Plans for the Luftwaffe if the war continued ...

In early 1941 the Luftwaffe launched attacks on Britain's ports and armaments industry, primarily the aircraft industry. A January 14th 1941 list of targets ranks ports in two categories (naval depots in rank II) and similarly towns or cities supporting the aircraft industry into two ranks. Between January and May 1941 there were 61 major raids on ports and 9 major raids on armament targets. There were also numerous 'storangriffe' or nuisance raids against these targets. Despite the inaccuracy and the resultant loss of civilian life, these raids were still part of a coordinated campaign against the British aircraft industry and in support of a blockade. For example Liverpool was singled out for attack as it fell into both categories, being in the opinion of the planners the principal port for the importation of 'aircraft supplies' from the US. About 4,000 people would be killed by the bombing of Liverpool and the surrounding areas, 2,895 in the first week of May alone.

The heaviest raids were reserved for London and were described, at the time, by the Germans, as 'vengeance attacks'. The heaviest came on 16th April when 712 aircraft dropped 1,026 tonnes of bombs across London along with 4,252 canisters of incendiaries. The Luftwaffe had, in Harris' words, 'sowed the wind'.

Arguments about who did what to whom first are pointless. Civilian casualties were inevitable in all bombed States anyway. They actually occurred at a level far lower than that anticipated before the war, even at the height of the Anglo-American campaigns against Germany and the US campaign against Japan in 1944/5. There are many reasons for this. I would suggest wading through 'Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-45' edited by Baldoli, Knapp and Overy for anyone seeking an explanation. It is not a light read.

Cheers

Steve

Going through the "this day in Europe " exercise in NJs thread, there was no bombing of German cities (where there was a likelihood of civ casualties at least) until May 1940. There was no aerial mining permitted until the Germans started it. The RAF was quite okay flying around the colonies machine gunning and bombing outlaws and disgruntled tribesmen in the empire, but drew a line about bombing civilians in Europe, at least in WWII for quite a while

Germany had already started targeting citizens directly from Spain on. They saw it as a legitimate means of waging war. They bombed Warsaw to provide incentive to the Poles to surrender. They bombed Namsos with a warning that any Norwegian city that co-operated with the allies would suffer the same,,,,deliberately targetting civilians for maximum casualties. They bombed Rotterdam to force the Dutch surrender, again hoping to kill as many civislians as possible. They threatened to level Boulogne unless the remaining defenders surrendered unconditionally, and then proceeded to conduct several massacres anyway.

At sea, instead of the customary practice of tethering their mines and then declaring an area mined, the Germsans decided it would be a good idea to mine the home waters and not tell them, and then, to add insult to injury, not bother to tether their mines. All in flagrant disregard to treaty obligations they had willingly signed up to

Well before the British started to get nasty, the Germans were already investing heavily in terrror bombing and other questionable practices. It beggars belief to think the British would sit around forever and fight the war with handicaps like observing the rules of war for bombing, when clearly their opponents thought nothing of ignoring the accepted rules of war.

Bombing 'semi-civilised' tribesmen (in the expression used at the time) was a cheap and efficient means of policing the Empire. Even then it was customary to issue a warning to allow the intended targets to move out of their town or village prior to the bombing. A distinct racial line was drawn between who might or might not be bombed.

John Slessor, Director of Plans in the Air Ministry in the late 1930s, gave us a brutal explanation of the policy in his memoir.

"Whether the offender concerned was an Indian Frontier tribesman, a nomad Arab of the northern deserts, a Morelli slave trader on the border of Kenya, or a web footed savage of the swamps of southern Sudan, there are always some essentials without which he cannot obtain his livelihood."

An example would be the bombing of the kraal of the rebel chieftain Ipumbu of the Ukuambi tribe in Ovamboland (South Africa) in 1938. Three aircraft attacked, destroying the kraal and driving off the unfortunate chieftain's cattle. Emphasis was put on the moral as well as material effects of such bombing. We should note that all those who held high office in the RAF during WW2 had shared in the practice of using bomber aircraft for coercive bombing in the policing of the Empire.

The British did draw a line at gassing their imperial subjects from the air, something another Axis power, Italy, notably did not.

Cheers

Steve

parsifal said:

At sea, instead of the customary practice of tethering their mines and then declaring an area mined, the Germsans decided it would be a good idea to mine the home waters and not tell them, and then, to add insult to injury, not bother to tether their mines. All in flagrant disregard to treaty obligations they had willingly signed up to

Well before the British started to get nasty, the Germans were already investing heavily in terrror bombing and other questionable practices. It beggars belief to think the British would sit around forever and fight the war with handicaps like observing the rules of war for bombing, when clearly their opponents thought nothing of ignoring the accepted rules of war.

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It really depends on what the goals are ... and my bigger arguments against terror bombing (or use of terror in general) is not on moral grounds or even ethical ones (though there's plenty there), but actual strategic and tactical efficacy both in the short term and long term. (ie in terms of fostering post-war stability)

If the goal is to destroy the enemy without any concern for the long term consequences, then sure ... the 'total war' strategy makes sense. If you actually care about avoiding the propagation of further (potentially worse) conflict, then far more calculated and precise planning is necessary. (like actually avoiding the cold war ... and avoiding repeating the mistakes of WWI) Though even there, I'm not certain that terror bombing was particularly useful (by any side) compared to resources being alternatively focused.

There's also the ethical issue of minimizing harm in general, destruction of life, culture, and history (art, literature, architecture, etc -obviously some of which the Nazi book burnings had destroyed, though others saved by plunder and hoarding of works that likely would have been otherwise destroyed). Those issues obviously become even more difficult once scorched earth tactics are being employed by the enemy as well, complicating invasion plans if the goal is capture without massive destruction of architecture/infrastructure and technology (let alone the more ethically motivated art/etc).

And of course pragmatic compromises to all of that, but rather few of the more destructive strategies and tactics used in WWII were particularly pragmatic, not that Britain was the worst offender there by any stretch. (Germany never regained counsel or leadership on the level of Bismark, and America didn't have leadership on par with Teddy Roosevelt -who'd certainly have been amazing to see in officer for either of the World Wars ... that is if there'd even been a second had he been in office during the first, and Churchill does indeed seem to have been one of the commanders of WWII to genuinely come closer to that level)

Churchill certainly seemed to see a great many more of the post-war problems than did his contemporaries, particularly relating to Stalin and Soviet expansion and solidification of power. Of course, ending the war in Europe earlier by allowing more conditional terms of surrender on the Western Front alone would certainly fit more into the pragmatic category on top of plenty of other motives making it appealing to the Western Allies as well as Germany.

The merits and demerits of the bombing campaigns of WW2, particularly the huge investment in the Anglo-American campaigns against Germany will be endlessly debated. Whether they were 'value for money' or not is not the point for me. It is also a rather modern retrospective view by which those literally fighting for their national survival (in the case of the British) would be completely baffled.

The destruction wrought on Germany, and particularly that wrought on the Luftwaffe by the Americans, certainly led to the conclusion of the war against Germany sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
The cost to the Germans, the destruction of their air force (the one unequivocal victory of the campaigns), the investment in anti aircraft defences, dispersal and/or fortification of essential industries, loss of production, be it to absenteeism (a serious problem under the bombing) or the actual destruction of plant, destruction of the transport infrastructure, etc, etc, were significant. The cost to the British and Americans was high both in blood and treasure, but they could afford it, just about in the case of the British.

The British had a good model on which to base their assumptions about bombing. In 1940/41 the Luftwaffe killed 44,652 people in Britain. The British estimated that all the bombing never caused a loss in excess of 5% of current production. Other research on urban activity rates, based on electrical consumption, confirmed that with the exception of Coventry (which took six weeks to recover from the November 1940 attack) cities suffered only a temporary loss of 10-25% of activity but recovered at a rate of three percentage points per day. That is they recovered in three to eight days. The longest reported interruption to water supply in 1941 was 24 hours, the longest delay to a rail service likewise just one day.
It is with this knowledge that the British planned their massive attacks on German cities.

Cheers

Steve

It's also the matter that the Germans never focused resources on defenses nearly to the extent the British had and maintained offensive planning, production, and operations far longer than was good for their own people or military (or ideological) aspirations of holding onto the territory captured in Western Europe. England was certainly far more sensible in all those respects at the leadership/command level.

The point of contention is more regarding whether British night bombing passed up on potential technical advances that would have allowed more effective (logistically viable) precision bombing as the war progressed and potential further changes in doctrine following those advancements. But all of that is better suited for another discussion anyway. (lack of emphasis on jet bomber development would also be relevant there, but again a separate discussion)

kool kitty89 said:

It's also the matter that the Germans never focused resources on defenses nearly to the extent the British had and maintained offensive planning, production, and operations far longer than was good for their own people or military (or ideological) aspirations of holding onto the territory captured in Western Europe. England was certainly far more sensible in all those respects at the leadership/command level.

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This is a very good point. The resources devoted to defence by the British were staggering. By the end of 1940 civil defence services employed more than 700,000 full time and 1.5 million part time men and women who might otherwise have been engaged in other war time activities. The cost of sustaining a civil defence economy was a major item of national and local government expenditure, just as it would be for the Germans, later.
There was a diversion of military resources too. Fighter Command expanded its units in mainland Britain from 59 squadrons in July 1940 to 75 by January 1941 and 99 by September 1941. This was a major factor in the inability to send the most advanced fighters, principally Spitfires, overseas. One has only to look at the aircraft on strength at Middle and Far East commands to see this. There was also the investment in men and materiel in anti aircraft defences and the developing radar network.
Britain's offensive war effort was curtailed by the German bombing campaign in 1940 and the expectation of its renewal in 1941.

In February 1944 a Luftwaffe academy lecturer examined the bombing of Britain since 1941. Thanks to the solid British defences the only option for Luftwaffe bombers and fighter bombers based in France was to mount hit and run raids on the English south coast. Even these had fallen from an average of 15 a month in 1942 to 5 a month in late 1943. The average crew only survived 16 to 18 of these missions. He concluded, 'it's plain to see that in this way England's war economy and morale cannot be hit in any war decisive way'.

Despite this the Luftwaffe did mount the 'Baedecker' raids in the summer of 1942. They may have annoyed the British but the reality was that just 439 tons of bombs were dropped on target for the 30 raids and strategically they were unimportant.

In early 1944 the Luftwaffe launched the even more disastrous 'Steinbock' raids. Pelz scraped together 524 aircraft (462 serviceable) for this campaign. The first attack took place on 21st January 1944. Losses ran consistently between 5% and 8% so that by the time of the last raid on Falmouth, on 29th May, Pelz was down to just 107 aircraft. Again, unless you were one of the 890 people killed in London, the raids were irrelevant in the larger context of the war.

Cheers

Steve