By this time Hitler was hoping to release the long-promised secret weapons for a real revenge attack. The first was the Fieseler FZG-76 cruise missile (generally known as the ‘flying bomb’). Developed by air force engineers at the research facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, the first missile was test flown in December 1942 and had a maximum range of around 150 miles. The second weapon was the A4 rocket designed for the German Army by a team led by Wernher von Braun. Successfully launched in June 1942, it was the world’s first ballistic missile with a range of 220 miles. In June 1944 the first Fieseler flying bombs were launched at London, in September the first A4 rockets. Though the purpose of both weapons was to avenge the destruction of German cities – hence the name Vergeltungswaffen (weapons of vengeance) for what were known as the V-1 and the V-2 – and to try to buoy up German domestic morale, as many of the earlier bombing operations had been intended to do, neither weapon was strictly speaking a form of strategic air warfare.232 They were fired randomly and exacted a high civilian death rate in the first few months, but had little effect on the wider strategic picture. The entire explosive weight of the A4 rockets fired at London, Paris and Antwerp was the equivalent of one large-scale RAF raid.233 Only 517 rockets hit London, a further 598 falling short or into the sea. The flying bombs were more deadly, but their threat to the home front peaked in the first few months. Thereafter the number of bombs and casualties declined as launch sites were overrun or destroyed and effective defence against the flying bomb was developed. The RAF, using some of the new turbojet Gloster Meteor fighters, found ways to knock the flying bombs off course, while anti-aircraft guns, using shells with proximity fuses, shot down increasing numbers. Out of 10,492 aimed at London, only 2,419 reached their destination (although another 2,600 fell short in Kent, Sussex and Surrey thanks to double-cross information fed to German intelligence that the bombs were dropping too far north). More flying bombs fell on Belgium than on England.234 Nevertheless, for the victim populations the effects of both weapons replicated a bombing raid and it is in that context that the V-weapons will be discussed more fully in the following chapters.
The failure of Steinbock and the deteriorating situation in Germany under heavy bomb attack, where every fighter aircraft was needed to protect the surviving war economy, sealed the fate of Germany’s bomber force. Bomber production had already fallen to a mere 16 per cent of overall monthly aircraft output as priority was given to fighters and fighter-bombers, including the Messerschmitt Me262 turbo-jet fighter, the first of its kind. In May 1944 Hitler insisted that the aircraft should be transformed from its intended fighter interception role, which posed a serious threat to Allied bombers, to the function of a fast fighter-bomber, for which it was less well suited. Although Hitler wanted the aircraft to be operated by the commander in charge of the bomber force, its object would be to mount harassing attacks on the advancing Allied armies and air forces, not to undertake long-distance operations.235 The following month Hitler ordered absolute priority for aircraft defending the Reich and the final exclusion of all heavier bombers. The bomber groups were ordered to transfer their crews and training personnel to the fighter sector. In early July a new production programme for aircraft cut out the remaining bomber models He177, Ju288, Ju290, Ju390 and He111, and further development of a range of advanced prototypes. On 8 July Hitler formally approved the end of the German bomber and a week later Göring ordered all researchers, engineers and workers employed on the bomber programme to transfer their skills to the new priority sectors. This did not stop engineers at Daimler-Benz recommending an intercontinental ‘superfast bomber’ project in January 1945, coupling a six-engine carrier aircraft with a smaller bomber which would be released over the ocean as it neared an American target city.236 German aeronautical technology entered the realm of science fiction as the war drew to a close. The German bomber force dwindled away in the last months of bitter combat under a weight of bombs greater each month than the quantity dropped throughout the entire first bombing offensive in 1940–41. In December 1944 just 37 bombers were produced.
In London anxiety remained that at some point Hitler might launch a macabre bombing finale as his empire crumbled around him. Churchill had worried in 1943 that the bombing of the dams in the Ruhr might provoke Germany to attack Britain’s water supply.237 The discovery of the V-weapons’ threat fuelled the fears that Germany had not yet exhausted its arsenal of scientific surprises. Secret intelligence suggested that the enemy was developing an even larger rocket with a 20-ton warhead as well as a chemical fluid which would be dropped from aircraft and ignited in order to suck the oxygen out of the air and cause mass suffocation.238 In March 1945 Portal had to reassure Churchill that a German spoiling attack on the Houses of Parliament was improbable. On 29 March the chiefs of staff considered the possibility of a once-and-for-all suicide attack by all the remaining German aircraft, but thought it unlikely since few German aircraft could now reach London from what remained of German-controlled territory. On 5 April 1945 Churchill still needed to be reassured by the military chiefs that a last throw by Hitler with bacteriological and chemical bombs was unlikely, though it could not be entirely ruled out.239 Historians have speculated on the existence of so-called ‘dirty bombs’ in Germany in 1944–5, using the waste material from Germany’s failed nuclear research programme. There is some evidence that small spherical bombs containing radioactive waste were stored in the Mittelbau-Dora works at Nordhausen, where the A4 rockets were being produced, but it is not conclusive. A case has recently been made that German scientists did finally achieve some form of atomic reaction at the very end of the war, but even if true, atomic weapons were still far away from operational realization.240 By the end of 1944 the capacity of German aircraft to deliver anything significant in British airspace was negligible.
The failure of the German Air Force to return to strategic bombing after the summer of 1941 was not the product of an unwillingness to pursue an independent air strategy but a result of the heavy demands made of German forces on the many fighting fronts that opened up over the next three years. Combined operations became the principal focus of air force activity. If the Soviet Union had been defeated in 1941, as Hitler had hoped, then a renewed air offensive would almost certainly have been the outcome, despite Hitler’s own reservations about the strategic effect of independent bombing, which he expressed to Goebbels in April 1942:
the munitions industry … cannot be interfered with effectively by air raids. We learned that lesson during our raids on English armament centres in the autumn of 1940 … Usually the prescribed targets are not hit; often the fliers unload their bombs on fields camouflaged as plants …241
A fresh air offensive would nevertheless have required a substantial increase in bomber output and the development of more technically sophisticated aircraft, bombs and navigation aids. It is striking that despite the efforts to upgrade and modernize the German bomber force in the years 1941 to 1944, almost none of the vaunted new generation of aircraft proved of operational value. Aircraft production stagnated in 1941 and 1942, bomber output in particular; according to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in one of his post-war interrogations, ‘a sort of vacuum was created’ where aeronautical innovation was concerned.242 It cannot be certain that a renewed bomber offensive would have had the technological edge or scale that it enjoyed in 1940.
As it was, strategic bombing remained a relatively unimportant part of overall German strategy. Apart from the blockade campaign of 1940–41, whose material effects were at best disappointing, bombing in the west was confined largely to tactical support missions or small-scale spoiling attacks. Hitler did not share Churchill’s or Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for air power, nor did he fully grasp its political potential beyond the propaganda effects of ‘vengeance’ for the German public. Göring did appreciate that air power was transforming the nature of warfare. ‘He looked at the army,’ one of his adjutants told an American interrogator in 1945, ‘and thought it a miserabl
e, obsolete branch of the armed force. The fleet was in his eyes, superseded.’243 Yet he failed to persuade Hitler to reshape German strategy to embrace air power more effectively, and failed to supervise the development of the usable, high-quality technology that Germany was capable of developing and producing during the war. Nor in the end did Göring think that air power could be decisive on its own. Air forces, he told one of his first interrogators, shortly after his capture, ‘can only disrupt, interfere and destroy’ as a vital adjunct to the decisive ground campaign.244
The German experience demonstrated the real limitations of bombing strategy under current conditions. The weapons used for the first strategic bombing offensive were insufficient to achieve its aims, despite the limited and poorly planned opposition the bomber force faced. The bomber aircraft had limited range, carried too small a bomb load, relied on a navigation system that was highly vulnerable to interruption and, most significantly, divided their operations among a wide number of targets, few of which were hit often enough, heavily enough or ruthlessly enough to undermine activity more than temporarily. The German air offensive was a classic example of a strategy pursued before its time.
3
Taking it? British Society and the Blitz
In mid-September 1940 a London East End pacifist wrote a letter to the Quaker activist Ruth Fry refusing her offer of a bed outside the capital to escape the bombs, preferring to wait and be killed if fate so dictated. It was a frank and certainly prejudiced view of the crisis: ‘People remain calm, yes, but happy? Certainly not.’ The writer continued: ‘No gas, tea shops closed, takes two hours to boil a kettle when a trickle of gas comes through. Thousands sleeping in the underground … but Churchill remains a great man, “the man of destiny” and the House of Commons just meets now and then to listen to a carefully studied speech. How low have we fallen?’ The writer thought Churchill might even sell Britain short by reaching a backstairs agreement with Hitler. ‘Some may well think that we deserve to be bombed,’ the writer reflected, ‘but the RIGHT people don’t get hurt. A nice winter in prospect.’1
In almost every respect – except the perception of calmness – this letter defies the popular image of British society under the impact of the Blitz, and of the iconic status enjoyed by Britain’s most famous prime minister. It suggests that in the face of the bombing, there were many historical realities, not one. Ordinary people responded to the sudden catastrophe in a myriad of ways, and if some fulfilled the popular image of placid fortitude, there were others like the letter-writer who saw injustice and bad faith in high places. Behind the rhetoric of ‘we can take it’ the social response to the German bombing was complex and fractured.
The British people were the first to experience a heavy and prolonged campaign of independent bombing. British society was the first to be tested to see whether the fantastic images of social disintegration suggested in the air culture of the pre-war years would really be the outcome. Moreover, British civilians had for centuries been spared the horrors of invasion, occupation and civil war that had regularly punctuated the history of Continental Europe. The violent death of over 43,000 people during the almost year-long German campaign was an unprecedented violation of British domestic life. The narrative of this violation differs remarkably from the narrative of the bombing itself, as it does for all bombing campaigns. Bombing raids took a matter of a few hours at most, but the act of ejecting the bombs took no more than a few seconds over the target. Bomber crews were not like soldiers, confined to the front lines, the battlefield strewn with corpses, the wreckage wrought by bombs and shells all too visible. Aircrews returned to base and an environment of relative calm. Yet for the bombed community the strike of the bombs was just the beginning. The material, social and psychological impact of bomb destruction persisted for weeks or months, sometimes for years. Bombing was a brief, if dangerous, operation for the bomber crew, but it was a profound social fact for the victims who lived more permanently with its consequences.
The British government was all too aware in the late 1930s of the extraordinary demands likely to be made on the fabric of the state and the resolution of the population if a major bombing campaign ever happened. Though preparations to cope with the air menace were launched nationwide from the mid-1930s, there remained intrinsic limitations as to what could be done. A report on evacuation plans in January 1939 put the problem bluntly: ‘in a country of the size of England there is under the conditions of modern war no place of absolute safety’.2 It was understood that safety was only relative and that high levels of casualty and destruction were almost certainly unavoidable. The one sure protection for the population was to provide bombproof shelter, but central government and local authorities alike appreciated that this was a counsel of perfection. An official leaflet on shelters produced in 1939 urged the public to realize that the idea of a ‘bombproof’ shelter was misleading. ‘Literally it means a shelter conferring complete immunity from the direct hit of the heaviest piercing bomb,’ ran the explanation. ‘It is not considered practicable to design a structure … giving such immunity.’3 The official British response to the coming bombing campaign was always to limit the damage, not to avoid it.
BUILDING THE NEW FRONT LINE: 1939–40
The view that civilian society was willy-nilly in the firing line in modern war turned the home front into a fighting front. This was a universal response in all societies threatened by bombing, reflected in the language used to describe civilian defence. When the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, visited the East End in September 1940 after the start of the heavy raids, he found ‘in the most exact and non-metaphorical sense, the front line of an enormous battle’.4 Local civil defence authorities divided their operational activities into two parts: the first they called ‘the Battle’, carried on when the bombs dropped; the second was ‘the Aftermath’, coping with the victims and the restoration of services.5 As the war went on, those engaged in all the many branches of civilian defence came to view themselves as a fourth service, alongside the army, navy and air force.
The idea of a civilian front line raised innumerable questions about how to transform a predominantly urban population, organized by civilian authorities, into a community capable of withstanding and contesting the effects of heavy bombing. The local records make it clear that if the Blitz had begun on 3 September 1939, the consequences would have been much worse than they proved to be a year later. The long interval between the outbreak of war and the onset of the bombing gave both the government and the local administration the time to prepare their front line and to encourage the growing militarization of a large section of the population. The slow pace of recruitment of civil defence personnel before the start of the war ended with the onset of hostilities. Between 1939 and 1940 an army of regulars and volunteers was created capable of manning the front line; for the rest of the civil population habits of obedience to the blackout regulations, gas-mask drill, air-raid alerts and evacuation imposed on everyone an exceptional pattern of wartime behaviour that persisted until the very end of the war. Part of this regulation represented simple self-interest, but it survived even during the long periods after 1941 when the bombing was comparatively light and intermittent. The development of a civil defence mentality derived in part from the democratic nature of total war, which insisted that all citizens had a part to play and encouraged the view that wartime identity was linked to new ideals of the civil warrior.6 When the government considered the idea that workers should carry on working even after the air-raid alarm had sounded, the risk was justified by the argument that all those engaged in vital war work ‘are frontline troops’.7 In 1945 Herbert Morrison, British Home Secretary through most of the Blitz, summed up the civil defence forces he had organized as a ‘citizen army’ filled with ‘rank-and-file warriors’, men and women alike.8
In reality civilians were not soldiers. The civil defence network had to be built up from the late 1930s using civilians who were neither armed nor uni
formed nor used to the demands of regular, quasi-military discipline. Following the Air Raid Precautions Act in late 1937, local authorities were obliged to establish a local civil defence scheme to be approved by the Home Office Air Raid Precautions Department, set up in 1935 under Sir John Hodsoll. Central government undertook to fund 65–75 per cent of the cost, subject to Home Office approval. The local councils were expected to appoint an ARP Controller to coordinate all civil defence activity, and it was generally expected that in the threatened urban areas this would be the local town clerk, head of the municipal administration. He would be subject to a local Emergency Committee or War Executive Committee formed by elected councillors and municipal officials of whom the most important were expected to be the city’s chief engineer, the local medical officer of health, the chief air-raid warden and the chief constable of police (who in some cases doubled as chief warden).9 The decision was taken by the government that civil defence should be grafted onto the existing structure of local administration, which meant placing a heavy burden on officials who had no necessary understanding of the problems involved in organizing passive defences or in disciplining their populations to collaborate and conform. Some relief was to be found by establishing Group Units, which linked smaller local authorities together and allowed them to pool resources and share experiences.10
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 18