25. The value of the bombing was debated during and after the war
Proponents of strategic bombing argued that the campaign shortened the war in Europe by limiting German production. They refuted the argument that German production in all war industries went up each year of the war until late 1944, by arguing the production would otherwise have risen by a greater factor. After the war, it was realized that many of the bombing raids had little impact whatsoever on industrial production. But in one aspect success was realized. Approximately 7.5 million German civilians were made homeless by the bombing, largely due to the wide-area bombing favored by the RAF. About 400,000 German civilians were killed by the bombing.
Just fewer than 40,000 aircraft were lost in the European theater by the Allies, and the air war took the lives of 160,000 Allied airmen. For most of the war, they faced an enemy which held the advantage in the skies over Europe, not until the final six months or so was air superiority achieved by the Allies. The mission planners who dispatched the aircrews and bombers into European skies did so with the intention of destroying German population centers as a means of striking at its industrial base, as a matter of stated policy. The Americans attempted to limit damage to residential areas, an effort which largely failed. Its bombing was imprecise at best. By the war’s end, cities such as Hamburg and Mainz had more than 75% of their urban area destroyed by British and American bombs.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Bomber Command maps reveal extent of German destruction”. Lauren Turner, BBC News. October 8, 2015
“Daylight Precision Bombing”. John T. Correll, Air Force Magazine. October 1, 2008
“Germany’s Forgotten Victims”. Luke Harding, The Guardian. October 22, 2003
“How Allied Air Attacks Evolved During World War II”. Brian Todd Carey, Historynet. Online
“Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942 – 1945”. Randall Hansen. 2010
“The Bombers and the Bombed”. Richard Overy. 2014
“RAF Bomber Command During The Second World War”. Article, Imperial War Museum. Online
