The book discusses the British carpet bombing campaign against German cities. The book suggests that the only thing that won the air war was Mustangs attacking and defeating the Luftwaffe where the Luftwaffe had to fight. And the Luftwaffe had to defend its own fuel supplies even more than it needed to protect Berlin. The Germans, I recently learned, were using 87 octane gas in their airplanes! We were using 100 octane aviation gasoline; no wonder we did well!
- Freedom's Forge:
- How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Hermanexplains the “miracle” of American production during WWII by giving the history of the vigorous efforts FDR made to keep Britain afloat after the fall of France in May 1940. The US was trying to supply Britain with war materiel (case in point, after Dunkirk the British Army had few weapons, and the US Army was in the process of adopting the Garand - so FDR sold Britain our entire inventory of bolt-action rifles) - and FDR bent every effort to use the British money for war materiel in a way to maximize future productivity. Result: we didn’t have much military inventory in December, 1941 - Britain had most of it - but we had factories and machine tools and the startup phase of production already well in hand. Pearl Harbor opened the funding spigot, and the planes and tanks and ships tumbled out.
- The New Dealers' War:
- FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas Flemingtreats of the politics of WWII.
One thing has to be said: Hitler savaged the Christian Church in Europe (formerly known as Christendom) - and the carpet bombing of the center cities of Germany, whatever the military justification may have been perceived to be, destroyed the old architecture of those cities. Including the churches. It was a radical act. I know, wars are radical. But I come down on the side of those who believe that bombing Dresden - and probably, most if not all carpet bombing of Germany - was substantially wasted effort and certainly didn’t help matters after the war. The same effort expended attacking fuel supplies would have done more damage to the Wehrmacht. Consider, if you will, the fact that Hitler’s Battle of the Bulge attack plan counted on capturing American fuel to sustain itself all the way to its objective. Intelligence confirmed that fuel limitation was the worst effect bombing had on the Wehrmacht - and yet Bomber Harris was fixated on bombing German cites instead of helping the American campaign against German fuel.On the flip side, consider that Patton had broken into the clear in France, and had the Germans on the run - but was prevented from continuing to obey the Principle of Pursuit by fuel starvation. IIRC that was due to diversion to the disastrous “Bridge to Far” plan and not due to lack of fuel arriving in Europe - but it illustrates the effect fuel supply has on your capabilities (and illustrates what I think is the intent of the “Global Warming” hoax).
It is also the case that Britain bombed German civilians first - and that Hitler’s response in attacking London actually gave the RAF a reprieve from attacks directly on the RAF which were perilously close to achieving their objective.
American bombing of Japan is an entirely different subject. Hard to justify, except that it did end the war with Japan, whereas historically carpet bombing in Germany is not what ended the war there. But that was really just the “shock and awe” effect of the A-bombs, without which the US would have had to fight on Japanese soil as in Germany. Or else settle for a negotiated peace short of that . . .
No it isn't. The first British civilian death from German bombing was caused on 16 March 1940. Not that this was the catalyst.
The bombing of cities in the Western theater started with the German bombing of Rotterdam on the 14th May 1940. This was explicitly a terror attack which had its desired effect of forcing the Dutch to capitulate.. "Fortress Holland" was forced to surrender due directly to the targeted bombing of its civilians. A point which was not lost on anyone at the time.
The day after this the British abandoned their previous extremely restrictive policy of bombing only military units and started to bomb industrial targets in the Ruhr. The inaccuracy of strategic bombing led to civilian deaths, but these deaths were not the aim of the bombing.
The first German bombs were dropped on London on August 24, 1940. They were almost certainly dropped in defiance of orders, but that didn't make much difference to the people underneath the bombs.
The British attacked the next night with a raid on Berlin, targeting Tempelhof airfield and the Siemens factories in Siemenstad. Hitler then declared (in a famous speech) that if the Royal Air Force dropped so many kilograms of bombs, that Germany would drop a hundred times as many - leading directly to the Blitz.
The whole process of wholesale German v British city bombing kicked off from there.