from the war zone. Their military purpose, where it was at all, seemed to be absolutely secondary. The main purpose of the bombings seems to have been to inspire horror by the massacre of the civilian population ... "
American bombing of Japan
The strategic bombing campaign against Japan was carried out by the US Air Force from to . During the last 7 months of the campaign, the emphasis was on firebombing, which resulted in extensive destruction of 67 Japanese cities, resulted in the deaths of about 500,000 Japanese, and made about 5 million people homeless. For Emperor Hirohito, seeing the destroyed squares of Tokyo in March 1945 was the impetus for personal involvement in the peace process, which culminated in Japan's surrender five months later.
Ordinary (conventional)
Doolittle Raid
The first US air raid on Japan (the Doolittle Raid) took place on April 18, 1942, when sixteen B-25 Mitchells launched from the USS Hornet (CV-8) to attack a number of Japanese cities, including Yokohama and Tokyo, and land at airfields located in China. In a military sense, the results of the raid were insignificant, but had a noticeable propaganda effect. Due to a premature start, none of the bombers made it to their assigned airfields, crashing on landing (except for one aircraft that landed in the USSR, where the crew was interned). Two crews were taken prisoner by the Japanese. It is estimated that as many as 250,000 Chinese men, women and children died in retaliation against the Japanese army for assisting the US Air Force in the bombing.
Air raids from China
A key factor in the bombing of Japan was the development of the B-29 heavy bomber, which had a range of 2,400 kilometers; almost 90% of the tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan fell on this type of bomber (147,000 tons).
The first B-29 raid on Japan from China took place on June 15, 1944. This raid also did little damage to the Japanese. Only 47 of 68 B-29s hit their intended targets; four returned due to technical problems, four crashed, six dropped bombs out of place due to technical problems, and the rest hit secondary targets. Only one B-29 was shot down by enemy aircraft. The first raid on Japan from the east took place on November 24, 1944, when 88 aircraft bombed Tokyo. The bombs were dropped from a height of about 10 kilometers and it is estimated that only about 10% of them hit their intended targets.
The first raids were carried out by the US 12th Air Force from air bases in mainland China as part of Operation Matterhorn. This was never seen as a satisfactory solution, not only because of the difficulties of supplying Chinese airfields (supplies went through the "Hump" - an air bridge from India to China over the Himalayas), but also because the B-29s could only reach Japan by replacing parts bomb load on additional fuel tanks.
Raids from the Marianas
In the next two weeks, 1,600 sorties were made against four cities, during which 80 sq. km. the urban area was destroyed at the cost of the loss of 22 bombers. By June, over 40% of the urban area of Japan's six largest cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama and Kawasaki) had been destroyed. Under the command of Li Mei there were almost 600 bombers, which managed to destroy dozens of smaller cities and industrial centers before the end of the war.
Before the bombing, leaflets were dropped over the cities, warning Japanese residents and urging them to leave the city. While many, even within the US Air Force, saw this as a form of psychological warfare, a significant motive was nonetheless a desire to alleviate concerns in the US over the extent of the devastation caused by the bombings.
Nuclear
Main article:In works of culture and art
- film "Memphis Beauty" (Great Britain, 1990)
see also
Literature
- Rumpf G. Air war in Germany. In: Results of the Second World War. M.: Publishing house of foreign literature, 1957. Pp. 215-238
Links
- About the contribution of the Allies to the Victory in the Second World War or how the bombings affected the industry of the Third Reich
- Davis, Richard G. Bombing the European Axis Powers. A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1939-1945 PDF. Alabama: Air University Press, 2006
- The Bomb War- doc. movie
Notes
- Frederick Taylor Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945 Chapter "Call Me Meier" pages 105-111
- Draft Convention for the Protection of Civilian Populations Against New Engines of War. Amsterdam, 1938, verified February 26,
- see w:en:Area bombing directive and also: Johnston, Philip Ralph Bomber Command blog site RAF-Lincolnshire.info
- Matthew White Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls: United Kingdom lists the following totals and sources:
- 60,000, (bombing): John Keegan The Second World War (1989);
- 60 000: Boris Urlanis, Wars and Population (1971)
- 60595: Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War
- 60,600: John Ellis, World War II: a statistical survey (Facts on File, 1993) "killed and missing"
- 92 673: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, 1992 printing. “Killed, dead from wounds, or in prisons…. excluding those who died of natural causes and committed suicide.
- 92673 Norman Davies Europe A History(1998) mostly matches figures in Britannica
- 92673: Michael Clodfelter ;
- 100,000: William Eckhardt, 3-page table of military statistics, printed in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th edition, 1987) Ruth Leger Sivard. "Deaths", including "mass killings, political violence and conflict-related epidemics."
- German aerial bombing deaths (not clear if these include Austrians, about 24,000 were killed (see Austrian Press & Information Service, Washington, D.C) and other areas of the Third Reich not part of present-day Germany)
- 600,000 of which about 80,000 children Hamburg, Juli 1943 in Der Spiegel © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003 (in German)
- Matthew White Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls lists the following figures and sources:
- over 305,000: (1945 US Government Strategic Bombing Efficiency Report);
- 400 000: Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century (1996)
- 410,000: R. J. Rummel;
- 499 750: Michael Clodfelter Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991;
- 593,000: John Keegan The Second World War (1989);
- 593 000: J. A. S. Grenville quoting "official Germany" in A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994)
- 600,000: Paul Johnson Modern Times (1983)
- Matthew White Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls: Allies bombing of Japan lists the following totals and sources
- 330,000: 1945 US Strategic Bombing Survey;
- 363,000: (not including post-war radiation sickness); John Keegan The Second World War (1989);
- 374,000: R. J. Rummel, including 337,000 democidal;
- 435,000: Paul Johnson Modern Times (1983)
- 500,000: (Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War)
- Saward, "Bomber" Harris; hastings, Bomber Command.
- John Ray The Night Blitz Chapter "Choosing London" pages 101-102
- Wood & Dempster The Narrow Margin Chapter "Second Phase" page 175
- Richard Overy The Battle Chapter "The Battle" pages 82-83
- Brian Grafton Bomber Command Military History Online
- Nelson, Hank. A different war: Australians in Bomber Command a paper presented at the 2003 History Conference - Air War Europe
- Deighton, Bomber.
- Norman Longmate, The Bombers: The RAF Offensive against Germany 1939-1945, pp.309-312
- War In The Air 1939-1945 by Richard Humble - Purnell - 1975
- Ryan Cornelius. last fight
- William Shearer. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. Part 30. Occupation of Germany
- Christian Zentner Der Zweite Weltkrieg. Ein Lexikon. Ulstein Heyne List GmbH & Co.KG ,München. 2003 Buch No. 006168
- Semyon Fedoseev. All-conquering aviation
- Price, Alfred (September 1993). "Against Regensburg and Schweinfurt". Air Force Magazine 76 (9) Retrieved 10 January 2007.
- M. Speke "Aces of the Luftwaffe" - Smolensk, "Rusich" 1999, p. 217
- Schollars, Todd J. German wonder weapons: degraded production and effectiveness . Air Force Journal of Logistics(Fall 2003). Retrieved January 16, 2007.
- Combat formation of bombers
- "Fortress Over Europe" Greg Gobel The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
- "B-17 Pilot Training Manual" Headquarters, AAF, Office of Flying Safety
- Caidin Martin Black Thursday. - New York: E.P. Duton & Co. Inc., 1960. - ISBN 0-553-26729-9
- Albert Speer. Third Reich from the inside. Memoirs of the Reich Minister of War Industry. - M.: 2005. - S. 463-464. (translation of "Memoirs" by an unknown author)
- Zefirov M.V. Aces of the Luftwaffe. Night Fighters. - M: AST, 2001. - S. 5-6. - 496 p. - 7000 copies.
- M. Speke"Aces of the Luftwaffe" - Smolensk, "Rusich", 1999
- The Illustrated London News, Marching to War 1933-1939, Doubleday, 1989, p.135
- Bradley, F.J. No Strategic Targets Left. "Contribution of Major Fire Raids Toward Ending WWII" p. 38. Turner Publishing Company, limited edition. ISBN 1-56311-483-6
- Spector, Ronald (1985). Eagle Against the Sun. New York: Vintage Books. p. 503.
- United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War). June 1
- Caidin, Martin. A Torch to the Enemy: The Fire Raid on Tokyo, Bantam War Books, 1960. ISBN 0-553-29926-3
| Bombing cities in World War II | |
|---|---|
|
Aomori Augsburg Athens Bari Bangkok Belgrade Belfast Berlin Birmingham Braunschweig Bremen ( English) Breslau Bristol Budapest Bucharest Warsaw Wesel Wielun Vienna Wuppertal Würzburg Hamburg Gdansk Gelsenkirchen Gifu Glasgow Bitter Greenock Guangzhou Darwin Darmstadt Dresden Dublin Duisburg Duesseldorf Zhytomyr Zagreb Zadar Salzburg Innsbruck Yokohama Ise Kagoshima Kaiserslautern Cagliari Caen Cardiff Kassel Cologne Chemnitz (Saxony) Königsberg Kyiv Chisinau Clydebank Kobe Coventry Kure Leipzig ( English) Leningrad Liverpool London Lübeck Mainz Malta Mannheim Manila Manchester Minsk Mito Munich Nagaoka Nagasaki Nagoya Nara Naples Nuremberg Okinawa Osaka Peenemünde Plymouth Ploiesti Phnom Penh Podgorica Prague Pforzheim Rabaul Remscheid Rome Rothenburg ob der Tauber Rotterdam Saarbrücken Thessaloniki San Marino Southampton Singapore (1941) Singapore (1944-1945) Sofia Stalingrad Swansea Sendai Taihoku Tallinn Tel Aviv Tokyo Toyama Treviso Ulm Frampol Frankfurt am Main Frascati Fukui Fukuoka Fukuyama Hamm Heilbronn Haifa Hanau Helsinki Hildesheim Hiroshima Tsu Chernihiv chongqing Schauhausen Shanghai Schweinfurt and Regensburg Schwäbisch Hall Sheffield Stuttgart Szczecin Essen |
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| see also | |
| The Second World War | ||||||||||||||||||
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German war economy
A protracted world war was never part of the plans of the supreme leadership of the Reich. Hitler counted on achieving all his goals by skillful diplomacy and a series of lightning wars, extensively building up the military and economic power of Germany - with the expectation that England and France would never keep up with the rapid growth of Germany. The German General Staff, in particular General Thomas, protested against this concept of "armament in breadth". Instead, they pushed "weapons in depth", namely: to direct significant efforts to increase steel production; significantly cut civilian consumption of steel and other natural resources; to use additional steel not only for the production of weapons, but also for increasing the production of other basic resources. According to the calculations of the General Staff, in this case, by 1945-1950, Germany could be ready for a protracted strategic war.
Hitler's point of view won. To give some idea of the priorities of the German economy, consider the use of steel in the pre-war years (there are no exact statistics, the figures are approximate). About 10-15% of the monthly steel production went to the railways (mostly scheduled maintenance/replacement of tracks). The same amount went to non-military and semi-military construction. 30% went to the production of consumer goods (TNP) and private construction. The remaining 40% was spent on the production of military products: by 1939 it was planned to create enough weapons for 100 divisions; by 1942 - for another 80. Plus, the programs for the construction of military aviation and navy, no less ambitious.
The choice of such a path of development largely predetermined many of the problems of the Germans during WWII. In particular, the program for the construction of synthetic fuel plants in 1936-1941 was assessed by the German General Staff as absolutely unsatisfactory; however, the Reich leadership was unwilling to increase the steel quota for the construction of these factories. After all, steel is needed for the production of weapons, and a protracted war is not expected.
raids
About the British / American side of the matter, I will definitely write sometime in more detail. The pre-war doctrines of strategic raids, disagreements over targets, casualties, aircraft production - it's all very interesting. But for now I will limit myself to just brief statistics about the raids.
The total tonnage of bombs dropped by the Americans and the British on Germany (including the countries occupied by it) and its allies during WWII:
Red - monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by the RAF (England Air Force)
Blue color - monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by the USAAF (United States Air Force)
Tonnage by target (larger image available):
Targets, left to right, top to bottom:
aircraft factories
Various production
Water transport
Start points V-1 and V-2
Airfields
Production of petroleum products, chemicals, rubber
Military
Industrial targets (which is a euphemism for carpet bombing cities)
Ground transport network (which partly also includes carpet bombing of cities)
Other
Monthly losses of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe:
The black curve is the total losses of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe
The red curve is the loss of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe minus the eastern front (i.e. the USSR)
In general, a separate post should also be written about the battle over Germany, because it's worth it. IMHO the most significant result of strategic raids.
Work force
Graph of the state of the German labor force during the war:
Top down:
Losses -- irretrievable losses
Armed Force -- armed forces
Foreigners & Prisoners of War -- foreign workers and prisoners of war
Civilians (male / female) -- civilians (men / women)
As you can see, 11.5 million German workers were drafted into the Wehrmacht from September 39 to September 44; their place was taken by 7 million workers and prisoners of war who arrived or brought from abroad, as well as 1 million new German workers. This adds up to a loss of 3.5 million workers, or 10% of the labor force.
Let's take a look at exactly how strategic raids have affected the workforce.
Direct damage (killed and maimed) - by the middle of 1944, about 250 thousand workers
Unproductive labor force, i.e. people who could not work due to bombings - destruction of factories, transport routes, etc. From September 43 to October 44 - the period for which there are German data on reports of category "A" firms on productive / unproductive work - did not work on average 1.5 million people employed in manufacturing.
The threat of destruction of certain nodes of the economy made it necessary to disperse production. By the summer of 1944, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were involved in additional construction and repair of damage caused by the bombing. An additional 250-400 thousand supplied them with materials and services.
The production of consumer goods, to replace those that were destroyed by the bombing. This is of course extremely difficult to isolate, but you can look at employment in the production of consumer goods. In May 1939, 6.8 million workers worked there. In the period 39-40, a drop of 1.7 million. In the period 40-42, a drop of 1.5 million. In the period 42-44 (i.e. the period of intense raids), the fall was only .5 million people.
Production of air defense artillery and ammunition for it - 250 thousand people. Plus air defense troops. The issue has been resolved in more detail.
If you add all this up, it turns out that strategic bombing in one way or another pulled off 17-22% of the German labor force available outside of agriculture.
It is worth noting here that by 1944 and even 1945 the Germans were far from exhausting their labor reserves. For example, both Germany and England started the war with approximately the same number of working women. During the war, the number of employed English women increased by 45%, while in Germany it remained almost at the pre-war level. Another example - during the war, the number of servants and other domestic workers in the UK fell from 1.2 million to .5, in Germany - from 1.5 million to 1.2. The German bureaucratic system numbered 3.5 million until the end of the war, and even Speer could do nothing about it.
Fixed assets
Before the war, the products of the machine-building industry were one of the main export items of Germany (in fact, it is still the case today). Naturally, with the outbreak of hostilities, trade with most of Germany's partners ceased, and therefore quite large capacities were unoccupied. So, with the exception of factories producing aircraft engines and some other specific things, German production worked one shift for almost the entire war - unlike the USA, the USSR and England. Thus, in 1942, 90% of German workers worked the first shift; 7% in the second, 3% in the third (mining workers not included).
In 1944, the machine park in Germany amounted to 2,260,000 machine tools. There are no exact statistics on destroyed and damaged machines; post-war estimates are 110,000 damaged and 36,500 destroyed by machine raids (both are the maximum estimates). A rough estimate of machine hours lost due to damage or destruction of machines is between 2 and 2.5 percent. Don't forget - this is a ceiling estimate. So, on the whole, we can conclude that the destruction of the German means of production did not cause significant damage to the German war economy. The exception here is the chemical industry; it will be discussed below.
Common consumption goods
In general, the Nazis tried to keep the production of consumer goods at a more or less acceptable level. Here's a detail: In the fall of 1943, Hitler protested Speer's decision to stop allocating resources for the production of curling irons.
Top down:
GNP including foreign participation (read - robbery of occupied countries)
GNP without it
Home capital gain
The share of civilian spending in the GNP of Nazi Germany (black part of the graph)
Table on the dynamics of civil spending:
Level 1939 == 100
Well, as a bonus, the percentage of industrial workers employed in the civil / military sphere:
The white part of the graph is civil industry
The shaded part of the graph is the military industry
All in all, it is safe to say that the destruction of consumer goods was not directly related to the military collapse of Nazi Germany. The only thing is that the regular destruction of houses during the raids generated a surge in demand for certain consumer goods, and thereby prevented the transfer of a certain part of the civilian industry to a military footing. For example, the production of kitchenware in 1943 was 25% higher than in 1942; bed frame production increased by 150% in the same period.
military production
At the beginning of the war and until the defeat near Moscow, and especially near Stalingrad, German military production was limited by one thing - the lack of orders from the military leadership. As described earlier, Hitler did not count on a protracted war. Moreover, some euphoria from the successes in the west and the general underestimation of the enemy played a bad joke on the Germans.
So, as of May 11, 1940 (that is, before the start of the operation on the western front), the Luftwaffe had 4782 aircraft of all types. A year later, on June 21, 1941 (that is, before the invasion of the USSR), there were 4882 aircraft, only a hundred more. In particular, the Germans had 200 fewer bombers (!) than before the start of the invasion of the Benelux and France. Military production was 1% higher than the 1940 production level.
And even after the defeat near Moscow, the situation was largely preserved. For example, back in March 1942, the Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, Hans Jeschonnek, told Milch, who was pushing at that time a program to increase the production of aircraft: "I don't even know what to do with an additional 360 fighters!" By the way, the same Jeshonnek shot himself a year later when British planes razed Peenemünde to the ground.
The fact that Germany did get involved in a total war, the German leadership really realized only after Stalingrad. But, as they said in my childhood, it was already too late to rush about.
German military production index:
Level 1940 == 100
So, now let's look at how strategic raids directly affected German military production.
Note: I decided to leave the bombing of the ball bearing factories behind the scenes. These raids had no effect on the war economy, although Speer, in his own words, did knock out a couple of bricks after the bombing of Schweinfurt. I can write more in the next post, when I describe the differences in the doctrine of the Americans and the British.
First half of 1943
The Allies tried to reduce the production of German submarines by bombing. The effect is near-zero; production continued to go almost without deviation from the schedule.
Second half of 1943
In the second half of 1943, the Allies decided to switch to the bombing of fighter factories, because by that time the scales in the Atlantic had already tipped quite noticeably in the direction of the Allies. Thanks to the raids, 13% fewer fighters were produced from the planned number. It should be noted that only part of the fall is a direct consequence of the raids; a significant share of the fall is due to the start of a large-scale program of dispersal of production. I won't dwell on the re-drinking of the bombings, on how the production of fuselages was first bombed (in vain), then they switched to engines.
First half of 1944
Significantly stronger raids on aircraft industry plants. But - a paradox! - The production of fighters doubles from December 1943 to July 1944. This fact (and in general the strong growth of German military production) is liked by supporters of the version that the bombings were absolutely useless. True, this hypothesis does not fit well with the fact that the Germans went for such a large and disproportionate increase in the production of single-engine fighters (see graph below). Well, okay, God bless him, I hope that above I was able to explain to some extent why it happened with production.
German aircraft production:
Top down:
Single engine bombers
Twin-engine bombers
Four-engine bombers
Single engine fighters
twin-engine fighters
Assault
Other
The growth in fighter production is the result of two things: 1) increasing production efficiency (i.e., reduced labor costs and increased efficiency in the use of resources); 2) an increase in the production of fighters was planned as early as 1943. It is difficult to say what the true figure would have been without strategic raids. Estimated figure - the Germans missed 18% of the possible number of fighters.
Well, little things. Tanks. Here the Germans missed 5% (thanks to the RAF raid on Friedrichshafen). Ammunition. Production is less than potential by 6-7%.
Second half of 1944
The raids are intensifying, the allies, in addition to the aircraft, are beginning to concentrate on the tank and automobile industries.
The decline in aircraft production by December 1944, in comparison with June, was 60%. Losses in aircraft production as a result of direct raids on airlines - 23%. Losses in the production of tanks and vehicles as a result of direct raids on factories - 20% and 20%.
On the whole, no decisive effect on the German military machine has been achieved by direct bombing of military production, but a significant drop in production has been achieved in certain areas.
Natural resources
And here is the most interesting, IMHO. So.
Germany's dependence on imported natural resources has always been seen as the main weakness of its military potential. Just before the start of the war, Germany imported 70% of its iron ore, 90% of copper, 100% of chromium, manganese, nickel, tungsten, and much more. By and large, the Germans had plenty of only coal.
The Germans were certainly aware of this weakness. Two solutions were chosen:
1) The beginning of the development of domestic deposits of iron ore (albeit of poor quality), the construction of factories for the production of synthetic fuel and rubber.
2) Creation of stocks of strategic resources before the start of the war.
When the war began, the Germans had nine months' worth of iron ore, copper, lead, and magnesium; manganese - for 18 months. However, measures to increase the efficiency of production, coupled with the conquest of a number of countries and trade with other pro-Nazi states, made it possible to delay serious interruptions in supply until mid-1944.
Fuel
The weakest point of the German military machine.
Imports before the war - 4.4 million tons, mostly by sea. After the outbreak of the war, the only significant external source of oil and oil products was Romania, which by 1941 exported to Germany 2114 thousand tons of oil and oil products per year. Plus, something came from Hungary and Poland (about 500 thousand tons of oil), plus the USSR in 1940 supplied the Germans with 617 thousand tons of oil.
The Germans also developed domestic production to the best of their ability: 2 million oil was produced in Austrian oil fields, plus synthetic fuel plants steadily increased production, from 1.6 million tons in 1938 to 6 million in early 1944. It should be noted that according to the plan, 1938 to 1944 11 million tons were to be mined, but as mentioned above, confidence in the quick end of the war, plus the intrigues of industrialists, prevented.
Sources of German oil, 38-43 (in thousands of tons):
Sources of German petroleum products (gasoline), first quarter 1944 (in thousands of tons):
For comparison, the USSR at that time produced 29 million tons of oil per year; USA - 168 million tons.
Influence of raids
Strategic raids on synthetic gasoline plants began in May 1944. Consequences:
Aviation gasoline production
red curve. Start level 1944 == 100
Production, consumption and stocks of aviation gasoline
Top down:
Stocks - stocks (left side of the graph - at the end of the year, right - at the end of the month)
consumption -- consumption
Production -- production (including imports)
Since May, 350,000 workers have been repairing synthetic fuel plants and building new, underground plants.
A little later, raids on Ploiesti began. In June, Romanian exports of petroleum products accounted for only 25% of the monthly average in the first half of the year; in July, exports ceased altogether. The oil fields were captured by Soviet troops on August 22.
As a result, by September 1944, the Luftwaffe was forced to reduce fuel consumption by 2/3 compared to June. Those. there was a reduction in the number of sorties, and a drop in the level of German pilots (due to the lack of gasoline for training) - and this despite the fact that just at that time a record number of fighters left the assembly lines, which simply could not take to the skies.
On the ground, the lack of fuel was also felt very acutely. For example, such an episode, told by both Speer and Jodl: in February 45, after the Soviet troops crossed the Vistula, the Wehrmacht gathered about 1200-1500 tanks to attack Upper Silesia. However, the fuel needed for the counteroffensive was simply not found.
Rubber
There were practically no direct raids on synthetic rubber factories. However, since in the process of its production, German factories used gas and hydrogen that came from synthetic fuel factories, it is only natural that rubber production has dropped significantly.
Rubber production (thousand tons)
The dotted line is the planned production.
Four colors -- different rubber factories
There is no evidence that the lack of rubber greatly affected the German war machine. However, had the war lasted longer, it was more than likely that the shortage of rubber would have seriously affected German armaments production.
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a necessary ingredient for the production of explosives. Like rubber, nitrogen was never a priority target for Allied bombers. However, the two largest nitrogen plants were part of synthetic fuel complexes. Since nitrogen and synthetic fuel use the same low-pressure tanks, the damage from the bombings was added by the fact that part of the nitrogen production capacity began to be converted to gasoline.
Monthly production of nitrogen and explosives (thousand tons):
Black curve - nitrogen
Different colors - different types of explosives
Steel
Ruhr raids -- last quarter 44. Production dropped from 2 million tons in September (including occupied territories) to 1 million in December, 80% of the drop was due to air raids.
Steel production (million tons):
Top down:
Losses due to other reasons
Losses due to lack of gas, electricity, energy, natural resources, labor
Losses due to damage from strategic bombing
Losses due to air raids
Electricity
Electric Power (GW)
As you can see, by the end of 1944, 15.5% of the capacities were put out of action by raids.
The effect on the economy is difficult to isolate, but it is quite obvious that it was great: electricity was Germany's weak point for almost the entire war; restrictions on use began as early as October 41. By 43-44 the situation had become so serious that the supply of aluminum and nitrogen plants was cut from time to time - despite their importance to the German war machine.
It should be noted that the bombing of power plants was never a priority goal for the Allies, because they (erroneously) believed that the Germans had enough spare capacity.
Transport
Along with the attack on fuel, one of the most effective targets of strategic bombers.
They decided to test full-scale raids on the transport network on the eve of the landing in France. Beginning in March 1944, Allied strategic bombers began the systematic destruction of the transport network in Western Europe. Plus, 800 Spitfires, Thunderbolts and Typhoons destroyed or damaged 500 locomotives between May 20 and May 28. By July, traffic on French railways was only 10% of the January level. See the following charts:
The upper curve is general traffic, the lower curve is military traffic. Vertical lines - bomb strikes
On the example of a specific railway (direction Valenton-Juvisi):
The upper curve is general traffic, the lower curve is military traffic. Vertical lines - bomb strikes
In the second half of 1944, the already tested method was applied in Germany itself. The consequences are in the next two graphs.
Number of loaded wagons
Number of tonne-kilometers
The collapse of the transport system served as a very significant reason for the very rapid disintegration of the German military industry in late 1944 - early 1945. Additional difficulties were created by the fact that many industries were dispersed in order to minimize the damage from the bombing, and therefore required a fairly well-functioning system of cargo transportation.