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I highly recommend reading "Why the Allies Won" by Dr Richard Overy. Everybody just assumes that the Allies were bound to win, but if you look at the early per

I highly recommend reading "Why the Allies Won" by Dr Richard Overy. Everybody just assumes that the Allies were bound to win, but if you look at the early period you can see that it was far from inevitable. Overy does a fantastic job of analysing WHY. One of the issues he addresses is our bombing campaign which so many people nowadays love to denigrate. It was actually crucial to our winning. The Nazis in charge had every reason to downplay the figures of just what it was costing, but even they admitted to something like 40% of industrial production lost or diverted to air defence. So much air defence required against bombers that they lacked air superiority in crucial battles like Kursk. So much ammunition converted to anti-aircraft production that they lacked supplies on the front line and even lacked fertiliser for producing food. At the end of the day you can only fight if you have the weapons and ammunition to do it with, so it becomes a battle between respective economies. On the Axis side only Germany really ramped up production. Russia did an outstanding job, with her people caught between a vicious onslaught by National Socialist who called them sub-humans and their own International Socialist rulers who barely treated them much better. And nobody could believe what the US economy proved capable of - the most accurate estimates were made by the British but even these were way off. It might sound dry but it doesn't read that way - highly recommended.

CalChris 10y ago
Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley talk covers Silicon Valley's role in the bombing campaign. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
qyv 10y ago
The Robert McNamara documentary "Fog of War" has some excellent insight into the WW2 bombing campaign (mostly in the pacific) and the sheer scale of what was done. It is startling to say the least.
mtreis86 10y ago
The US Army wrote an entire book on the Logistics of WWII http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-29/CMH_Pub_70-29.pdf http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-29/CMH_Pub_70-... "Many of the logistical problems faced in World War II may never need to be addressed by a future army, but problems of mobilizing, adjudicating competing demands, and fitting strategic ends to material means will inevitably plague future military leaders. They may have better organizations and tools at their disposal, but they can expect that policy guidance will be vague, expectations of field commanders excessive, and complex logistical systems almost impossible to keep in balance in the midst of war's vagaries."
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> it becomes a battle between respective economies I tend to think of WW2 as the Civilization video game. If you have more "production" than the other players, it's pretty easy to squash them like bugs. > Russia did an outstanding job There's an argument to make there, that if Russia was a democracy, it would have crumbled. It was Stalin's iron fist that moved resources where he needed them that reshaped the whole country into a lean mean fighting machine - at the cost of tremendous suffering, of course.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  Yes, but it was also his "fist" which through a paranoid mind killed off much of his military brain trust --which left him with amateurish (unseasoned) upper ranks to run the military when war actually came.
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    That's also true.
keevie 10y ago
I don't think people denigrating allied bombing campaigns are really concerned with their military effectiveness, but rather the millions upon millions of civilians we (Allies) killed.
twic 10y ago
I learned this playing Axis and Allies [1], where there is a rule for 'strategic bombing' [2]: rather than using your bomber to attack enemy troops, you attack enemy factories, where damage is done to the enemy's budget, rather than forces. I never used my bombers that way, preferring to attack armies and fleets, but my opponent, who understood the game much better than me, would doggedly go after my factories. Needless to say, he always won. [1] http://avalonhill.wizards.com/games/axis-and-allies http://avalonhill.wizards.com/games/axis-and-allies [2] http://axisandallies.wikia.com/wiki/Strategic_Bombing http://axisandallies.wikia.com/wiki/Strategic_Bombing
nickpsecurity 10y ago
On that note, I recommend reading on the spy that posed as an expert on tech for their oil/gas factories. They brought him to them. The Allies would then bomb them later. My memory loss prevents me from giving his name and more detail of operations. We had a number of people doing stuff like this. Not just bombing but spies were crucial to our work. Anyone remember the name of that spy or got an online writeup on him? Like to add to my bookmarks.

CalChris 10y ago

Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley talk covers Silicon Valley's role in the bombing campaign. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

qyv 10y ago

The Robert McNamara documentary "Fog of War" has some excellent insight into the WW2 bombing campaign (mostly in the pacific) and the sheer scale of what was done. It is startling to say the least.

mtreis86 10y ago

The US Army wrote an entire book on the Logistics of WWII http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-29/CMH_Pub_70-29.pdf http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-29/CMH_Pub_70-... "Many of the logistical problems faced in World War II may never need to be addressed by a future army, but problems of mobilizing, adjudicating competing demands, and fitting strategic ends to material means will inevitably plague future military leaders. They may have better organizations and tools at their disposal, but they can expect that policy guidance will be vague, expectations of field commanders excessive, and complex logistical systems almost impossible to keep in balance in the midst of war's vagaries."

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> it becomes a battle between respective economies I tend to think of WW2 as the Civilization video game. If you have more "production" than the other players, it's pretty easy to squash them like bugs. > Russia did an outstanding job There's an argument to make there, that if Russia was a democracy, it would have crumbled. It was Stalin's iron fist that moved resources where he needed them that reshaped the whole country into a lean mean fighting machine - at the cost of tremendous suffering, of course.

pizzetta 10y ago
Yes, but it was also his "fist" which through a paranoid mind killed off much of his military brain trust --which left him with amateurish (unseasoned) upper ranks to run the military when war actually came.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  That's also true.

keevie 10y ago

I don't think people denigrating allied bombing campaigns are really concerned with their military effectiveness, but rather the millions upon millions of civilians we (Allies) killed.

twic 10y ago

I learned this playing Axis and Allies [1], where there is a rule for 'strategic bombing' [2]: rather than using your bomber to attack enemy troops, you attack enemy factories, where damage is done to the enemy's budget, rather than forces. I never used my bombers that way, preferring to attack armies and fleets, but my opponent, who understood the game much better than me, would doggedly go after my factories. Needless to say, he always won. [1] http://avalonhill.wizards.com/games/axis-and-allies http://avalonhill.wizards.com/games/axis-and-allies [2] http://axisandallies.wikia.com/wiki/Strategic_Bombing http://axisandallies.wikia.com/wiki/Strategic_Bombing

nickpsecurity 10y ago

On that note, I recommend reading on the spy that posed as an expert on tech for their oil/gas factories. They brought him to them. The Allies would then bomb them later. My memory loss prevents me from giving his name and more detail of operations. We had a number of people doing stuff like this. Not just bombing but spies were crucial to our work. Anyone remember the name of that spy or got an online writeup on him? Like to add to my bookmarks.