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I added the mention of Blackett's criticism because it's the sole example at the time, & because, without it, it appears the only view was in favor of dehousing. That's clearly not the case. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
About Warsaw: As a defended city in the direct front-line that refused calls to surrender it could legitimately be attacked under the Hague Convention Its attributed to Boog 2001, p. 361
Nevermind that it comes from dubious source(wrote for Junge Freiheit) and without attribution.It doesn't actually state that. The source claims that "by the last third of September the situation of Warsaw has changed;it was now a defended city". Something quite different from the claim that was based on this source. Warsaw was bombed from 1st September.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 20:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Preparations were made for a concentrated attack (Operation Wasserkante) by all bomber forces against targets in Warsaw.[38] However, possibly as a result of the plea from Roosevelt to avoid civilian casualties, Goering canceled the operation and prohibited the bombing of military and industrial targets within the Warsaw residential area called Praga.[39] A report made on 4 September by the French air attache in Warsaw stated clearly that so far the Germans had tried to hit only military and economic targets.[40] Warsaw was first attacked by German ground forces on 9 September and was put under siege on 13 September. As a defended city in the direct front-line that refused calls to surrender it could legitimately be attacked under the Hague Convention.
The report of the French air attache in Warsaw of 4 September 1939, submitted at the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals, expressedly stated that the Luftwaffe until then tried to attack only military and economic targets in the city. By the last third of September the situation of Warsaw had changed, it was now a defended city in the front line, as even the Brittish air-war historian Frankland has confirmed, as a city that, in spite of repeated calls, had refused to surrender and therefore, under the Hague Convention on Land Warfare, could legitimately be attacked. Gen. von Richthofen's earlier proposals for comprehensive bombing had been rejected from higher up. Nevertheless, the bombing of Warsaw on 25 September, carried out against military targets in preparation for the capture of the city, was marked by a great degree of inaccuracy because, with bomber formations being pulled back to protect Germany´s western frontier, the raid was largely performed by Ju-52 transport aircraft usuitabe for aimed bombing. Yet even Polish historians confirm that barely 3 percent of the total bombs were incendiaries, a mere 1/5 of the proportion of incendiaries to be later routinely carried by RAF bomber command in its raids on German cities. Finally, there was a further justification in international law for this bombing raid - the prospect of achieving an immediate military advantage, in this case the surrender of Poland.
There were no responses to the following - if no one has a source for accurate final figures, it is necessary to take the table down:
The table listing "Conventional bombing damage to large German cities in WWII" cites Arthur Harris' data from 1943-1945 as a source. 'Bomber' Harris' data, if I'm not mistaken, must have been based on photos taken from planes during and in the immedeate aftermath of air raids (i.e. in the dark and through smoke). They are preliminary results (see article 177 in Harris' book) and they don't necessariliy including all US efforts (only for Berlin there is a footnote on US participation). The estimates we have today (possibly based on the post-war Air Force surveys and/or local officials) are in some cases much higher, in fact some of these higher numbers are mentioned in the English entries or the more detailed German ones on the cities in question. Cologne city center was 95% destroyed by the end of the war, with the rest of the city not far behind. (Harris: 61%.) Conventional bombing was used on the cities to prepare for take-over long after Harris' campaigns, so that may be the main reason for the differences. I suggest we find numbers from a later source or remove the table for the time being. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jansch (talk • contribs) 17:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC) 00:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.110.116 ( talk)
report made on 4 September by the French air attache in Warsaw stated clearly that so far the Germans had tried to hit only military and economic targets. This again cited to Boog page 361.
I checked this. Boog indeed does mention 4th of September-while sourcing it to IMT chapter IX page 639.
I checked the IMT chapter IX and page 639(IMT trials are open for reading: http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Vol-IX.pdf). No mention of Warsaw. It's a discussion with Goering. The report is though mentioned by Goering's defender Otto Stahmer on page 689, however it gives the date of 14 September 1939. Tomasz Szarota gives more on the report which can be added. But for now however it seems that Boog either gave false date or it is a typo in the book with 1 missing before 4. All other sources give 14th September as date of the report, and the source Boog uses also gives 14th September.
Since this report is mentioned already, I would remove the incorrect information regarding 4th of September if nobody opposses it.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 13:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
This article is meant to be about strategic bombing yet there are mentions of terror scatted through the article as if the word is going out of fashion. It seems to be done on a tit for tat basis by various editors and I think that the article suffers because of it. For example what does the phrase "terror bombing" add to the sentence "In January 1944, a beleaguered Germany tried to strike a blow to British morale with terror bombing with Operation Steinbock."Surly the sentence in the lead of the Operation Steinbock would be more descriptive and useful "Between January and May 1944, a beleaguered Germany tried an offensive called Operation Steinbock intended to destroy British military and civilian targets in southern England"? -- PBS ( talk) 06:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
It is just one example I think there is too much emphasis on "terror bombing" in this article at the expense of description. What is the difference in "strike a blow to British morale" with "terror bombing" and "strike a blow to British morale" with "terror bombing"? --
PBS (
talk)
08:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
I am surprised we have nothing on this subject. (Similar sample article: Bombing of Japan). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Additional note: The R.A.F. famously mounted a series of 1,000-bomber attacks against large German cities, beginning with Cologne in 1942, with devastating results on the ground. Meanwhile, in the war against Germany's petroleum sources, a comparatively paltry force of 177 U.S. bombers was devoted to the largest raid on the Ploesti oil fields — Hitler's largest single source of oil — in 1943. Ploesti was a strategic failure (see: Operation Tidal Wave).
What do the numbers of planes involved in these missions say about the Western Allies' strategic priorities?
Sca ( talk) 21:38, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
What about allied strategic bombings in other countries than Germany and Japan. By exemple, americans bombings on targets in France before D-Day : Marseille (2000 deads), Nantes (1500 deads) and others (like the useless and devastating napalm bombing on civilian boroughs of Royan in 1945). I think there were such bombings on Rumania and Hungary too. I'd like to see that part, I'm not very fluent in english, so I let you do the job, but I know that it won't be easy because this topic has been for a long time a taboo even in France, despite the scars are still noticeable in a lot of cities. Felipeh | babla 20:33, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
- On 14 January 1943 directive (S.46239/?? A.C.A.S. Ops) gave priority to attacking U-boat pens of Lorient, St Nazaire, Brest and La Pallice on the western French coast. In line with the bombing of Genoa and Turin on 23 October 1942 and a speech by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill six days later, warning the Italian government that the RAF would continue bombing Italian cities while Italy remained an Axis power, a directive was issued on 17 January 1943 (S.46368/??? D.C.A.S. Ops) added to the bombing list of targets the Industrial centres of Northern Italy — Milan, Turin, Genoa and Spezia (citation give).
Given the earlier paragraphs that state that the Germans bombing of Britain was within the laws of war the paragraph that starts "Operation Abigail Rache ..." with its unattributed in text quote "first deliberate terror raid" IMHO makes the whole section read like a Nazi apologists contribution. -- PBS ( talk) 12:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
As always, we go by reliable sources, and they contradict each other. Some say the Bombing of Guernica was the first terror bombing by air; others say the town was a legitimate target, though the airplanes completely missed the railway and the arms factory. Barcelona was next; pure terror. Historian Donald E. Schmidt states plainly that the first terror bombing by air was the British bombing of residential Mannheim in February 1942. Professor Frederick Henry Gareau says that the Nazis "pioneered" terror bombing in Guernica. British control of rebellion in India and Mesopotamia from 1919 to the late '30s has been called terror by air, using primarily strafing raids but also bombs and gas. Sir Philip Game was said to be more brutal than his WWII peers in using air power against civilians in India, 1919. Similarly, the Italians in Libya (1923–1933) used terror by air as did the French and Spanish in Morocco in 1923–24. See To Destroy A City: Strategic Bombing And Its Human Consequences In World War 2, by Herman Knell. My point is that we have no firm agreement as to what was the first terror raid; the best we can do is describe the larger viewpoints and attribute them. Binksternet ( talk) 15:51, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
Hitler and his crew spent the better part of three years at a remote headquarters near Rastenburg (now Kętrzyn, Poland) in East Prussia. This HQ, the so-called Wolfsschanze, was a huge complex served by road, rail and airfields. (I've seen it.) Each Nazi bigwig had his own bunker. It was widely known among German government and military officials, who referred to it simply as “Rastenburg.” I find it hard to believe that the Western Allies were unaware of its existence through the entire war.
In her memoir Until the Final Hour, published in English translation in 2003, one of Hitler's secretaries, Traudl Junge, née Humps, writes that in late 1943 or early 1944, Hitler spoke repeatedly of the possibility of a devastating bomber attack on the Wolfsschanze by the Western Allies. She quotes Hitler as saying, "They know exactly where we are, and sometime they’re going to destroy everything here with carefully aimed bombs. I expect them to attack any day."
Junge notes that when Hitler’s entourage returned to the Wolfsschanze from an extended summer stay at the Berghof (residence) in July 1944, the previous small bunkers had been replaced by the Organisation Todt with "heavy, colossal structures" of reinforced concrete as defense against the feared air attack. She describes Hitler’s bunker, the largest, as "a positive fortress" containing "a maze of passages, rooms and halls." Junge writes that, in the period after the July 20 assassination attempt until Hitler finally left the Wolfsschanze for the last time in November 1944:
Presumably, the "single aircraft circling" high overhead was a British or American reconnaissance plane. But whether the Allies indeed knew of the Wolfsschanze's location and importance never has been revealed. I've never understood why they couldn't find it and bomb it to smithereens — rather than bombing cities (or dams). At least by 1944, if not considerably earlier, they had the capability of bombing such a target; witness the devasting R.A.F. attacks on nearby Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in August 1944.
Similar questions could be asked regarding the Berghof (residence), Hitler's Bavarian aerie, where his entourage spent long periods during the war. Junge also writes of repeated air-raid warnings there late in the war, but says the Allied planes, chiefly U.S. bombers based in Italy, flew on "to their destinations," i.e. German cities. It wasn't bombed until April 25, 1945, twelve days before the surrender of German forces on May 7. Why not?
Sca ( talk) 16:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
What concrete change is being suggested to improve the article, backed by what sources? ( Hohum @) 22:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I do not see any consensus here. Besides by the mid point in the war (after El Alamain and Stalingrad) Churchill an others recognised that Hitler was not necessarily an asset to the Axis powers and said so publicly:
...I am free to admit that we builded better than we knew in North Africa. The unexpected came to the aid of the design, and multiplied the results, for which we have to thank the military intuition of Cpl. Hitler.
The touch of the master hand and the same insensate obstinacy which condemned von Paulu's army to destruction at Stalingrad brought this new catastrophe to our enemies in Tunisia. We destroyed or captured considerably more than 250,000 of the enemy's best troops, together with vast masses of material.
Bonus from Hitler Nobody could count on such folly. They gave us, in the language of finance, a handsome bonus after a full divined
— Churchill in a speech to Congress on 21 May 1943. [3]
Also in practical terms -- the British were the only ones to have bunker busters/ earthquake bombs (Tallboy from mid 44 and the Grandslam from March 45) and the only aeroplane able to carry them (so the USAAF could not carry out such a strategy of targeting bunkers even if they had wanted to). The RAF had plenty of tactical targets to go after such as the Tirpitz, Submarine pens and physical communications infrastructure (such as railway tunnels and viaducts), without wasting such limited ordinance on speculative raids which could only be based on information hours or days old (on targets which would have been, until the last months of the European war, 100 of miles behind the front lines and heavily defended), and Bomber Harris, OC of RAF Bomber Command (and so commander of any bombers that would have been used for such an operation), considered anything that did not involved 1,000 bombers pounding the city centre of a German town a "panacea", and so would not have supported such an initiative. So I think the genesis of this proposal is based on the false premise that the Allies had the equipment and the will to want to hunt Hitler as the USAF hunted for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf wars. As for attacking command and control, all sides did that, but only at a tactical level, because during World War II strategic bombing was still a bludgeon rather than a rapier that it would become by the second Gulf war. -- PBS ( talk) 02:38, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Pardon my persistence, but I'd still like to know what the Western Allies knew about Rastenburg and the so-called " Wolf's Lair" HQ, and when they knew it. Sca ( talk) 17:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've put a dubious just after the sub paragraph that claims that bomber movements were seriously disrupted in preperation for Steinbock. This would presuppose night as well as daytime air superiority over france, and the low countries. I didn't think the allies achieved that till the spring? A citation would be good, indicating GAF bomber losses destroyed in transit to jumping off airfields, etc. For sure by Jan 44 the British air defence system was almost impenetrable without unacceptable losses to an attacker (the radical HE177 attack profile used in Steinbock proves that the GAF were grimly aware of that) So I have no issues with that part. Irondome ( talk) 20:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
Could someone please include this graph of Allied bombing target or create a new graph? http://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Germany342/BombingTonnage.GIF
I think it is important to visually show what the main targets were.
Please also replace the image in the start of the article. Bombing of the Astra Romana refinery is very much not representative of strategic bombing since the graph shows that less than 10% of the Allied bombing was on oil installations, while more than 60% of bombing was area bombing. Please use an image of bombing of residential areas to replace the refinery bombing with. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IkswejezreiM ( talk • contribs) 14:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
Note that Today's Featured Article (for March 25) concerns the Nazi-built Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, La Coupole and the Fortress of Mimoyecques in NE France, and says, "All three facilities were put out of action by the Allies' Operation Crossbow bombing campaign between August 1943 and August 1944."
I realize these targets were much, much closer to Allied airfields than was the Wolfsschanze, but the fact that they were so thoroughly ravaged by accurate bombing seems to show that a massive raid on Hitler's so-called Wolf's Lair might have been possible, or at least worth trying. As noted above, the RAF bombed Königsberg — only 45 miles from Rastenburg — with devastating effect in August 1944. Danzig, some 75 miles from Rastenburg, also was bombed by Allied and Soviet air forces late in the war.
The Western Allies, particularly the British, steadfastly refused to lend any encouragement to the German resistance circles plotting Hitler’s assassination, despite the plotters' multiple attempts at contacts. I cannot but suspect, and I tend to conclude, that the Allies similarly refused to consider killing Hitler because they believed only a total military defeat of Nazi Germany served their war aims. If that is the case, they ignored an opportunity to save several million human lives – lives lost in the last year of the war in Europe. This is just one more among countless examples of the dehumanization of war.
I believe they should have tried to kill the beast (and at least some of his rabid pack) in his "Lair."
Sca ( talk) 16:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Irondome and I are debating an edit on how the British in late 1940 thought they could win the war. I am using as source chapter 13 of Ralph Ingersoll's book Report on England, November 1940 (Simon & Schuster, 1940). Ingersoll was a well-known American journalist who visited Britain in October 1940 and met with Churchill, Bevin, Bracken, and other leading figures as well as many ordinary soldiers and civilians. Chapter 13 is called "The Hardest Questions", and the first paragraph is:
THE HARDEST questions to answer about the English are how they are going to win the war and what they are going to do when they've won it. The general belief in the government as well as in the Air Force is that it can and will be won by intensive bombing of Germany. It is recognized that this can be done only with American production of bombing planes and after the Empire pilot-training program is at least six months, possibly a year, older. The theory is that the industrial production of Germany can be crippled until Hitler hollers for help. The Greek show and the Middle East show are regarded as important but not crucial. But I don't think many people I have talked to would call me a liar if I said flatly that the heads of the British government do not know how the war is to be won. They simply propose to find out how and to win it. There was a great deal of talk about taking the offensive while I was there- somewhere in the Mediterranean, even in the north. But most of it was a bombing offensive on German industrial production.
In hindsight we know that British strategic bombing alone would not have been sufficient, any more than the Combined Bombing Offensive, but it seems reasonable that in late 1940—when the British had no realistic prospects of landing on the continent, and when "the bomber will always get through" had not been debunked—strategic bombing was the closest the British had to a war-winning strategy. Ylee ( talk) 03:39, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
I think that my comments here are off topic and if someone wants to remove them I will not object: Nuclear weapons were not the only weapons of mass destruction (WMD) developed in World War II. Pre-war and into the Blitz the British expected that poison weapons would be used. Gruinard Island was a testament to how much worse it could have been in the European theatre, and pound to a penny if the Germans had still been fighting in August 45 they would have been on the hot end of Little Boy. -- PBS ( talk) 23:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I think the data on the German bombing seems very inaccurate. They might very well have been within the letter of the law but Warsaw and Rotterdam far as I know were aimed with terrorization in mind -- all too often many people have a way of following the letter of a law while completely and totally gutting its spirit when they want to do soimething bad enough; likewise according to Arthur T. Harris, he actually said that other than Essen most of the city bombings weren't aimed at industrial targets at all; they were merely bonuses with the main targets being the inner cities and/or city center.
Likewise, Dresden which inevitably comes up was little different in terms of the objective (mass destruction, mass murder) than any of the other city bombings particularly from 1942 on. The only real difference was that the city had no air defenses (which actually is significant as it made it completely and unambiguously illegal), and with the exception of the first few terror raids (Mannheim, 1940) the crews were told very clearly that the city was being targeted with the intention of killing it and its occupants with little other in mind. This was attested to by a RAF medical officer named Harry O'Flanagan. His statements were consistent with other orders circulated the same day which more or less stated the city was the last built-up area that the Germans had left, that it was around the size of Mancherster, loaded with refugees and would be a place where the Germans would feel it the most. 69.127.45.17 ( talk) 18:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Greetings, I am confused about table showing % of bombed out area in japanese cities. Nara is among them but according to this : http://www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/Japan/Nara/ikaruga/ikaruga.htm Cities Nara, Kyoto and Kamakura were not bombed due to their cultural significance. Also this useful but unsourced article: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=94834 doesn't have Nara on bombed cities list. If Nara was indeed not bombed during ww2 then this table should either be removed or edited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.167.236.119 ( talk) 20:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Arch dude with this edit you have changed a perception into a fact.
From
Before World War II began, advances in aviation had led to a situation where groups of aircraft could devastate cities. This worrying development ... As British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, " The bomber will always get through".
To
Before World War II began, advances in aviation made groups of bombers capable of devastating cities. The new aircraft flew high enough that anti-aircraft guns were largely impotent and fast enough that fighters were unlikely to intercept them. As British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, " The bomber will always get through".
By that, I mean although the previous wording was unsatisfactory, the point it was making was that it was believed by British politicians, that given the tonnage of bombs dropped on England in World War I and the death rates coupled to that tonnage along with the use of poison gas bombs, that the number of deaths in another conflict would be something like that which it was later believed would occur in a nuclear exchange in the Cold War, and just as in the Cold War, MAD affected how British politicians and the public approached international relations in the 20s and 30s. So there was a worry, which 20/20 hindsight tends to blur (mixed up metaphor intended). The easiest way to see the panic of the time is to look at its literature such as H.G. Well's The Shape of Things to Come and the 30s film adaptation Things to Come. For what ever reasons (MAD?) poison gas was not used in Europe and the bombing devastation alone did not cause mega-deaths as had been feared before the war, but that does not make the contemporary worries any less real. -- PBS ( talk) 09:43, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
this sentence says unrestricted but the source only talks about indiscriminate. "The Luftwaffe also began eliminating strategic objectives and bombing cities and civilian population in Poland in an indiscriminate[13] and unrestricted aerial bombardment campaign." clearly the luftwaffe was not unrestricted. the bombing of warsaw for example was tactical, the city was within the war zone and warsaw was a polish fortified city with heavy polish military presence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.90.114.46 ( talk) 15:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
According to this, Russia engaged in strategic bombing of Germany and Finland during the war. Thus, Russia needs to be mentioned as a belligerent in the infobox and have a paragraph on it in the text. Cla68 ( talk) 23:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
There are two city lists. The European one has 25 cities the Japanese one around 75. I messed around with the positioning of the current Japanese list but it is too large even if it is put on the left with all the pictures on the right. I suggest that it is cut down to the 25 cities with the highs percentage of damage. If in the future the article expands then perhaps some more can be re-added but at the moment it is forcing some very amateurish looking formatting on the page.
If someone else knows of another suitable solution which does not involve reducing the numbers (drop down boxes are not acceptable) then please suggest or implement a solution. -- PBS ( talk) 20:45, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
The representatives of our Operational Research Section in Germany [after the war] were able to revise the measurement of the extent of devastation in German cities which we had obtained during the war from air photographs; these were taken under operational conditions and did not always give complete cover of the areas concerned. Seventy German cities were attacked by Bomber Command. Twenty-three of these had more than sixty per cent of their built up areas destroyed and 46 about half of their built-up areas destroyed. Thirty-one cities had more than five hundred acres, and many more of them vastly more than 500; thus Hamburg had 6200 acres, Berlin 6427—this includes about 1000 acres of destruction by American attacks—Dusseldorf, 2003, and Colonge 1944. Between one and two thousand acres were devastated in Dresden, Bremen, Duisburg, Essen, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hanover, Munich, Nuremberg, Mannheim-Ludwigshafen, and Stuttgart. As an indication of what this means it may be mentioned that London had about 600, Plymouth about 400, and Coventry just over 100 acres destroyed by enemy aircraft during the war.
— Bomber Harris
With the edit, at 00:56, 29 December 2013,I corrected the date for the first strategic bombing of Germany by the RAF from 12 to the 15, noting it was after the Rotterdam Blitz and included a source with the change. The date change was altered today, by an editor making their very first edit (if I were not assuming good faith I might assume that this was a sockpuppet edit), back to 12 May. with the comment "The first RAF raid on Germany was on the night of 11-12th May 1940"
The raids on Germany west of the Rhine prior to night of 15/16 May 1940 were tactical theatre interdiction raids. Here is a source the explains them in more detail:
Note its entry for the night of 15/16 May 1940:
15/16 May - 39 Wellingtons, 36 Hampdens and 24 Whitleys (99 aircraft in total) despatched to 16 targets in the vital Ruhr industrial area of Germany. 81 aircraft report bombing their primary or secondary objectives. 1 Wellington lost. 6 Wellingtons and 6 Whitleys also raided targets in Belgium without loss. These are the first Bomber Command raids to the east of the Rhine and mark the beginning of Bomber Command's Strategic Offensive.
This is in line with the Taylor source cited in the article that explains it was on the 15th that the British Cabinet gave the go-ahead for strategic bombing of Germany and the issuing of a new RAF directive. -- PBS ( talk) 18:59, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Closing discussion started by a sockpuppet of banned editor HarveyCarter. Binksternet ( talk) 17:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC) |
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It's important to mention why Hitler had to invade Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg - in order to avoid the Maginot Line. As France and the UK and all of the British Empire and Commonwealth apart from Eire had declared war on Germany, Hitler had to invade France in order to end the war and the economic blockade, and the only way to do so was by bypassing the Maginot Line. ( ChuckOvereasy ( talk) 20:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC))
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Edit history
As an experienced editor I would expect you to be familiar with the following but in case you are not: See WP:BRD and see WP:PROVEIT "Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation" -- It is up to you to provide sources for your additions -- PBS ( talk) 10:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
The following first stag at a topic that I feel was seriously lacking in this article, is being censored.
This is it.
~~Perhaps. I would avoid getting into cold war preparations, even if some WW2 activities continue beyond 1945. The U.S. wasn't on the receiving end of strategic bombing (unless you count Japanese bomber balloons). The section might get a warmer reception if it opens with the preparations performed by countries that were attacked. Check the rest of the article to see if there are bits and pieces that can be moved to this new section. Information on industrial countermeasures could also beef your proposed section. The civilian part of things isn't my area of expertise so I can't be of much help to you. I am watching this page, so I can help with edits.~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtgelt ( talk • contribs) 21:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (March 2014) |
During the 1940s and 1950s, neighborhoods such as Detroit, MI would practice blackout air raid drills. During this time, the city's Civil Defense workers would immediately activate the neighborhood air raid siren, and families would be required to do the following in order: 1. Shut off all appliances, such as stoves, ovens, furnaces; 2. Shut off valves for water and natural gas or propane, as well as disconnect electricity; 3. Close blackout curtains (plain black curtains that would block light from coming in or going out). This step was changed after the atomic age began, where white curtains began to be preferred as they reflect the thermal radiation of the bomb to a greater degree(see anti-flash white), black curtains were used in WWII to prevent any airborne enemies from seeing light from windows; 4. Get to a public shelter, such as a bomb shelter, or the household basement, and stay there until the local police or block warden dismissed the blackout. [1] [2]
In Germany, blockhouses were built in cities, such as Trier, these Hochbunker/ "high-rise" bunkers were a peculiarly German construction, with no equivalents of hochbunkers in the cities of the Allied countries. [3]
References
This section of the article is the only one that has a conclusion statement:
"On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September which officially ended World War II. Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbade Japan from nuclear armament."
I am not disputing that the above statement is a fact. I am suggesting that it is superfluous to this particular article. Note that the sections on the aerial bombing of every other nation in the rest of the article have no conclusive statements. The section on Italy does not end with their overthrow of Mussolini. The German section does not end with signing of an unconditional surrender. If you look at the article on submarine warfare,there is no conclusion statement.
The issue is, why is it here and only here in this context? The statement, especially since no other section on bombing has a similar conclusive statement, infers that the nuclear bombardment of Japan caused Japanese surrender. Inferring the cause and effect of Japanese surrender goes beyond the scope of this article.
I agree that nuclear bombs contributed to Japanese surrender. The bombs probably were their number one concern at the moment of decision. However, there are other contributors. These contributors and conditions are dealt with in Wiki article "The Surrender of Japan."
I highly recommend striking "On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September which officially ended World War II." The second sentence seems very awkward "Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbade Japan from nuclear armament." It probably should be reworded or dropped.
The other alternative is to write a conclusion for every nation. I recommend against that. The results of bombing campaigns is a highly contentious issue. Trying to draw such conclusions will undoubtedly open a can of worms. Again I see conclusion statements as being beyond the scope of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtgelt ( talk • contribs) 18:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi, In this tabels, where are presended percentage destroing, it concerns total destroyed buildings, or all that have been light, or medium destroyed? Bmp91 ( talk) 09:56, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
Closing discussion initiated by banned HarveyCarter. Binksternet ( talk) 17:56, 14 February 2015 (UTC) |
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The RAF began bombing Germany on 11 May 1940, before the Rotterdam Blitz. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-military-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html ( TaylorLaundry ( talk) 13:39, 14 February 2015 (UTC))
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I'm at a loss to understand how one word on the miniscule scale of the Farman raid on Berlin is "POV-pushing". Anybody who has bothered to look at the scale of any bombing mission on any city should realize one bomber has a trivial effect. "Non-negligible"? Compared to what? To not being bombed at all, yes; to being bombed by Bomber Command in 1944, it's a joke. The Doolittle mission against Tokyo dropped 16 tons of bombs, & it's considered insignificant in its actual effect. Elevating this attack to an exalted status simply for being first (or being French, which, judging by the source, is probable) is POV--& unwarranted. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 11:21, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
The article is "Strategic bombing during World War II", a raid by a single bomber is out of scope. It should not be in the article. ( Hohum @) 17:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I believe it is out of WP:Scope for this article on Strategic Bombing in WWII to include an attack by a single bomber. It's trivia. I could live with a single short non WP:Peacock sentence though. ( Hohum @) 23:44, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
It's trivia because it was unimportant. I support Irondome's suggestion. ( Hohum @) 18:02, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
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I changed the words "a wing of B-29 bombers" to reflect the actual number used. Whoever wrote that doesn't know what a wing of bombers is. Hildenja ( talk) 15:44, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
"Before World War II began, advances in aviation made groups of bombers capable of devastating cities. The new aircraft flew high enough that anti-aircraft guns were largely impotent, and approximately as fast as the fighters that were in use at the time and would seek to intercept them. "
I'm not sure this uncited content is accurate. Before WW2, the combined bomber forces of all air forces in the world would barely have been capable of 'devastating' a city. Maximum efforts early in WW2 resulted in fairly limited damage. It seems to me it was only in the second half of the war that bombers were big enough, numerous enough and effective enough to devastate a city. Of course the word 'devastate' is doing a lot of work here.
Also, I imagine a lot of WW2 aircrew would have been very pleased to learn that their aircraft were largely immune to flak and were as fast as enemy fighters.
Should we perhaps re-word this paragraph to tone it down a bit? DMorpheus2 ( talk) 18:39, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
The infobox states that United Kingdom alone lost 160,000 airmen in Europe. Is this really correct? I have seen the number before, but only for United Kingdom and United States combined. / EriFr ( talk) 20:47, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I have removed these sentences:
'Furthermore, the bombing was against well-defined targets, albeit in the middle of the city, and would have assisted the advancing German Army'
well defined as in every house in the area?
'In legal terms, the attack was performed against a defended part of a city vital for the military objectives and in the front-line, and the bombing respected Article 25 to 27 of the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare.[1]'
The Hague convention was held before bombers even existed. It is hard to imagine that this applies here.
This reeks of revisionism. The fact that the Germans threatened to bomb Utrecht goes directly against these two statements. And reveals their real intentions was not to destroy specific military targets, but rather intimidation.
The reason why Rotterdam was bombed is simple The schlieffen plan needed to be executed as quickly as possible. And the Gemans needed to get to Paris. Destroying a city would send a clear message to others and aid their advance. Rotterdam had the best port facilities in Europe it needed to be captured or destroyed in the first days of operation fall gelb or the allies might be able to use it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.172.137.53 ( talk) 02:24, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I took a quick look at the relevant wikipedia articles of the Hague convention and the article on the Rotterdam blitz itself. Based on them I seriously doubt the sources used in those sentences. Article 27 of the Hague convention seems to be applied way to liberally by the sources. The Germans decided to carpet bomb instead of using Stukas and flattened many monuments which is specified in no. 27. This can be attested by the other sources in the Rotterdam blitz article. But even more amazingly the wikipedia article you have linked to even specifies the Rotterdam blitz as one of the raids in which the treaty was dishonored.
The lead sentence for this section stated that bombing occurred from 1942 to 1945. While true, this is very misleading, as described in the detailed subsections. There was a single raid (Doolittle raid) in 1942, and then ineffective raids from Chinese airfields in June to December 1944. Thus, the enormous damage almost all occurred in in January to August, 1945, less than eight months rather than the 4-years implied by the old wording. I did not add references here because this is a summary of the rest of the section, which is referenced. - Arch dude ( talk) 01:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
They sound plausible, but I can't verify the two claims: 1) "Polish historians Paweł Puzio and Ryszard Jasiński, had no targetable industry and no military units were stationed there, the bombing of Frampol has been described as an experiment to test the German tactics and weapons effectiveness." and 2) "In his book, Eyes on the Sky, Wolfgang Schreyer wrote". First, and more worryingly, I can't even find out that such historians exist or that people with such names (Paweł Puzio and Ryszard Jasiński) wrote a book about Frampol. I checked worldcat, and the only hit for Puzio is a co-authored historical book on World War I, and as for Jasinski, he has several books about agriculture. Second, the book by Schreyer cited is likely only available in German (Augen am Himmel, [7]), so the translation of the title is OR, and the quote doesn't give page numbers). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
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When General Curtiss LeMay took over air operations, he re-ordered priority from fighters defending bombers to eliminating Nazi fighters That is seeking air superiority. Fighters were sent before and after bomber groups because even superior German fighters were vulnerable on landing and takeoff (Nazi fighters had limited range, aka loiter time). Shjacks45 ( talk) 05:29, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Kurfurst added some Hinchliffe references in 2009, but none of the citations were ever complete. It's not clear which Hinchliffe book was the source.
What can be done about this? Binksternet ( talk) 09:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
" workers' and civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory during World War II," it says in the introductory paragraph. This is redundant. Workers' housing is civilian housing even if it were, say, dormitories attached to munitions factories -- a claim which is not being made here.
This whole article needs a more balanced treatment of Allied terror-bombing aimed at German civilians. I'm not currently up to date on the subject, but I remember reading plausible RAND corporation stuff on it back in the 1960s. Did Churchill believe that the German bombing of Poland and Holland in 1939 legalized Allied area bombing of German cities? What was and is the law on the topic? I don't know, and I'd like to.
David Lloyd-Jones ( talk) 02:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
". The Luftwaffe was blamed for not warding off the attacks and confidence in the Nazi regime fell by 14 percent."
Morale is not numerable and so cannot be percenticized. ("percentilificated"? 😎🤦♂️) Even claims of it having a direction, and of that direction being believably identified, improving or declining, are speculative, personal, and entirely subjective.
The reports in which Germans claim after the fact to have been demoralized are meaningless without context. I am perfectly willing to believe unattributed, context-free, claims that a housewife was afraid of bombers. If she is said to have added that this made her a less enthusiastic Nazi I think anybody would want some evidence. Sadly, it is in the interest of both the bombers and the bombed to agree that such loss of blood-lust, jingoism, and worship of Hitler came about. Both sides naturally feel that their enemies' agreement strengthens their cases.
David Lloyd-Jones ( talk) 02:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
No effort to examine the effects of bombing was ever made. [1]
I've listened to many hours of conversation with Freeman Dyson, some of this concerning his time as a young mathematical prodigy—under the guidance of C. P. Snow—calculating the cost–benefit of every aspect of the British bombing campaign.
The main tenor of his observations: the great secret of the war was that mass bombs dropped from the air almost never hit anything, Pearl Harbor being the one notable exception, an exception that induced excessive excitement for the strategy forever afterward. Sometimes you got "lucky" due to air conditions and burned an entire city down (Hamburg, Dresden).
Hamburg had been a viable military target, associated with U-boat production.
Here are a few of my notes concerning Dresden.
Dresden. February 1945. German defenses largely disintegrated. We could destroy whatever we wished.
Dresden for us was nothing special, it wasn't a particularly heavy attack, just one of many. We knew Dresden was a historical city, but that was true of many other places, and it wasn't unusual.
They didn't expect the firestorm. There were only two in the war, and it probably depended on local weather conditions.
Dresden was clearly wanton destruction, happened so late in the war, had no impact on the outcome of the war. None of these attacks by this point had any point. Mainly bureaucratic inertia.
In any case, extremely smart people within this group performed extremely detailed calculations of many detailed aspects of the bombing campaign.
I recall that Dyson was rather dismissive of the effectiveness of this program toward the end, in cost–benefit terms. What's annoying about Dyson is that he tends to swoop in, make a precise, but limited comment and then swoop out again. Whatever he actually says is usually gold, but he mainly delivers this gold in extremely tiny flecks.
What the statement we presently have in the article probably amounts to: no august committee was convened to generate a public report after the fact.
Dyson also said that since the bombing itself (by the end) was accomplishing so little of strategic importance, he mainly worked on how to accomplish these meager outcomes with the least possible loss of British aviators and servicemen. — MaxEnt 00:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
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I added the mention of Blackett's criticism because it's the sole example at the time, & because, without it, it appears the only view was in favor of dehousing. That's clearly not the case. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
About Warsaw: As a defended city in the direct front-line that refused calls to surrender it could legitimately be attacked under the Hague Convention Its attributed to Boog 2001, p. 361
Nevermind that it comes from dubious source(wrote for Junge Freiheit) and without attribution.It doesn't actually state that. The source claims that "by the last third of September the situation of Warsaw has changed;it was now a defended city". Something quite different from the claim that was based on this source. Warsaw was bombed from 1st September.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 20:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Preparations were made for a concentrated attack (Operation Wasserkante) by all bomber forces against targets in Warsaw.[38] However, possibly as a result of the plea from Roosevelt to avoid civilian casualties, Goering canceled the operation and prohibited the bombing of military and industrial targets within the Warsaw residential area called Praga.[39] A report made on 4 September by the French air attache in Warsaw stated clearly that so far the Germans had tried to hit only military and economic targets.[40] Warsaw was first attacked by German ground forces on 9 September and was put under siege on 13 September. As a defended city in the direct front-line that refused calls to surrender it could legitimately be attacked under the Hague Convention.
The report of the French air attache in Warsaw of 4 September 1939, submitted at the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals, expressedly stated that the Luftwaffe until then tried to attack only military and economic targets in the city. By the last third of September the situation of Warsaw had changed, it was now a defended city in the front line, as even the Brittish air-war historian Frankland has confirmed, as a city that, in spite of repeated calls, had refused to surrender and therefore, under the Hague Convention on Land Warfare, could legitimately be attacked. Gen. von Richthofen's earlier proposals for comprehensive bombing had been rejected from higher up. Nevertheless, the bombing of Warsaw on 25 September, carried out against military targets in preparation for the capture of the city, was marked by a great degree of inaccuracy because, with bomber formations being pulled back to protect Germany´s western frontier, the raid was largely performed by Ju-52 transport aircraft usuitabe for aimed bombing. Yet even Polish historians confirm that barely 3 percent of the total bombs were incendiaries, a mere 1/5 of the proportion of incendiaries to be later routinely carried by RAF bomber command in its raids on German cities. Finally, there was a further justification in international law for this bombing raid - the prospect of achieving an immediate military advantage, in this case the surrender of Poland.
There were no responses to the following - if no one has a source for accurate final figures, it is necessary to take the table down:
The table listing "Conventional bombing damage to large German cities in WWII" cites Arthur Harris' data from 1943-1945 as a source. 'Bomber' Harris' data, if I'm not mistaken, must have been based on photos taken from planes during and in the immedeate aftermath of air raids (i.e. in the dark and through smoke). They are preliminary results (see article 177 in Harris' book) and they don't necessariliy including all US efforts (only for Berlin there is a footnote on US participation). The estimates we have today (possibly based on the post-war Air Force surveys and/or local officials) are in some cases much higher, in fact some of these higher numbers are mentioned in the English entries or the more detailed German ones on the cities in question. Cologne city center was 95% destroyed by the end of the war, with the rest of the city not far behind. (Harris: 61%.) Conventional bombing was used on the cities to prepare for take-over long after Harris' campaigns, so that may be the main reason for the differences. I suggest we find numbers from a later source or remove the table for the time being. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jansch (talk • contribs) 17:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC) 00:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.110.116 ( talk)
report made on 4 September by the French air attache in Warsaw stated clearly that so far the Germans had tried to hit only military and economic targets. This again cited to Boog page 361.
I checked this. Boog indeed does mention 4th of September-while sourcing it to IMT chapter IX page 639.
I checked the IMT chapter IX and page 639(IMT trials are open for reading: http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Vol-IX.pdf). No mention of Warsaw. It's a discussion with Goering. The report is though mentioned by Goering's defender Otto Stahmer on page 689, however it gives the date of 14 September 1939. Tomasz Szarota gives more on the report which can be added. But for now however it seems that Boog either gave false date or it is a typo in the book with 1 missing before 4. All other sources give 14th September as date of the report, and the source Boog uses also gives 14th September.
Since this report is mentioned already, I would remove the incorrect information regarding 4th of September if nobody opposses it.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 13:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
This article is meant to be about strategic bombing yet there are mentions of terror scatted through the article as if the word is going out of fashion. It seems to be done on a tit for tat basis by various editors and I think that the article suffers because of it. For example what does the phrase "terror bombing" add to the sentence "In January 1944, a beleaguered Germany tried to strike a blow to British morale with terror bombing with Operation Steinbock."Surly the sentence in the lead of the Operation Steinbock would be more descriptive and useful "Between January and May 1944, a beleaguered Germany tried an offensive called Operation Steinbock intended to destroy British military and civilian targets in southern England"? -- PBS ( talk) 06:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
It is just one example I think there is too much emphasis on "terror bombing" in this article at the expense of description. What is the difference in "strike a blow to British morale" with "terror bombing" and "strike a blow to British morale" with "terror bombing"? --
PBS (
talk)
08:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
I am surprised we have nothing on this subject. (Similar sample article: Bombing of Japan). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Additional note: The R.A.F. famously mounted a series of 1,000-bomber attacks against large German cities, beginning with Cologne in 1942, with devastating results on the ground. Meanwhile, in the war against Germany's petroleum sources, a comparatively paltry force of 177 U.S. bombers was devoted to the largest raid on the Ploesti oil fields — Hitler's largest single source of oil — in 1943. Ploesti was a strategic failure (see: Operation Tidal Wave).
What do the numbers of planes involved in these missions say about the Western Allies' strategic priorities?
Sca ( talk) 21:38, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
What about allied strategic bombings in other countries than Germany and Japan. By exemple, americans bombings on targets in France before D-Day : Marseille (2000 deads), Nantes (1500 deads) and others (like the useless and devastating napalm bombing on civilian boroughs of Royan in 1945). I think there were such bombings on Rumania and Hungary too. I'd like to see that part, I'm not very fluent in english, so I let you do the job, but I know that it won't be easy because this topic has been for a long time a taboo even in France, despite the scars are still noticeable in a lot of cities. Felipeh | babla 20:33, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
- On 14 January 1943 directive (S.46239/?? A.C.A.S. Ops) gave priority to attacking U-boat pens of Lorient, St Nazaire, Brest and La Pallice on the western French coast. In line with the bombing of Genoa and Turin on 23 October 1942 and a speech by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill six days later, warning the Italian government that the RAF would continue bombing Italian cities while Italy remained an Axis power, a directive was issued on 17 January 1943 (S.46368/??? D.C.A.S. Ops) added to the bombing list of targets the Industrial centres of Northern Italy — Milan, Turin, Genoa and Spezia (citation give).
Given the earlier paragraphs that state that the Germans bombing of Britain was within the laws of war the paragraph that starts "Operation Abigail Rache ..." with its unattributed in text quote "first deliberate terror raid" IMHO makes the whole section read like a Nazi apologists contribution. -- PBS ( talk) 12:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
As always, we go by reliable sources, and they contradict each other. Some say the Bombing of Guernica was the first terror bombing by air; others say the town was a legitimate target, though the airplanes completely missed the railway and the arms factory. Barcelona was next; pure terror. Historian Donald E. Schmidt states plainly that the first terror bombing by air was the British bombing of residential Mannheim in February 1942. Professor Frederick Henry Gareau says that the Nazis "pioneered" terror bombing in Guernica. British control of rebellion in India and Mesopotamia from 1919 to the late '30s has been called terror by air, using primarily strafing raids but also bombs and gas. Sir Philip Game was said to be more brutal than his WWII peers in using air power against civilians in India, 1919. Similarly, the Italians in Libya (1923–1933) used terror by air as did the French and Spanish in Morocco in 1923–24. See To Destroy A City: Strategic Bombing And Its Human Consequences In World War 2, by Herman Knell. My point is that we have no firm agreement as to what was the first terror raid; the best we can do is describe the larger viewpoints and attribute them. Binksternet ( talk) 15:51, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
Hitler and his crew spent the better part of three years at a remote headquarters near Rastenburg (now Kętrzyn, Poland) in East Prussia. This HQ, the so-called Wolfsschanze, was a huge complex served by road, rail and airfields. (I've seen it.) Each Nazi bigwig had his own bunker. It was widely known among German government and military officials, who referred to it simply as “Rastenburg.” I find it hard to believe that the Western Allies were unaware of its existence through the entire war.
In her memoir Until the Final Hour, published in English translation in 2003, one of Hitler's secretaries, Traudl Junge, née Humps, writes that in late 1943 or early 1944, Hitler spoke repeatedly of the possibility of a devastating bomber attack on the Wolfsschanze by the Western Allies. She quotes Hitler as saying, "They know exactly where we are, and sometime they’re going to destroy everything here with carefully aimed bombs. I expect them to attack any day."
Junge notes that when Hitler’s entourage returned to the Wolfsschanze from an extended summer stay at the Berghof (residence) in July 1944, the previous small bunkers had been replaced by the Organisation Todt with "heavy, colossal structures" of reinforced concrete as defense against the feared air attack. She describes Hitler’s bunker, the largest, as "a positive fortress" containing "a maze of passages, rooms and halls." Junge writes that, in the period after the July 20 assassination attempt until Hitler finally left the Wolfsschanze for the last time in November 1944:
Presumably, the "single aircraft circling" high overhead was a British or American reconnaissance plane. But whether the Allies indeed knew of the Wolfsschanze's location and importance never has been revealed. I've never understood why they couldn't find it and bomb it to smithereens — rather than bombing cities (or dams). At least by 1944, if not considerably earlier, they had the capability of bombing such a target; witness the devasting R.A.F. attacks on nearby Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in August 1944.
Similar questions could be asked regarding the Berghof (residence), Hitler's Bavarian aerie, where his entourage spent long periods during the war. Junge also writes of repeated air-raid warnings there late in the war, but says the Allied planes, chiefly U.S. bombers based in Italy, flew on "to their destinations," i.e. German cities. It wasn't bombed until April 25, 1945, twelve days before the surrender of German forces on May 7. Why not?
Sca ( talk) 16:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
What concrete change is being suggested to improve the article, backed by what sources? ( Hohum @) 22:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I do not see any consensus here. Besides by the mid point in the war (after El Alamain and Stalingrad) Churchill an others recognised that Hitler was not necessarily an asset to the Axis powers and said so publicly:
...I am free to admit that we builded better than we knew in North Africa. The unexpected came to the aid of the design, and multiplied the results, for which we have to thank the military intuition of Cpl. Hitler.
The touch of the master hand and the same insensate obstinacy which condemned von Paulu's army to destruction at Stalingrad brought this new catastrophe to our enemies in Tunisia. We destroyed or captured considerably more than 250,000 of the enemy's best troops, together with vast masses of material.
Bonus from Hitler Nobody could count on such folly. They gave us, in the language of finance, a handsome bonus after a full divined
— Churchill in a speech to Congress on 21 May 1943. [3]
Also in practical terms -- the British were the only ones to have bunker busters/ earthquake bombs (Tallboy from mid 44 and the Grandslam from March 45) and the only aeroplane able to carry them (so the USAAF could not carry out such a strategy of targeting bunkers even if they had wanted to). The RAF had plenty of tactical targets to go after such as the Tirpitz, Submarine pens and physical communications infrastructure (such as railway tunnels and viaducts), without wasting such limited ordinance on speculative raids which could only be based on information hours or days old (on targets which would have been, until the last months of the European war, 100 of miles behind the front lines and heavily defended), and Bomber Harris, OC of RAF Bomber Command (and so commander of any bombers that would have been used for such an operation), considered anything that did not involved 1,000 bombers pounding the city centre of a German town a "panacea", and so would not have supported such an initiative. So I think the genesis of this proposal is based on the false premise that the Allies had the equipment and the will to want to hunt Hitler as the USAF hunted for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf wars. As for attacking command and control, all sides did that, but only at a tactical level, because during World War II strategic bombing was still a bludgeon rather than a rapier that it would become by the second Gulf war. -- PBS ( talk) 02:38, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Pardon my persistence, but I'd still like to know what the Western Allies knew about Rastenburg and the so-called " Wolf's Lair" HQ, and when they knew it. Sca ( talk) 17:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've put a dubious just after the sub paragraph that claims that bomber movements were seriously disrupted in preperation for Steinbock. This would presuppose night as well as daytime air superiority over france, and the low countries. I didn't think the allies achieved that till the spring? A citation would be good, indicating GAF bomber losses destroyed in transit to jumping off airfields, etc. For sure by Jan 44 the British air defence system was almost impenetrable without unacceptable losses to an attacker (the radical HE177 attack profile used in Steinbock proves that the GAF were grimly aware of that) So I have no issues with that part. Irondome ( talk) 20:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
Could someone please include this graph of Allied bombing target or create a new graph? http://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Germany342/BombingTonnage.GIF
I think it is important to visually show what the main targets were.
Please also replace the image in the start of the article. Bombing of the Astra Romana refinery is very much not representative of strategic bombing since the graph shows that less than 10% of the Allied bombing was on oil installations, while more than 60% of bombing was area bombing. Please use an image of bombing of residential areas to replace the refinery bombing with. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IkswejezreiM ( talk • contribs) 14:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
Note that Today's Featured Article (for March 25) concerns the Nazi-built Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, La Coupole and the Fortress of Mimoyecques in NE France, and says, "All three facilities were put out of action by the Allies' Operation Crossbow bombing campaign between August 1943 and August 1944."
I realize these targets were much, much closer to Allied airfields than was the Wolfsschanze, but the fact that they were so thoroughly ravaged by accurate bombing seems to show that a massive raid on Hitler's so-called Wolf's Lair might have been possible, or at least worth trying. As noted above, the RAF bombed Königsberg — only 45 miles from Rastenburg — with devastating effect in August 1944. Danzig, some 75 miles from Rastenburg, also was bombed by Allied and Soviet air forces late in the war.
The Western Allies, particularly the British, steadfastly refused to lend any encouragement to the German resistance circles plotting Hitler’s assassination, despite the plotters' multiple attempts at contacts. I cannot but suspect, and I tend to conclude, that the Allies similarly refused to consider killing Hitler because they believed only a total military defeat of Nazi Germany served their war aims. If that is the case, they ignored an opportunity to save several million human lives – lives lost in the last year of the war in Europe. This is just one more among countless examples of the dehumanization of war.
I believe they should have tried to kill the beast (and at least some of his rabid pack) in his "Lair."
Sca ( talk) 16:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Irondome and I are debating an edit on how the British in late 1940 thought they could win the war. I am using as source chapter 13 of Ralph Ingersoll's book Report on England, November 1940 (Simon & Schuster, 1940). Ingersoll was a well-known American journalist who visited Britain in October 1940 and met with Churchill, Bevin, Bracken, and other leading figures as well as many ordinary soldiers and civilians. Chapter 13 is called "The Hardest Questions", and the first paragraph is:
THE HARDEST questions to answer about the English are how they are going to win the war and what they are going to do when they've won it. The general belief in the government as well as in the Air Force is that it can and will be won by intensive bombing of Germany. It is recognized that this can be done only with American production of bombing planes and after the Empire pilot-training program is at least six months, possibly a year, older. The theory is that the industrial production of Germany can be crippled until Hitler hollers for help. The Greek show and the Middle East show are regarded as important but not crucial. But I don't think many people I have talked to would call me a liar if I said flatly that the heads of the British government do not know how the war is to be won. They simply propose to find out how and to win it. There was a great deal of talk about taking the offensive while I was there- somewhere in the Mediterranean, even in the north. But most of it was a bombing offensive on German industrial production.
In hindsight we know that British strategic bombing alone would not have been sufficient, any more than the Combined Bombing Offensive, but it seems reasonable that in late 1940—when the British had no realistic prospects of landing on the continent, and when "the bomber will always get through" had not been debunked—strategic bombing was the closest the British had to a war-winning strategy. Ylee ( talk) 03:39, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
I think that my comments here are off topic and if someone wants to remove them I will not object: Nuclear weapons were not the only weapons of mass destruction (WMD) developed in World War II. Pre-war and into the Blitz the British expected that poison weapons would be used. Gruinard Island was a testament to how much worse it could have been in the European theatre, and pound to a penny if the Germans had still been fighting in August 45 they would have been on the hot end of Little Boy. -- PBS ( talk) 23:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I think the data on the German bombing seems very inaccurate. They might very well have been within the letter of the law but Warsaw and Rotterdam far as I know were aimed with terrorization in mind -- all too often many people have a way of following the letter of a law while completely and totally gutting its spirit when they want to do soimething bad enough; likewise according to Arthur T. Harris, he actually said that other than Essen most of the city bombings weren't aimed at industrial targets at all; they were merely bonuses with the main targets being the inner cities and/or city center.
Likewise, Dresden which inevitably comes up was little different in terms of the objective (mass destruction, mass murder) than any of the other city bombings particularly from 1942 on. The only real difference was that the city had no air defenses (which actually is significant as it made it completely and unambiguously illegal), and with the exception of the first few terror raids (Mannheim, 1940) the crews were told very clearly that the city was being targeted with the intention of killing it and its occupants with little other in mind. This was attested to by a RAF medical officer named Harry O'Flanagan. His statements were consistent with other orders circulated the same day which more or less stated the city was the last built-up area that the Germans had left, that it was around the size of Mancherster, loaded with refugees and would be a place where the Germans would feel it the most. 69.127.45.17 ( talk) 18:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Greetings, I am confused about table showing % of bombed out area in japanese cities. Nara is among them but according to this : http://www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/Japan/Nara/ikaruga/ikaruga.htm Cities Nara, Kyoto and Kamakura were not bombed due to their cultural significance. Also this useful but unsourced article: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=94834 doesn't have Nara on bombed cities list. If Nara was indeed not bombed during ww2 then this table should either be removed or edited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.167.236.119 ( talk) 20:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Arch dude with this edit you have changed a perception into a fact.
From
Before World War II began, advances in aviation had led to a situation where groups of aircraft could devastate cities. This worrying development ... As British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, " The bomber will always get through".
To
Before World War II began, advances in aviation made groups of bombers capable of devastating cities. The new aircraft flew high enough that anti-aircraft guns were largely impotent and fast enough that fighters were unlikely to intercept them. As British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, " The bomber will always get through".
By that, I mean although the previous wording was unsatisfactory, the point it was making was that it was believed by British politicians, that given the tonnage of bombs dropped on England in World War I and the death rates coupled to that tonnage along with the use of poison gas bombs, that the number of deaths in another conflict would be something like that which it was later believed would occur in a nuclear exchange in the Cold War, and just as in the Cold War, MAD affected how British politicians and the public approached international relations in the 20s and 30s. So there was a worry, which 20/20 hindsight tends to blur (mixed up metaphor intended). The easiest way to see the panic of the time is to look at its literature such as H.G. Well's The Shape of Things to Come and the 30s film adaptation Things to Come. For what ever reasons (MAD?) poison gas was not used in Europe and the bombing devastation alone did not cause mega-deaths as had been feared before the war, but that does not make the contemporary worries any less real. -- PBS ( talk) 09:43, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
this sentence says unrestricted but the source only talks about indiscriminate. "The Luftwaffe also began eliminating strategic objectives and bombing cities and civilian population in Poland in an indiscriminate[13] and unrestricted aerial bombardment campaign." clearly the luftwaffe was not unrestricted. the bombing of warsaw for example was tactical, the city was within the war zone and warsaw was a polish fortified city with heavy polish military presence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.90.114.46 ( talk) 15:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
According to this, Russia engaged in strategic bombing of Germany and Finland during the war. Thus, Russia needs to be mentioned as a belligerent in the infobox and have a paragraph on it in the text. Cla68 ( talk) 23:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
There are two city lists. The European one has 25 cities the Japanese one around 75. I messed around with the positioning of the current Japanese list but it is too large even if it is put on the left with all the pictures on the right. I suggest that it is cut down to the 25 cities with the highs percentage of damage. If in the future the article expands then perhaps some more can be re-added but at the moment it is forcing some very amateurish looking formatting on the page.
If someone else knows of another suitable solution which does not involve reducing the numbers (drop down boxes are not acceptable) then please suggest or implement a solution. -- PBS ( talk) 20:45, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
The representatives of our Operational Research Section in Germany [after the war] were able to revise the measurement of the extent of devastation in German cities which we had obtained during the war from air photographs; these were taken under operational conditions and did not always give complete cover of the areas concerned. Seventy German cities were attacked by Bomber Command. Twenty-three of these had more than sixty per cent of their built up areas destroyed and 46 about half of their built-up areas destroyed. Thirty-one cities had more than five hundred acres, and many more of them vastly more than 500; thus Hamburg had 6200 acres, Berlin 6427—this includes about 1000 acres of destruction by American attacks—Dusseldorf, 2003, and Colonge 1944. Between one and two thousand acres were devastated in Dresden, Bremen, Duisburg, Essen, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hanover, Munich, Nuremberg, Mannheim-Ludwigshafen, and Stuttgart. As an indication of what this means it may be mentioned that London had about 600, Plymouth about 400, and Coventry just over 100 acres destroyed by enemy aircraft during the war.
— Bomber Harris
With the edit, at 00:56, 29 December 2013,I corrected the date for the first strategic bombing of Germany by the RAF from 12 to the 15, noting it was after the Rotterdam Blitz and included a source with the change. The date change was altered today, by an editor making their very first edit (if I were not assuming good faith I might assume that this was a sockpuppet edit), back to 12 May. with the comment "The first RAF raid on Germany was on the night of 11-12th May 1940"
The raids on Germany west of the Rhine prior to night of 15/16 May 1940 were tactical theatre interdiction raids. Here is a source the explains them in more detail:
Note its entry for the night of 15/16 May 1940:
15/16 May - 39 Wellingtons, 36 Hampdens and 24 Whitleys (99 aircraft in total) despatched to 16 targets in the vital Ruhr industrial area of Germany. 81 aircraft report bombing their primary or secondary objectives. 1 Wellington lost. 6 Wellingtons and 6 Whitleys also raided targets in Belgium without loss. These are the first Bomber Command raids to the east of the Rhine and mark the beginning of Bomber Command's Strategic Offensive.
This is in line with the Taylor source cited in the article that explains it was on the 15th that the British Cabinet gave the go-ahead for strategic bombing of Germany and the issuing of a new RAF directive. -- PBS ( talk) 18:59, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Closing discussion started by a sockpuppet of banned editor HarveyCarter. Binksternet ( talk) 17:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC) |
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It's important to mention why Hitler had to invade Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg - in order to avoid the Maginot Line. As France and the UK and all of the British Empire and Commonwealth apart from Eire had declared war on Germany, Hitler had to invade France in order to end the war and the economic blockade, and the only way to do so was by bypassing the Maginot Line. ( ChuckOvereasy ( talk) 20:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC))
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Edit history
As an experienced editor I would expect you to be familiar with the following but in case you are not: See WP:BRD and see WP:PROVEIT "Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation" -- It is up to you to provide sources for your additions -- PBS ( talk) 10:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
The following first stag at a topic that I feel was seriously lacking in this article, is being censored.
This is it.
~~Perhaps. I would avoid getting into cold war preparations, even if some WW2 activities continue beyond 1945. The U.S. wasn't on the receiving end of strategic bombing (unless you count Japanese bomber balloons). The section might get a warmer reception if it opens with the preparations performed by countries that were attacked. Check the rest of the article to see if there are bits and pieces that can be moved to this new section. Information on industrial countermeasures could also beef your proposed section. The civilian part of things isn't my area of expertise so I can't be of much help to you. I am watching this page, so I can help with edits.~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtgelt ( talk • contribs) 21:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (March 2014) |
During the 1940s and 1950s, neighborhoods such as Detroit, MI would practice blackout air raid drills. During this time, the city's Civil Defense workers would immediately activate the neighborhood air raid siren, and families would be required to do the following in order: 1. Shut off all appliances, such as stoves, ovens, furnaces; 2. Shut off valves for water and natural gas or propane, as well as disconnect electricity; 3. Close blackout curtains (plain black curtains that would block light from coming in or going out). This step was changed after the atomic age began, where white curtains began to be preferred as they reflect the thermal radiation of the bomb to a greater degree(see anti-flash white), black curtains were used in WWII to prevent any airborne enemies from seeing light from windows; 4. Get to a public shelter, such as a bomb shelter, or the household basement, and stay there until the local police or block warden dismissed the blackout. [1] [2]
In Germany, blockhouses were built in cities, such as Trier, these Hochbunker/ "high-rise" bunkers were a peculiarly German construction, with no equivalents of hochbunkers in the cities of the Allied countries. [3]
References
This section of the article is the only one that has a conclusion statement:
"On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September which officially ended World War II. Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbade Japan from nuclear armament."
I am not disputing that the above statement is a fact. I am suggesting that it is superfluous to this particular article. Note that the sections on the aerial bombing of every other nation in the rest of the article have no conclusive statements. The section on Italy does not end with their overthrow of Mussolini. The German section does not end with signing of an unconditional surrender. If you look at the article on submarine warfare,there is no conclusion statement.
The issue is, why is it here and only here in this context? The statement, especially since no other section on bombing has a similar conclusive statement, infers that the nuclear bombardment of Japan caused Japanese surrender. Inferring the cause and effect of Japanese surrender goes beyond the scope of this article.
I agree that nuclear bombs contributed to Japanese surrender. The bombs probably were their number one concern at the moment of decision. However, there are other contributors. These contributors and conditions are dealt with in Wiki article "The Surrender of Japan."
I highly recommend striking "On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September which officially ended World War II." The second sentence seems very awkward "Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbade Japan from nuclear armament." It probably should be reworded or dropped.
The other alternative is to write a conclusion for every nation. I recommend against that. The results of bombing campaigns is a highly contentious issue. Trying to draw such conclusions will undoubtedly open a can of worms. Again I see conclusion statements as being beyond the scope of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtgelt ( talk • contribs) 18:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi, In this tabels, where are presended percentage destroing, it concerns total destroyed buildings, or all that have been light, or medium destroyed? Bmp91 ( talk) 09:56, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
Closing discussion initiated by banned HarveyCarter. Binksternet ( talk) 17:56, 14 February 2015 (UTC) |
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The RAF began bombing Germany on 11 May 1940, before the Rotterdam Blitz. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-military-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html ( TaylorLaundry ( talk) 13:39, 14 February 2015 (UTC))
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I'm at a loss to understand how one word on the miniscule scale of the Farman raid on Berlin is "POV-pushing". Anybody who has bothered to look at the scale of any bombing mission on any city should realize one bomber has a trivial effect. "Non-negligible"? Compared to what? To not being bombed at all, yes; to being bombed by Bomber Command in 1944, it's a joke. The Doolittle mission against Tokyo dropped 16 tons of bombs, & it's considered insignificant in its actual effect. Elevating this attack to an exalted status simply for being first (or being French, which, judging by the source, is probable) is POV--& unwarranted. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 11:21, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
The article is "Strategic bombing during World War II", a raid by a single bomber is out of scope. It should not be in the article. ( Hohum @) 17:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I believe it is out of WP:Scope for this article on Strategic Bombing in WWII to include an attack by a single bomber. It's trivia. I could live with a single short non WP:Peacock sentence though. ( Hohum @) 23:44, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
It's trivia because it was unimportant. I support Irondome's suggestion. ( Hohum @) 18:02, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
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I changed the words "a wing of B-29 bombers" to reflect the actual number used. Whoever wrote that doesn't know what a wing of bombers is. Hildenja ( talk) 15:44, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
"Before World War II began, advances in aviation made groups of bombers capable of devastating cities. The new aircraft flew high enough that anti-aircraft guns were largely impotent, and approximately as fast as the fighters that were in use at the time and would seek to intercept them. "
I'm not sure this uncited content is accurate. Before WW2, the combined bomber forces of all air forces in the world would barely have been capable of 'devastating' a city. Maximum efforts early in WW2 resulted in fairly limited damage. It seems to me it was only in the second half of the war that bombers were big enough, numerous enough and effective enough to devastate a city. Of course the word 'devastate' is doing a lot of work here.
Also, I imagine a lot of WW2 aircrew would have been very pleased to learn that their aircraft were largely immune to flak and were as fast as enemy fighters.
Should we perhaps re-word this paragraph to tone it down a bit? DMorpheus2 ( talk) 18:39, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
The infobox states that United Kingdom alone lost 160,000 airmen in Europe. Is this really correct? I have seen the number before, but only for United Kingdom and United States combined. / EriFr ( talk) 20:47, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I have removed these sentences:
'Furthermore, the bombing was against well-defined targets, albeit in the middle of the city, and would have assisted the advancing German Army'
well defined as in every house in the area?
'In legal terms, the attack was performed against a defended part of a city vital for the military objectives and in the front-line, and the bombing respected Article 25 to 27 of the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare.[1]'
The Hague convention was held before bombers even existed. It is hard to imagine that this applies here.
This reeks of revisionism. The fact that the Germans threatened to bomb Utrecht goes directly against these two statements. And reveals their real intentions was not to destroy specific military targets, but rather intimidation.
The reason why Rotterdam was bombed is simple The schlieffen plan needed to be executed as quickly as possible. And the Gemans needed to get to Paris. Destroying a city would send a clear message to others and aid their advance. Rotterdam had the best port facilities in Europe it needed to be captured or destroyed in the first days of operation fall gelb or the allies might be able to use it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.172.137.53 ( talk) 02:24, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I took a quick look at the relevant wikipedia articles of the Hague convention and the article on the Rotterdam blitz itself. Based on them I seriously doubt the sources used in those sentences. Article 27 of the Hague convention seems to be applied way to liberally by the sources. The Germans decided to carpet bomb instead of using Stukas and flattened many monuments which is specified in no. 27. This can be attested by the other sources in the Rotterdam blitz article. But even more amazingly the wikipedia article you have linked to even specifies the Rotterdam blitz as one of the raids in which the treaty was dishonored.
The lead sentence for this section stated that bombing occurred from 1942 to 1945. While true, this is very misleading, as described in the detailed subsections. There was a single raid (Doolittle raid) in 1942, and then ineffective raids from Chinese airfields in June to December 1944. Thus, the enormous damage almost all occurred in in January to August, 1945, less than eight months rather than the 4-years implied by the old wording. I did not add references here because this is a summary of the rest of the section, which is referenced. - Arch dude ( talk) 01:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
They sound plausible, but I can't verify the two claims: 1) "Polish historians Paweł Puzio and Ryszard Jasiński, had no targetable industry and no military units were stationed there, the bombing of Frampol has been described as an experiment to test the German tactics and weapons effectiveness." and 2) "In his book, Eyes on the Sky, Wolfgang Schreyer wrote". First, and more worryingly, I can't even find out that such historians exist or that people with such names (Paweł Puzio and Ryszard Jasiński) wrote a book about Frampol. I checked worldcat, and the only hit for Puzio is a co-authored historical book on World War I, and as for Jasinski, he has several books about agriculture. Second, the book by Schreyer cited is likely only available in German (Augen am Himmel, [7]), so the translation of the title is OR, and the quote doesn't give page numbers). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
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When General Curtiss LeMay took over air operations, he re-ordered priority from fighters defending bombers to eliminating Nazi fighters That is seeking air superiority. Fighters were sent before and after bomber groups because even superior German fighters were vulnerable on landing and takeoff (Nazi fighters had limited range, aka loiter time). Shjacks45 ( talk) 05:29, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Kurfurst added some Hinchliffe references in 2009, but none of the citations were ever complete. It's not clear which Hinchliffe book was the source.
What can be done about this? Binksternet ( talk) 09:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
" workers' and civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory during World War II," it says in the introductory paragraph. This is redundant. Workers' housing is civilian housing even if it were, say, dormitories attached to munitions factories -- a claim which is not being made here.
This whole article needs a more balanced treatment of Allied terror-bombing aimed at German civilians. I'm not currently up to date on the subject, but I remember reading plausible RAND corporation stuff on it back in the 1960s. Did Churchill believe that the German bombing of Poland and Holland in 1939 legalized Allied area bombing of German cities? What was and is the law on the topic? I don't know, and I'd like to.
David Lloyd-Jones ( talk) 02:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
". The Luftwaffe was blamed for not warding off the attacks and confidence in the Nazi regime fell by 14 percent."
Morale is not numerable and so cannot be percenticized. ("percentilificated"? 😎🤦♂️) Even claims of it having a direction, and of that direction being believably identified, improving or declining, are speculative, personal, and entirely subjective.
The reports in which Germans claim after the fact to have been demoralized are meaningless without context. I am perfectly willing to believe unattributed, context-free, claims that a housewife was afraid of bombers. If she is said to have added that this made her a less enthusiastic Nazi I think anybody would want some evidence. Sadly, it is in the interest of both the bombers and the bombed to agree that such loss of blood-lust, jingoism, and worship of Hitler came about. Both sides naturally feel that their enemies' agreement strengthens their cases.
David Lloyd-Jones ( talk) 02:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
No effort to examine the effects of bombing was ever made. [1]
I've listened to many hours of conversation with Freeman Dyson, some of this concerning his time as a young mathematical prodigy—under the guidance of C. P. Snow—calculating the cost–benefit of every aspect of the British bombing campaign.
The main tenor of his observations: the great secret of the war was that mass bombs dropped from the air almost never hit anything, Pearl Harbor being the one notable exception, an exception that induced excessive excitement for the strategy forever afterward. Sometimes you got "lucky" due to air conditions and burned an entire city down (Hamburg, Dresden).
Hamburg had been a viable military target, associated with U-boat production.
Here are a few of my notes concerning Dresden.
Dresden. February 1945. German defenses largely disintegrated. We could destroy whatever we wished.
Dresden for us was nothing special, it wasn't a particularly heavy attack, just one of many. We knew Dresden was a historical city, but that was true of many other places, and it wasn't unusual.
They didn't expect the firestorm. There were only two in the war, and it probably depended on local weather conditions.
Dresden was clearly wanton destruction, happened so late in the war, had no impact on the outcome of the war. None of these attacks by this point had any point. Mainly bureaucratic inertia.
In any case, extremely smart people within this group performed extremely detailed calculations of many detailed aspects of the bombing campaign.
I recall that Dyson was rather dismissive of the effectiveness of this program toward the end, in cost–benefit terms. What's annoying about Dyson is that he tends to swoop in, make a precise, but limited comment and then swoop out again. Whatever he actually says is usually gold, but he mainly delivers this gold in extremely tiny flecks.
What the statement we presently have in the article probably amounts to: no august committee was convened to generate a public report after the fact.
Dyson also said that since the bombing itself (by the end) was accomplishing so little of strategic importance, he mainly worked on how to accomplish these meager outcomes with the least possible loss of British aviators and servicemen. — MaxEnt 00:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
References
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