Western Allies Terror-bombed 70 German Cities by 1945
The Ardennes Offensive, beginning in December 1944, would not have been possible had Allied leaders directed their pilots more regularly towards bombardment of German industrial plants, communication signals and transportation lines.
Instead, from 1940 British and later American airmen were ordered to implement “area bombing”; in plain English, the destruction of cities and residential areas which entailed, as was known, the deaths of noncombatants like women, children, along with the elderly. This was a particular brand of Anglo-Saxon warfare, which had prior agreement in the highest levels of Allied government circles.
Shortly after becoming Britain’s prime minister in May 1940,
Winston Churchill had said,
“this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest”.
By the spring of 1945, Allied aircraft had terror-bombed a remarkable 70 cities
across Germany – killing around 600,000 of the Reich’s civilians, the majority of whom were mothers and children, coupled with those too old to fight – along with destroying countless hospitals, schools and historical buildings. In contrast, the Luftwaffe’s Blitz of Britain killed less than 10% of the above total, about 40,000 people.
Of the 70 German cities firebombed, 69 of them endured the obliteration of 50% or more of their urban areas.
What Churchill says about the Germans is interesting. Was his wish fulfilled or does it continue to this day in another form:
Biden's attack on Nord Stream pipelines was aimed at Germany - Seymour Hersh
The Wiki for
Strategic bombing has:
The development of the B-29 gave the United States a bomber with sufficient range to reach the Japanese home islands from the safety of American bases in the Pacific or western China. The capture of the Japanese island of
Iwo Jima further enhanced the capabilities that the Americans possessed in their strategic bombing campaign. High-explosive and incendiary bombs were used against Japan to devastating effect, with greater indiscriminate loss of life in the
firebombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945 than was caused either by the
Dresden mission, or the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Unlike the USAAF's strategic bombing campaign in Europe, with its avowed (if unachievable) objective of precision bombing of strategic targets, the bombing of Japanese cities involved the deliberate targeting of residential zones from the outset. Bomb loads included very high proportions of incendiaries, with the intention of igniting the highly combustible wooden houses common in Japanese cities and thereby generating firestorms.
[54][55][56][57]
The final development of strategic bombing in World War II was the use of nuclear weapons. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States exploded nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 105,000 people and inflicting a psychological shock on the Japanese nation. On August 15, Emperor
Hirohito announced the
surrender of Japan,
stating:
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects; or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.
Following the link to
Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945)
On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating
firebombing raid on
Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named
Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the
Great Tokyo Air Raid in Japan.
[1] Bombs dropped from 279
Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers burned out much of eastern Tokyo.
More than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people were killed, mostly civilians, and one million were left homeless, making it the most destructive single
air attack in human history. The Japanese air and civil defenses proved largely inadequate; 14 American aircraft and 96 airmen were lost.
The site,
Civilian casualties of strategic bombing, has a list of towns, and the number of civilians killed. Next to some, it says
firestorm, which is a general concept, that covers both natural and manmade causes including
firebombing. To get an idea of how firebombing developed:
In the early days of bombing our notion, like that of the Germans, was to spread an attack out over the whole night, thereby wearing down the morale of the civilian population. The result was, of course, that an efficient fire brigade could tackle a single load of incendiaries, put them out, and wait in comfort for the next to come along; they might also be able to take shelter when a few high explosives bombs were dropping. ... But it was observed that when the Germans did get an effective concentration, ... then our fire brigades had a hard time; if a rain of incendiaries is mixed with high explosives bombs there is a temptation for the fireman to keep his head down. The Germans, again and again, missed their chance, as they did during the London blitz that I watched from the roof of the Air Ministry, of setting our cities ablaze by a concentrated attack. Coventry was adequately concentrated in point of space, but all the same, there was little concentration in point of time, and
nothing like the fire tornadoes of Hamburg or Dresden ever occurred in this country. But they did do us enough damage to teach us the principle of concentration, the principle of starting so many fires at the same time that no firefighting services, however efficiently and quickly they were reinforced by the fire brigades of other towns could get them under control.
—
Arthur Harris[3]
To give an idea of what Arthur Harris meant with his reference to Hamburg and Dresden can be found in the Wiki on Firestorm:
The incendiary effects of a nuclear explosion do not present any especially characteristic features. In principle, the same overall result with respect to destruction of life and property can be achieved by the use of
conventional incendiary and
high-explosive bombs.
[55] It has been estimated, for example, that the same fire ferocity and damage produced at Hiroshima by one 16-kiloton nuclear bomb from a single B-29 could have instead been produced by about 1,200 tons/1.2 kilotons of incendiary bombs from 220 B-29s distributed over the city; for Nagasaki, a single
21 kiloton nuclear bomb dropped on the city could have been estimated to be caused by 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs from 125 B-29s.
[55][56][57]
It may seem counterintuitive that the same amount of fire damage caused by a nuclear weapon could have instead been produced by smaller total yield of thousands of incendiary bombs; however, World War II experience supports this assertion. For example, although not a perfect clone of the city of Hiroshima in 1945, in the conventional
bombing of Dresden, the combined
Royal Air Force (RAF) and
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped a total of 3441.3 tons (approximately 3.4
kilotons) of
ordnance (about half of which was incendiary bombs) on the night of 13–14 February 1945, and this resulted in "more than" 2.5 square miles (6.5 km2) of the city being destroyed by fire and firestorm effects according to one authoritative source,
[58] or approximately 8 square miles (21 km2) by another.
[30]
In total about 4.5 kilotons of conventional ordnance was dropped on the city over a number of months during 1945 and this resulted in approximately 15 square miles (39 km2) of the city being destroyed by blast and fire effects.
[59] During the Operation MeetingHouse firebombing of Tokyo on 9–10 March 1945, 279 of the 334 B-29s dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the city, resulting in the destruction of over 10,000 acres of buildings—16 square miles (41 km2), a quarter of the city.[60][61]
In contrast to these raids, when a single 16-kiloton nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 4.5 square miles (12 km2) of the city was destroyed by blast, fire, and firestorm effects.
[47] Similarly, Major Cortez F. Enloe, a surgeon in the USAAF who worked with the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), said that
the 21-kiloton nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki did not do as much fire damage as the extended conventional airstrikes on Hamburg.[62]
bnnbreaking.com
FIELD EXECUTIONS, MASS DETENTIONS.
