The possibility of mounting retaliatory attacks against enemy cities in response to enemy attacks was part of German Air Force doctrine and had been repeated in the instructions in July, subject only to Hitler’s personal approval. London was kept in abeyance as a target perhaps to maximize the impact on the population when attacks finally began, but also to shield Berlin from the possibility of retaliation in turn. But given the pressure of popular opinion after four months of repeated British operations against German urban and rural targets, and the very public failure of the German air defence system to protect the capital, Hitler was compelled to make a gesture to meet public expectations. The attacks on Berlin seem to have affected him particularly: ‘a calculated insult’, according to his air force adjutant von Below, which required a response in kind.92 There were no moral or legal qualms about the attack on cities, since the RAF raids were widely regarded as evidence that the enemy had already shown a deliberate disregard for civilian casualties in prosecuting the war. This was not mere special pleading. The view of British ruthlessness went back to memories of the wartime naval blockade, which were deeply embedded in the generation now in command of Germany’s war effort. ‘The British are realists,’ Hitler told his dinner companions later in the war, ‘devoid of any scruple, cold as ice.’93 Once again Britain had declared an economic blockade on the day war broke out. Early air force wartime planning documents assumed that Britain might resort to ‘terror measures’ against German cities. Papers found after the defeat of France on Franco-British plans to bomb Soviet oilfields to cut off German oil supplies were used to show just how unscrupulous the British could be.94 The operation carried out on 7 September was in this broader sense a ‘revenge attack’, designed to strike a powerful blow to satisfy German domestic opinion, to shock the population of London out of its enthusiasm for war, and perhaps bring RAF bombing to a halt.
The ‘revenge attack’ was nevertheless not intended to be random retaliation. The London raids fitted into the framework of the planned pattern of the campaign, which was still predicated on the idea of a cross-Channel invasion at some point in September. After the brief assault on the RAF, the air force schedule was to move to other urban targets further inland, employing predominantly night-time ‘destroyer’ raids, with a final heavy blow at London just before Operation Sea Lion to create a major refugee problem.95 Operations against targets in the London area were already under way weeks before Hitler’s speech and there were detailed target plans for the capital – known on the German side by the acronym Loge, from Londongebiet (London area) – showing dock areas, communication targets, power stations and armaments works, which had been distributed to the Fliegerkorps in July. The object of the attack was to do serious damage to London’s capacity as Britain’s major port, to undermine the infrastructure necessary for the war economy as well as to intimidate the population. German bombing was intended to affect morale indirectly, rather than undermine it by deliberately indiscriminate or terror attacks. It was recognized that operations against crowded port areas would necessarily involve damage to residential housing and civilian casualties, but this was not regarded as a sufficient reason to abandon port facilities as a target.96 The combination of military-economic targeting and indirect pressure on morale was regarded, according to a later wartime account of the campaign, as ‘the principal and most effective form of operation’.97
Air force units were under orders to identify and hit precise strategic targets. If they could not, an alternative target was to be found. In extreme cases they were under orders to bring back their bombload and, if conditions permitted, to jettison the bombs on approaching their home base at a height of 30 metres from the ground, low enough to prevent the fuse from being activated, so that the bombs could be used again.98 The insistence on identifying and attacking strategic targets was no doubt done partly to emphasize the contrast between British and German practice, but it also made military sense because it maximized the impact on the enemy’s war effort of a given weight of bombs. Tactical instructions to German pilots issued in the autumn of 1940 insisted on the importance of achieving a high concentration of strikes on a designated target. When the air force chief of staff asked Hitler in mid-September whether he approved of deliberate attacks on residential areas as well, Hitler said no. His rejection was recorded in his headquarters war diary: ‘Terror attacks against purely residential areas will be held back as a very last resort, and for the moment will not be used.’ War-essential targets in London, including airfields, were given priority; terror was only to be used if the RAF unleashed a similar programme against German towns.99
The German Air Force saw the opening assault on London on 7 September 1940 as the opportunity to achieve the operational success and wide publicity that had been denied on ‘Eagle Day’. Bomber groups had been sent their instructions on 4 September. The London area was divided up into target zones for each group, each terminating in the London docks. The plan was to attack in three waves, the first attracting British fighters, but the second two free to bomb as enemy fighters were forced to land and refuel. The bombers were instructed to carry 20 per cent of their load as ‘flame bombs’ (Flammenbombe C250), large oil bombs designed to ignite the highly flammable material in London’s docklands, and 30 per cent as delayed-action bombs, to hinder efforts to fight the fires. Close formation and concentration of effort were called for.100 The raid itself was a considerable success because Fighter Command was positioned to expect further attacks on the fighter stations rather than a mass raid on London. A large formation of 348 bombers, escorted by 617 Me109s and Me110s, was able to penetrate through to the London docks and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and drop around 300 tonnes of bombs at 5 p.m. A second wave attacked at 8 p.m., dropping a further 330 tonnes, and bomber activity went on until the early hours of 8 September. Major fires started throughout the dock and port area and 436 Londoners were killed. The German Air Force lost 40 aircraft, the RAF 28. The sheer size of the fighter screen made it difficult for the enemy fighters to reach the bomber squadrons and a high concentration of effort was indeed achieved.
The day was chosen, like the 18 August attack on Biggin Hill, for the preparation of a special volume of reports from the pilots and crew about the first major ‘vengeance-attack’. Though the reports were destined for the Propaganda Ministry, they reflected the view of German aircrew that the 7 September raids gave them a renewed sense of purpose after weeks of small-scale and costly conflicts. Air force medical personnel had already observed signs of nervous exhaustion and ‘aversion to flying’ among personnel who had had little respite for a month.101 ‘At last once again a splendid goal before us!’ ran one account among the many. Talks to the crews had stressed the fact that bombing London was revenge for the destruction of German towns and the deaths of German civilians, and this view reappeared in a number of the accounts. ‘Everyone knew about the last cowardly attacks on German cities,’ wrote one reporter, ‘and thought about wives, mothers and children. And then came that word “Vengeance!” ’ The reports once again contrasted German operational achievements with British failures:
We steered towards London from the south. Still 50 or 60 kilometres away from Britain’s capital, we saw already in the sky thick, black clouds of smoke, which grew up like giant mushrooms. This is a target one can no longer mistake! A blazing girdle of fire stretched round the city of millions! In a few minutes we reached the point where we had to drop our bombs. And where are Albion’s proud fighters to be found? No Spitfire, no Hurricane in sight. Finished, quite finished is that British ‘air supremacy’. Before us now lies the bend in the Thames to the east of the city. In this bend lies our target: an electricity works surrounded by giant gasworks and docks. Below us flames and smoke …102
Another pilot recalled the sight of a ruined airfield on the flight to London, with nothing visible save the charred foundations. The impression from the air, which was largely what German Air Intelligence had to go on, was of systematic de
vastation.
The conviction that the German Air Force was winning the battle helps to explain why over the week following the raids on 7 September, Göring insisted once again that the RAF was on the point of collapse and the invasion a possibility. London was attacked in force again by day on 9, 11 and 14 September, with the RAF taking heavy casualties and inflicting fewer than usual. Not even the events on 15 September, celebrated thereafter in Britain as ‘Battle of Britain Day’, seriously dented German air force confidence. That day German bomber forces were hit heavily by changed RAF tactics. The British side thought that 185 German aircraft had been brought down, but actual losses amounted to 30 bombers and 26 fighters destroyed and a further 20 bombers damaged. This was a high enough toll from the attacking force, and it accelerated the shift over to night-time raiding, which had been conducted intermittently up until then. But during the week between 7 and 15 September, Fighter Command lost 120 aircraft to 99 German fighters, a ratio that could not easily be sustained by the RAF for very long. The German view was that air superiority, which had eluded the air force in August, was now within its grasp. Göring told Goebbels on 4 September that the war in the west would be over in three weeks. Goebbels relished the initial reports from neutral observers in London, which conjured up ‘really apocalyptic images’.103
None of this was in the end sufficient to convince Hitler that the risk of embarking on Sea Lion was worth taking. He had already expressed reservations in July about the possibility of defeating Britain. Against a background of wrangling between the army and the navy over how wide a beachhead could be supported, Hitler waited to see how the air war unfolded. On 3 September, D-Day was fixed for 20–21 September, but by mid-September it was evident from continued attacks by RAF Bomber Command against the assembled shipping and stores for the invasion that the enemy air force was far from defeated. Admiral Raeder and the army leadership began to explore indirect strategies – cutting Britain off in the Mediterranean by the occupation of Gibraltar, Malta and Suez, an intensified blockade – but Hitler still hesitated, perhaps in the hope that the new wave of bombing in London might still force the British leadership to negotiate. On 14 September in discussion with the three service chiefs he reasserted his view that the quickest way to end the war was to invade, but he concluded that the air force, though poised for victory, had not yet achieved air mastery.104 Persistent poor weather and the threat of British naval power contributed to the declining prospects for Sea Lion. Hitler reviewed the situation again on 17 September but could see little change; two days later Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely. Hitler was in the end unimpressed by the performance of the air force. In September he was shown less optimistic estimates of RAF strength than the ones Göring used. These indicated, correctly, that there were still at least 600 fighters in RAF units; interviews with the fighter aces Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders in the week after the postponement confirmed that the situation in the air war was more even than Göring and air force propaganda had suggested. Galland later recalled that his candid account of an RAF far from defeat was greeted by Hitler with nods of agreement.105
It has never been entirely clear what Hitler expected the air force to do once Sea Lion failed to materialize. The air force failure was only relative, since a great deal of damage had been done by the German Air Force in August and September, but air force action had not been sufficient to establish air superiority over southern England for any length of time. The explanations for this failure are well known, but are worth reiterating. The intelligence assessment of the enemy played a part throughout in shaping the German approach to the battle. German estimates in mid-September were notoriously wide of the mark. Instead of 300, the RAF had 656 operational fighters on 19 September with 202 more in immediate reserve and 226 in preparation for transfer to units; there were over 1,500 pilots available in the second half of September. The German fighter arm, in contrast, was down to 74 per cent of its pilot strength (around 700–800) by the beginning of September, and suffered losses of 23.1 per cent of its personnel throughout the month; serviceable fighter strength hovered around 500. The loss of crew over England was permanent, 638 identified bodies, 967 prisoners. This was never the contest of the Few against the Many. High attrition – a total of 1,733 aircraft lost from 10 July to 31 October, against 915 RAF fighters – could not be made good from German production. Between June and October 1940 the German aircraft industry turned out 988 single-engine fighters, but British factories produced 2,091 Hurricanes and Spitfires. There were problems with the planning and organization of German aircraft production (to be explored later), but the central problem facing the German Air Force during the daylight fighting was the failure to anticipate serious, centrally directed fighter defences. The sustained strength of Fighter Command compelled the German fighter force to accompany the bombers more closely, exposing them as well to greater risk, increasing the level of combat attrition and making it in the end impossible to sustain the daylight campaign.106
THE FIRST STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE
The German Air Force as a whole was still a formidable weapon in the autumn of 1940. But after the cancellation of Sea Lion the rationale for its continued activity against Britain had to be reassessed. Hitler quickly lost interest in the air campaign and issued no fresh directives for it throughout the ten months that followed, except to reiterate the blockade strategy. He was, claimed von Below, one of the first German leaders to recognize that the air war ‘had neither achieved its objective nor was likely to’.107 Historians too have shown much less interest in the German strategic bombing campaign, overshadowed as it is by the Battle of Britain at one end and the Barbarossa invasion at the other. In strategic terms the bombing campaign has generally been regarded as a failure. Yet it was here, between October 1940 and June 1941, that the first independent strategic bombing campaign took place. If the air force had been compelled to work within a broader inter-service strategy up until mid-September, it was now no longer obliged to do so and could fulfil its ambitions for independent action. On 16 September, unencumbered by Sea Lion, Göring ordered a new phase in the campaign of attacks across the breadth of the British Isles.108
It is possible that Hitler hoped the British could still be induced to give up the war because of the moral and material damage that would be wrought by the bombing and that the campaign was sustained in hope of a political dividend. There is no doubt that there was a popular expectation in Germany that the bombing might win Germany a reprieve from a second winter of war. ‘When will Churchill capitulate?’ asked Goebbels in his diary in late November 1940 after more news of devastating raids on Britain’s cities.109 Yet the surviving evidence suggests that Hitler remained sceptical about what air power might achieve and focused his attention on the campaign against the Soviet Union, whose successful outcome was intended to create the conditions that would make it possible to return to the problem of Britain a year hence. He was nonetheless trapped in a situation of his own making. He could not order the campaign to end because that would seem to admit defeat and privilege British resistance in the eyes of the German public and the wider world. Nor could he ignore what Stalin might think. The air campaign had to be kept going because it would persuade Stalin that Britain was still the principal object of German strategy and mask the eastward turn. Politics played its part in sustaining a campaign whose strategic purpose was no longer so clear-cut.
The bombing campaign can best be understood as a form of economic warfare. In his post-war interrogations at Nuremberg, Hitler’s chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, explained that the bombing in 1940–41 was designed to have two important economic purposes: first, a contribution to the food blockade strategy, in collaboration with the navy’s submarine arm, along the lines of the campaign in the Great War; second, a campaign of attrition against key military-economic targets.110 These aims were to be met principally by large-scale night-bombing attacks, sea-mining and daytime raids by small numbers of high-
flying fighters, some converted to carry a 250-kg bomb. These daytime raids were designed during late September and October to lure the RAF into combat, and to attack with as much precision as possible a suitable military or economic target. As the weather deteriorated, the raids became less frequent and eventually petered out. Although these daytime Störangriffe imposed heavy losses on RAF fighters, it was found that the single bomb was difficult to drop with any accuracy, and on occasion had to be jettisoned to allow the converted fighter to return to its fighter role in self-defence.111 The pattern of German bombing operations over the course of the England campaign is set out in Table 2.1. The high point of German bombing was achieved in October and November 1940, while poor weather from December to February made continual raiding difficult and costly. The blockade campaign was carried out according to the instructions established in the directive from July 1940 on the conduct of the trade war. It potentially involved the air force in closer collaboration with the German Navy, whose limited naval air arm and as yet small force of U-boats needed reinforcement by bombers and dive-bombers with experience of over-sea operations, but such cooperation threatened air force hopes that victory might be delivered by air power alone.
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 13