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The US and UK's reliance on heavy bombing is thought provoking, but perhaps not as profound or unique as the author suggests: Germany attempted a similar policy
by woodruffw 3y ago
The US and UK's reliance on heavy bombing is thought provoking, but perhaps not as profound or unique as the author suggests: Germany attempted a similar policy at the beginning of the war (culminating in the London Blitz), and largely failed for strategic rather than technical reasons.
In other words: what really sets the Allied bombings apart is learning from the strategic errors that the Germans made (destroying entire industrial bases, not trying to smear small amounts of damage across the target's entire economy), not some uniquely "liberal" world view.
- hackandthink 3y agoI agree it's not unique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_strategic_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_strateg... Bombing of North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia is missing. The terrible scale of Bombing of North Korea is not well known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea
- JoeDaDude 3y agoSir Arthur Harris, the British head of Bomber Command which was responsible for the bombing campaign against Germany, has some choice words on how the bombing was a response to Germany's own campaigns earlier in the war: "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ujzVqwJnB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ujzVqwJnB0
- mrguyorama 3y agoThere's also the fact that it was well understood that Germany meant to conquer everyone. This was a war of survival for all countries involved
- hef19898 3y agoNo, the allies didn't learn. The British knew very well that moral was not negatively affected by the Blitz, nor was industry. The targeted workers living quarters and civilians regardless. And no amounz of data confirming that these bombings had no real impact on German production rates, nor moral (in fact, POWs from Normandy confirmed that they fought to defend Germany from allied bombing), and still contimued. Heck, the leveled Caen in France in order to destroy three bridges. Caen was leveled, thousands killed. And the bridges still intact.
- woodruffw 3y ago> The British knew very well that moral was not negatively affected by the Blitz, nor was industry. My comment addresses this: the German aerial strategy didn't obtain its stated goals (demoralization and destruction of the British industrial base), and the Allied aerial counteroffensive arguably learned from that. For all of its excesses (and they were gross, violent excesses), the Allied aerial offensive was strategically sound: the German industrial base collapsed not because it was entirely flattened by bombings, but because of strategic attacks on its foundations (primarily oil[1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II
- hef19898 3y agoOh, the campaign flanking the invasion of France in 1944 (!), the only time strategic bombing actually did something meaningful. Up to that point, not so much. Funny so, that you fight against reports from the RAF and USAAF confirming that strategic bombing didn't have the intended effect for all the previous years of the war. That attitude is getting a trend online so, first it was Wehraboos glamorizing German tanks and mechanized warfare, now it is people doing the same thing with allied bombing and bombers. Both are wrong by the way.