Once again the raiding habit of flying at high altitude against targets which even when visible could not be hit with sufficient accuracy broke the pledge to bomb with greater discretion. The Eighth Air Force began operations with B-17 ‘Flying Fortresses’ against Dutch targets just two days after receiving approval from the Dutch government. The target chosen was the Fokker aircraft plant in Amsterdam, first bombed by the RAF in 1940 with little effect.224 The American operation on 17 July killed 185 people and missed the factory. One bomb hit the church of St Rita, filled with 500 schoolchildren who were singing an ‘Ave Maria’ to ward off danger after the siren sounded. Eleven were killed in the church; another 29 died when a bomb hit a doctor’s waiting room. Around 130 buildings were destroyed.225 The Dutch government-in-exile immediately protested and Eaker was asked to explain how he was going to avoid a repetition. The Eighth Air Force switched temporarily from using B-17s to using the medium twin-engine Glen Martin ‘Marauder’ B-26 bombers for attacks on Dutch and Belgian targets from lower altitude. On their second raid, against a Dutch power station at Ijmuiden, all 11 B-26s were shot down.226 Over the months that followed the B-26s were instructed to fly higher and casualties on the ground mounted again. The bombing of Ghent on 4 September 1943 resulted in 111 dead, that of Brussels on 7 September using B-17s caused a further 327 deaths.227 An American raid on Enschede on 10 October, again using B-17s, killed 150. The damage to the German war effort was limited. The Fokker works completed a programme of dispersal and decentralization into 43 smaller locations scattered around the Amsterdam region.228 For Dutch workers and producers, as in Belgium and France, the choice of refusing to work for the German military was to run the risk that both the machinery and the workers would be transferred to Germany. By 1944 over 40,000 workers had been sent from Rotterdam to work in the Reich; repeated raids, which killed a total of 748 people in the city during the war, encouraged the German occupiers to move workers to industry in Germany, where there was effective protection and the means to compel compliance.229
The inclusion of Dutch and Belgian firms in the Pointblank plan came about as a result of the contribution made by their industries to German aircraft and submarine production, as well as the supply of machinery and steel. There were no complete aircraft produced in Belgium, although hundreds of small firms supplied components; in The Netherlands, however, 414 aircraft were built in 1943 and 442 in 1944, while Dutch shipbuilders supplied an important source of additional capacity for the submarine industry and for the production of smaller naval vessels.230 By the end of 1943 around 75,000 Belgian and 109,000 Dutch workers were employed on German arms contracts.231 The transfer of German production to the occupied territories gave the occupiers sufficient reason to provide limited protection from air attack. Anti-aircraft guns and fighters stationed in the Low Countries formed, as in France, part of the air-defence rampart around the European fortress, which in The Netherlands included 10 squadrons of night-fighters by 1944 and 74 sites for radar and electronic warfare.232 Regiments of German fire-protection police were also stationed in the Low Countries to supplement the efforts of the local population organized, in the Dutch case, in an Air Protection Service (Luchtbeschermingsdienst) first set up in April 1936 and organized by urban district, street and housing block. The attitude of the population to the raiding was complex since many Allied aircraft crashed in the Low Countries, and in many cases surviving crew were helped by the local population or benefited from escape networks. The local press generally condemned the raids with high civilian casualties, although in no occupied territory was the press free from German controls or from the numerous German communiqués on terror bombing they were given. An article in the Haagische Courant on a bombing attack with 22 dead carried the headline ‘That’s It: Murder’ and ended with the question ‘Is that not terroristic?’ Another article following the bombing of Rotterdam on 29 January 1942 carried the headline ‘Bloody Work of the English Air Pirates!’233 British intelligence from Belgium and The Netherlands, however, only suggested that the barometer of popular support for bombing fluctuated as it did in France with the perceived accuracy or inaccuracy of a raid. There was, however, little sign of open resistance as there had been in the early years of war. A report sent to the PWE in November 1943 observed that the people ‘are just weak and passive’.234
The most intensive period of bombing came in 1944 with the preparations for the Normandy invasion and the ‘Crossbow’ raids against sites intended for the V-1 and V-2 missiles. Most of the raids were small tactical raids against rail and air targets carried out by medium bombers and fighter-bombers. But as Belgium and The Netherlands became involuntary parts of the vast aerial battlefield in north-western Europe, so the pace of destruction and loss of life quickened. There descended on both populations a rain of bombs and leaflets, the second designed to explain the liberating effects of the first. In April and May 1944 the Eighth Air Force undertook 1,111 sorties against German airbases in the two countries, and in May 759 sorties against marshalling yards, losing only 20 aircraft in the process.235 The preparatory raids by heavy bombers involved some of the highest casualties of the war. In Belgium 252 were killed in Kortrijk on 26 March and 428 in Ghent on 10 April. The peak in Belgium came between 10 and 12 May, when more than 1,500 died, culminating in a raid on Leuven in which 246 were killed. The ‘Overlord’ preparations cost Belgium a total of 2,180 civilian dead.236 The Netherlands was bombed less heavily during the late spring, but on 22 February 1944 it had suffered the severest raid of the war when the city centre of Nijmegen was hit by a group of B-24 bombers returning from an aborted mission over Germany. The aircrew aimed for a marshalling yard on the edge of the town, still believing that they were over German territory. Instead the lead bombardier misjudged the speed, dropping bombs in the crowded city centre, followed by the rest of the combat box. The estimated 800 dead were caught in the open after the all-clear had been given a few minutes before the bombs began to fall. Some 1,270 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged. On this occasion the Dutch government, not fully aware of the results of the raid, lodged no protest.237 Over the following three months more than 50 million leaflets were dropped on Belgium, 55 million on the Netherlands, preparing both populations for their liberation but including a leaflet apologizing for the bombing of Nijmegen and regretting that under the circumstances of modern air war ‘sometimes harm and grief was caused to our friends’.238
During the period when the noose was tightened around the German New Order, little attention was given to conditions in Scandinavia. Denmark, like the Low Countries, was astride the bombing runs to targets in Germany and became the inadvertent target from occasional errors of navigation as well as the site of numerous Allied aircraft that either crashed or were forced to land. Most of the raiding against German naval targets and airfields was carried out by aircraft of Coastal Command until the end of 1941, when Bomber Command Blenheims and Mosquitos were detailed to attack land targets, while Coastal Command concentrated on targets at sea. The German occupiers collaborated with the Danish civil defence organization, Statens Civile Luftvaern, in observing incoming aircraft. A large number of light anti-aircraft guns protected military installations and when the Kammhuber Line was extended into Denmark to give better protection against RAF raids in 1941, squadrons of German night-fighters were also based at Danish airfields.239 There were almost no strategic Allied air attacks on Denmark. Most bombs were jettisoned or dropped in error, a total of 3,269 high explosive and 22,298 incendiaries counted by Danish civil defence. The only planned attack on an industrial target took place on 27 January 1943 when eight Mosquitos attacked the Burmeister & Wain Diesel Engine factory in Copenhagen. Some damage was done, and a sugar plant was set on fire. The raid resulted from PWE pressure to undertake an attack on at least one industrial target in each occupied state to discourage collaboration and to reinforce local morale. In the Danish case the raid proved a success: there were few casualties, and in the aftermath Danes took to
wearing RAF colours as a mark of sympathy with a distant ally. The only raid by the Eighth Air Force was against Esbjerg airfield on the west coast of Jutland on 27 August 1944, bombed as a target of opportunity following an aborted raid on Berlin. Over the whole course of the war 307 Danes were killed as a result of all Allied air activity and 788 injured.240
Operations against Norway were also linked closely to the air-sea war, but Norway differed from Denmark because there were important industrial and raw-material resources which the Germans exploited throughout the occupation, particularly aluminium production and the development of ‘heavy water’ for the German nuclear research programme. Both were attacked by the Eighth Air Force, the aluminium plant at Herøya on 24 July 1943, the Norsk Hydro plant on 16 November. Spaatz was pleased with the result and thought ‘it was heartening to the Norwegians’.241 Far from being heartened, the Norwegian government complained that the destruction of the Norsk Hydro plant, which produced a large quantity of Scandinavia’s much-needed fertilizer, had provoked ‘bewilderment and dismay’ among the Norwegian population as they contemplated declining food output. The small ‘heavy water’ plant had been successfully sabotaged by the Norwegian Resistance some months before. The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, asked the Allies to agree a means of collaborating on the choice of targets to avoid further mishaps. It took almost a year of argument before an agreed list was drawn up. British air marshals, Lie complained, were a law unto themselves.242 When the Air Ministry presented a list of seven targets they would like to bomb, the Norwegian High Command responded that some were wrong, some had ceased operating, and others were essential to Norway’s economy when the war was over.243 A second list was worked out with Norwegian advice and finally agreed on 2 November 1944. But only four days before that, Bomber Command had tried to hit the submarine pens at Bergen in poor weather. The bombs struck the town centre, killing 52 civilians and burning down Europe’s oldest theatre. The Norwegian government again warned the Foreign Office that raids without an evident military purpose merely alienated a potentially friendly population. Though on the agreed list, Bergen had been attacked by 47 Lancasters, against instructions, through almost complete cloud cover.244
For Norway and Denmark the price of remaining occupied was substantially lower than the price paid by Belgium and The Netherlands as they became the focus of the ground campaign from the autumn of 1944. As was the case in France, operational requirements soon came to replace political calculations when deciding on targets to attack. Belgium was caught in between the fighting powers as Allied armies occupied Belgian territory in September 1944. From sites in western Germany, the V-weapons were turned against Allied forces in Antwerp and the surrounding territory, while a few were launched against Paris. The first V-2 rocket fell on 7 October in Brasschaat on the outskirts of Antwerp, the first V-1 flying bomb on 21 October. The last V-1 struck on 28 March 1945. Around 12,000 V-1s were launched at Belgian targets, and 1,600 V-2s.245 The port of Antwerp suffered most. The worst incident occurred on 16 December when a V-2 fell on the Rex Cinema, killing 271 Belgians and an estimated 300 soldiers.246 Late in 1944 a British civil defence Mobile Column was sent to Belgium at the request of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, complete with canteens, ambulances and fire units; three British rescue instructors were sent to Brussels, Antwerp and Eindhoven to train soldiers for emergency work after a rocket strike.247 In November 1944 the American Brig. General C. H. Armstrong was appointed commander of Flying Bomb Command Antwerp X, and three belts of anti-aircraft guns were set up in a ring around the city to shoot down the flying bombs. RAF Fighter Command set up a Continental Crossbow Forward Unit in December 1944 to add fighter interception of the flying bombs to the effects of anti-aircraft fire. By February almost three-quarters of the V-1s were destroyed before they hit the city, a total of 7,412 over the course of the campaign. Only 73 fell in the dock area of Antwerp and only 101 on the built-up area. The effect on the flow of Allied supplies through the port was described in the official account of the campaign as ‘negligible’.248 Against the V-2 rocket, however, there was no defence; the Belgian population became once again hostage to their geographical location and suffered a heavy toll. In total 6,500 were killed and 22,500 injured in the last flurry of bombardment from the air, almost exactly the same number of casualties exacted by the V-weapon attacks on England. This final German aerial assault greatly increased the overall Belgian casualties from air bombardment during the war. An estimated total of 18,000 Belgians were killed, one-third from German operations.249
Since The Netherlands was used as a base for firing V-weapons, the threat of Allied bombing hung over the Dutch population until almost the end of the war. The battle for Arnhem in September 1944 brought further heavy raids against German military targets by both the Eighth Air Force and Bomber Command. The continuous bombardment of London by V-2 rockets from sites in the Netherlands finally prompted a decision to try to neutralize the threat by bombing, despite their proximity to residential areas. On 3 March 1945 RAF bombers of the Second Tactical Air Force flew from bases in Belgium to bomb a V-2 site in a large park in the north of The Hague. The weather was poor – cloudy and with a strong wind – and the briefing officer had confused the map coordinates, instructing the force to bomb more than a kilometre away from the intended target. The 60 B-25 Mitchell and A-20 Boston/Havoc aircraft dropped 67 tons of bombs on a residential area of the Dutch capital, killing an estimated 520 and rendering 12,000 homeless. A stream of up to 50,000 refugees fled from the area, some of them, one eyewitness wrote, still in their pyjamas: ‘a long procession of people and children crying … some were all white from lying under the ruins. Others bled from a variety of injuries, which were half-bandaged or not covered at all … More and yet more.’250 Over the course of the war an estimated total of between 8,000 and 10,000 Dutch deaths came from bombing, around one-tenth of them caused by German raids.251
The bombing, so close to the end of the war, provoked a furious response from the Dutch government in London and strong criticism from Churchill. A broadcast apology was made later in the month, promising a full inquiry, but nothing was relayed to the Dutch authorities, who repeated the request in June 1945 for an explanation.252 The Air Ministry told the Foreign Office at the end of June that the internal investigation had discovered the error in plotting the coordinates for the raid and had court-martialled the officer responsible. There was, however, little sense of contrition. The operation, claimed the Ministry, was a difficult one: ‘the extent of the disaster must to some extent be set down to the mischances of war’.253 Six months later a Dutch woman wrote to King George VI asking him to pay compensation for the total loss of her house and possessions in the 3 March raid. The letter summed up the ambivalence felt by the liberated peoples about being bombed into freedom:
I humbly come to you, first to express my great gratitude for all you, the English Government and the English people have done to deliver us from those awful huns. Second to ask you for help. On March 3 my house (home) with all that was therein, was bombed and nothing could be saved … And now after nearly ten months, I sit here as poor and forlorn as on March 3 … It may seem rather impudent from me, to ask you for help, but I know you are righteous and honest, above all, and that in no way you will have a widow been left in solicitude [sic] and affliction, where there is still a debt for the RAF to be redeemed.254
The Foreign Office contacted the Air Ministry for confirmation that nothing could be done for what was clearly ‘a hazard of war’. The Ministry replied that nothing should be done: ‘If we started paying for this kind of loss there would be no end to our liability.’255
In all the bombing of New Order Europe a balance was supposed to be struck between political calculation and military imperatives, since the peoples to be bombed were allies or potential allies. The cautious bombing of the first two years of war reflected a balance in favour of political restraint. In some cases bombing was used as a ‘calling card’, to remind pop
ulations under German domination not to collaborate or to encourage confidence in eventual liberation. In some cases the resistance movements called for bombing because they accepted the airmen’s claims about its accuracy and power. However, by the spring of 1942 and on to the end of the war, the pendulum swung slowly in favour of military necessity, while European resisters became disillusioned about what bombing might achieve. In June 1943 Sinclair asked Eden to reconsider the principle that causing casualties to non-German civilians was a sufficient ground for restraint. Eden had a politician’s instinct that killing Allied civilians was the wrong course but his reply to Sinclair symbolized the shift in priorities: ‘if the new bombing plan is strategically necessary, I shall not of course stand in its way’.256 American airmen were in general less affected by political calculation, partly because the State Department was geographically remote, partly because Americans were outsiders in the European theatre, less aware of the political realities they faced. As the Western war entered Europe, bombing became more widespread and its effects usually indiscriminate. By 1944 Allied commanders were increasingly ‘bomb happy’, summoning bombing whenever there was a problem to solve. This produced dangerous paradoxes for the peoples of the New Order: the closer to victory and liberation, the more deadly became the bombing; as the bombing intensified, so German anti-aircraft resources were spread ever more thinly around the perimeter of the German empire, exposing the subject peoples more fully to the rigours of bombardment. The occupied states had their own civil defence organizations, but they were in general less well resourced than in Britain or Germany. This would have mattered less if the bombing of military objectives had been as accurate as the Allies claimed (and on occasion achieved). The bombing of Brest, Le Havre, Caen, Mortsel, The Hague, Bucharest and a dozen or more other cities exposed the hollowness of any claim to operational precision. Bombing was a blunt instrument as the Allies knew full well, but its bluntness was more evident and more awkward when the bombs fell outside Germany.
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 82