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‘Icannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’
said one woman who lived through the initial German raids on London
during the second world war. This woman’s ambivalent reaction to
having a bomb rip through her bedroom typified the shocking reality of
a different type of war to any that had ever been fought before.

For as Richard Overy makes eminently clear in his extraordinary and
far-reaching history of Europe’s bombing war, this was the first time
civilians actually became a part of the front line. The cause of this
was the advent of aerial bombardment, which, Overy says, exposed ‘the
democratic nature of total war, which insisted that all citizens had a
part to play.’

The idea that bombing could demoralise a population and cause a
government crisis had been a topic of hot discussion during the
interwar years. In a lengthy preamble Overy, who has written numerous
histories of the second world war, focuses on Bulgaria as a microcosm
of the issues which defined the wider ‘strategic’ bombing war in
Europe:

The bombing of Bulgaria was Churchill’s idea, and he remained the
driving force behind the argument that air raids would provide a quick
and relatively cheap way of forcing the country to change sides.

Fine in theory, but in practice things worked rather differently. The
‘political dividend’ Churchill sought to achieve in the early months
of 1944 was offset by a high level of civilian casualties ‘which
undermined the prestige of both the United States and Britain in the
eyes of the Bulgarian people’. Overy notes that while bombing
contributed to the collapse of any pro-German consensus and
strengthened the hand of opposition political parties it did not
result in a change of government until September 1944 when the Soviets
introduced an administration dominated by the Bulgarian communist
party.

Martialling his facts with dexterity Overy argues that bombing in
Europe was never a war-winning strategy and invariably caused more
harm than good. In what is the first full narrative of the bombing war
in Europe Overy’s scope is incredibly broad and well-researched, also
highly readable. He tackles not only the wider conflict with Germany
but little-known bombing wars in France and Italy, which in both cases
resulted in civilian casualties the equal of the Blitz.

He has also had access to ‘two new sources’ from the former Soviet
archives, which include German air force documents covering the Blitz
and others which throw new light on Germany’s bombings of Moscow,
Leningrad and Stalingrad — an area which up until now has had very
little coverage.

Overy traces the origins of the bombing war back to 10 May 1940, the
same day that Germany began its attack on the West and Churchill
replaced Chamberlain as British prime minister. ‘Chamberlain had
always opposed the use of bombing against urban targets,’ writes
Overy, ‘but Churchill had no conscientious or legal objections.’
Indeed, already as Minister of Munitions in 1917, Churchill had been
in favour of an independent air force and a policy of long-range
bombing against German industrial targets.

Up until Churchill’s appointment as prime minister both Germany and
Britain had stuck to a pledge not to attack targets in each other’s
cities where civilians were at risk. Overy dismisses the long-held
belief ‘firmly rooted in the British public mind’ that Hitler
initiated the trend for indiscriminate bombings. Instead, he says, the
decision to take the gloves off was Churchill’s, ‘because of the
crisis in the Battle of France, not because of German air raids [over
Britain].’

Ethical restraints which had been imposed at the start of the war
became slowly eroded as a result of Britain’s decision to initiate
‘unrestricted’ bombing of targets located in Germany’s urban areas. In
a fascinating chapter entitled ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Overy
suggests that Britain’s Bomber Command developed its tactics for
concentrated ‘area bombing’ and the wide use of incendiary bombs by
observing the destruction Germany wrought on London during the Blitz.

The RAF altered its strategy of focusing on precise targets when it
saw how effectively the German air force attacked clusters of targets
in industrial and commercial areas. However, Overy says that under Sir
Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris’s stewardship Bomber Command took things a
grisly step further by deliberately targeting German workers to reduce
industrial output.

For much of the war, combined British, Commonwealth and American
forces lacked the necessary technology to develop the long-range heavy
bombers they needed to launch attacks on Germany’s main industrial
hubs. The bombing war only really escalated in 1943 when Harris
finally felt ready to launch three major offensives: the
Ruhr-Rhineland in late spring and summer, Hamburg in July and Berlin
in the autumn.

It was the second of these, codenamed ‘Operation Gomorrah’, that
resulted in the single largest loss of civilian life in one city
throughout the European war. Some 37,000 people died and over 60 per
cent of Hamburg’s houses and apartments were destroyed by a blaze of
incendiary bombs. Overy cites a German doctor who says he had to
estimate the number of dead by measuring the ash left on the floor.

It was only near the end of the war, and the bombing of Dresden which
killed approximately 25,000 people in a few hours, that there was any
kind of outcry against Allied strategy, which incidentally had failed
in any way to stem Germany’s production of armaments (there was a
three-fold increase between 1941 and 1944). Yet after the war the
British Bombing Survey Unit’s assessment was positively damning and
criticised almost ‘all phases of Bomber Command’s activities except
the final phase against oil and communications targets [in Germany].’

Though he is never quick to judge Overy does not disagree with postwar
interpretations which saw ‘the final flourish of bombing against a
weakened enemy, with overwhelming force, as merely punitive, neither
necessary, nor, as a result, morally justified’. Looking desperately
among the historical rubble for a positive response to a campaign
which saw roughly 50 per cent of bomber pilots lose their lives during
airborne sorties, Overy, suggests that

bombing was at its most significant as a political gambit in the
earlier part of the war when the British government used the RAF as a
means to win support among the occupied populations and from the US by
showing that Britain was capable of fighting back.

It is small consolation for what the esteemed Canadian economist John
Kenneth Galbraith described as ‘one of the greatest, perhaps the
greatest, miscalculation of the war.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hitler-didn-t-start-indiscriminate-bombings-churchill-did/