Terror From the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II

By Igor Primoratz

In this first interdisciplinary study of this contentious subject, leading experts in politics, history, and philosophy examine the complex aspects of the terror bombing of German cities during World War II. The contributors address the decision to embark on the bombing campaign, the moral issues raised by the bombing, and the main stages of the campaign and its effects on German civilians as well as on Germany’s war effort. The book places the bombing campaign within the context of the history of air warfare, presenting the bombing as the first stage of the particular type of state terrorism that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and brought about the Cold War era “balance of terror.” In doing so, it makes an important contribution to current debates about terrorism. It also analyzes the public debate in Germany about the historical, moral, and political significance of the deliberate killing of up to 600,000 German civilians by the British and American air forces. This pioneering collaboration provides a platform for a wide range of views—some of which are controversial—on a highly topical, painful, and morally challenging subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781845458447

Book preview

PART I

THE BOMBING

CHAPTER 1

The Bombing Campaign the RAF

Stephen A. Garrett

In June 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued the following instructions to British Bomber Command in the event of an outbreak of war with Germany:

1. It is against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks on the civilian population.

2. Targets which are aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be capable of identification.

3. Reasonable care must be taken in attacking those military objectives so that by carelessness a civilian population in the neighbourhood is not bombed.¹

The Prime Minister reiterated his position on this matter even after war had broken out. Whatever be the lengths to which others may go, his Majesty’s government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women and children, and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.²

It is instructive to consider British policy on air warfare as enunciated by Chamberlain in relation to the events of 13 February 1945. On this occasion, the British air force attacked the German city of Dresden in two waves totaling almost 800 heavy bombers. Some 2,700 tons of bombs were dropped, about 75 percent of which were incendiaries. The results were such that Dresden was converted into a household word symbolizing the terror that could be inflicted on a city by a modern bombing force. The worst effects of the bombing came shortly after the initial British assault, when a tremendous firestorm of the sort only seen previously at Hamburg developed. About 1,600 acres were engulfed by the flames, which was practically the whole of the older part of Dresden. Estimates on casualties vary widely, from a minimal guess of about 25,000 dead to the most drastic estimate of over 200,000. Whatever the final accounting, there was no question but that Dresden had suffered a catastrophic blow. In order to prevent the spread of disease, the authorities cordoned off the center of the city and constructed 25-foot-long grills where thousands of the victims were cremated.³

How does one account for the drastic change in British bombing policy that developed from Chamberlain’s initial stance to the attack on Dresden that took place around seven years later? The discussion here focuses on the interwar debate over the character and promise of a major air campaign in a future conflict between the major powers. It then analyzes the factors that led Britain to abandon its original policy of avoiding deliberate attacks on civilians. Finally, it assesses the impact of British bombing on the capacity of Germany to successfully wage war.

The Past as Prologue

Amongst the many profound effects of World War I on the future conduct of military operations, none was perhaps to weigh as heavily as the introduction of attacks on enemy’s cities by the then-limited airpower resources of the combatants. Leading the way in this regard were German assaults on the British homeland, first by the use of airships (Zeppelins) and later by fixed-wing bombers. Overall, there were a total of 208 airship and 435 airplane sorties undertaken against England by the German air force. About 300 tons of bombs were dropped, killing around 1,400 people and wounding another 3,400.⁴

Compared to the figures that were to be produced by the next great war, these may have been relatively modest results, but they established an ominous precedent. Certainly, many informed analysts at the time were concerned about the implication of these raids. The notion that civilians could be a legitimate, and even important, target of air strikes seemed to have acquired at least a tentative acceptance. One authority on the use of airpower in World War I thus wrote that demoralization of the enemy by means of aerial bombardment was accepted as part of the functions of the bombardment groups [of all major powers].⁵

As a consequence of the city attacks by airpower in World War I (the British and French also undertook some relatively minor steps in this direction), a considerable debate developed in the interwar year as to what this new use of military technology portended for the conduct of a future war. There were certain basic alternatives that presented themselves. Emphasis could be placed on the use of airpower in an essentially tactical role, that is, in support of ground operations by field armies and potentially in naval engagements as well. In this sense, airpower could be seen largely in terms of its capacity to influence direct battlefield outcomes. A second approach to the use of aircraft was to emphasize air defense, and in particular the development of substantial fighter squadrons that hopefully would blunt the enemy’s capability for air attacks against one’s homeland.

Each of these emphases in the use of airpower was to have its advocates in Great Britain and elsewhere in the interwar period. For present purposes, however, it was the promise (or threat) of airpower being used in a strategic mode that is of principal interest. In the generic sense, the strategic application of airpower simply meant the use of aircraft for direct assaults on the enemy’s homeland and his fundamental capacity to make war. Approached in this fashion, the prospective use of airpower indeed represented something quite novel in the conduct of war: a strategy for overcoming the enemy not (or not only) through direct defeat of his land or naval forces, but through an assault on the nation itself quite aside from battlefield operations.

In analyzing the concept of the strategic air offensive, it is important to note that even those generally supportive of such a strategy could and did differ a great deal on what might be called the targeting philosophy to be followed in carrying out such an effort. Broadly speaking, the targets of an air offensive could be defined in terms of what came to be called either precision or area bombing. The theory of precision bombing held that the objects to be attacked should be more or less traditional military objectives, such as airfields, defense industries (e.g., steel and chemicals), the communications network, petroleum installations, and other sites that had a reasonably direct connection to the enemy’s war effort, that is, were in direct support of that effort.

The idea of area bombing, sometimes referred to as indiscriminate bombing (although, not surprisingly, rarely so by advocates of area bombing), basically rejected the notion that air strikes should be limited to precision targets such as arms factories. This is not to say that there was no interest in destroying these factories. Instead, the controlling theory of area bombing was that to concentrate only on the destruction of such a military objective was a far too narrow approach to the potential of the strategic air offensive. In plain terms, area bombing meant that the arms factory along with much else (and legitimately much else) should or could be equally the objective of the air campaign. This much else basically involved the entire social, economic, and even political infrastructure of the enemy—in particular, for an urbanized country such as Germany, the infrastructure of its cities. In even plainer terms, then, area bombing meant a generalized assault on civilians and the very life of the population.

To what purpose? Several rationales were offered for such an air campaign. In the first place, the dislocations caused by the bombing of cities would divert resources from the war effort. The enemy would have to put enormous effort into feeding, clothing, and housing the affected civilian population as well as restoring a minimal level of public services. Secondly (and here there was some agreement with the adherents of precision bombing), the enemy would have to expend considerable effort on air defenses such as fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft installations, which in turn would mean that these resources could not be used for offensive operations. Finally, there was the matter of morale, or the enemy society’s will to continue the war effort. Area bombing advocates felt that civilian morale was inherently fragile, the Achilles’ heel, as it were, of the enemy’s military position. A steady barrage of attacks on civilian life would, it was argued, cause civilian morale to crack fairly rapidly, and this in turn would lead to irresistible pressure on the government to end the war.

Two observations are necessary concerning the interwar debate over precision versus area bombing in the strategic air offensive. In the first place, certain technical questions played a prominent role in shaping attitudes toward either form of air attack, in particular the matter of whether aircraft could actually attain the bombing accuracies necessary to hit precise targets and, a related issue, whether bomber forces could attack such targets in daytime (which seemed critical to accuracy) without overwhelming losses from the enemy’s air defenses. If the answer was no to either or both of these questions, then it did not matter much if one in theory held that precision bombing was the better system. The question became whether there was to be a strategic air offensive at all, whether bombers were in fact to be used against the enemy’s homeland. If the decision was to do so, area bombing was, faute de meilleur, the strategy that seemed to present itself.

The acceptance of area bombing as part of a strategic air offensive, as it was discussed prior to 1939, is especially associated with the Italian theorist General Giulio Douhet. His essential proposition was that a massive air offensive by a fully developed strategic bomber force at the outbreak of hostilities—undertaken with the greatest possible intensity—would prove decisive to the outcome of the war. One of the purposes of such an effort would be to attain command of the air, [being] in a position to prevent the enemy from flying while retaining the ability to fly oneself.⁶ Phrased in this way, the concept of preemption was inherent to Douhet’s thinking. He was convinced, as were others, that there was no effective defense against the modern bomber, and that the country that struck first would therefore achieve a preponderance in the air after destroying the enemy’s own bomber forces.

Assuming command of the air was achieved, the more fundamental purpose of the bombing offensive would unfold and once again the stress was on the factor of morale and the enemy society’s will to continue the war. Douhet’s comments on this matter differed from those of other strategic airpower advocates in their certitude and notably florid presentation, rather than content:

A complete breakdown of the social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of merciless pounding from the air. The time would soon come when, to put an end to horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war—this before their army and navy had time to mobilize at all!⁷

Douhet can also be distinguished from other writers by his frank willingness to lay to rest the notion that non-combatants would enjoy any privileged position in the coming conflict.

No longer can areas exist in which life can be lived in safety and tranquility, nor can the battlefield be limited to actual combatants. … All of [a country’s] citizens will become combatants since all of them will be exposed to the aerial offensives of the enemy. There will be no distinction any longer between soldiers and civilians.⁸

In Britain itself, the debate over the use of airpower can perhaps best be summarized by reference to an exchange amongst the chiefs of the various branches of the British armed services in May 1928. The Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard, initiated the exchange with a note setting forth the claims of the Royal Air Force (RAF) for a major share of defense funding and of a continuing independent role.⁹ He was convinced that the proper application of a strategic bombing offensive against a potential enemy could well prove vital in any future conflict, even though he conceded that the RAF could not be expected by itself to win the victory. Rather than devoting the bulk of the resources of the RAF to close air support of ground operations, to assaults on opposing army and naval targets, or even to air defense of the homeland, Trenchard proposed concentrating on developing a capacity for striking directly at the enemy’s sources of power. As he put it, it is not necessary for an air force, in order to defeat the enemy nation, to defeat its armed forces first. Air power can dispense with that intermediate step … and attack directly the centres of production, transportation and communication from which the enemy war effort is maintained. Trenchard envisioned his bombing campaign as having two fundamental purposes: to destroy the enemy’s technical capacity for continuing the war effort and to undermine his will for doing so. On the latter point, he put the moral effects of bombing as more important than the physical effects by a factor of 20 to 1.

What is especially interesting about the Trenchard memorandum is how it attempted to blur the distinction between precision and area bombing and in fact to defuse the debate over the appropriateness of each. In effect, Trenchard seemed to say that he was proposing a precision bombing offensive, but that it could on occasion take on some of the characteristics of an area offensive. In addressing the possible moral objections to his outlined strategy, he stressed that the air offensive would be directed not at civilians as such, but rather at defined military objectives, among which would be the enemy’s great centres of production of every kind of war materials, from battleships to boots, his essential munition factories, the centres of all his systems of communications and transportation, his docks and shipyards, railway workshops, wireless stations, and postal and telegraph systems. In a comment that is rather striking (and ironic) in view of subsequent activity by Bomber Command, he accepted that the indiscriminate bombing of a city for the sole purpose of terrorising the civilian population was contrary to the dictates of humanity. On the other hand, claimed Trenchard, it was an entirely different matter to terrorize munitions workers into ceasing working or stevedores to stop loading arms onto ships. Moral effect is created by the bombing in such circumstances but it is the inevitable result of a lawful operation of war—the bombing of a military objective. Put in this way, many later critics of British bombing policy in World War II would have been forced to nod assent. The question was, however, how the concept of a military objective was subject to elaboration and expansion as the air offensive evolved.

The response of the Army and Navy chiefs to Trenchard’s memorandum was itself a curious blend of practical and moral objections. On the matter of practicality, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General G.F. Milne, argued that Britain would be at a clear disadvantage in any environment of unrestricted air warfare. The major issue was geography: British cities would be far more vulnerable to attack than the more remote urban centers of an enemy on the Continent, particularly if the enemy should acquire air bases in the Low Countries or in France. An additional argument was that unrestricted air warfare would inevitably spill over into unrestricted submarine warfare at sea, which would threaten Britain’s naval lifelines (the experience of World War I was a sobering precedent in this regard).

Other practical objections to Trenchard’s views on the strategic air offensive were voiced as well. Thus, the Chief of the Naval Staff argued that there was little evidence to support the notion that enemy civilian morale would crack under aerial bombardment. In fact, such attacks might even serve to stiffen it. Also in serious doubt was the claim that enemy war production could be seriously disrupted by air power, particularly if there were any sort of effective air defense against such attacks (the rebuttal to Trenchard was far more pessimistic about the ability of bomber squadrons to penetrate unscathed to their targets). Moreover, committing large resources to a potentially ineffective air offensive risked dispersal of the nation’s military assets, with a concomitant lessening of the overall effectiveness of the war effort. The recommendation from the Army and Navy, then, was that Britain should never initiate unlimited air combat, but only hold such a possibility open in response to an enemy’s introduction of such tactics.

The response to Trenchard also addressed the moral issue, and in a language of some asperity. As regards the ethical aspects of his [Trenchard’s] proposals, it is for His Majesty’s Government to accept or to refuse a doctrine which, put into plain English, amounts to one which advocates unrestricted warfare against the civilian population of one’s enemy. There was a barely concealed impatience with Trenchard’s references to striking military objectives in an air offensive. In effect, the charge was that Trenchard was actually proposing an area bombing strategy thinly disguised as an exercise in precision bombing. Even if the effort might be directed, say, at destroying a factory making boots for the army,

the actual target would be the town in which the factory happened to be located. … It is ridiculous to contend that the dropping of bombs would hit only the so-called military targets. … The impression produced by the acceptance and publication of such a doctrine will indubitably be that we are advocating what might be termed the indiscriminate bombing of undefended towns and of their unarmed inhabitants.¹⁰

The Decision to Bomb Cities

Despite the often heated debate in prewar Britain about the use of airpower in a future conflict, during the period stretching from the British declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939 to about the middle of May 1940, the idea of a strategic bombing offensive against Germany was little more than a gleam in the eye of its British advocates. Bomber Command divided its time between dropping leaflets over the German Reich inviting its surrender and occasional precise attacks on naval and other military targets. One problem was the relative paucity of resources: at the outbreak of war, Britain had only about 272 aircraft at its disposal and a number were not operational. There was also a continuing concern about avoiding any unnecessary harm to enemy civilians. For example, in November 1939, the War Cabinet secretly considered a plan for bombing targets in the Ruhr in response to a German invasion of Belgium, but there was great reluctance to do so because of the expected effect on the civilian population.¹¹ This sensitivity was reinforced by the position adopted by the United States, potentially a key partner in the war on the Axis. On 1 September 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt had addressed an appeal to all the belligerent powers, calling for a restriction of aerial warfare to specifically military targets, and at this point the British government felt they could hardly ignore such an admonition, a position reinforced by fears of a drastic German retaliation against British cities should the informal prohibition against attacks on urban areas be broken.

What may be regarded as a period of innocence for Bomber Command during the first eight months of the war came to a close on 15 May 1940, when in a directive signed by Winston Churchill, who had replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister a few days earlier, the RAF was now authorized to attack land targets east of the Rhine. The spur to this decision was evidently a reduced concern about the possibilities of German retaliation on British cities as well as the fact that at least some strategic bombing of the enemy seemed at this point to be one of the few ways in which the British could carry the war to the enemy, a consideration that acquired particular currency after the evacuation at