Opposing Viewpoints: The Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) 1942 to 1945

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Opposing Viewpoints: The Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) 1942 to 1945

The Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), the allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany from 1942 to 1945 is still being researched, evaluated, and debated amongst Second World War historians today. The strategic bombing campaign waged against Germany killed over half a million Germans, devastated infrastructure, cities, towns, and manufacturing. The debate among contemporary writers centers along the revisionists claims as to the ‘ineffectiveness’ of the allied bombing campaign. Post-revisionists arguments are routinely focused on the ‘immorality of the targeting, bombing, and killing of civilians. Counter arguments in defense of the bombing campaign and specifically, in defense of the Allied aircrews, tend to focus on the decision makers, the reality of the war, and the pressures applied on the key leaders to ‘do something’ in the early period of the war.

Robin Neillands’ The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive against Nazi Germany, published in 2001, is a short history of the allied bombing of Germany whose objective is to challenge the claims that Chief Air Marshal Harris and further an argument that ‘his bomber boys’ executed a reckless and devastating war against helpless German civilians. The twentieth century historiography of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) evolved into open and severe criticism of the entire effort with sharp focus on the Royal Air Force, Harris, and Bomber Command specifically.

Neillands argument concentrates firstly, on the advent of airpower during the Great War, the inter-war years influence of airpower advocates, and the reality of the situation Great Britain found herself in 1940. Chief Air Marshall Harris was a proponent of the bomber and believed in the promises of airpower. By 1940, when the Luftwaffe was bombing London, Churchill felt pressed to do something. He left it to Harris to deliver a solution. Harris then, “went to Bomber Command in 1942” and “his principal aim was to devastate Germany by relentless bombing until the Nazi’s were forced surrender.”[1]

Harris never gave up on the pre-war airpower advocates dream of ending a conflict with airpower alone. Harris, even after Allied forces set foot on the European Continent, wished to refocus the entire effort of the CBO to completely destroy all of Germany. For Harris, war was ‘total war.’ But the wars end found airpower wanting. “Bombing alone did not defeat the Axis powers”[2] despite the beliefs and intentions of Harris, Spaatz and others.

Neillands summarizes the CBO with the perplexing and vexing questions of morality. Neillands asks that after placing the bombing campaign in context with total war ‘does morality have any place in war at all?’ The arguments against the bombing of Germany collectively fell on the shoulders of Harris and RAF Bomber Command, as they executed ‘area bombing’ against city targets across Germany. Area bombing techniques are when bomb aimers set the city center, or a wide area as the target and bomb release point. The Americans, with their Norden bombsight, selected industrial centers as their aim and release points. “Daylight precision bombing, often cited in an attempt to show that Harris’ area bombing was not necessary” didn’t work “until the arrival of dedicated long range fighter escorts such as the P-51 Mustang. [3] Neillands discusses the effectiveness of the CBO and the moral questions. Ultimately, Neillands sides with Harris and the aircrews of the Allied bombers who fought and died against Germany.

 

Dr Randall Hansen’s Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945, published in 2009, is also a short history of the allied bombing campaign against Germany during the Second World War. Hansen compares and contrasts the efforts against Germany by two organizations: the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, led by Chief Air Marshal Arthur Harris, and the United States Army Air Force 8th Air Force, led by General Tooey Spaatz. Fire and Fury clearly stakes out a claim that the USAAF and Spaatz took the ‘high road’ against Germany whereas Bomber Command and Harris, adopted the immoral, by specifically targeting German civilians.

Hansen argues that it was the Americans (USAAF) who pushed for the raids against Germany’s oil industry. The attacks on oil “were kept on the agenda by the Americans, pushed heavily by Spaatz and Tedder, and opposed by Harris.”[4] The 8th Air Force laid claims early on, in late 1942 when they arrived in the United Kingdom, that they would pursue ‘precision bombing’ against industrial targets across Germany in daylight. The RAF Bomber Command had tried hard in early 1940 and 1941 but by 1942, Bomber Command decided against daylight bombing as the losses were prohibitive. Once the USAAF joined the effort, the Americans pursued Germany by day while the RAF attacked at night.

Hansen argues that the American efforts against Germany were focused on industrial targets in a manner so as to engage the Luftwaffe in the air and when at all possible, to avoid needless civilian casualties. “Before 1945, Spaatz tried whenever possible to avoid killing German civilians; Harris killed them deliberately and with equanimity.”[5] Hansen stresses the differences between the two Allied Air Forces but doesn’t quite acknowledge that the 8th Air Force suffered tremendously in late 1942 and early 1943. Eventually, the arrival of long-range fighter escort aircraft allowed the daylight campaign to continue. It was indeed the daylight campaign that challenged ultimately, destroyed the Luftwaffe in the skies above Germany.

Hansen compares the USAAF daylight bombing campaign with the night effort of RAF Bomber Command and concludes that the British effort was far worse; criminal even. “For Harris, the whole point of bombing, was to destroy cities.”[6] As for the Luftwaffe, Hansen comments that “the Americans alone destroyed” and “had they not done so, no bombing war of any sort would have been possible.”[7]

Between these two histories, Fire and Fury and The Bomber War, the ongoing debates within the historiography of the CBO are clear to see. Revisionists began to question the effectiveness of the campaign waged against German industry after wartime archives were made available. Post-revisionists soon began questioning the morality of the entire effort and unfortunately, began to minimize the sacrifice of the Allied aircrews of which over 50% perished. A new move is afoot with historians and writers acknowledging the German civilian experience of the bombing, and even the immorality. However, these writers, like Neillands, do so, by recognizing the aircrew who sacrificed so much. And further, by acknowledging the reality of the life and death decisions made by the very participants of the costliest war in human history.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Hansen, Randall, Fire, and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-45, Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.

 

Neillands, Robin, The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2001.


[1] Neillands, Robin, The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany, (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2001), 204.

[2] Ibid., 386.

[3] Ibid., 388.

[4] Randall Hansen, Fire, and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-45, (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008). 272.

[5] Ibid., 273.

[6] Ibid., 273.

[7] Ibid. 281.


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