Strategic bombing and the economy of Nazi Germany. The myth of the strategic bombing of Germany by Anglo-American aircraft

Of all aspects of the application of air power, strategic bombing seems to have been the subject of the most heated debate. The beginning of these discussions dates back to 1920, when the Italian aviation specialist Douai suggested that victory in the war could only be achieved through long-range aerial bombing; the ground forces and navy are “merely auxiliary means used for transport purposes and the occupation of territory.” This view existed until, after the war, some American senior officers suggested that strategic atomic bombing, carried out on a large scale, could go a long way toward winning the war. The starting point of this point of view was Clausewitz’s position that war is a continuation of politics. This view suggests that the devastating bombing of Germany and Japan created fertile ground for the growth of communist sentiment in these countries and made them more hostile to the democratic Anglo-Saxon countries that destroyed their cities. Let's try to look into the future. Let us assume that the European continent or any part of Europe was captured by the Red Army. Will they ever be able to politically reunite with the West if their liberation is tied to the atomic bombing? There are many other controversial issues regarding strategic bombing. Should the strategic bomber force be independent from the Army and Navy and even from the rest of the Air Force? Should it report directly to the Department of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or should it be an integral part of the Air Force, regardless of its form of organization? What is the best way to plan the sequence of bombing targets? When is it better to carry out daytime bombing and when is it better to carry out night bombing? Etc.

Aviation strategists until 1950 disagreed widely about the meaning of strategic bombing. The advent of atomic and hydrogen bombs and modern strategic bombers with a range of up to 8 thousand km, increased by refueling aircraft in the air, made the governments and command of each country clearly understand that strategic bombing can be the main means of achieving victory in a war or stabilizing an international politicians. Currently, bombers from their bases can reach and attack targets anywhere in the world, delivering bomb attacks of unprecedented force.

The destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo and Berlin was horrendous, but it was insignificant compared to what could be caused by concentrated, repeated bombings of increasingly powerful atomic bombs.

During the period between the two world wars, the role of strategic bombing was repeatedly assessed and re-evaluated at the air headquarters of various countries. Probably the most significant, fundamental change occurred in the Soviet air force in the thirties. Although the Russians initially viewed aviation as a means to serve the tactical requirements of the army and navy, the USSR was the first state in history to begin building a large air fleet of four-engine bombers. These were TB-3 bombers designed by Tupolev. By 1935, there were already several hundred of them in the Soviet air force. However, the need to build transport aircraft to transport airborne troops, the failure to create prototypes of four-, six- and eight-engine bomber-transport aircraft in the thirties, the need to rapidly expand fighter aircraft to counter the potential threat from Japan and Germany - all this delayed construction of Soviet strategic bomber aircraft. The origins of the Russian heavy bomber date back to the First World War, when Russia temporarily pioneered the use of a four-engine heavy bomber, which even then had almost the same wingspan as the Flying Fortress bomber of the Second World War.

In 1942, a new change occurred in the Soviet air force. Stalin was concerned about the heavy losses of tactical aviation in the first months of the war with Germany. He wanted, like the British, to strike back directly at Germany at a time when the Red Army was retreating and did not set as its immediate goal the return of the vast territories captured by the Germans in the Baltic republics, eastern Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine. That is why Stalin instructed General (later Marshal) Golovanov to reorganize heavy bomber aviation and unite it into an independent organizational unit subordinate to the State Defense Committee. This new organization, called ADD (long-range aviation), was weak in combat terms. Most of the aircraft were twin-engine American B-25 Mitchell aircraft, supplied under Lend-Lease, and Soviet IL-4 aircraft. Later, several squadrons of four-engine Soviet-made PE-8 aircraft appeared. These aircraft, however, had insufficient range and carrying capacity, and lacked radar aids for navigation and blind bombing. The actions of these aircraft against the oil fields in Romania, as well as several raids they carried out on Berlin, Budapest and Warsaw, caused very little concern to the German air defense. The German air force did develop night fighter aircraft to combat Soviet bombers, but it was never of great importance.

However, starting in 1945, the Soviet air force did everything possible to create a strong strategic bomber force. In the West, many were amazed by the speed with which the aircraft were built, which were an exact copy of the American B-29 Superfortres bombers that made an emergency landing on the territory of the USSR in the period 1946-1947. By 1950, the Soviet Air Force had several hundred four-engine Tupolev-designed TU-4 bombers. Engine power, bomb load and range were significantly increased. Ilyushin, the leading designer of tactical bombers, was switched to designing a heavy jet bomber. The Ilyushin-16 four-engine jet bomber was not put into service, but Ilyushin participated in the design of another heavy four-engine jet bomber. In 1949, the first atomic bomb exploded in the USSR.

In a published report on air power at Pacific Ocean Major Alexander Seversky, one of the leading proponents of strategic bombing, stated that the United States, like Japan, did not plan to use airpower at the beginning of the war except in the interests of providing close air support. This statement applies entirely to the Japanese, who intended to subordinate their air force to the tactical requirements of the army and navy. For the Americans, things were different. Mitchell was not the only person to point out the need to create a heavy bomber force independent of the US Army. He was simply the most popular of the “prophets.” Generals Arnold and Spaatz believed in the future of strategic bomber power, but they were in the US Army Air Forces and were confused by the increasing demands and priorities of the ground forces. It is significant that the US Army budget in 1940 provided for appropriations that were insufficient even to create one squadron of Flying Fortress bombers. In his book The Bomber Offensive, Lord Harris pointed out that the United States adopted “the basic idea of ​​the strategic use of air power from the British air force.” Many US Air Force officers, as well as British Air Force officers, would disagree with Seversky’s assertion that the tactical use of aviation was “the only goal initially envisioned by the military leaders of all the warring states.”

Sunken bomber. Photo: Matt Kieffer

England's priority in developing a general concept of strategic bombing is generally recognized. Before the end of the First World War, General Smuts presented a serious report to the War Cabinet in which he suggested that military aviation would soon be used for strategic purposes. The reason for this assumption was the daytime raids of German aircraft on London in June - July 1917. These raids caused great concern as the air defenses were unprepared to deal with them. In his report, Smuts made an unusual statement for that time, which in our time has become a truism. He wrote: “The day is not far off when air operations, entailing the devastation of enemy territory and the destruction of industrial and administrative centers on a large scale, may become the main ones, and the actions of the army and navy – auxiliary and subordinate.” He also stated in his report that he “sees no limits to self-use military aviation."

Perhaps this is where it is appropriate to try to explain the concept of independent air forces. There have been many cases of poor planning for long-range bombing operations due to the fact that the concept of independent bomber aircraft was the subject of disputes between branches of the armed forces. The organization of air forces that exists only on paper has no significance for the effectiveness of air operations and is only a secondary factor. Goering's air force during the Second World War was independent only on paper, but in reality it was not used independently in the sense that General Smuts had in mind in 1917. This happened mainly because the command of the German air force, due to the existing economic policy in the pre-war period, did not develop its four-engine long-range bombers such as the Junkers-90 and Focke-Wulf-200, but adhered to the trend towards the development of twin-engine Heinkel bombers, “ Dornier and Junkers. When the German Air Force sought to change this in 1942, the harsh combat environment, the unbridled and ignorant attitude of Commander-in-Chief Hitler, and the inability of industry to produce sufficient heavy bombers all effectively prevented the creation of an effective strategic air force. At the same time, the example of the United States Air Force showed that the organizational scheme is not an obstacle to independent action. The American Flying Fortress and Superfortres bomber squadrons were theoretically an integral part of General Marshall's armed forces and, despite this, acted almost as effectively as if they were an independent bomber command similar to that of the British air force. The personal fighting qualities of US Air Force generals Arnold, Spaatz, Kenya, Andersen and Doolittle played a greater role than the Pentagon's decision.

When in 1942 the heavy bomber aviation of the Soviet Union was allocated to independent species armed forces, this did not make it any more effective. In the past, too much emphasis has been placed on the organizational structure of air forces and too little on the necessary flexibility in their use. Talk about independent bomber aircraft is in some ways completely absurd and even dangerous. Even more dangerous is the assignment of bomber aviation to missions that do not meet the requirements of the ground army and navy. The purpose of long-range bombing is to help achieve victory in the war. The best way for an air force to win a war is to gain air superiority, then use heavy bomber aircraft to cripple enemy industrial capacity, destroy lines of communication, undermine morale, and help transport troops intended to occupy enemy territory. It is assumed that the enemy’s air defense can be suppressed and deprived of the ability to resist for a long time.

However, most aviation experts believed that in the summer of 1943 the American strategic bombing program against Nazi Germany was in danger of collapse. This happened because the US Eighth Air Force did not have long-range fighter escorts, and the German air force strengthened daylight fighter aircraft to such an extent that it could inflict almost irreparable losses on the American bomber squadrons participating in the raids. At that time, Regensburg and Schweinfurt were too expensive bombing targets for the Americans. The bombing of Japan and the subsequent bombing of Germany in 1944 and 1945 were relatively easy tasks, since enemy air defenses were weakened. When the B-29 bombers began bombing Japan in 1944, the latter had hundreds of heavily armed air defense fighters that were faster than the American Super Fortress bombers. Due to insufficient cooperation between army and navy fighter aviation units, as well as imperfect radar stations, the Japanese were unable to effectively use fighters with a speed of 640 km/h (such as the Frank). It is believed that if Japan had had a fighter force equal in strength to the RAF Fighter Command in 1940, it is not known whether American heavy bombers would have been able to show a classic example of achieving victory through air power. Despite the presence of atomic bombs, in any war in the near future, effective means of defense will be found that can neutralize the effects of offensive weapons. In conditions of warfare using strategic aviation, the advantage can sometimes be on the side of the defenders, since they have an early warning system that provides data on the number of enemy aircraft participating in the raid, the altitude and direction of their flight; because supersonic fighters are superior to supersonic bombers in speed and, finally, because radio-controlled missiles, launched from the ground or from the air, may be more effective when operating at short ranges, that is, in strategic defense, than in strategic offensive, as is already the case called Lord Trenchard. In raids on the Soviet Union, American strategic bombers will not have the same freedom of action that they enjoyed in the raids on Japan in 1945. Russia will face complex defense problems. However, it remains doubtful: who (defense or attack forces) will win complete air superiority over the entire territory of the Soviet Union? American bombers can achieve success operating under heavy fighter cover against ports and secondary targets, but over interior heavily covered target areas such as Irkutsk and Moscow, they will encounter strong opposition both on the flight to the target area and on the return route.

Lancaster bomber. Photo: Konrad Summers

Seversky, for example, states that “the entire strategy of the Second World War was determined by the insufficient range of the air force. Aviation had destructive power sufficient to disrupt the military production of an enemy country, but the range of the aircraft was insufficient to carry out such attacks.

Bloody battles during the war were ultimately fought for the advancement of bomber aviation airfields” (Seversky’s italics). Of course, the main problem was the shortage of aircraft, not their range, as Air Chief Marshal Harris complains about in his book Bomber Offensives. He asked for 4,000 heavy bombers to carry out air raids on Europe and did not receive them. And it is not known what was the reason for the limited operations of the US 8th Air Force in Europe in 1942 and 1943: the insufficient range of bombers, their insufficient number, or the strong German air defense? Moreover, the Red Army on the Eastern Front and the Americans in France and Germany in 1944–1945 fought bloody battles, the purpose of which was not to capture advanced airfields for bomber aircraft. The importance of strategic aviation is not diminished by saying that strategic defense can negate the full power of a strategic attack, especially when fighter and anti-aircraft artillery units can be easily and quickly switched from performing tactical tasks to support offensive actions of ground forces to fighting strategic bombers. The advent of guided missiles, launched from the ground, from an aircraft or from other guided missiles, once again emphasizes the high flexibility of air defense systems in this regard. When assessing the power of strategic bombing, one must constantly consider how many bombers are operational, manned, and ready to fly, how strong the enemy's air defenses are, and how accurate and effective bombing can be. In the heat of debate, these important points are often missed or ignored. The selection of targets for strategic bombing will always be influenced by factors such as the state of enemy air defenses, the importance of the targets being attacked, and the amount of intelligence available about the enemy. Meteorological conditions are no longer the same important factor, as they were, for example, during the actions of the US Air Force against Germany in 1943 and 1944.

One of the most important lessons of strategic bombing, which has yet to be fully learned, is that the order in which targets are bombed based on their importance cannot make any difference until the latest intelligence on the target has been obtained. During the Second World War, much of the bomber force was expended in vain and many civilians were killed simply because the targets were chosen incorrectly. We can recall, for example, how cities in neutral countries - Eire and Switzerland - were accidentally bombed. This occurred not so much because of errors in aeronautical calculations, which also happened quite often, but because of ignorance of their bombardment target. If Allied intelligence data on oil production in Germany and the productivity of oil refineries had been sufficiently accurate, then the Anglo-American strategic bombing of oil industry facilities would have begun much earlier than May 1944. If the Allies had been better aware of the enemy's aircraft industry, there would have been no need for intensive bombing of aircraft airframe factories, aircraft engine factories, and aircraft assembly plants. There are many ways to kill a cat, but one way is enough for one cat. Reconnaissance and strategic bombing, like Darby and John, are inseparable from each other, but it is very difficult to achieve full recognition of this need, both in peacetime and in war time. Moreover, during the Second World War, Allied aerial reconnaissance was often unable to assist in assessing the results of bombing targets. If the commander of a strategic bomber does not know exactly to what extent his bombs destroyed the target, then how can he say which targets he should attack next.

During the Second World War, bomber aircraft were often tasked with attacking targets for which there was virtually no recent reliable intelligence on which to rely. Why did we strive to destroy Monte Cassino through continuous bombing raids that had no military effect? Why were very small groups of British bombers sent to bomb German aluminum smelters in June, July and August 1940, while Germany had just captured France with all its bauxite reserves and aluminum smelters? Unfortunately, many such examples can be cited.

Apparently, when strategic bombing becomes the basis of a strategy, the air command feels the need to bomb a certain complex of objects, but often with little understanding of the purpose of such an event. Air Marshal Harris, in a sense, justifies such actions when he writes: “If the task was to test the strength of the enemy’s defenses, then it was necessary to immediately launch an attack, albeit with small forces. The policy of maintaining our fighting forces until they could be used on a large scale would mean that we would deprive ourselves of the opportunity to keep up with the enemy's countermeasures." This seems to be the main reason for the error. Reconnaissance bombers can do a lot in terms of probing enemy air defenses, but they can also help make them stronger by giving the defender the opportunity to test his defenses in practice. Of course, strategic bomber aircraft need to be held in reserve only until the military value of the installations becomes known. What is the use of studying the problems of bombing Baku or Berlin and wasting money and effort in vain? At the same time that bombers are trying to find the weak points of the air defense, the latter is studying ways to combat the bombers. Receiving a brief briefing before departing on a mission does not mean being well prepared to launch an attack with the appropriate forces. As Harris himself wrote, “The Dortmund-Ems Canal would never have been blocked for long if precise, often repeated attacks had not been carried out, preventing the destruction from being repaired.” The RAF pilot was awarded the Victoria Cross for hitting this target. Harris adds regretfully: “The feat which merits the award of the Victoria Cross is of such a nature that it cannot often be repeated.”

The issue of selecting forces appropriate to the task, as well as providing economic intelligence data, cannot be completely resolved. In the future he will play even more important role than in the past. The use of an atomic bomb requires more careful reconnaissance of targets than before. This is caused by two main reasons. First, the atomic bomb is terribly expensive: a large-caliber bomb costs almost a million dollars. Secondly, it cannot be used with the same effect against any military target, and no one would risk throwing away such a huge amount of people’s money. If at one time crews and aircraft were the most expensive means of strategic aviation, now, in the atomic age, atomic bombs have become such means. The basic economics of air power have changed; atomic bombs become more important than crews, requiring increased intelligence and improved planning. The atomic bomb did not change air power strategy or the principles of strategic bombing. The atomic bomb did not increase its destructive power to the incredible proportions that were discussed in the first days after the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Workers from the Strategic Bombing Directorate have calculated that for such destruction as was caused by the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, 120 SuperFortress bombers would be required, carrying 10 tons of conventional bombs each, and for such destruction as in Hiroshima, 210 bombers. Seversky points out: “It is true that Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and many other large German cities suffered the same heavy destruction and on the same scale as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” It is also true that the suffering of the population, the loss of property and the destruction of industrial plants as a result of the incendiary bombs was enormous in Tokyo and other cities in Japan. The use of the atomic bomb inevitably caused emotional distress that is not conducive to sound military analysis. Those around the Mikado deliberately exaggerated the destructive power of the atomic bomb in order to convince the Japanese people that it was a new supernatural weapon. This was done to preserve the prestige of the Mikado and justify Japan's surrender to General MacArthur. It was in the name of humanity, not in the name of military strategy, that John Hersey wrote his horrific account of the destruction and tragedy at Hiroshima. American readers are more familiar with this document than with the more reliable data from the Atomic Energy Commission and the reports of the Office of the Study of the Results of Strategic Bombing. It is not easy to overcome the influence of the flood of sensational reports about the atomic bombing that flooded the pages of the press for two or three years after the end of the Second World War. “The greatest tectonic force that has ever struck the earth... a catastrophe, a world revolution, a flood, defeat and disaster merged into one,” journalists wrote about this event. It was said that in Hiroshima, on soil contaminated by the atomic bomb, cucumbers the size of skyscrapers could be grown, as well as a large number of other vegetables of gigantic size, which dwarfed all achievements in the field of gardening. In fact, it turned out that one Japanese farmer applied more fertilizer than his neighbor and reaped a larger harvest. Most military commentators now understand that the atomic bomb is not a universal air weapon, as previously believed. It may be advisable to list some of the limitations in the use of the atomic bomb without, however, diminishing its power and significance as a means of deterrence.

It is unwise to use an atomic bomb against strong defensive fortifications. Dropping one large-caliber atomic bomb means risking too much at once. There are small caliber atomic bombs for fighter aircraft, but their cost is high. In a future war, jet fighters will have almost the same range and striking power as any heavy bomber of World War II. Creating smaller atomic bombs and increasing the rate of their production will reduce the cost of the bomb, but will not make it cheap. If you set yourself the goal of using atomic bombs economically, then you must strive to ensure that the maximum possible number of aircraft carrying them reaches the goal. The high cost of atomic bombs does not allow making major miscalculations when using them. The successful execution of an attack with atomic bombs urgently requires special care in planning the operation and the best possible intelligence support. It is necessary to take special distracting actions, create radio interference and organize fighter cover. If atomic bombers were to penetrate further into the interior than the range of escort fighters, they would have to take advantage of darkness or poor weather conditions, meaning that their bombing accuracy would be reduced. If a target cannot be detected visually, it can be identified using bombsight radars; but currently the defender has the ability to create radar and electromagnetic interference, which can distort the target image on the radar screen or mislead the commander. There are many different objects against which the effect of an atomic explosion would be much less effective than against the light wooden dwellings of the Japanese. Analysis of the destruction caused by the use of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as during the post-war tests at Bikini and New Mexico, showed that against some concrete and steel structures the atomic bomb may be less effective than a series of rockets or armor-piercing bombs. Use of atomic bombs against bases submarines, having a reinforced concrete coating, as well as underground aircraft or other factories is wasteful. Modern cities with their steel and reinforced concrete structures will not suffer to the same extent as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially if there is a well-organized nuclear defense ready to deal with the consequences of an attack. Using an atomic bomb against airfields is tantamount to shooting sparrows from a cannon. For these same reasons, it is unprofitable to use the atomic bomb against many railway targets, for example against small stations and road junctions. The cost of atomic bombing such targets would be prohibitively high. The consequences of an atomic attack will be effective within about a day. The experience of using the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other data allow us to conclude that the main restoration work can be carried out in most cases only after a few days. It may take one to two days to eliminate the consequences of an atomic bomb. The zone of complete destruction now, for World War II bombs, was about one square mile, and not a quarter of a square mile, as was the case in Hiroshima. Finally, most of the shock wave force and thermal effect is lost because the atomic bomb explodes at a high altitude or because the bulk of the atomic bomb's energy is expended over a limited area.

There is no doubt that strategic bombing must be carried out both day and night. Round-the-clock operations by Anglo-American aviation against Germany proved the advisability of combining daytime and night raids. Such actions forced the Germans to split their fighter force in two and divert large numbers of single-engine and twin-engine fighter squadrons from missions in support of the German army. The need arose to have two types of fighters: single-engine - with a short range of the Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf type, for operations during the day and in good meteorological conditions, and twin-engine - like the Junkers and Messerschmitt - for operations at night and in bad weather conditions. Of course, sometimes both performed the same tasks. Most of the American bomber raids on Japan were carried out during the day, so the defense of Japan was carried out by single-engine day fighters. It would be very instructive to see what would happen to Japan's air defense if the daytime operations of the American air force were supplemented by night raids by the British Air Force. If Japan had not surrendered, Lancaster bomber squadrons would have begun conducting combat raids from the island in 1945. Okinawa. Then the population of Japanese cities would be forced to suffer from round-the-clock devastating bombing, as was the case in Hamburg, Leipzig and other German cities. Japanese fighters would have to operate under greater strain, and, most importantly, this would affect the composition of the kamikaze air units. It would have been much better in 1944 and 1945 to destroy Japanese fighters during dangerous night battles than to allow them to be used in large numbers against American and British shipping. In July 1944, seventeen squadrons were armed with Zero fighters (Dzeke-52), equipped for use by suicide pilots. Fourteen of these squadrons operated against the American fleet in the fall of that year during the fighting off the Philippines. In addition to transports and cruisers, three American aircraft carriers were damaged: Hornet, Franklin and Hancock. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, it had 5,000 aircraft available for suicide pilots, mostly fighters. One of the most effective responses to the suicide pilots who threatened the American fleet in the last year of the war in the Pacific would be intensive round-the-clock strategic air operations against Japan.



Six hundred thousand dead civilians, seventy thousand of them children - this is the result of the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. Was this large-scale, high-tech mass murder driven solely by military necessity?

“We will bomb Germany - one city after another. We will bomb you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue her mercilessly. City after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and this list will only grow,” with these words the commander of the British Bomber Aviation, Arthur Harris, addressed the residents of Germany. This is exactly the text that was distributed on the pages of millions of leaflets scattered over Germany.

The words of Marshal Harris were inevitably translated into reality. Day after day, newspapers published statistical reports.

Bingen – 96% destroyed. Dessau - destroyed by 80%. Chemnitz – destroyed by 75%. Small and large, industrial and university, full of refugees or clogged with war industry - German cities, as the British marshal had promised, one after another turned into smoldering ruins.

Stuttgart - destroyed by 65%. Magdeburg - 90% destroyed. Cologne - destroyed by 65%. Hamburg - destroyed by 45%.

By the beginning of 1945, the news that another German city had ceased to exist was already perceived as commonplace.

“This is the principle of torture: the victim is tortured until she does what is asked of her. The Germans were required to throw off the Nazis. The fact that the expected effect was not achieved and the uprising did not occur was explained only by the fact that such operations had never been carried out before. No one could imagine that the civilian population would choose bombing. It’s just that, despite the monstrous scale of destruction, the probability of dying under bombs until the very end of the war remained lower than the probability of dying at the hands of an executioner if a citizen showed dissatisfaction with the regime,” reflects Berlin historian Jörg Friedrich.

Five years ago, Mr. Friedrich's detailed study, Fire: Germany in the Bomb War 1940–1945, became one of the most significant developments in German historical literature. For the first time, a German historian tried to soberly understand the causes, course and consequences of the bomb war waged against Germany by the Western allies. A year later, under the editorship of Friedrich, the photo album “Fire” was published - a more than poignant document documenting step by step the tragedy of German cities bombed into dust.

And here we are sitting on the terrace in the courtyard of Friedrich’s Berlin house. The historian calmly and calmly - it seems, almost meditating - tells how the bombing of cities took place and how his own house would have behaved if it had been under a bomb carpet.

Sliding into the abyss

The carpet bombing of German cities was neither an accident nor the whim of individual pyromaniac fanatics from among the British or American military. The concept of bombing a civilian population, successfully used against Nazi Germany, was merely a development of the doctrine of British Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, developed by him during the First World War.

According to Trenchard, during an industrial war, the enemy's residential areas should become natural goals, since the industrial worker is the same participant in the hostilities as the soldier at the front.

This concept was in quite obvious contradiction with the international law in force at that time. Thus, articles 24–27 of the Hague Convention of 1907 directly prohibited the bombing and shelling of unprotected cities, the destruction cultural values, as well as private property. In addition, the belligerent side was instructed, if possible, to warn the enemy about the start of shelling. However, the convention did not clearly state the ban on the destruction or terrorization of the civilian population; apparently, they simply did not think about this method of warfare.

An attempt to ban air warfare against civilians was made in 1922 in the draft Hague Declaration on the Rules of Air Warfare, but failed due to the reluctance of European countries to join the strict terms of the treaty. Nevertheless, already on September 1, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the heads of state that entered the war with a call to prevent “shocking violations of humanity” in the form of “the deaths of defenseless men, women and children” and “never, under any circumstances, undertake bombing from the air of the civilian population of unprotected cities." The then British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain also stated at the beginning of 1940 that “Her Majesty’s government will never attack civilians.”

Jörg Friedrich explains: “During the first years of the war, there was a fierce struggle among the Allied generals between supporters of targeted and carpet bombing. The first believed that it was necessary to strike at the most vulnerable points: factories, power plants, fuel depots. The latter believed that the damage from targeted strikes could be easily compensated for, and relied on the carpet destruction of cities and terrorizing the population.”

The concept of carpet bombing looked very profitable in light of the fact that it was precisely this kind of war that Britain had been preparing for during the entire pre-war decade. Lancaster bombers were designed specifically for attacking cities. Especially for the doctrine of total bombing, the most advanced production of incendiary bombs among the warring powers was created in Great Britain. Having established their production in 1936, by the beginning of the war the British Air Force had a stockpile of five million of these bombs. This arsenal had to be dropped on someone's head - and it is not surprising that already on February 14, 1942, the British Air Force received the so-called “Area Bombing Directive.”

The document, which gave then-Bomber Commander Arthur Harris unfettered authority to use bombers to suppress German cities, stated in part: "From now on, operations should be focused on suppressing the morale of the enemy civilian population - particularly industrial workers."

On February 15, RAF Commander Sir Charles Portal was even less ambiguous in a note to Harris: “I think it is clear to you that the targets should be residential areas and not shipyards or aircraft factories.”

However, it was not worth convincing Harris of the benefits of carpet bombing. Back in the 1920s, while commanding British air forces in Pakistan and then Iraq, he ordered the firebombing of unruly villages. Now the bomb general, who received the nickname Butcher1 from his subordinates, had to test the aerial killing machine not on Arabs and Kurds, but on Europeans.

In fact, the only opponents of raids on cities in 1942–1943 were the Americans. Compared to British bombers, their planes were better armored, had more machine guns and could fly farther, so the American command believed that it could solve military problems without mass killing of civilians.

“The views of the Americans changed seriously after the raid on the well-defended Darmstadt, as well as on the bearing factories in Schweinfurt and Regensburg,” says Jörg Friedrich. – You see, in Germany there were only two bearing production centers. And the Americans, of course, thought that they could deprive the Germans of all their bearings with one blow and win the war. But these factories were so well protected that during a raid in the summer of 1943, the Americans lost a third of their vehicles. After that, they simply didn’t bomb anything for six months. The problem was not even that they could not produce new bombers, but that the pilots refused to fly. A general who loses more than twenty percent of his personnel in just one flight begins to experience problems with the morale of the pilots. This is how the area bombing school began to win.”

Nightmare technology

The victory of the school of total bombing meant the rising of the star of Marshal Arthur Harris. A popular story among his subordinates was that one day a policeman stopped Harris's car while he was driving too fast and advised him to obey the speed limit: "Otherwise you might accidentally kill someone." “Young man, I kill hundreds of people every night,” Harris allegedly responded to the officer.

Obsessed with the idea of ​​bombing Germany out of the war, Harris spent days and nights at the Air Ministry, ignoring his ulcer. During all the years of the war, he was only on vacation for two weeks. Even the monstrous losses of his own pilots - during the war years the losses of British bomber aviation amounted to 60% - could not force him to give up the fixed idea that gripped him.

“It is ridiculous to believe that the largest industrial power in Europe can be brought to its knees by such a ridiculous instrument as six or seven hundred bombers. But give me thirty thousand strategic bombers and the war will end tomorrow morning,” he told Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reporting the success of the next bombing. Harris did not receive thirty thousand bombers, and he had to develop a fundamental new way destruction of cities - “firestorm” technology.

“Bomb war theorists have come to the conclusion that the enemy’s city itself is a weapon - a structure with a gigantic potential for self-destruction, you just need to put the weapon into action. “We need to put the fuse to this barrel of gunpowder,” says Jörg Friedrich. – German cities were extremely susceptible to fire. The houses were predominantly wooden, the attic floors were dry beams ready to catch fire. If you set fire to the attic in such a house and break out the windows, then the fire that breaks out in the attic will be fueled by oxygen entering the building through the broken windows - the house will turn into a huge fireplace. You see, every house in every city was potentially a fireplace - you just had to help it turn into a fireplace.”

The optimal technology for creating a “firestorm” looked like this. The first wave of bombers dropped so-called aerial mines on the city - a special type of high-explosive bombs, the main purpose of which was to create ideal conditions for saturating the city with incendiary bombs. The first aerial mines used by the British weighed 790 kilograms and carried 650 kilograms of explosives. The following modifications were much more powerful - already in 1943, the British used mines that carried 2.5 and even 4 tons of explosives. Huge cylinders three and a half meters long rained down on the city and exploded upon contact with the ground, tearing tiles off roofs and knocking out windows and doors within a radius of up to a kilometer.

“Reared up” in this way, the city became defenseless against a hail of incendiary bombs that rained down on it immediately after being bombarded with aerial mines. When the city was sufficiently saturated with incendiary bombs (in some cases, up to 100 thousand incendiary bombs were dropped per square kilometer), tens of thousands of fires broke out in the city at the same time. The medieval urban development with its narrow streets helped the fire spread from one house to another. The movement of fire crews in conditions of a general fire was extremely difficult. Cities that had neither parks nor lakes, but only dense wooden buildings that had been dried out for centuries, did especially well.

The simultaneous fire of hundreds of houses created a draft of unprecedented force over an area of ​​​​several square kilometers. The entire city was turning into a furnace of unprecedented proportions, sucking in oxygen from the surrounding area. The resulting draft, directed towards the fire, caused a wind blowing at a speed of 200–250 kilometers per hour, a gigantic fire sucked oxygen out of bomb shelters, condemning to death even those people who were spared by the bombs.

Ironically, Harris picked up the concept of a “firestorm” from the Germans, Jörg Friedrich continues to say sadly.

“In the autumn of 1940, the Germans bombed Coventry, a small medieval city. During the raid, they bombarded the city center with incendiary bombs. The calculation was that the fire would spread to the engine factories located on the outskirts. In addition, fire trucks should not have been able to drive through the burning city center. Harris saw the bombing as an extremely interesting innovation. He studied its results for several months in a row. No one had carried out such bombings before. Instead of bombarding the city with land mines and blowing it up, the Germans carried out only a preliminary bombardment with land mines, and delivered the main blow with incendiary bombs - and achieved fantastic success. Inspired by the new technique, Harris tried to carry out a completely similar raid on Lubeck - almost the same city as Coventry. A small medieval town,” says Friedrich.

Horror without end

It was Lübeck that was destined to become the first German city to experience the “firestorm” technology. On the night of Palm Sunday 1942, 150 tons of high-explosive bombs were rained down on Lübeck, cracking the tiled roofs of medieval gingerbread houses, after which 25 thousand incendiary bombs rained down on the city. Lübeck firefighters, who realized the scale of the disaster in time, tried to call for reinforcements from neighboring Kiel, but to no avail. By morning the city center was a smoking ashes. Harris was triumphant: the technology he had developed bore its first fruits.

Harris's success also inspired Prime Minister Churchill. He gave instructions to repeat the success in a large city - Cologne or Hamburg. Exactly two months after the destruction of Lübeck, on the night of May 30-31, 1942, weather conditions over Cologne turned out to be more favorable - and the choice fell on him.

The raid on Cologne was one of the most massive raids on a major German city. For the attack, Harris assembled all the bomber aircraft at his disposal - including even coastal bombers, critical for Britain. The armada that bombed Cologne consisted of 1,047 vehicles, and the operation itself was called “Millennium”.

To avoid collisions between planes in the air, a special flight algorithm was developed - as a result, only two cars collided in the air. The total number of losses during the night bombing of Cologne was 4.5% of the aircraft participating in the raid, while 13 thousand houses were destroyed in the city, and another 6 thousand were seriously damaged. Still, Harris would have been upset: the expected “firestorm” did not occur, and fewer than 500 people died during the raid. The technology clearly needed improvement.

The best British scientists were involved in improving the bombing algorithm: mathematicians, physicists, chemists. British firefighters gave advice on how to make the work of their German colleagues more difficult. English builders shared observations about the technologies used by German architects to construct fire walls. As a result, a year later the “firestorm” was realized in another large German city, Hamburg.

The bombing of Hamburg, the so-called Operation Gomorrah, occurred at the end of July 1943. The British military was especially happy that all the previous days in Hamburg there had been unprecedentedly hot and dry weather. During the raid, it was also decided to take advantage of a serious technological innovation - for the first time, the British risked spraying millions of the thinnest strips of metal foil in the air, which completely disabled German radars designed to detect the movement of enemy aircraft across the English Channel and send fighters to intercept them. The German air defense system was completely disabled. Thus, 760 British bombers, loaded to the brim with high-explosive and incendiary bombs, flew up to Hamburg, experiencing virtually no opposition.

Although only 40% of the crews were able to drop their bombs exactly within the intended circle of 2.5 kilometers around the Church of St. Nicholas, the effect of the bombing was stunning. Incendiary bombs set fire to the coal located in the basements of the houses, and within a few hours it became clear that it was impossible to put out the fires.

By the end of the first day, the execution was repeated: a second wave of bombers hit the city, and another 740 planes dropped 1,500 tons of explosives on Hamburg, and then flooded the city with white phosphorus...

The second wave of bombing caused the desired “firestorm” in Hamburg - the wind speed, sucked into the heart of the fire, reached 270 kilometers per hour. Streams of hot air threw the charred corpses of people like dolls. The “Firestorm” sucked oxygen out of bunkers and basements - even underground rooms untouched by bombing or fire turned into mass graves. The column of smoke over Hamburg was visible to residents of surrounding cities tens of kilometers away. The wind of the fire carried the charred pages of books from Hamburg libraries to the outskirts of Lübeck, located 50 kilometers from the bombing site.

The German poet Wolf Biermann, who survived the bombing of Hamburg at the age of six, would later write: “On the night when sulfur rained from the sky, before my eyes people turned into living torches. The roof of the factory flew into the sky like a comet. The corpses burned and became small to fit in mass graves.”

“There was no question of putting out the fire,” wrote one of the leaders of the Hamburg fire department, Hans Brunswig. “We could only wait and then pull the corpses out of the basements.” For many weeks after the bombing, columns of trucks carrying charred corpses sprinkled with lime continued along the rubble-strewn streets of Hamburg.

In total, at least 35 thousand people died during Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg. 12 thousand air mines, 25 thousand high explosive bombs, 3 million incendiary bombs, 80 thousand phosphorus incendiary bombs and 500 canisters of phosphorus were dropped on the city. To create a “firestorm”, each square kilometer of the south-eastern part of the city required 850 high-explosive bombs and almost 100 thousand incendiary bombs.

Murder according to plan

Today, the very idea that someone technologically planned the murder of 35 thousand civilians looks monstrous. But in 1943 the bombing of Hamburg did not provoke any significant condemnation in Britain. Thomas Mann, who lived in exile in London - a native of Lübeck, which was also burned by British aircraft - addressed the residents of Germany on the radio: “German listeners! Did Germany think that she would never have to pay for the crimes she had committed since her descent into barbarism?

In a conversation with Bertolt Brecht, who was also living in Britain at the time, Mann spoke even harsher: “Yes, half a million of the civilian population of Germany must die.” “I was talking to a stand-up collar,” Brecht wrote in horror in his diary.

Only a few in Britain dared to raise their voice against the bombings. For example, Anglican Bishop George Bell stated in 1944: “The pain that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on people cannot be healed by violence. Bombing is no longer an acceptable way to wage war." For the bulk of the British, any methods of war against Germany were acceptable, and the government understood this perfectly well, preparing an even greater escalation of violence.

At the end of the 1980s, the German historian Gunter Gellermann managed to find a previously unknown document - a memorandum dated July 6, 1944 D 217/4, signed by Winston Churchill and sent by him to the leadership of the Air Force. The four-page document, written shortly after the first German V-2 rockets fell on London in the spring of 1944, showed that Churchill had given explicit instructions to the Air Force to prepare for a chemical attack on Germany: “I want you to seriously consider the possibility use of combat gases. It is stupid to morally condemn the method that during the last war all its participants used without any protests from moralists and the church. In addition, during the last war, bombing undefended cities was prohibited, but today it is common practice. It's just a matter of fashion, which changes just as the length of a woman's dress changes. If the bombing of London becomes heavy and if the missiles cause serious damage to government and industrial centers, we must be prepared to do everything to inflict a painful blow on the enemy... Of course, it may be weeks or even months before I ask you to drown Germany in poison gases. But when I ask you to do this, I want it to be 100% effective.”

Just three weeks later, on July 26, two plans for the chemical bombing of Germany were placed on Churchill’s desk. According to the first, the 20 largest cities were to be bombed with phosgene. The second plan provided for the treatment of 60 German cities with mustard gas. In addition, Churchill's scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, an ethnic German born in Britain into a family of emigrants from Germany, strongly advised that German cities be bombarded with at least 50 thousand bombs filled with anthrax spores - this is exactly the amount of biological weapons ammunition that Britain had in its arsenals. . Only great luck saved the Germans from realizing these plans.

However, conventional ammunition also caused catastrophic damage to the German civilian population. “A third of Britain’s military budget was spent on the bombing war. The bomb war was carried out by the country's intellectual elite: engineers, scientists. The technical progress of the bomb war was ensured by the efforts of more than a million people. The whole nation waged a bomb war. Harris only stood at the head of bomber aviation, it was not his “personal war”, which he allegedly waged behind the backs of Churchill and Britain, continues Jörg Friedrich. “The scale of this gigantic enterprise was such that it could only be accomplished through the efforts of the entire nation and only with the consent of the nation. If it were otherwise, Harris would simply be removed from command. In Britain there were also supporters of precision bombing. And Harris received his position precisely because the concept of carpet bombing won. Harris was the commander of Bomber Command, and his boss, The commander of the air force was Sir Charles Portell. And Portell gave instructions back in 1943: 900 thousand civilians should die in Germany, another million people should be seriously wounded, 20 percent of the housing stock should be destroyed. Imagine that today the commander in chief in Iraq says: "We need to kill 900 thousand civilians! He will be brought to justice immediately. Of course, this was Churchill's war, he made the appropriate decisions and bears responsibility for them."

Raising the stakes

The logic of the bomb war, like the logic of any terror, required a constant increase in the number of victims. If until the beginning of 1943 the bombing of cities did not kill more than 100–600 people, then by the summer of 1943 the operations began to radicalize sharply.

In May 1943, four thousand people died during the bombing of Wuppertal. Just two months later, during the bombing of Hamburg, the number of victims approached 40 thousand. The likelihood for city residents to die in a fiery nightmare increased at an alarming rate. If earlier people preferred to hide from bombing in basements, now, at the sound of an air raid raid, they increasingly fled to bunkers built to protect the population, but in few cities the bunkers could accommodate more than 10% of the population. As a result, people fought to the death in front of the bomb shelters, and those killed by the bombs were added to those crushed by the crowd.

The fear of death by bombs reached its maximum in April-May 1945, when the bombing reached its peak intensity. By this time, it was already obvious that Germany had lost the war and was on the verge of capitulation, but it was during these weeks that the most bombs fell on German cities, and the number of civilian deaths in these two months amounted to an unprecedented figure - 130 thousand people.

The most famous episode of the bomb tragedy of the spring of 1945 was the destruction of Dresden. At the time of the bombing on February 13, 1945, there were about 100 thousand refugees in the city with a population of 640 thousand people.

At 22.00, the first wave of British bombers, consisting of 229 aircraft, dropped 900 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city, which led to a fire throughout almost the entire old city. Three and a half hours later, when the intensity of the fire reached its maximum, a second one hit the city, doubling it a big wave bombers, pouring another 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs into the burning Dresden. On the afternoon of February 14, a third wave of attack followed - this time carried out by American pilots, who dropped about 400 tons of bombs on the city. The same attack was repeated on February 15.

As a result of the bombing, the city was completely destroyed, the number of victims was at least 30 thousand people. The exact number of victims of the bombing has not yet been established (it is reliably known that individual charred corpses were removed from the basements of houses until 1947). Some sources, whose reliability, however, is questioned, give figures of up to 130 and even up to 200 thousand people.

Contrary to popular belief, the destruction of Dresden not only was not an action carried out at the request of the Soviet command (at the conference in Yalta, the Soviet side asked to bomb railway junctions, and not residential areas), it was not even coordinated with the Soviet command, whose advanced units were in close proximity from the city.

“In the spring of 1945, it was clear that Europe would become the prey of the Russians - after all, the Russians had fought and died for this right for four years in a row. And the Western allies understood that they could not oppose anything to this. The Allies' only argument was air power - the kings of the air opposed the Russians, the kings of land warfare. Therefore, Churchill believed that the Russians needed to demonstrate this power, this ability to destroy any city, destroy it from a distance of a hundred or a thousand kilometers. It was Churchill's show of force, a show of Western air power. That's what we can do with any city. Actually, six months later the same thing happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” says Jörg Friedrich.

Bomb Kulturkampf

Be that as it may, despite the full scale of the tragedy of Dresden, its death was only one of the episodes of the large-scale destruction of the German cultural landscape in recent months war. It is impossible to understand the composure with which British aircraft destroyed the most important cultural centers of Germany in April 1945: Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn - small cities of great importance for German history. These cities were cultural symbols of the nation, and until 1945 they were practically not bombed because they were insignificant both from a military and economic point of view. Their time came precisely in 1945. Bomb attacks methodically destroyed palaces and churches, museums and libraries.

“When I was working on the book, I thought: what will I write about in the final chapter? – recalls Jörg Friedrich. – And I decided to write about the destruction of historical substance. About how historical buildings were destroyed. And at one point I thought: what happened to libraries? Then I picked up professional librarians' journals. So, in the professional magazine of librarians, in the 1947-1948 issue, it was calculated how many books stored in libraries were destroyed and how many were saved. I can say: it was the largest book burning in the history of mankind. Tens of millions of volumes were burned. A cultural treasure that was created by generations of thinkers and poets."

The quintessential bomb tragedy last weeks war was the bombing of Würzburg. Until the spring of 1945, the residents of this town, considered one of the most beautiful places in Germany, lived in the hope that the war would pass them by. During all the years of the war, practically not a single bomb fell on the city. Hopes grew even stronger after American aircraft destroyed the railway junction near Würzburg on February 23, 1945, and the city completely lost even the slightest military significance. A fantastic legend spread among the residents of the town that young Churchill studied at the local university for some time, so the city was granted life by the highest decree.

“Such hopes glimmered among the population of many German cities, which held out until the spring of 1945,” explains Jörg Friedrich. – For example, the residents of Hanover believed that they were not bombed because the Queen of England came from the family of Hanoverian kings. For some reason, the residents of Wuppertal decided that their city was known throughout Europe for its zealous Christian faith, and therefore they will not be bombed by those who are fighting the godless Nazis. Of course, these hopes were naive.”

The residents of Würzburg were also mistaken in their hopes. On March 16, 1945, the British command considered that ideal weather conditions had been created over the city for a “firestorm” to occur. At 1730 GMT, the 5th Bomb Group, consisting of 270 British Mosquito bombers, took off from a base near London. This was the same bomber force that had successfully destroyed Dresden a month earlier. Now the pilots had an ambitious goal to try to surpass their recent success and perfect the technique of creating a “firestorm”.

At 20.20 the formation reached Würzburg and, according to the usual pattern, dropped 200 high-explosive bombs on the city, opening the roofs of houses and knocking out windows. Over the next 19 minutes, the Mosquito dropped 370,000 incendiary bombs with a total weight of 967 tons on Würzburg with pinpoint precision. The fire that engulfed the city destroyed 97% of buildings in the old city and 68% of buildings on the outskirts. In a fire that reached a temperature of 2000 degrees, 5 thousand people burned. 90 thousand residents of Würzburg were left homeless. The city, built over 1,200 years, was razed to the ground overnight. British bomber losses amounted to two aircraft, or less than 1%. The population of Würzburg would not reach its pre-war level again until 1960.

With mother's milk

Similar bombings took place throughout Germany at the end of the war. British aviation actively used the last days of the war to train its crews, test new radar systems, and at the same time teach the Germans a final lesson in “moral bombing,” brutally destroying before their eyes everything they held dear. The psychological effect of such bombings exceeded all expectations.

“After the war, the Americans conducted a large-scale study of exactly what consequences their remarkable bomb war had for the Germans. They were very disappointed that they managed to kill so few people, continues Jörg Friedrich. “They thought they had killed two or three million people, and were very upset when it turned out that 500–600 thousand had died. It seemed to them that this was unthinkable - so few died after such a long and intense bombing. However, the Germans, as it turned out, were able to defend themselves in basements and bunkers. But there is another interesting observation in this report. The Americans came to the conclusion that, although the bombing did not play a serious role in the military defeat of Germany, the character of the Germans - this was said back in 1945! – the psychology of the Germans, the way Germans behave, has changed significantly. The report said - and this was a very smart observation - that the bombs did not really explode in the present. They did not destroy houses and people who were not living then. Bombs hacked psychological basis of the German people, broke its cultural backbone. Now fear sits in the hearts of even those people who have not seen the war. My generation was born in 1943-1945. It did not see a bomb war; a baby does not see it. But the baby feels the mother's fear. A baby lies in his mother's arms in the basement, and he knows only one thing: his mother is deathly afraid. These are the first memories in life - the mortal fear of the mother. Mother is God, and God is defenseless. If you think about it, the relative proportion of deaths even in the most terrible bombings was not so great. Germany lost 600 thousand people in bombings - less than one percent of the population. Even in Dresden, the most effective firestorm achieved at that time, 7 percent of the population died. In other words, even in Dresden, 93 percent of the inhabitants were saved. But the effect of psychological trauma - the city can be burned with one wave of the hand - turned out to be much stronger. What is the worst thing for a person today? I’m sitting at home, the war begins - and suddenly the city is burning, the air around me is burning my lungs, there is gas and heat all around, the world around me changes its state and destroys me.”

Eighty million incendiary bombs dropped on German cities radically changed the appearance of Germany. Today, any large German city is hopelessly inferior to French or British in terms of the number of historical buildings. But the psychological trauma turned out to be deeper. Only in recent years have Germans begun to think about what the bomb war actually did to them - and it seems that the realization of the consequences may drag on for many years.

German war economy

A protracted world war was never part of the plans of the supreme leadership of the Reich. Hitler expected to achieve all his goals through skillful diplomacy and a series of lightning wars, extensively increasing the military and economic power of Germany - with the expectation that England and France would never keep up with the rapid growth of Germany. The German General Staff, in particular General Thomas, protested against this concept of "arming in breadth". Instead, they pushed “weapons in depth”, namely: direct significant efforts to increase steel production; significantly reduce civilian consumption of steel and other natural resources; additional steel should be used not only for the production of weapons, but also to increase the production of other basic resources. According to General Staff calculations, in this case, by 1945-1950, Germany could be ready for a protracted strategic war.

Hitler's point of view won. To give some idea of ​​the priorities of the German economy, consider the use of steel in the pre-war years (there are no exact statistics, the figures are approximate). About 10-15% of monthly steel production went to railways (mainly scheduled repairs/replacement of tracks). The same amount was spent on non-military and semi-military construction. 30% went to the production of consumer goods (consumer goods) and private construction. The remaining 40% was spent on military production: by 1939 it was planned to create enough weapons for 100 divisions; by 1942 - for another 80. Plus the construction programs for military aviation and navy, no less ambitious.

The choice of this development path largely predetermined many of the problems of the Germans during WWII. In particular, the program for the construction of synthetic fuel plants in 1936-1941 was assessed by the German General Staff as completely unsatisfactory; however, the Reich leadership did not want to increase the steel quota for the construction of these plants. After all, steel is needed for the production of weapons, and a protracted war is not expected.

Raids

I will definitely write about the British/American side of the matter in more detail someday. Pre-war doctrines of strategic raids, disagreements over targets, losses, aircraft production - all this is very interesting. But here for now I will limit myself to just brief statistics regarding raids.

The total tonnage of bombs dropped by the Americans and the British on Germany (including the countries it occupied) and its allies during WWII:

Red is the monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by the RAF.
Blue color - monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by USAAF (US Air Force)

Tonnage by target (larger version of image available):

Goals, left to right, top to bottom:
Aviation factories
Various production
Water transport
Launch points V-1 and V-2
Aerodromes
Production of petroleum products, chemicals, rubber
Military
Industrial targets (which is a euphemism for carpet bombing cities)
Ground transportation network (which partly also includes carpet bombing of cities)
Other

Monthly losses of single-engine Luftwaffe aircraft:

Black curve -- total losses of single-engine Luftwaffe aircraft
Red curve - losses of single-engine Luftwaffe aircraft minus the eastern front (i.e. the USSR)

In general, we should also write a separate post about the battle over Germany, because it’s worth it. IMHO the most significant result of strategic raids.

Work force

Graph of the German labor force during the war:

Top down:
Losses -- irretrievable losses
Armed Force -- armed forces
Foreigners & Prisoners of War - foreign workers and prisoners of war
Civilians (male / female) - civilians (men / women)

As we can see, 11.5 million German workers were drafted into the Wehrmacht from September 39 to September 44; their place was taken by 7 million workers and prisoners of war who arrived or were brought from abroad, as well as 1 million new German workers. This adds up to a loss of 3.5 million workers, or 10% of the workforce.

Let's look at exactly how the strategic raids affected the workforce.

Direct damage (killed and maimed) - by mid-1944 about 250 thousand workers

Unproductive workforce, i.e. people who could not work due to bombings - destruction of factories, transport routes, etc. From September 43 to October 44 - the period for which there are German data on reports from category "A" companies on productive/unproductive work - did not work on average 1.5 million people employed in manufacturing.

The threat of destruction of certain units of the economy made it necessary to disperse production. By the summer of 1944, between 500 and 800 thousand people were involved in additional construction and repair of damage caused by the bombing. An additional 250-400 thousand supplied them with materials and services.

Production of consumer goods to replace those that were destroyed by bombing. This, of course, is extremely difficult to isolate, but you can look at employment in the production of consumer goods. In May 1939, 6.8 million workers worked there. In the period 39-40 there was a drop of 1.7 million. In the period 40-42 there was a drop of 1.5 million. In the period 42-44 (i.e., the period of intense raids) there was a drop of only 5 million people.

Production of air defense artillery and ammunition for it - 250 thousand people. Plus air defense troops. The question has been discussed in more detail.

If you add it all up, it turns out that strategic bombing in one way or another delayed 17-22% of the available Agriculture German labor force.

It is worth noting here that by 1944 and even 1945, the Germans were far from depleting their labor reserves. For example, both Germany and England started the war with approximately the same number of working women. During the war, the number of employed English women increased by 45%, while in Germany it remained almost at the pre-war level. Another example is that during the war the number of servants and other domestic workers in Great Britain fell from 1.2 million to .5, in Germany - from 1.5 million to 1.2. The German bureaucracy until the end of the war numbered 3.5 million people, and even Speer could not do anything about it.

Fixed assets

Before the war, engineering products were one of Germany's main exports (in fact, it still is). Naturally, with the outbreak of hostilities, trade with most of Germany’s partners ceased, and therefore quite large capacities were unoccupied. So, with the exception of factories producing aircraft engines and some other specific things, German production worked one shift for almost the entire war - unlike the USA, USSR and England. Thus, in 1942, 90% of German workers worked the first shift; 7% in the second, 3% in the third (mining workers are not included).

In 1944, the German machine park amounted to 2,260,000 machines. There are no accurate statistics on destroyed and damaged machines; post-war estimates are 110,000 damaged and 36,500 destroyed by machine-tool raids (both are maximum estimates). A rough estimate of lost machine hours due to machine damage or destruction is 2 to 2.5 percent. Don't forget - this is a ceiling estimate. So, in general, we can conclude that the destruction of German means of production did not cause significant damage to the German war economy. The exception here is the chemical industry; it will be discussed below.

Common consumption goods

In general, the Nazis tried to maintain the production of consumer goods at a more or less acceptable level. Here's a detail: in the fall of 1943, Hitler protested Speer's decision to stop allocating resources to the production of curling irons.

From top to bottom:
GNP taking into account foreign participation (read - robbery of occupied countries)
GNP without it
Home Equity Gain
Share of civil expenditures in Nazi Germany's GNP (black part of the graph)

Table on the dynamics of civil expenditures:

Level 1939 == 100

Well, as a bonus, the percentage of industrial workers employed in the civil/military sector:

The white part of the graph is the civilian industry
The shaded part of the graph is the military industry

In general, we can confidently say that the destruction of consumer goods was not directly related to the military collapse of Nazi Germany. The only thing is that the regular destruction of houses during raids generated a surge in demand for certain consumer goods, and thereby prevented the transfer of a certain part of the civilian industry to a military footing. For example, production kitchen utensils in 1943 it was 25% higher than the level of 1942; production of bed frames increased by 150% during the same period.

Military production

At the beginning of the war and until the defeat near Moscow, and especially at Stalingrad, German military production was limited by one thing - the lack of orders from the military leadership. As described earlier, Hitler did not count on a protracted war. Moreover, some euphoria from successes in the West and a general underestimation of the enemy played a bad joke on the Germans.

Thus, as of May 11, 1940 (i.e., before the start of the operation on the Western Front), the Luftwaffe had 4,782 aircraft of all types. A year later, on June 21, 1941 (i.e., before the invasion of the USSR), there were 4882 aircraft, only a hundred more. In particular, the Germans had 200 fewer bombers (!) than before the invasion of Benelux and France. Military production was 1% higher than the 1940 production level.

And even after the defeat near Moscow, the situation largely remained the same. For example, the Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff, Hans Jeschonneck, said back in March 1942 to Milch, who was pushing a program to increase aircraft production at that time: “I don’t know what to do with the additional 360 fighters!” By the way, this same Eschonnek shot himself a year later when British planes razed Peenemünde to the ground.

The German leadership truly realized that Germany had gotten involved in a total war only after Stalingrad. But, as they said during my childhood, it was already too late to rush around.

German military production index:

Level 1940 == 100

So, now let's look at how strategic raids directly affected German military production.
Note: I decided to leave the bombing of ball bearing factories behind the scenes. These raids had no effect on the war economy, although Speer, in his own words, did shit a couple of bricks after the bombing of Schweinfurt. I may write more in detail in the next post, when I describe the differences in the doctrine of the Americans and the British.

First half 1943

The Allies tried to reduce the production of German submarines by bombing. The effect is near-zero; production continued to proceed almost without deviation from schedule.

Second half of 1943

In the second half of 1943, the Allies decided to switch to bombing factories producing fighter aircraft, because by that time the scales in the Atlantic had already tipped very significantly in favor of the Allies. Thanks to the raids, 13% fewer fighters were produced than the planned number. It should be noted that only part of the fall is a direct consequence of the raids; a significant portion of the decline was due to the start of a large-scale production dispersal program. I will not dwell in detail on the repetition of bombings, on how they first bombed the production of fuselages (in vain), then switched to engines.

First half of 1944

Significantly stronger attacks on aircraft manufacturing plants. But - a paradox! -- fighter production doubles from December 1943 to July 1944. Supporters of the version that the bombings were absolutely useless like to trump this fact (and indeed the strong growth in German military production). The truth is that this hypothesis does not fit well with the fact that the Germans agreed to such a large and disproportionate increase in the production of single-engine fighters (see graph below). Well, oh well, God bless him, I hope that above I was to some extent able to explain why this happened with production.

German aircraft production:

Top down:
Single-engine bombers
Twin-engine bombers
Four-engine bombers
Single-engine fighters
Twin-engine fighters
Assault
Others

The growth in fighter aircraft production is a consequence of two things: 1) increasing production efficiency (i.e., reducing labor costs and increasing the efficiency of resource use); 2) an increase in fighter production was planned back in 1943. It is difficult to say what the true production figure would have been without strategic raids. Estimated figure - the Germans missed 18% of possible quantity fighters.

Well, little things. Tanks. Here the Germans were missing 5% (thanks to the RAF raid on Friedrichsshafen). Ammunition. Production is 6-7% less than potential.

Second half of 1944

The raids intensify, and the Allies begin to concentrate on the tank and automobile industries in addition to aircraft.

The decline in aircraft production by December 1944, compared to June - 60%. Lost aircraft production as a result of direct raids on airlines - 23%. Losses in the production of tanks and cars as a result of direct raids on factories - 20% and 20%.

In general, the bombing of military production itself probably did not achieve a decisive effect on the German military machine, but a significant drop in production in certain areas was achieved.

Natural resources

And here is the most interesting thing, IMHO. So.

Germany's dependence on imported natural resources has always been considered the main weakness of its military capabilities. Just before the start of the war, Germany imported 70% of its iron ore, 90% of copper, 100% of chromium, manganese, nickel, tungsten, and much more. By by and large, the Germans only had plenty of coal.

The Germans were of course aware of this weakness. Two solutions were chosen:
1) The beginning of the development of domestic iron ore deposits (albeit of poor quality), the construction of factories for the production of synthetic fuel and rubber.
2) Creation of reserves of strategic resources before the start of the war.

When the war began, the Germans had nine months' supply of iron ore, copper, lead and magnesium; manganese - for 18 months. However, measures to increase production efficiency, coupled with the conquest of a number of countries and trade with other pro-Nazi states, made it possible to delay serious supply disruptions until mid-1944.

Fuel

The weakest point of the German military machine.

Imports before the war were 4.4 million tons, mostly by sea. After the outbreak of the war, the only significant external source of oil and petroleum products was Romania, which by 1941 exported 2,114 thousand tons of oil and petroleum products per year to Germany. Plus, something came from Hungary and Poland (approximately 500 thousand tons of oil), plus the USSR supplied the Germans with 617 thousand tons of oil in 1940.

Also, the Germans developed, to the best of their ability, home production: 2 million oil was produced in Austrian oil fields, plus synthetic fuel plants steadily increased production, from 1.6 million tons in 1938, to 6 million in early 1944. It should be noted that according to the 1938 plan, 11 million tons were supposed to be produced by 1944, but as mentioned above, confidence in the quick end of the war, plus the machinations of industrialists, prevented this.

Sources of German oil, 38-43 (in thousands of tons):

Sources of German petroleum products (gasoline), first quarter of 1944 (in thousands of tons):

For comparison, the USSR at that time was producing 29 million tons of oil per year; USA - 168 million tons.

Impact of raids

Strategic raids on synthetic gasoline plants began in May 1944. Consequences:

Aviation gasoline production

Red curve. Start level 1944 == 100

Production, consumption and stocks of aviation gasoline

From top to bottom:
Stocks -- stocks ( left side graph - at the end of the year, right - at the end of the month)
Consumption
Production -- production (including import)

Since May, 350,000 workers have been repairing synthetic fuel plants and building new, underground plants.

A little later, raids on Ploiesti began. In June, Romanian exports of petroleum products amounted to only 25% of the monthly average in the first half of the year; in July, exports stopped altogether. The oil fields were captured by Soviet troops on August 22.

As a result, by September 1944 the Luftwaffe was forced to reduce fuel consumption by 2/3 compared to June. Those. here is a reduction in the number of sorties, and a drop in the level of German pilots (due to the lack of gasoline for training) - and this despite the fact that just at this time record numbers of fighters were coming off the assembly lines that simply could not take to the skies.

On the ground, the shortage of fuel was also very acute. For example, this episode, told by both Speer and Jodl: in February 45, after Soviet troops crossed the Vistula, the Wehrmacht assembled about 1200-1500 tanks to attack Upper Silesia. However, the fuel necessary for the counteroffensive was simply not found.

Rubber

There were practically no direct raids on synthetic rubber factories. However, since in the process of its production German factories used gas and hydrogen that came from synthetic fuel production plants, it is quite natural that rubber production dropped very significantly.

Rubber production (thousand tons)

The dotted line is planned production.
Four colors - different rubber factories

There is no evidence that the rubber shortage had a significant impact on the German war machine. However, had the war lasted longer, it is more than likely that rubber shortages would have seriously affected German arms production.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a necessary ingredient for the production of explosives. Like rubber, nitrogen was never a priority target for Allied bombers. However, the two largest nitrogen plants were part of synthetic fuel complexes. Since nitrogen and synthetic fuel use the same low-pressure tanks, the damage from the bombing was compounded by the fact that part of the capacity for producing nitrogen began to be transferred to gasoline.

Monthly production of nitrogen and explosives (thousand tons):

Black curve - nitrogen
Different colors - different types of explosives

Steel

Air raids on the Ruhr - last quarter 44. Production fell from 2 million tons in September (including occupied territories) to 1 million in December, 80% of the fall was due to air raids.

Steel production (million tons):

From top to bottom:
Losses due to other reasons
Losses due to lack of gas, electricity, energy, natural resources, labor
Losses due to damage from strategic bombing
Losses due to air raids

Electricity

Electrical capacity (GW)

As we can see, by the end of 1944, 15.5% of the capacities were disabled by raids.

The effect on the economy is difficult to isolate, but it is quite obvious that it was great: electricity was Germany’s weak point almost throughout the war; restrictions on use began as early as October 41. By 43-44 the situation had become so serious that supply to aluminum and nitrogen plants was periodically cut off - despite their importance to the German war machine.

It should be noted that bombing power plants was never a priority goal for the Allies, because they (wrongly) believed that the Germans had enough spare power.

Transport

Along with an attack on fuel, one of the most effective targets of strategic bombers.

They decided to test full-scale raids on the transport network in anticipation of the landing in France. Beginning in March 1944, Allied strategic bombers began systematically destroying the transport network in Western Europe. Plus, 800 Spitfires, Thunderbolts and Typhoons between 20 and 28 May destroyed or damaged 500 locomotives. By July, traffic on French railways was only 10% of January levels. See the following charts:

The upper curve is general transport, the lower curve is military transport. Vertical lines - bomb attacks

Using the example of a specific railway (direction Valenton-Juvisi):

The upper curve is general transport, the lower curve is military transport. Vertical lines - bomb attacks

In the second half of 1944, the already tested technique was used in Germany itself. The consequences are on the next two graphs.

Number of loaded wagons

Number of ton-kilometers

The collapse of the transport system was a very significant reason for the very rapid disintegration of the German military industry in late 1944 - early 1945. Additional difficulties were created by the fact that many production facilities were dispersed in order to minimize damage from bombing, and therefore required a fairly well-functioning system of cargo transportation.

The total air raids of the Second World War convincingly showed the uncompromising means of the participants in the conflict. Massive bombing attacks on cities destroyed communications and factories, leading to the death of thousands of innocent people.

Stalingrad

The bombing of Stalingrad began on August 23, 1942. Up to a thousand Luftwaffe aircraft took part in it, which made from one and a half to two thousand combat sorties. By the time the air raids began, more than 100 thousand people had been evacuated from the city, but most of the residents were unable to evacuate.

As a result of the bombing, according to rough estimates, more than 40 thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed. First, the bombing was carried out with high-explosive shells, then with incendiary bombs, which created the effect of a fiery tornado that destroyed all living things. Despite significant destruction and a huge number of victims, many historians believe that the Germans did not achieve their initial goals. Historian Alexey Isaev commented on the Stalingrad bombing: “Everything did not go according to plan. The bombing was not followed by the planned development of events - the encirclement of Soviet troops west of Stalingrad and the occupation of the city. As a result, the bombing looked like such a terrorist act, although if everything had developed according to written plan, it would seem logical."

It must be said that the “world community” responded to the bombing of Stalingrad. Residents of Coventry, which was destroyed by the Germans in the autumn of 1940, showed special participation. The women of this city sent a message of support to the women of Stalingrad, in which they wrote: “From a city torn to shreds by the main enemy of world civilization, our hearts reach out to you, those who are dying and suffering much more than we do.”

In England, the “Committee of Anglo-Soviet Unity” was created, which organized various events and collected money to send to the USSR. In 1944, Coventry and Stalingrad became sister cities.

Coventry

The bombing of the English city of Coventry is still one of the most discussed events of the Second World War. There is a point of view, expressed, including by the British writer Robert Harris in the book "Enigma", that Churchill knew about the planned bombing of Coventry, but did not strengthen air defense because he feared that the Germans would understand that their codes had been solved.

However, today we can already say that Churchill really knew about the planned operation, but did not know that the target would be the city of Coventry. The British government knew on November 11, 1940 that the Germans were planning a major operation called Moonlight Sonata, which would be launched on the next full moon, which was November 15. The British did not know about the Germans’ goal. Even if the targets were known, they would hardly be able to take proper action. In addition, the government relied on electronic countermeasures (Cold Water) for air defense, which, as we know, did not work.

The bombing of Coventry began on 14 November 1940. Up to 437 aircraft took part in the air raid; the bombing lasted more than 11 hours, during which 56 tons of incendiary bombs, 394 tons of high-explosive bombs and 127 parachute mines were dropped on the city. In total, more than 1,200 people died in Coventry. The city's water and gas supplies were virtually cut off, the railway and 12 aircraft factories were destroyed, which had the most negative impact on Britain's defense capability - aircraft production productivity decreased by 20%.

It was the bombing of Coventry that ushered in a new era of all-out air raids, which would later be called "carpet bombing", and also served as the reason for the retaliatory bombing of German cities at the end of the war.

The Germans did not leave Coventry after the first raid. In the summer of 1941, they carried out new bombings of the city. In total, the Germans bombed Coventry 41 times. The last bombing took place in August 1942.

Hamburg

For the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition, Hamburg was a strategic object; oil refineries and military-industrial plants were located there; Hamburg was the largest port and transport hub. On 27 May 1943, RAF Commander Arthur Harris signed Bomber Command Order No. 173 about the operation code-named "Gomorrah". This name was not chosen by chance; it referred to the biblical text “And the Lord rained brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah.” During the bombing of Hamburg, British aircraft first used a new means of jamming German radars, called Window: strips of aluminum foil were dropped from aircraft.

Thanks to Window, the Allied forces managed to reduce the number of losses as much as possible; British aviation lost only 12 aircraft. Air raids on Hamburg continued from July 25 to August 3, 1943, and about a million residents were forced to leave the city. The number of victims varies according to various sources, but is at least 45,000 inhabitants. The greatest number of victims was on July 29. Due to climatic conditions and massive bombing, fire tornadoes formed in the city, literally sucking people into the fire, asphalt burned, walls melted, houses burned like candles. For three more days after the end of the air raids, it was impossible to carry out rescue and restoration work. People waited for the debris that had turned to coals to cool down.

Dresden

The Bombing of Dresden remains one of the most controversial events of World War II to this day. Historians have disputed the military necessity of the Allied air raids. Information about the bombing of the marshalling yard in Dresden was transmitted by the head of the aviation department of the American military mission in Moscow, Major General Hill, only on February 12, 1945. The document did not say a word about the bombing of the city itself.

Dresden was not considered a strategic target, and by February 1945, the Third Reich was living out its last days. Thus, the bombing of Dresden was more of a demonstration of the power of US and British air power. The officially declared target was German factories, but they were virtually undamaged by the bombing, 50% of residential buildings were destroyed, and in general 80% of city buildings were destroyed.

Dresden was called "Florence on the Elbe" and was a museum city. The destruction of the city caused irreparable damage to world culture. However, it must be said that most of the works of art from the Dresden gallery were taken to Moscow, thanks to which they survived. They were later returned to Germany. The exact number of victims is still disputed. In 2006, historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll from the bombing of Dresden ranged from 25 to 250 thousand people. In the same year, in the book of the Russian journalist Alyabyev, the total number of deaths was from 60 to 245 thousand people.

Lubeck

The bombing of Lubeck, carried out by the British Royal Air Force on March 28-29, 1942, was an operation of retaliation by the British for air raids on London, Coventry and other British cities. On the night of March 28–29, Palm Sunday, 234 British bombers dropped about 400 tons of bombs on Lübeck. The air raid followed a classic pattern: first, high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy the roofs of houses, then incendiary bombs. According to British estimates, almost one and a half thousand buildings were destroyed, more than two thousand were seriously damaged, and more than nine thousand were slightly damaged. As a result of the attack, more than three hundred people died, 15,000 were left homeless. The irreparable loss of the bombing of Lübeck was the loss of historical and artistic values.

The myth of the strategic bombing of Germany by Anglo-American aircraft

The main myths of the Anglo-American strategic bombing of Germany in 1943–1945 are that they played a decisive role in the collapse of the German resistance in World War II. This thesis was actively disseminated during the war by American and British propaganda, and in the post-war years it became widespread in Anglo-American historiography. The opposite and equally mythological thesis was strengthened in Soviet historiography, which argued that the Anglo-American bombing of Germany only slightly reduced its military-economic potential.

In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to begin strategic bombing of Germany by joint Anglo-American forces. The targets of the bombing were to be both military industrial facilities and German cities. The operation was codenamed "Point Blanc". Before this, British air raids on German cities had more moral than strategic significance. Now the main hopes were placed on the American four-engine strategic bombers B-17 “Flying Fortress”. Initially, German aircraft factories, as well as factories for the production of engines and ball bearings, were identified as priority targets. However, on April 17, 1943, an attempt to attack the Focke-Wulf plant near Bremen with 115 bombers ended in failure. 16 aircraft were shot down and 48 damaged. Since the main aircraft factories were located in southern Germany, bombers were forced to fly there without fighter escort. This made daytime raids too risky due to insufficient fighter cover, and night raids precluded targeted bombing. A raid on Schweinfurt, where there was a plant that produced almost 100% of German ball bearings, and on the aircraft manufacturing center of Regensburg in Bavaria on August 17, 1943, resulted in the loss of 60 B-17s out of 377 and 5 Spitfire and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. The Luftwaffe lost 27 Me-109, Me-110 and FV-190 fighters. About 200 civilians were killed.

The second attack on Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943 led to even more disastrous results. Of the 291 B-17s, 77 were lost. Another 122 were damaged. Of the 2,900 crew members, 594 were missing, 5 were killed and 43 were wounded. After this, the bombing of targets deep in German territory was postponed until the availability of fighter escorts that could accompany the bombers all the way from the airfield to the target and back.

On January 11, 1944, during the attack on Oschersleben, Halberstadt and Braunschweig, 60 Flying Fortresses were irretrievably lost.

The third raid on Schweinfurt on February 24, 1944 was successful. Thanks to the escort of P-51 Mustangs and P-47 Thunderbolts with drop tanks, only 11 of the 231 B-17s participating in the raid were lost. The Mustangs were able to fly to Berlin and back. The raid on Schweinfurt was part of the air battle over Germany that later became known as "Big Week" and lasted from 20 to 25 February. During it, the Anglo-American Air Force, which attacked aircraft manufacturing facilities, lost 378 bombers and 28 fighters, and the Luftwaffe lost 355 fighters and about a hundred pilots. This damage forced the Germans to sharply increase the production of fighters. From now on they could not even dominate the skies over Germany. This guaranteed the success of the Allied invasion of France. From the end of April 1944, the theater of operations shifted to France and bombing was aimed at crippling transport infrastructure to make it difficult for German reinforcements to be transferred. As a result of the raids, the overall productivity of synthetic fuel plants from April to July decreased from 180 thousand tons to 9 thousand tons per month. Despite the fact that 200 thousand workers were specially allocated to restore these enterprises, productivity in August was only 40 thousand tons per month, and this level was not increased until the end of the war. Also, as a result of the raids, the production of synthetic rubber decreased by 6 times.

Strategic bombing resumed in full in September 1944 and was now focused on synthetic fuel plants and transport infrastructure. As a result, fuel production dropped sharply, and already from September 1944, the German army and the Luftwaffe were on starvation rations. Now German air defense could do little to counter the Anglo-American bombing. Since the end of 1944, due to the depletion of synthetic fuel reserves, German aircraft very rarely took to the air. German arms production increased until September 1944 and then began to decline due to the impact of strategic bombing. And in 1944, the Luftwaffe consumed 92% of synthetic gasoline and only 8% of regular gasoline, while in the ground army the share of synthetic fuel was 57%. By the time Anglo-American troops surrounded and occupied the Ruhr in March 1944, its industry was virtually paralyzed due to the destruction of its transport infrastructure.

When it became clear that it was not possible to permanently disable aircraft factories and other key industrial facilities in Germany using aerial bombing, the Anglo-American command decided to move on to area bombing (the so-called “carpet bombing”) of large cities in order to undermine the morale of the German population and army. A series of such bombings hit Hamburg between July 25 and August 3, 1943. More than 50 thousand people died, about 200 thousand were injured. Such a large number of victims was due to the fact that a fire tornado occurred in the city. Berlin, Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg and other cities were also subjected to “carpet bombing”.

"Carpet bombing" also continued almost until the end of the war. The largest bombing was the bombing of Dresden on February 23–25, 1945. At least 25 thousand people died then. There are also higher estimates - up to 135 thousand dead. Many of the approximately 200 thousand refugees, of whom there was no accurate count, could have died in the city.

The last Flying Fortress raid was carried out on April 25, 1945. Subsequently, due to the lack of targets due to the occupation of all major German cities by Allied troops, strategic bombing was stopped.

In total, 593 thousand people became victims of the bombing of Germany within the borders of 1937, including about 32 thousand prisoners of war. About 42 thousand people died in Austria and the Sudetenland. About half a million people were injured. In France, the victims of the Anglo-American bombings were 59 thousand killed and wounded. In England, 60.5 thousand people died as a result of German bombings and attacks with V-1 and V-2 missiles.

In general, the strategic bombing of German cities did not play a decisive role in the outcome of the war, but it cannot be denied that their role was significant. They significantly slowed down the growth of the German military industry and forced the Germans to spend significant resources on restoring destroyed factories and cities. In the last six months of the war, thanks to the constant destruction of the main synthetic fuel factories, the Luftwaffe was practically confined to the ground, which may have brought victory over Germany several months closer.

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