The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945

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The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 110

by Richard Overy


  111. BA-MA, RL7/141, Intelligence Report, Air Fleet 3, 1 Aug 1943, 2.

  112. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/AEAF/7, War Cabinet Defence Committee, 5 Apr 1944, 1.

  113. TNA, AIR 40/1882, Bottomley to Portal, 18 Jan 1944; Bufton to Harris, 14 Jan 1944.

  114. TNA, AIR 37/752, Harris memorandum for Leigh-Mallory, ‘The Employment of the Night Bomber Force in Connection with the Invasion of the Continent’, 13 Jan 1944.

  115. LC, Spaatz papers, Box 143, Spaatz to Eisenhower [n.d. but Apr 1944].

  116. Ibid., Arnold to Spaatz, 24 Apr 1944; see too Anderson to Spaatz, 28 Feb 1944, 3, ‘there be complete accord … as to the continuation of POINTBLANK’.

  117. Walter W. Rostow, Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy: General Eisenhower’s Decision of March 25, 1944 (Aldershot: 1981), 13–14, 88–98; Solly Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords: The Autobiography of Solly Zuckerman 1904–1946 (London: 1978), 220–24, 231–45.

  118. Lord Arthur Tedder, With Prejudice: The War Memoirs of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder (London: 1966), 520–25.

  119. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 5, Portal to Churchill, 29 Mar 1944; UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/AEAF/7, Defence Committee minutes, 5 Apr 1944; Defence Committee minutes, 13 Apr 1944.

  120. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 5, Portal to Churchill, 13 Apr 1944; UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/AEAF/7, Defence Committee, Note by the Secretary, ‘Bombing Policy’; Zuckerman memorandum, ‘Estimates of Civilian Casualties’, 6 Apr 1944.

  121. Ibid., ‘Number of Fatal Casualties’ [n.d. but Apr 1944]; ‘Casualties among French Civilians Resulting from Rail Centre Attacks’.

  122. Warren Kimball (ed), Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence: Vol III, Alliance Declining (London: 1984), 122–3, Churchill to Roosevelt, 7 May 1944, and 127, Roosevelt to Churchill, 11 May 1944; Tedder, With Prejudice, 531–2.

  123. BN, Bulletin de Renseignements, Apr 1944, 16; Bulletin d’Information de la Défense Passive, Aug 1944, 18.

  124. SHAA, 3D/322/Dossier 1, ‘Tableau des projectiles explosifs lancés de janvier 1942 à aôut 1944’.

  125. BN, Bulletin d’Information de la Défense Passive, May 1944, 7–8.

  126. Details from BN, Bulletin d’Information de la Défense Passive, June 1944, 1–3, 6–7, 10–11, 13.

  127. SHAA, 3D/322/Dossier 1, ‘Bombardement de St. Étienne, 26 mai 1944’, 4, 7–8; ‘Bombardement de Marseille, 27 mai 1944’, 1, 4–6; BN, Bulletin d’Information de la Défense Passive, ‘Bombardement de Saint-Étienne, 26 mai 1944’, 2–4; ‘Bombardement de Marseille, 27 mai 1944’, 2–5; statistics on human losses from Georges Ribeill, Yves Machefert-Tassin, Une Saison en Enfer: Les bombardements des Alliés sur les rails français (1942–1945) (Migennes: 2004), 142–3.

  128. TNA, FO 371/41984, memorandum from the French Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, ‘Allied Bombardment of Metropolitan France’, 5 May 1944; AIR 19/218, telegram for the War Cabinet from the British chargé d’affaires in Algiers, 8 June 1944. See too Baldoli, Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, 233–5, for a fuller discussion of the views of the French Resistance.

  129. FDRL, Map Room Files, Box 73, Deputy Director OSS to the White House, 17 May 1944, encl. OSS Bulletin from Madrid.

  130. Baldoli, Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, 29.

  131. FDRL, Map Room Files, Box 72, OSS Bulletin, 8 Feb 1944.

  132. CCAC, BUFT 3/51, SHAEF Report, ‘The Effect of the Overlord Plan to Disrupt Enemy Rail Communications’, 1–2.

  133. Georges Ribeill, ‘Aux prises avec les voies ferrées: bombarder ou saboter? Un dilemme revisité’, in Battesti, Facon (eds), Les bombardements alliés, 162.

  134. TNA, AIR 37/719, Solly Zuckerman, ‘Times for Re-Establishment of Traffic through Bombed Rail Centres and Junctions and across Bridges’, 11 Aug 1944, 2, and App 9, 11; Ribeill, Machefert-Tassin, Une Saison en Enfer, 138–9.

  135. Ibid., 153–5, 204; TNA, AIR 37/719, Railway Research Service, London, ‘German Military Movements in France and Belgium August 1944’, 13 Oct 1944, App B.

  136. Steve Darlow, Sledgehammers for Tintacks: Bomber Command Combats the V-1 Menace 1943–1944 (London: 2002), 195–7.

  137. Joachim Ludewig, Rückzug: The German Retreat from France, 1944 (Lexington, KT: 2012), 23–4.

  138. Maud Jarry, ‘Le bombardement des sites V en France’, in Battesti, Facon (eds), Les bombardements alliés, 39–43.

  139. TNA, AIR 40/1882, Report from Dewdney (RE8) to Bufton, 15 Apr 1944 ‘Crossbow – Large Sites’.

  140. TNA, AIR 19/218, Sinclair to Portal, 9 July 1944.

  141. TNA, AIR 40/1882, Air Marshal Colyer to Director of Intelligence, 2 July 1944; AI Report, ‘Examination of “Crossbow” Sites in the Cherbourg Peninsula’, 6 July 1944.

  142. Jean Quellien, ‘Les bombardements pendant la campagne de Normandie’, in Battesti, Facon (eds), Les bombardements alliés, 61–8.

  143. BN, Bulletin de Renseignements, June, July and August 1944; Quellien, ‘Les bombardements’, 70–71.

  144. TNA, AIR 37/761, AEAF HQ, ‘Observations of RAF Bomber Command’s Attack on Caen July 7 1944’, 14 July 1944, 3–5.

  145. William Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (New York: 2008), 32–3, 34, 44.

  146. USMA, Bradley papers, War Diary, vol 3, entry for 24 July 1944; LC, Spaatz papers, Box 84, USSTAF HQ, ‘Report of Investigation of Tactical Bombing, 25 July 1944’, 14 Aug 1944, 3–4.

  147. USMA, Bradley papers, War Diary, vol 3, entry for 25 July 1944. Eisenhower was reported as saying ‘I don’t believe they [strategic bombers] can be used in support of ground troops.’

  148. USMA, Bradley papers, memorandum by Bradley, ‘Combined Air and Ground Operations West of St. Lô on Tuesday 25 July 1944’; Bradley memorandum for the record, 19 Nov 1944.

  149. Andrew Knapp, ‘The Destruction and Liberation of Le Havre in Modern Memory’, War in History, 14 (2007), 477–82.

  150. TNA, AIR 8/842, minute by Portal, 7 Jan 1945; Bottomley to Portal, 9 Jan 1945; Bottomley to Portal, 25 Jan 1945; Florentin, Quand les Alliés bombardaient la France, 596–7.

  151. Ibid., 597–8.

  152. TNA, AIR 40/1720, MAAF Intelligence Division Report, 30 May 1944, 14.

  153. Baldoli, Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, gives a figure of 54,631 for overall deaths; Florentin, Quand les Alliés bombardaient la France, 600–601, gives both the official figure (53,601) and the post-war estimate of 67,078, which seems to have been derived from the assertion that of the 133,000 civilian dead in France, half came from bombing. Danièle Voldman suggests a figure of at least 70,000, but does not explore how this figure is arrived at. See Voldman, ‘Les populations civiles, enjeux du bombardement des villes (1914–1945)’, in Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker, Christian Ingrao, Henry Rousso (eds), La violence de guerre 1914–1945 (Paris: 2002), 161–2.

  154. LC, Spaatz papers, Box 143, Notes by Spaatz for Eisenhower, Apr 1944.

  155. LC, Doolittle papers, Doolittle to Spaatz, 10 Aug 1944; Doolittle to Eisenhower, 5 Aug 1944.

  156. TNA, AIR 19/218, Portal to Eaker, 3 June 1943.

  157. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 2, Stefan Zamoyski to Peirse, 4 Jan 1941, encl. letter from Polish Army HQ, 30 Dec 1940; Peirse to Sikorski, 15 Jan 1941; Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: 2002), 191–2.

  158. TNA, AIR 19/218, Eden to Sinclair, 7 July 1944; Sinclair to Eden, 15 July 1944; Sinclair to Vice CoS (RAF), 26 July 1944; Richard Levy, ‘The Bombing of Auschwitz Revisited: A Critical Analysis’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 10 (1996), 268–9, 272–3. See too Michael Neufeld, Michael Berenbaum (eds), The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have Attempted it? (New York: 2000), 263–4, 266–7, for the full correspondence.

  159. TNA, AIR 19/218, Bottomley to ACAS (Intelligence), 2 Aug 1944; V. Cavendish-Bentinck (JIC) to Bottomley, 13 Aug 1944. See too Stuart Erdheim, ‘Could the Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?’, H
olocaust and Genocide Studies, 11 (1997), 131–7.

  160. David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 (New York: 1984), 290–91, 295; Levy, ‘The Bombing of Auschwitz Revisited’, 277–8. The McCloy letters of 14 August and 18 November 1944 are reproduced in Neufeld, Berenbaum (eds), The Bombing of Auschwitz, 274, 279–80.

  161. TNA, AIR 19/218, Richard Law (FO) to Sinclair, 1 Sept 1944; Air Ministry to Spaatz, 1 Sept 1944.

  162. Neufeld, Berenbaum (eds), The Bombing of Auschwitz, has 15 papers arguing the case for or against.

  163. AFHRA, Disc MAAF 233, Economic Warfare Division to Maj. Ballard, NAAF, ‘Strategic Target Priority List’, 16 Dec 1943. OŚwie˛im was number 14 out of 15 priority targets.

  164. Joseph White, ‘Target Auschwitz: Historical and Hypothetical German Responses to Allied Attack’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 16 (2002), 58–9; Randall Rice, ‘Bombing Auschwitz: US 15th Air Force and the Military Aspects of a Possible Attack’, War in History, 6 (1999), 205–30.

  165. Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (London: 2003), 310–11.

  166. TNA, AIR 8/1169, Portal to Slessor, 5 Aug 1944; Slessor to Portal, 6 Aug 1944; Slessor to Portal, 9 Aug 1944.

  167. Ibid., AMSSO to British Mission, Moscow, 8 Aug 1944; Slessor to Portal, 16 Aug 1944. See too Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (London: 2012), 419.

  168. TNA, AIR 8/1169, Despatches from MAAF on Dropping Operations to Warsaw [n.d.]; Davies, Rising ’44, 311; Kochanski, Eagle Unbowed, 408–11. The successful drops included 4.5 million rounds of ammunition, 14,000 hand grenades, 250 anti-tank guns and 1,000 Sten guns.

  169. TNA, FO 898/151, PWE, ‘Rumanian Policy’, 2 Dec 1943; PWE minute, ‘Air Attack on Bucharest’, 20 Mar 1944.

  170. C. O. Richardson, ‘French Plans for Allied Attacks on the Caucasus Oil Fields January–April 1940’, French Historical Studies, 8 (1973), 136–42; Ronald Cooke, Roy Nesbit, Target: Hitler’s Oil. Allied Attacks on German Oil Supplies 1939–45 (London: 1985), 25–8, 37–8.

  171. TNA, AIR 9/138, Air Ministry (Plans) for the CAS, ‘Appreciation on the Attack of the Russian Oil Industry’, 2 Apr 1940, 1–2; memorandum by Air Ministry (Plans), ‘Russian Oil Industry in the Caucasus’, 30 May 1940.

  172. Ibid., ‘Memorandum on the Russian Petroleum Industry in the Caucasus’, App E, ‘Calculation of Effort’; Cooke, Nesbit, Target: Hitler’s Oil, 49–51.

  173. TNA, 9/138, letter from E. A. Berthoud (British Embassy, Cairo) to HQ RAF Middle East, 13 June 1941; Air Ministry (Plans) to HQ RAF Middle East, 13 June 1941; Air Ministry to British C-in-C (India) [n.d. but June 1941].

  174. TNA, PREM 3/374/6, HQ RAF Middle East to Air Marshal Evill, 14 June 1942.

  175. TNA, FO 898/176, PWB, Allied Forces HQ, ‘Psychological Warfare in the Mediterranean Theater’, 31 Aug 1945, 4–5, 15.

  176. LC, Spaatz papers, Box 157, Col. Earl Thomson to Director of Intelligence, USSTAF Europe, 1 Feb 1944.

  177. Ibid., Box 157, Carl Spaatz article for Air Force Star, ‘Leaflets: An Important Weapon of Total War’, 5.

  178. Ibid., Box 157, Lt. Col. Lindsey Braxton to Spaatz [n.d. but Feb 1944]; Thomson to Director of Intelligence, USSTAF, 1 Feb 1944. For an example of whole bundles falling see TNA, FO 898/437, H. Knatchbull-Hugesson (British Embassy, Ankara) to Ministry of Information, 18 Jan 1944, on Bulgarian leaflets.

  179. TNA, FO 898/176, ‘Psychological Warfare in the Mediterranean Theater’, 31 Aug 1945, 14; FO 898/318, Dr Vojacek to PWE, 19 Feb 1943; Dr Vojacek to PWE, 11 Jan 1943.

  180. TNA, FO 898/318, memorandum by Elizabeth Barker (PWE), ‘Probable Effects of Intensified Large-Scale Bombing of Densely Populated Areas in South-Eastern Europe’, 26 Jan 1944; PWE memorandum, ‘The Bombing of Romania, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Jugoslavia’ [n.d.].

  181. TNA, FO 898/318, PWE Regional Director (Czechoslovakia) to Calder, 25 Jan 1944.

  182. TNA, FO 898/437, Wing Commander Burt-Andrews to Elizabeth Barker, 10 Dec 1943; FO 898/318, Barker memorandum, 26 Jan 1944, 2.

  183. Charles Webster, Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945, 4 vols (London: 1961), vol 4, 508–9, 518.

  184. TNA, AIR 20/3238, HQ RAF Middle East to Air Ministry, 26 Apr 1942; Air Ministry memorandum, ‘Tactical Appreciation on the Interruption of Axis Supplies of Oil from Romania’, 21 Dec 1942; Churchill to Portal, 28 Feb 1943; Portal to Churchill, 9 Mar 1943.

  185. TNA, PREM 3/374/6, Churchill to Eden, 10 Mar 1943; Ismay to Churchill, 18 May 1943; Eisenhower to CCS, 25 May 1943.

  186. TNA, AIR 20/3238, Air Ministry to Mediterranean Air Command, 31 May 1943; Portal to Tedder, 2 June 1943.

  187. TNA, AIR 20/3238, Eisenhower to CCS, 25 May 1943; PREM 3/374/6, minute by Ismay, 19 June 1943; Ismay to Churchill, 23 June 1943.

  188. TNA, AIR 20/3238, Lt. Col. W. Forster to E. Berthoud (Cairo Embassy), 3 Aug 1943.

  189. Cooke, Nesbit, Target: Hitler’s Oil, 86–7.

  190. TNA, AIR 20/3238, HQ RAF Middle East to Air Ministry, 3 Aug 1943; Report, ‘Bombing of Roumanian Oilfields’, 9 Aug 1943. For details of both raids see Wesley F. Craven, James L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II: Europe: Torch to Pointblank (Chicago, IL: 1949), 481–4; Cooke, Nesbit, Target: Hitler’s Oil, 89–96.

  191. TNA, AIR 20/3238, H. Knatchbull-Hugesson to the Foreign Office, 8 Aug 1943.

  192. AFHRA, Disc MAAF/233, HQ MAAF, ‘Notes on Strategic Bombardment Conference, Gibraltar, 8–10 November 1943’, 11 Nov 1943, 2; Richard G. Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers: A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive, 1939–1945 (Maxwell AFB, AL: 2006), 322–4.

  193. FDRL, Map Room Files, Box 136, Arnold to Spaatz, 17 Mar 1944; CoS to Wilson and Spaatz, 22 Mar 1944; AFHRA, Disc MAAF/233, Air Ministry to Eaker, 11 Apr 1944.

  194. Akten zur Deutschen auswärtigen Politik: Serie E, Band VIII: 1 Mai 1944 bis 8 Mai 1945 (Göttingen: 1979), 99–100, Joachim von Ribbentrop to Bucharest Embassy, 6 June 1944.

  195. ADAP: Serie E, Band VIII, 114, OKW to Ambassador Ritter, 7 June 1944 (appointment from 4 June 1944).

  196. TNA, AIR 23/7776, Fifteenth Air Force, ‘The Air Battle of Ploesti’, Mar 1945, 2, 6, 61–8, 81.

  197. Cooke, Nesbit, Target: Hitler’s Oil, 105–6; AFRHA, Disc MAAF/233, HQ MAAF, Operation Order for Mining the Danube, 25 Apr 1944.

  198. ADAP: Serie E, Band VIII, 383–4, Budapest Embassy to the German Foreign Office, 30 Aug 1944; Karl-Heinz Frieser (ed), DRZW: Band 8: Die Ostfront 1943/44 (Stuttgart: 2007), 782–800.

  199. NARA, RG 107, Lovett papers, Box 28, Eaker to Robert Lovett, 18 Sept 1944; FDRL, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 82, Arnold to Roosevelt, 22 Sept 1944.

  200. TNA, WO 204/1068, Air Ministry to Air Force HQ, Algiers, 4 Apr 1944.

  201. AFHRA, MAAF/233, HQ MAAF, Intelligence Section, ‘The Balkan Situation – Possibilities of Air Attack’, 24 Apr 1944, 13.

  202. Ibid., Portal to Spaatz and Wilson, 30 May 1944.

  203. NARA, RG 107, Box 28, Eaker to Lovett, 18 Sept 1944, 2–3; Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 323.

  204. AFHRA, Disc MAAF/233, HQ MAAF, Intelligence Section, ‘Priority List of Strategic Targets in MAAF Area’, 31 July 1944.

  205. Ibid., HQ MAAF, Operational Instruction 111, 21 Mar 1945, 1–2.

  206. Ibid., HQ MAAF, cypher message to all air staff, 24 Apr 1944. See too John Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of American Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia (London: 1947), 128–9.

  207. TNA, AIR 20/3229, HQ MAAF to Air Ministry, 9 Nov 1944; JSM Washington to AMSSO (Moscow), 19 Nov 1944; Deane, The Strange Alliance, 132–4.

  208. TNA, AIR, 20/3229 Spaatz to Arnold, 29 Nov 1944; US Joint Chiefs to John Deane, Military Mission, Moscow; Joint Planning Staff memorandum, ‘Co-ordination of Allied Operations’, 23 Jan 1945.

  209. FDRL, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 82, Arnold to Roosevelt, 17 Sept 1944, 2.

  210. Gordon Daniels (ed), A Guide
to the Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (London: 1981), xxii; Wagenführ story in John K. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times: Memoirs (London: 1981), 235–6.

  211. See e.g. Maria Bucur, Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania (Bloomington, IN: 2009), 198–9, 212–13.

  212. A. Korthals Altes, Luchtgevaar: Luchtaanvallen op Nederland 1940–1945 (Amsterdam: 1984), 332.

  213. http://www.groningerarchieven.nl ‘Groningers gedood door Engelse-bommen’.

  214. Altes, Luchtgevaar, 332.

  215. TNA, FO 898/312, Foreign Office to Brigadier Brooks (PWE), 14 Feb 1942.

  216. TNA, AIR 9/187, Slessor (ACAS) to all air commands, 29 Oct 1942, ‘Bombardment Policy’, 3.

  217. Pieter Serrien, Tranen over Mortsel: De laatste getuigen over het zwaarste bombardement ooit in België (Antwerp: 2008), 12–19. See too the report in TNA, ADM 199/2467, NID, minute on bombing of Antwerp, 20 Apr 1943.

  218. TNA, AIR 40/399, HQ VIII Bomber Command, ORS Report on 5 Apr 1943 operations, 18 May 1943.

  219. Serrien, Tranen over Mortsel, 41, from an anonymous letter on the bombing.

  220. TNA, FO 898/312, Foreign Office to Director of Political Warfare (Operations), 9 Apr 1943.

  221. TNA, AIR 19/218, Sinclair to Portal, 30 Apr 1943; Sinclair to Portal, 3 May 1943; Air Marshal Evill to Eaker, 10 May 1943, encl. App A, ‘Targets in Occupied Countries Recommended for Attack by the Eighth Air Force’; Air Ministry to Harris, 21 May 1943.

  222. TNA, AIR 19/218, Portal to Eaker, 3 June 1943; Sinclair to Eden, 5 June 1943; Eden to Sinclair, 11 June 1943.

  223. Ibid., draft leaflet, ‘An Urgent Warning to the Belgian People’, 16 June 1943; Bottomley to Harris and Eaker, 25 June and 15 July 1943; E. Micheils van Verduyren (Netherlands FO) to Sir Nevile Bland (British ambassador), 23 June 1943.

  224. Joris van Esch, ‘Restrained Policy and Careless Execution: Allied Strategic Bombing on The Netherlands in the Second World War’, US School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, KS (2011), 35–6.

  225. Altes, Luchtgevaar, 167–9.

 

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