Was Anti-Morale Bombing Actually Effective?

[Shimbo]

I don't think this is quite right. While certainly the intention of the bombing campaign was to reduce German warmaking capability, we shouldn't quantify its effectiveness by looking at whether production rose or fell. We need to be aware that German industry was expanding hugely, and that means that success is measured not by changes in absolute production, but by a comparison between production expected without bombing and the actual production.

On this basis, my understanding is that the Ruhr campaign was effective and successful, whereas Berlin wasn't.

I get what you're saying, but I think there's little of the strategic bombing campaign that can be said to have seriously impeded the growth German industry. I'm sure it had some effect, but not the kind of dramatic, war-winning effect they were looking for. As it says on wiki: "Despite its successes, by the spring of 1944 the Combined Bomber Offensive had failed to severely damage the German economy or significantly interrupt production of a vital item."

The ball-bearing raids Schweinfurt and Schweinfurt II, for example. were strategically ineffective, because although they caused a drop in ball-bearing production, it was not enough to actually cause any consequent production problems, due to stockpiling. This was the problem. Only sustained raids could stop production to the extent that stockpiles were depleted, but sustained raids were impossible because the bomber force was close to combat ineffective after two raids - having lost a third of its strength. One more raid and they'd potentially have been down to half strength. It was only in 1944 with Big Week and then the oil and transport plans that they hit on targets that had war-winning effect.

 

[eltf177]

I personally feel oil was the choke-point, bomb the refineries and rail lines over and over...

 

[hipper]

I personally feel oil was the choke-point, bomb the refineries and rail lines over and over...

pointless before 1941 as the SOviets were shipping lots of oil to the Nazis, limited effectiveness unless you can hit the Rumanian oil fields too so you need to wait till 1943 to get bombers in range. the US was defeated in its attempts to daylight bomb deep into Germany during 1943. Bomber command could have done something in Winter 1943/1944 but bombed Berlin instead.

Short answer oil bombing In 1943/44 could have shortened the war,

 

[marathag]

pointless before 1941 as the SOviets were shipping lots of oil to the Nazis, limited effectiveness unless you can hit the Rumanian oil fields too so you need to wait till 1943 to get bombers in range. the US was defeated in its attempts to daylight bomb deep into Germany during 1943. Bomber command could have done something in Winter 1943/1944 but bombed Berlin instead.

Short answer oil bombing In 1943/44 could have shortened the war,

Crude oil shipments don't help when refineries are offline

 

[King Augeas]

I get what you're saying, but I think there's little of the strategic bombing campaign that can be said to have seriously impeded the growth German industry. I'm sure it had some effect, but not the kind of dramatic, war-winning effect they were looking for. As it says on wiki: "Despite its successes, by the spring of 1944 the Combined Bomber Offensive had failed to severely damage the German economy or significantly interrupt production of a vital item."

Are you familiar with Tooze? He talks of the Ruhr campaign severely impeding the expansion in production and causing a crisis in subcomponent delivery. He actually puts it much stronger "Bomber Command had stopped Speer's armaments miracle in its tracks".

Clearly this can't be a war-winning effect, but what could be? The criticism that bombing failed to "severely damage" the German economy again seems vulnerable to the fallacy of looking for absolute reductions in output, as Wiki doesn't define what it means by "damage". Or "severe", for that matter.

The criticism that bombing couldn't interrupt production of a vital item is valid, but this is more a reflection of the impossibility of accurate bombing of specific industries, rather than the ineffectiveness of bombing. If we take Tooze's interpretation as correct, then the Ruhr campaign did cause significant damage to the German economy, but that damage could never manifest itself as severe disruption to specific items, only as general degradation of a system.

 

[trurle]

Irrespective of the moral issues, was anti-civilian morale bombing actually effective in WWII?

The "anti-civillian morale bombing" is the euphemism for the "terror bombing". As such, it was not effective because inducing terror only were not enough in hierarchical German / Japanese society where decision makers were heavily protected from the all but worst of the acts of terror (i.e. nuclear bombing).
For "anti-civillian morale bombing" in WWII to be effective, it should have uses "bunker boosters" on top leadership locations, not on general populace or industrial targets.

 

[hipper]

Crude oil shipments don't help when refineries are offline

In winter 42 / 43 Bomber command was not accurate enough to destroy oil refineries, 43/44 was the first real opportunity to do serious damage.

 

[marathag]

In winter 42 / 43 Bomber command was not accurate enough to destroy oil refineries, 43/44 was the first real opportunity to do serious damage.

GEE and OBOE beam broadcasters showed up in number by Summer '42 with enough receivers to do Pathfinder missions, bur Harris was stuck on dehousing and an active opponent of the Pathfinder idea

 

[Crusonia]

Maybe. But as to the practical effects of causing strikes or a rebellion, it didn't work. There was nothing like 1918. With the memory of 1918 in mind it wasn't unreasonable for the British and Americans to assume it would work.

It did however work in destroying industry. Some people say the amount of resources that were destroyed by the bombing was less than the amount the Allies put into conducting the bombing in the first place. Even if that were true, the Allies had a lot more resources than the Germans and so it was in their favor. The alternative of investing those resources in a premature landing in France would have been much more wasteful.

 

[hipper]

GEE and OBOE beam broadcasters showed up in number by Summer '42 with enough receivers to do Pathfinder missions, bur Harris was stuck on dehousing and an active opponent of the Pathfinder idea

The Refineries were In South West Germany Gee and Oboe were range limited and long winter nights were needed for such missions I don't think Bomber command trying to find and destroy oil refineries in winter 1942/43 would have been effective. Especially with The avaolibility of Rumanian Oil.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I personally feel oil was the choke-point, bomb the refineries and rail lines over and over...

The USSBS stated that they severely misstepped by failing to hit the electrical grid on the assumption that it would be too easy for the Germans to work around any losses and the grid was too decentralized to damage, which they found to be completely incorrect; instead they were stretched to the breaking point and any damage would have caused major problems; Speer during interrogations after the war said that had the Allies hit two facilities outside of Berlin the entire city and it's industry would have been entirely ground to a halt. Combined with bombing of electrical equipment production facilities, they could have ended the war in 1943 or early 1944 had they focused their effort. Even their OTL 'pressure' valve for electrical needs, buying some power from Switzerland, wouldn't have worked for most of the country.

 

[marathag]

The Refineries were In South West Germany Gee and Oboe were range limited and long winter nights were needed for such missions I don't think Bomber command trying to find and destroy oil refineries in winter 1942/43 would have been effective. Especially with The avaolibility of Rumanian Oil.

If worried about Romanian Oil, the way to slow that would have been more mining of the Danube, that OTL wasn't applied till 1944
That also works against other traffic besides oil barges too

 

[phx1138]

It had scant impact on civilian morale, except to stiffen it against the Allies, & helped bankrupt Britain postwar... It was enormously costly.

 

[CalBear]

Sure. It just was not strategically effective in the manner that the advocates expected.

The expectation was that the population would be cowed, the actual result was resignation. Folks were terrified, but if anything continued to go to work as an act of defiance. The morale of the people was undoubtedly damaged, fear became a regular component of life, but the strategic goal was not met.

There was a pretty profound effect in the Reich, where enormous amounts of assets were diverted to defend against the bombing, and materials were used to construct shelters that would otherwise have been used to build fortifications. Much of that effort was done to counter the morale impact of the bombing.

 

[Raferty]

I believe the Germans were able to obtain a quicker Dutch surrender because of terror bombing. And the atomic bombs I think were what induced the Japanese to surrender, rather than the Manchurian campaign (I know there is some debate about this, but the Japanese internal debates very much were about their inability to stop the bombings).

 

[frustrated progressive]

Sure. It just was not strategically effective in the manner that the advocates expected.

The expectation was that the population would be cowed, the actual result was resignation. Folks were terrified, but if anything continued to go to work as an act of defiance. The morale of the people was undoubtedly damaged, fear became a regular component of life, but the strategic goal was not met.

There was a pretty profound effect in the Reich, where enormous amounts of assets were diverted to defend against the bombing, and materials were used to construct shelters that would otherwise have been used to build fortifications. Much of that effort was done to counter the morale impact of the bombing.

I'm honored that you noticed my thread.

 

[King Augeas]

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

I recently finished reading this. It's a great book in terms of detail, history and rationale of the bombing campaigns. But there a few frustrating aspects, such as those related to perceptions of the effects of bombing and targeting, and it's also a bit thin on the comparisons of the different bombing strategies.

I will have to read it again to check the following interpretation, but I'll post it here for now for your comments...

Early on, Overy talks of the "terror bombings" of Warsaw, Rotterdam etc. not being terror bombing, but being legitimate attacks aimed at military targets in support of the ground campaign. I have no particular problem with that description, except to note that it's one of presentation and perception. The reality on the ground, given the impossibility of precision bombing noted elsewhere, and the perception of that reality, did not match the ideal of a legitimate attack on military targets, instead resembling indiscriminate terror bombing. This is curious because later on, he seems to assign Bomber Command the dubious honour of being the first to perform indiscriminate bombing, in 1940, based on the reality of the absence of nearby ground forces for the bombing to support and the actual reality of the effects on the ground, rather than the intended targets. Then, however, the daylight BoB raids are presented as legitimate attacks on the London docks etc. - despite the indiscriminate reality on the ground. It all seems quite inconsistent and the lack of emphasis on outcome over intent leads to apparent contradictions. It's as if he wanted to assign blame to someone for being the first to start terror bombing, but gave up halfway when he realised that the distinction between indiscriminate terror bombing and badly-aimed precision bombing was pretty much nothing, but then didn't want to explicitly draw that significant conclusion out because it would mess with his half-developed, half-abandoned argument.

The other aspect is the common (mis?)conception of Bomber Command area-bombing at night vs. the USAAF precision bombing at day. Overy is aware that this is a misconception - he talks of the startling amount of "daylight" bombing conducted through cloud using radar aids, just as Bomber Command was doing, with basically identical effects. But it comes out here and there, rather than being, say, the focus of a chapter, which I think would help people's understanding of the war.

 

[Michele]

Sure it was effective. See my post #29 in this thread.

 

[Michele]

Early on, Overy talks of the "terror bombings" of Warsaw, Rotterdam etc. not being terror bombing, but being legitimate attacks aimed at military targets in support of the ground campaign. I have no particular problem with that description, except to note that it's one of presentation and perception. The reality on the ground, given the impossibility of precision bombing noted elsewhere, and the perception of that reality, did not match the ideal of a legitimate attack on military targets, instead resembling indiscriminate terror bombing.

Sorry to hear Overy makes such a mistake.

Sure, when issuing the orders for Rotterdam, the Luftwaffe commanders singled out a military target, the port. It just so happened to be in the center of the city.

The "military" qualification was nothing but pretence. The intention was to force the Dutch to surrender, and to do it quickly, because otherwise the entire German plan would have foundered.
We know that for a fact because this knowledge doesn't come from Allied wartime propaganda or from sources sympathetic to the Allied cause. It comes from Cajus Bekker's The Luftwaffe War Diaries. That's a source that is entirely sympathetic to the Luftwaffe, and that describes the event with the clear intention to justify the bombing.

Yet it contains candid and damning statements by the German side in the truce negotiations.

Bekker writes:

The tank attack across the Willems bridge was fixed for 15.30 hours on May 14th, and would be preceded by artillery fire and a pinpoint bombing raid on a limited area at the northern end to paralyse the enemy's power of defence."

Bold mine; note how he describes this as accurate, military targeting.

Then the German negotiators go on to say:

"That," he added, "could result in the complete destruction of the city.

And

They at once informed him that only immediate capitulation could save the city from heavy air bombardment.
...
Choltitz, waiting with Bakker on the bridge for the few minutes till Corps was advised, seized the opportunity once more to emphasize the deadly danger with which Rotterdam was threatened.

The Germans were, beyond any doubt, trying to terrorize the Dutch into surrendering, under the threat of the complete destruction of their city, not of their military assets.

That was because, again not in my opinion, not in the opinion of an Allied propaganda source, but in the analysis of the Luftwaffe War Diaries:

Undoubtedly the Rotterdam garrison could effectively bar any further German advance to the north. From the strictly military point of view there was no reason why it should yield.

So, when one wonders whether terror bombing worked during WWII, one should consider how the whole of the Netherlands surrendered.

 

[phx1138]

Sure. It just was not strategically effective in the manner that the advocates expected.

The expectation was that the population would be cowed, the actual result was resignation.

Keynes said it best: better even a bad government than a bomber overhead.

The problem the WAllies had was, they were targetting the wrong morale. The issue was, was Hitler going to quit? Could the Nazis be induced to surrender? To achieve that, the WAllies had to take a different approach, one that, in effect, said, "Overthrow the Nazis, & we stop."