Month German Air Force Eughth/Ninth Air Force
Strenth % Loss Rate Strenth % Loss Rate
Jan 1944 1,590 30.3 2,528 2.7
Feb 1944 1,767 33.8 2,998 3.4
March 1944 1,714 56.4 3,419 5.6
April 1944 1,700 43.0 3,685 7.6
May 1944 1,720 50.4 3,382 10.0
June 1944 1,560 48.3 3,046 17.7
Sources: Calculated from Richard Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (Washington, DC: 1993), App 9, 22–4; Horst Boog et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg: Band 7: Das Deutsche Reich in der Defensive (Stuttgart: 2001), 105.
German Air Force commanders were also quick to point out to their interrogators after the war that the principal problem they faced was leadership. This is more difficult to assess, and air force commanders were scarcely without prejudice. Most accounts blamed the air force commander-in-chief, Hermann Göring. Minutes of the regular meetings in late 1943 and early 1944 show a commander full of irate bluster and frustration, prone to impulsive gestures and trite solutions. Though he was capable of sudden bursts of activity, his subordinates found him a bizarre, sadly comical figure. A paratroop general, secretly tape-recorded in captivity in October 1944, entertained his fellow officers to a description of a recent interview with Göring at Karinhall: ‘there stood the figure and I thought: is it Nero II or a Chinese mandarin? [laughter] … A cloud of all the perfumes of the orient and occident met you half-way exuding over the fat cheeks … [All: laughing helplessly].’289 Göring, however, blamed Hitler: ‘You had a great ally in your aerial warfare – the Führer,’ he told interrogators in June 1945.290 From 1942 onwards, and particularly after the failure of the air force to supply the encircled forces at Stalingrad, few major decisions in the air war could be taken without Hitler’s approval or intervention. Yet Hitler did many things right in relation to the air war: he did not in the end obstruct the shift to fighter priority, favoured a heavy anti-aircraft defence, authorized the dispersal of industry underground, and bullied the air force into prioritizing improvements in electronic warfare.
Göring aside, the other leadership problems stemmed from lower down the air force tree. The coordinated aerial defence of German territory in 1944 fell to an organization that for years had been accustomed to conducting operational air warfare at the fighting fronts. The shift of three-quarters of the fighter force to Germany and the sharp decline in the bomber arm forced a rapid adjustment to an unfamiliar air environment. Stumpff, Schmid and Korten were relatively inexperienced for the kind of contest they fought in the ‘Battle of Germany’. Spaatz, Kepner and Doolittle had solid experience with just the kind of battle they faced in 1944 and suffered little direct interference from Arnold or Roosevelt in Washington. Although Arnold was also capable at times of irate bluster, he grasped quickly key technical and organizational issues – the importance of the P-51 fighter, the absolute priority for extra fuel tanks, the critical role of logistics – which made his style of management more effective than Göring’s was in 1944, or had been in 1940.291 One factor did link the Battle of Britain and the ‘Battle of Germany’: the German Air Force did not admit that they had lost either battle. In the same document that reflected on how the German Air Force should emulate Fighter Command in 1940, optimistic plans were sketched out for a possible revival of effective fighter defence and a renewed bombing effort, despite the profound crisis now facing German air power: ‘the war can only be brought to a satisfactory conclusion if we take the offensive’.292
RELEASING THE HURRICANE: SEPTEMBER 1944–MAY 1945
The Combined Offensive was formally reactivated in September 1944 after three months in which the priority for Allied air forces had been supporting the invasion of France and the defeat of German armies in the west. Eisenhower eventually relinquished control of the strategic air forces on 14 September 1944, though he retained the right to request help with the land war when needed. Both bomber commanders were anxious to return to what they saw as their primary mission. Spaatz reported to Arnold on the revival of the pre-invasion command structure with the comment that ‘the Hun has still got a lot of fight left in him … we must concentrate to kill him off’.293 By July, Harris was impatient to restart full-scale bombing, because he expected Germany to have recovered fully in five bomb-free months. In August, Portal warned Churchill that there were evident signs of German revival which would have to be snuffed out by a bombing policy of ‘continuous attrition’.294
What followed from September 1944 to May 1945 was an Allied campaign with the heaviest weight of bombs and the highest level of German casualties of the war. Over the eight months until German surrender the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces together with Bomber Command dropped three-quarters of the wartime bomb total against a deteriorating German defence; approximately half of all German deaths from bombing occurred over the same period. It is the extravagant power of this final bombing campaign, and its massive damage to Germany’s civilian population, urban infrastructure and cultural heritage that has occasioned most post-war criticism of bombing strategy. To understand why the offensive was continued on such a devastating scale it is necessary to reconstruct the strategic situation as it seemed to the Western Allies in autumn 1944.
The most obvious answer is that there was no compelling reason after the rapid victory in France to ease the pressure on an enemy who, it was hoped, might be defeated before Christmas. There was wide popular endorsement of the bombing campaign among the home populations. The percentages in favour of bombing German civilians expressed in British opinion polls rose from less than half in 1940 to almost two-thirds by 1944, a reflection of popular anxiety to end the war quickly and a growing familiarity with bombing as a central pillar of Allied strategy.295 The BBC air commentaries in 1944 by ‘Squadron Leader Strachey’ (the left-wing politician John Strachey, now a temporary member of Bufton’s Bombing Directorate) had record radio audiences.296 There was little reason for Churchill or Roosevelt to shut down the bombing offensive given the exceptional commitment to its organization and supply, and both leaders were by now anxious to accelerate an end to the conflict and frustrated by an enemy whose willingness to continue fighting showed little sign of wilting. When Churchill was shown yet another political intelligence report confirming that the German people lacked the ‘energy, the courage or the organization’ necessary to overthrow Hitler’s dictatorship, he asked to be spared any further reports on German morale.297 From the military point of view, bombing was now part of the combined arms offensive to defeat Germany on the ground, and although the targets were distant from the front line in eastern France, the Combined Chiefs of Staff expected that bombing would be used in general against targets that promised to expedite the army’s advance. The achievement of air superiority in the summer of 1944 required constant and vigilant defence against any prospect of German recovery, since superiority was always relative. It was feared that if the German war effort were not suppressed, the conflict might run on well into 1945, or might even reach stalemate. There was always the persistent fear, going back many years, that the German leadership might be able to turn the tide of war by jumping a stage ahead in the race for new science-based weapons.
Of all the factors that encouraged the final months of heavy bombing, the fear that the German military situation might be reversed by new weapons, secret or otherwise, kept bombers at their task. Though some of these fears might appear with hindsight mere fantasy, the launch of the V-weapons and the first employment of the Me262 jet fighter/fighter-bomber provoked the Allied view that Germany’s military situation might abruptly improve. The Me262 was a crude fighter, easily adapted to mass production, but with its high speeds it was capable of posing a serious challenge to the bomber fleets had it been available in sufficient numbers. The few units equipped with the Me262 by the end of the war claimed to have shot down 300 heavy bombers. The new aircraft was certainly welcomed by German air leaders as a possible war-winner. Evaluations of the war situati
on produced in September 1944 and January 1945 by German Air Force intelligence presented the possibility of a ‘final victory’ given the apparent decline in Anglo-American military capability and enthusiasm since the summer and the clutch of dangerous new technical developments available to Germany; these included the Wasserfall ground-to-air missile (V-4), proximity fuses, jet fighters (Me262 and Me163), jet bombers (Arado Ar243), rocket fighters (Heinkel He162), and equipment for non-visual detection and destruction of enemy aircraft.298 Some of these developments were well known to the Allies, others merely speculation. The correspondence between Spaatz and Arnold on the threat of the German jet fighters reveals the extent to which the Allies feared for the future of the bombing offensive. Spaatz wanted top priority for the development of the American jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80, and suggested the possibility that American bombers would have to change to night-bombing or shallow penetration raids to keep losses to jet fighters within acceptable limits.299 Doolittle told Arnold in August 1944 that he was not ‘awed’ by German potential, and proposed to challenge jet and rocket-propelled fighters by head-on attack and superior turning. But by October he warned that jet aircraft and enhanced weaponry, including the powerful 30-mm cannon, might well ‘overwhelm our defenses’ in attacks on Germany.300 Anglo-American air intelligence confirmed, as Harris had warned, that by the autumn the German single-engine fighter force would be larger than at any point in 1944. Hence the arguments in favour of continued heavy bombing of German industrial and military targets.
The greatest fear was that the German leadership, like some wounded stag at bay, would unleash what are now called weapons of mass destruction. The United States Chemical Warfare Committee in January 1945 warned that although German leaders had not yet authorized the use of gas, the strategic situation they faced had changed for the worse: ‘The Germans are now fighting with their backs to the wall, on their homeland, and may out of zealousness, in defense of their own soil, or the fanatical desperation of the Nazi leadership, resort to the gas weapon.’301 These fears had a long pedigree. Extensive preparations had been made by the RAF during the Blitz to prepare for a gas campaign against Germany. When the United States entered the war, gas warfare plans were coordinated between the two allies.302 In late 1943 these anxieties revived. Intelligence from a captured Italian diplomat suggested that Germany had large stocks of gas but would only use them ‘in a last resort’. Churchill, who had been the motor behind expanding Britain’s gas capability in 1941, underlined on the report the words ‘Gas’, ‘no new gas has been produced’, ‘Germans would not use’ as evidence of his continued concern.303 A report from the Analysis of Foreign Weapons Division in October 1943 to the War Department concluded that ‘Germany is well prepared with the necessary weapons and agents to start gas warfare at any moment’, using a variety of new toxins and means of delivery. This was indeed the case: by the beginning of 1944 the German armed forces had thousands of tons of chemical weapons on hand, including the deadly agents Sarin and Tabun.304 In December the Joint Chiefs of Staff were supplied with full details of the toxic gases available for American forces for the conduct of gas warfare from the air in both the European and Pacific theatres, and in 1944 an accelerated programme for the production of gas bombs was set in motion. In January 1945 Arnold’s headquarters could confirm that the air force ‘can be effectively employed for waging gas warfare’.305
British preparations for gas warfare were much further advanced and more likely to be used. In January 1944 Portal told Churchill that he was toying with the idea of using gas to attack V-weapon installations, but hesitated to do so because the repercussions of starting gas warfare ‘would be far-reaching’. The RAF was nevertheless alert for the first whiff of German gas in order to activate the extensive plans for airborne gas attacks. The War Cabinet was notified by the Air Staff the same month that if Germany should ever use it, the air force would immediately unleash six area attacks with mustard gas and two with Phosgene every month. The attacks were to be divided between lighter, harassing raids and heavy concentrated raids using a mix of gas bombs, incendiaries and high explosive, which would have to be repeated regularly ‘on the most densely populated centres’.306 The Air Staff understood that even if the German forces used gas against the invading troops in June 1944, Churchill favoured gas attacks not only on enemy troops but also on ‘the cities of Germany’. A list of suitable cities was drawn up in case such attacks were needed, 15 for Bomber Command, 30 for the Eighth Air Force and 15 for American bombers from Italy. For the Normandy landings Bomber Command planned 11,000 sorties using gas and other bombs against a variety of military and civilian targets.307 The stalemate in Normandy and the onset of the V-weapons campaign brought further pressure from Churchill to use gas to speed up German defeat: ‘I want a cold-blooded calculation made,’ he wrote on 6 July, ‘as to how it would pay us to use poison gas … we could drench the cities of the Ruhr.’308 But the chiefs of staff remained opposed to the risk, while all the available intelligence suggested that there were no German plans to use it (though it was certainly discussed by Hitler and other German leaders during 1944).309 Nevertheless, by early 1945 the American Chemical Warfare Service had sufficient stocks of gas in theatre to maintain a campaign equivalent to 25 per cent of the total available bomblift. Almost all gas attacks would be made from the air.310
Less well known are the plans for biological warfare against Germany developed in 1944–5. These, too, were the result of growing fears that a desperate enemy might utilize bacteriological warfare, possibly projected by some form of rocket propulsion. In 1942 Roosevelt authorized a War Research Board directed by George Merck, with an advisory board of prominent scientists, disguised simply as the ‘ABC Committee’, whose first task was to work out ways to protect the American population from a possible German or Japanese bacteriological attack. In late 1942 the work was taken over by the Chemical Warfare Service, which set up a research facility at Camp Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. As with gas warfare, intelligence began to appear in 1943 that suggested Germany was planning the use of biological warfare agents, and in particular ‘bacillus botulinus’ (now known as Clostridium botulinum, the cause of botulism), which was impossible to detect in an airborne attack, caused symptoms in four to five hours and death by embolism in most cases. The assumption was that Germany would only hesitate to use biological weapons because of the threat of ‘instant reprisal’ and as a result a programme to produce lethal pathogens was accelerated. A further report in January 1944 warned that rocket or air attacks using bacteria might be imminent, and their effects ‘devastating’. This included the probability of using anthrax spores directed at human populations.311 Three plants were set up for experiment and production in Mississippi, Indiana and Utah; 60 workers were infected, but none died.312 Before biological agents became available in sufficient quantities, which would not be before April 1945, it was recommended that retaliation should be with gas.313
Would the Allies have used either gas or germ warfare? The question was never tested, since Hitler was opposed to their use and more concerned about defence against a possible Allied biological attack.314 But the development of both Allied programmes shows the extent to which perception of the German enemy coloured the decision to continue heavy bombing in case worse weapons were to hand. The most significant factor is that fear of chemical and biological weapons prompted the Allies to think in terms of retaliation against civilian populations on a large scale, turning interwar fantasies about gas and germs into potential reality. The RAF staff thought that incendiary and high-explosive raids were more strategically efficient, in that they destroyed property and equipment and not just people, but in any of these cases – blown apart, burnt alive or asphyxiated – deliberate damage to civilian populations was now taken for granted. This paved the way for the possibility of using atomic weapons on German targets in 1945 if the war had dragged on late into the year, a fact that is easily forgotten. Echoes can be found in the later extrava
gant planning for second-strike nuclear destruction during the first decades of the Cold War, when up to 80 million Soviet citizens were expected to be casualties.315
It is against this strategic background that sense can be made of the decision to intensify the bombing offensive to be certain of securing German defeat. The summer diversion to the ground war, however, had done nothing to settle the inter-Allied arguments over bombing strategy that surfaced in the early months of 1944. Indeed, a renewed eagerness to demonstrate what air forces were now capable of gave them fresh impetus. The first step following the decision to return the bomber forces to air force control was to change the overall command structure to more properly reflect the balance of power between the two Allied bomber forces. This was now heavily tilted towards the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, which had on hand between them more than 5,000 heavy bombers in the European theatre and could call on over 5,000 fighters, including by November around 2,000 P-51s. One major Eighth Air Force raid late in 1944 employed 2,074 bombers and 923 fighters. Against this Harris could field around 1,400 heavy bombers, mainly Lancasters, a fraction of what had been hoped for.316 Spaatz refused to return to Portal’s direct control and preferred to retain his close relationship with Eisenhower. Under pressure from the British chiefs of staff Arnold agreed to relinquish the link with SHAEF, but only on condition that he would now be the representative of the Combined Chiefs of Staff for directing the American Strategic and Tactical Air Forces in Europe rather than Portal. To mollify the British, Spaatz was also formally appointed as Portal’s deputy chief of staff, together with Norman Bottomley. In practice Spaatz was left free to organize an independent campaign; he left Anderson in London and based himself in a forward headquarters next to Eisenhower, first in Paris, then Rheims. He told Arnold in late September that he preferred to keep the two forces separate.317 Harris also understood that the change would give him once again more control over his force; since he was now the junior partner after years in which Bomber Command had been the senior manager, the guardianship of his campaign loomed larger than ever in his mind.318
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 52