Was Anti-Morale Bombing Actually Effective?

[Carl Schwamberger]

...
Speer had it right, the need to produce AA guns and fighters to stop the bombing meant fewer resources to other fronts which had long-range benefits.
....

The thing to watch out for is application of Speers remark to the entire war.

...
Imagine a German Army approaching Moscow with a third more artillery, thousands more aircraft and another hundred thousand troops. ....

Would these numbers have applied in December 1941? Had this quantity of men and material been allocated to defense of the homeland in 1941?

A look at John Ellis 'Brute Force' gives access to a couple charts showing the ramp up of the Allied bombing 1940-45. From those its fairly clear the threat from Allied bombers did not emerge until 1943. While that threat might be anticipated in 1942 the actual damage to industry was in gross terms negligible. The number of sorties and tonnage of bombs dropped was flat out insignificant in comparison to 1944. That is the large scale diversion of men, weapons, ammunition, fuel, to air defense was not of serious strategic effect until 1943 at the earliest, & then in the later half. The effect Speer is referring to primarily occurs in the las 24 months of the war, after Germany had effectively lost the war.

Precisely how the resources diverted to air defense would be reallocated is a open question. The reflexive notion is more AAA on the battle front & more AT guns are possible. Transportation is problematic as the anti air units in Germany were depending on third rate automotive transport, horses, and the dense railway system. That does not translate directly into mobility on the battle front in Africa, Italy or the eastern front. Manpower requires a evaluation o the men who served in the FLAK units. Underage boys & overaged men do not mean a 1-1 increase in soldiers on the battle front. While immense amounts of ammunition could be added to production for the field artillery such returns to the problem of transportation. The transportation campaigns of 1944. such as Op STRANGLE, left much of the ammunition sent overrun in rail side dumps, or destroyed by tactical and operational level bombing, never reaching the battle front.

Getting back to the OP, my take is 'Shock and Awe' air attacks were effective where morale was already endangered, i.e.: air attacks on Soviet cities like Minsk in late June. Tho relatively light compared to Warsaw, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, Coventry, they induced panic among a already nervous population & military service support. Belgrade a few weeks earlier should be examined for this effect. Where morale was sound anti morale effects were not close to what was expected.

 

[Mumbles]

Bomber Command had that single-minded ferocity but they applied it to the wrong targets. If BC's awareness of the difficulties of precision bombing had been married to a willingness to solve those problems and they'd applied their dedication to seeing Germany burn instead to seeing a few key industries flattened then we'd remember Bomber Command's effort in a very different light. After the war, even Arthur Harris, BC's commander, admitted as much although he claimed this was not apparent at the time.
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Harris had a profound dislike of what he called "panacea" targets that would supposedly shorten the war faster than the area bombing strategy he was wedded to, and he included oil and transport targets in that category. He was effectively rogue during the latter part of the war when it was apparent the "panacea" targets were worth hitting and Harris was not directing Bomber Command toward them appropriately but the political cost of relieving him was judged to be too high.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Did Harris publish anything post war, in explanation of his decisions?

 

[Deleted member 1487]

That is the large scale diversion of men, weapons, ammunition, fuel, to air defense was not of serious strategic effect until 1943 at the earliest, & then in the later half.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but this part is where more specialist sources will disagree. Going by the books "FLAK" and "How the war was won" as early as 3rd quarter 1941 1/3 of the total Wehrmacht budget was going into air defense of Germany and Western Europe.
https://www.amazon.com/Flak-German-...s&ie=UTF8&qid=1503882791&sr=1-2&keywords=flak
https://www.amazon.com/How-War-Was-Won-Cambridge/dp/1107014751

Things varied a bit in 1942, but it only climbed from there to the high point in 1944-45. So the strategic impact on production was noticed as early as the start of Barbarossa due to the diversions the RAF BC forced on Germany. Note this includes the FLAK towers and IIRC also civilian protection bunkers.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Did Harris publish anything post war, in explanation of his decisions?

Authorized biography:
https://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Harris-Authorized-Biography/dp/0722176589

This paper might help with some of his policies:
https://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/F1805DCA_5056_A318_A8B0723CFC07C863.pdf

He gave a number of interviews:
His part starts at about 9:45

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

I agree with most of what you wrote, but this part is where more specialist sources will disagree. Going by the books "FLAK" and "How the war was won" as early as 3rd quarter 1941 1/3 of the total Wehrmacht budget was going into air defense of Germany and Western Europe. Things varied a bit in 1942, but it only climbed from there to the high point in 1944-45. So the strategic impact on production was noticed as early as the start of Barbarossa due to the diversions the RAF BC forced on Germany. Note this includes the FLAK towers and IIRC also civilian protection bunkers.

I've seen some of those numbers & can't see a deep impact. Specifically I'm looking at weapons and ammunition, and specifically for Germany. The anti air investment in "Western Europe" crosses to far into operational and tactical defense, lying outside the strategic bombing of Germany.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I've seen some of those numbers & can't see a deep impact. Specifically I'm looking at weapons and ammunition, and specifically for Germany. The anti air investment in "Western Europe" crosses to far into operational and tactical defense, lying outside the strategic bombing of Germany.

It's difficult to disaggregate the numbers especially when the 'western shield' was part of the defenses of Germany, as Western Europe was a buffer zone; it also was part of the independent operations against France, but remember too that the 1941-42 RAF 'lean in' to France was part of a strategy to divert German attention from Russia as was the bombing of Germany proper. So it doesn't really make sense to separate the two, as it was all part of the strategic operation to stretch German resources to help Russia in 1941 and keep them in the war; from 1942 on was when the specific strategy of bombing German cities and de-Housing as in effect, but the point is the air campaign in general from 1941 on divert major German production resources, which was part of the British strategic aim. The change of targets altered their aim, but not the impact it had on the diversion of German resources to strategic effect. Just because the actual bomb damage was relatively minor or included targets outside of Germany, doesn't mean it wasn't part of the same strategy; I'll even argue that the HARPRO bombing of Romania in 1942 and then Operation Tidal Wave was all part of that strategic plan and effect to use air power to hurt German resources, which included diverting major assets from the front (and in the case of Romania away from Germany). In 1943 and beyond an average of around 5% of total German air defense resources was stationed in Romania to defend the airfields.

 

[Aber]

The reality on the ground. While it is true that American bombing accuracy was poor enough to cause lots of collateral damage to the surrounding area, the methodology of aiming for industrial targets as the Americans did still delivered more hits then the British, who just pounded cities regardless of the presence of targets.

The reality is more complex.

IF conditions were clear over the target, then US bombing could be VERY accurate on particular plants. However the impact was overestimated and it wasn't realised at the time that multiple attacks had to made to ensure that the sites were not repaired and put back into production.

However if the target was obscured by cloud, or defensive smokescreens then US attacks were LESS accurate than Bomber Command attacks at night. Bomber Command drew from the experience of the attacks on Coventry that it was not damage to the industrial plants themselves that caused the biggest problem in resuming production, but damage to the local infrastructure - electricity, water, rail, housing for workers etc.

The definitive work on the effects of bombing is now Richard Overy's The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/bombing-war-europe-richard-overy-review

 

[Michele]

While all assessments tend to focus on Germany only, I find that the actually desired effect of "morale" bombings is better understood if you look at all the instances. If you do, you'll notice that while it never happened that this sort of bombing caused a popular insurrection and forced the government in power to seek peace terms, it repeatedly happened that these bombings caused, or were at least followed by, such a development.

This happened when not the population at large, but the government itself, or at least some important part of the decision-making class, would come to senses.
Bombing of Prague - did not happen, the Czechoslovakian government caved in on the basis of the mere threat.
Bombing and bombardment of Warsaw - the Polish government ignored it, but the Polish mayor of the capital took the decision for surrender.
Bombing of Rotterdam - the Dutch government had already decided to surrender on the basis of the mere threat of city bombardments.
Bombing of Rome, accompanied by a series of disasters and the presence of enemy troops in Italy - Mussolini was not convinced by that, but other Fascists and the King took the thing in their own hands.
Bombing of Bucarest, accompanied by the Soviet troops on the doorstep - I don't know if the bombings factored in the decision, but the fact is that in 1944, the capital was bombed by the Allies repeatedly, and Antonescu was ousted and the country switched sides.
Atomic bombings, possibly accompanied by the threat of the Soviets - part of the war cabinet still wanted to fight on, but the Emperor and another part changed their minds.
Bombing of German cities - no change of mind for Hitler of course, but wasn't this a factor on the minds of the July 1944 plotters?

 

[Michele]

This wasn't solved until 1944 with the oil campaign, which by the latter part of the year had indeed collapsed German oil production and brought German industry to the point of collapse. Of course, by then it was far too late to say it had a decisive impact on the war as German industry was also collapsing under the effects of over-mobilization, resource depletion, and battlefield losses. But had the issue been solved in 1943, the war would have very much gone faster.

Well, yes, the German oil production was essentially out of service by the fall of 1944 - but I would also thank the Soviets boots on the ground at the Ploesti oilfields, for that.
Achieving the same result in 1943? That's the intention of Tidal Wave, which while useful wasn't a decisive success.

 

[Michele]

NATO did it again with Serbia in 1999, continually switching the target set while flailing blindly.

Gosh.
Yeah, they switched targets sets often. And... this remains the prime example of a war won solely through aerial bombardment. The NATO/OTAN bombed and bombed, until the Yugoslavian government accepted to withdraw its troops from Kosovo. The ground forces only moved in to mop up, demine, secure, take over. If there is a completely, unqualifiedly successful morale bombing campaign, this is the one.

 

[hipper]

Gosh.
Yeah, they switched targets sets often. And... this remains the prime example of a war won solely through aerial bombardment. The NATO/OTAN bombed and bombed, until the Yugoslavian government accepted to withdraw its troops from Kosovo. The ground forces only moved in to mop up, demine, secure, take over. If there is a completely, unqualifiedly successful morale bombing campaign, this is the one.

hmm I'm not sure on that one on the face of it you are correct but the presence of very large ground forces poised for invasion probably had as large an effect as the bombing itself

Granted I've not read any Serbian memoirs that would confirm this, anyone know if there are any?

 

[Redbeard]

As someone once joked, the Germans were subjected to a *second* wave of bombardment after World War II ended--this time they were bombarded with surveys and questionnaires to determine what the effect of the bombings had been on their morale... Richard Overy, *Why the Allies Won, * p. 132. https://books.google.com/books?id=aA-lS2K4hJkC&pg=PA132 The answers were in the main predictable: *of course* bombing was demoralizing, though this did not lead to any panic or revolt against the governments. People were too busy struggling for survival to think of political resistance against the regime. OTOH, neither did the prospect of vengeance against the bombers sustain their morale.

I guess people after the war would hesitate to say that the bombing had them hate the British and Americans even more, but my impression is that the bombings of UK and Germany created the same "we must stand together feeling" - which after the war was elevated into divine heights in UK and almost forgot/tabooed in Germany.

Anyway, what took the axis out was boots on the ground and ships on the sea cutting German and Japanese factories off from vital supplies. Of course German resources were diverted into defence vs. the bombers but not in proportion to the wallied effort put into the strategic bombing campaign. And where strategic bombing was in the high end of logistic and technologic complexity and cost the defence to a large degree was in the low end. It is a lot easier to keep static FlaK batteries manned and supplied than field army units.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

I loved Hansens book it's a good example of a polemic attack on Arthur Harris

Hansen ultimately calls Harris a good general and credits him for forging Bombing Command into a effective fighting force while noting that the misapplication of that force was an understandable one. If that is an "polemic attack" looks like then I must wonder what praise is!

In any case, it is true that Bomber Command launched many impressive precision attacks during the war. But these were never a priority for Harris and he always saw them as a distraction from the true war winning goal of flattening German cities, which he pursued relentlessly to the end of the war.

Gosh.
Yeah, they switched targets sets often. And... this remains the prime example of a war won solely through aerial bombardment. The NATO/OTAN bombed and bombed, until the Yugoslavian government accepted to withdraw its troops from Kosovo. The ground forces only moved in to mop up, demine, secure, take over. If there is a completely, unqualifiedly successful morale bombing campaign, this is the one.

The threat of a ground invasion was also an important factor in Serb decision making. While the Serb army was convinced it could temporarily hold Kosovo against a ground invasion and extract a solid blood price, Milosevic was concerned that if NATO ran into too many problems in Kosovo it might make an end run around his forces and just push straight for Belgrade. This was not an unreasonable concern. NATO had after all already done this by switching to bombing civilian targets in Serbia proper after military targets in Kosovo proved too difficult. Had NATO invaded on the ground then Milosevic had to know that the likely result would not just be the loss of Kosovo but the invasion of Serbia proper and his overthrow. At that point it would have become a war NATO could not afford to lose. And then there was a third factor: the political pressure the Russians brought to bear. This was particularly devastating since the Serbs were counting on Russia to back them up, not oppose them. So one can't say morale bombing solely won the Serbian War nor that it was an unqualified success as the two other factors very much qualify it.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

The reality is more complex.

IF conditions were clear over the target, then US bombing could be VERY accurate on particular plants. However the impact was overestimated and it wasn't realised at the time that multiple attacks had to made to ensure that the sites were not repaired and put back into production.

However if the target was obscured by cloud, or defensive smokescreens then US attacks were LESS accurate than Bomber Command attacks at night. Bomber Command drew from the experience of the attacks on Coventry that it was not damage to the industrial plants themselves that caused the biggest problem in resuming production, but damage to the local infrastructure - electricity, water, rail, housing for workers etc.

The definitive work on the effects of bombing is now Richard Overy's The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/bombing-war-europe-richard-overy-review

It depends on what year you're talking about. The USAAF got a lot more accurate even in obscured conditions in 1944 as they learned from their mistakes in 1942-43.

Well, yes, the German oil production was essentially out of service by the fall of 1944 - but I would also thank the Soviets boots on the ground at the Ploesti oilfields, for that.
Achieving the same result in 1943? That's the intention of Tidal Wave, which while useful wasn't a decisive success.

Check your timeline there, the RAF mining of the Danube happened before the Soviet invasion of Romania (at least the oil bits) and had shut down oil barge traffic.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EsWgAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=mining+danube+1944&source=bl&ots=SJXFL2h8IE&sig=thlIbhTilpl5OVril4VBI0cfAjA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK5ZbV-fnVAhVJNiYKHWX3Dk8Q6AEIaTAL#v=onepage&q=mining danube 1944&f=false

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47696625
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/44807001

 

[Michele]

Check your timeline there, the RAF mining of the Danube happened before the Soviet invasion of Romania (at least the oil bits) and had shut down oil barge traffic.

I'm entirely aware of that, thanks, and BTW it's been discussed here not long ago.
The point is the difference between initiatives that temporarily stop something, and those that close them up for good.
It's a difference many professional proponents of aerial bombing did not understand at the time, let alone amateurs like us today.

 

[Michele]

The threat of a ground invasion was also an important factor in Serb decision making. While the Serb army was convinced it could temporarily hold Kosovo against a ground invasion and extract a solid blood price, Milosevic was concerned that if NATO ran into too many problems in Kosovo it might make an end run around his forces and just push straight for Belgrade. This was not an unreasonable concern. NATO had after all already done this by switching to bombing civilian targets in Serbia proper after military targets in Kosovo proved too difficult. Had NATO invaded on the ground then Milosevic had to know that the likely result would not just be the loss of Kosovo but the invasion of Serbia proper and his overthrow. At that point it would have become a war NATO could not afford to lose. And then there was a third factor: the political pressure the Russians brought to bear. This was particularly devastating since the Serbs were counting on Russia to back them up, not oppose them. So one can't say morale bombing solely won the Serbian War nor that it was an unqualified success as the two other factors very much qualify it.

Very well, I'll take back the unqualified. Considering that it remains a fact there was no ground combat, and that the Serbian surrender was achieved through bombing, and that you yourself now state that the threat to the Serbian hearland, Belgrade himself, and the government was validated exactly by the bombing campaign and its enlargement to a long list of targets, maybe you should withdraw the notion that the NATO/OTAN was "flailing blindly". It turns out they did exactly the right thing - in your analysis too.

 

[Fearless Leader]

Did bombing of civilian homes cause problems as the displaced workers had to find shelter and food for their families, thus disrupting production at least temporarily?

Speer had it right, the need to produce AA guns and fighters to stop the bombing meant fewer resources to other fronts which had long-range benefits.

Agreed, the US should have focused on two or three key facilities - oil being key - and keep hitting those. It was almost impossible to disrupt rail traffic for long periods of time except by bombing bridges, and with no guided weapons this was very difficult at best.

Regarding Dehousing: It really depended on the target. Destroying German housing had very little impact due to well organized relief methods. It was, however, massively effective in Italy due to the decision to employ all available trucks in shipping workers in and out of the cities on a nightly basis.

As for the "Lost Division" argument, the limitations of applying the resources the Wehrmacht used to defend against the Bombing campaign have been well documented and argued. What hasn't really been noted is that if we are to imagine the German war effort unencumbered by the strain of defending against strategic bombing, we must also keep in mind that the Allies are similarly unencumbered. Imagine how much more swiftly the Battle of the Atlantic could have been won if Coastal Command had gotten all the long range aircraft it wanted? In general, it seems to me that the resources that the Allies employed in their strategic bombing campaigns could have been much more easily employed in other areas of the war than the resources the Germans employed in defensive efforts.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I'm entirely aware of that, thanks, and BTW it's been discussed here not long ago.
The point is the difference between initiatives that temporarily stop something, and those that close them up for good.
It's a difference many professional proponents of aerial bombing did not understand at the time, let alone amateurs like us today.

Shut down is shut down. Effectively the mining shut down the transit of oil to Germany permanently because they did not have the resources to sweep the mines before the RAF could add more. Same with the bombing of German oil facilities, they could be wrecked far quicker than rebuilt and were hammered relentlessly. As it was German synthetic oil production by 1942 was greater than the shipments from Romania anyway. By 1944 nearly all sources were being shut down by bombing and mining, the Soviet overrun of Romania just stopped the limited flow through coming in via rail and relieved Allied bombers of mining duty.

 

[David T]

I guess people after the war would hesitate to say that the bombing had them hate the British and Americans even more, but my impression is that the bombings of UK and Germany created the same "we must stand together feeling" - which after the war was elevated into divine heights in UK and almost forgot/tabooed in Germany.

Actually, the decline in morale caused by the bombing (and of course other indications of defeat) in Germany was noted by SD reports at the time, not just by postwar surveys. https://books.google.com/books?id=W4sUi6omc3cC&pg=PA205 (Decline in morale does not of course mean that capitulation was seen as conceivable by the majority of Germans until very late in the war--especially in view of the Allied demand for unconditional surrender.) One must remember in making comparisons that as Ian Kershaw put it: "the scale was colossal compared with what happened here - half a million civilians killed from the bombing... What people remember there is the horror of it all, the nightly terror of the bombing. You can't look back on that and think how brave the population were, or what courageous Blitz spirit there was. People remember the suffering, and the deaths and the devastation." http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11213968

During the War itself, incidentally, Allied propaganda, far from portraying the Germans as demoralized, portrayed them as a people "fanatically prepared to fight to the last for its Fuhrer." https://books.google.com/books?id=W4sUi6omc3cC&pg=PA201