Spread Wings - Bombing Part 1. Strategic bombing and the economy of Nazi Germany

Six hundred thousand dead civilians, including seventy thousand children - this is the result of the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. Was this large-scale and high-tech massacre caused only by military necessity?

“We will bomb Germany, one city after another. We will bombard you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue her relentlessly. City after city: Lübeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and this list will only grow, ”the British bomber commander Arthur Harris addressed the people of Germany with these words. It was this text that was distributed on the pages of millions of leaflets scattered over Germany.

The words of Marshal Harris were invariably put into practice. Day after day, newspapers issued statistical reports.

Bingen - destroyed by 96%. Dessau - destroyed by 80%. Chemnitz - 75% destroyed. Small and large, industrial and university, full of refugees or clogged with military industry - German cities, as the British marshal promised, one after another turned into smoldering ruins.

Stuttgart - destroyed by 65%. Magdeburg - destroyed by 90%. Cologne - destroyed by 65%. Hamburg - destroyed by 45%.

By the beginning of 1945, the news that another German city had ceased to exist was already perceived as commonplace.

“This is the principle of torture: the victim is tortured until she does what is asked of her. The Germans were required to throw off the Nazis. The fact that the expected effect was not achieved and the uprising did not happen was explained only by the fact that such operations had never been carried out before. No one could have imagined that the civilian population would choose bombing. It’s just that, despite the monstrous scale of destruction, the likelihood of dying under bombs until the very end of the war remained lower than the likelihood of dying at the hands of an executioner if a citizen showed dissatisfaction with the regime, ”reflects Berlin historian Jörg Friedrich.

Five years ago, Mr. Friedrich's detailed study Fire: Germany in the Bomb War 1940-1945 became one of the most significant events in German historical literature. For the first time, a German historian tried to soberly understand the causes, course and consequences of the bomb war waged against Germany by the Western Allies. A year later, under the editorship of Friedrich, the photo album "Fire" was released - more than a poignant document, step by step documenting the tragedy of German cities bombed to dust.

And here we are sitting on the terrace in the courtyard of Friedrich's house in Berlin. The historian coolly and calmly - almost meditating, it seems - tells how the bombing of cities took place and how his own house would have behaved if it had been under the bombing carpet.

Slipping into the abyss

The carpet bombing of German cities was neither an accident nor the whim of individual pyromaniac fanatics in the British or American military. The concept of a bomb war against the civilian population, successfully used against Nazi Germany, was only a development of the doctrine of the British Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, developed by him during the First World War.

According to Trenchard, in the course of an industrial war, residential areas of the enemy should become natural targets, since the industrial worker is just as much a participant in the hostilities as a soldier at the front.

Such a concept was in rather obvious contradiction with international law in force at that time. Thus, Articles 24-27 of the 1907 Hague Convention explicitly prohibited the bombing and shelling of undefended cities, the destruction of cultural property, as well as private property. In addition, the belligerent side was instructed to, if possible, warn the enemy about the beginning of the shelling. However, the convention did not clearly spell out a ban on the destruction or terrorization of the civilian population, apparently, they simply did not think about this method of waging war.

An attempt to prohibit the conduct of hostilities by aviation against the civilian population was made in 1922 in the draft of the Hague Declaration on the rules of air warfare, but failed due to the unwillingness of European countries to join the harsh terms of the treaty. Nevertheless, already on September 1, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the heads of states that entered the war with a call to prevent “shocking violations of humanity” in the form of “deaths of defenseless men, women and children” and “never, under any circumstances, bombard from the air of the civilian population of undefended cities. The fact that "Her Majesty's Government will never attack civilians" was announced in early 1940 by the then British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain.

Joerg Friedrich explains: “Throughout the first years of the war, there was a bitter struggle among the Allied generals between the supporters of point bombing and carpet bombing. The first believed that it was necessary to strike at the most vulnerable points: factories, power plants, fuel depots. The latter believed that the damage from pinpoint strikes could be easily compensated, and relied on the carpet destruction of cities, on the terrorization of the population.

The concept of carpet bombing looked very advantageous in light of the fact that it was for such a war that Britain had been preparing for the entire pre-war decade. Lancaster bombers were designed specifically to attack cities. Specially for the doctrine of total bombing in Great Britain, the most perfect production of incendiary bombs among the warring powers was created. Having established their production in 1936, by the beginning of the war, the British Air Force had a stock of five million of these bombs. This arsenal had to be dropped on someone's head - and it is not surprising that already on February 14, 1942, the British Air Force received the so-called "Area Bombing Directive".

The document, which granted then Bomber Commander Arthur Harris unlimited rights to use bombers to suppress German cities, said in part: “From now on, operations should be focused on suppressing the morale of the enemy civilian population - in particular, industrial workers.”

On 15 February, RAF Commander Sir Charles Portal was even less ambiguous in a note to Harris: "I think it's clear to you that the targets should be housing estates, not shipyards or aircraft factories."

However, it was not worth convincing Harris of the benefits of carpet bombing. As early as the 1920s, while commanding British air power in Pakistan and then in Iraq, he gave orders to firebomb unruly villages. Now the bombing general, who received the nickname The Butcher from his subordinates, had to test the machine of aerial killing not on the Arabs and Kurds, but on the Europeans.

In fact, the only opponents of the raids on the cities in 1942-1943 were the Americans. Compared to the British bombers, their planes were better armored, had more machine guns and could fly farther, so the American command believed that they were able to solve military problems without the massacre of the civilian population.

“American attitudes changed dramatically after the raid on the well-defended Darmstadt, as well as on the bearing factories in Schweinfurt and Regensburg,” says Joerg Friedrich. – You see, in Germany there were only two centers for the production of bearings. And the Americans, of course, thought that they could strip the Germans of all their bearings with one blow and win the war. But these factories were so well protected that during a raid in the summer of 1943, the Americans lost a third of the machines. After that, they simply did not bomb anything for six months. The problem was not even that they could not produce new bombers, but that the pilots refused to fly. A general who loses more than twenty percent of his personnel in a single sortie begins to experience problems with the morale of the pilots. This is how the school of area bombing began to win."

Nightmare Technology

The victory of the school of total bomb war meant the rise of the star of Marshal Arthur Harris. Among his subordinates, there was a popular story that once the car of Harris, who was driving at an excess of speed, was stopped by a policeman and advised to observe the speed limit: “Otherwise you can accidentally kill someone.” “Young man, I kill hundreds of people every night,” Harris allegedly replied to the policeman.

Obsessed with the idea of ​​bombing Germany out of the war, Harris spent days and nights in the Air Ministry, ignoring his ulcer. For all the years of the war, he was only on vacation for two weeks. Even the monstrous losses of his own pilots - during the war years, the losses of British bomber aircraft amounted to 60% - could not make him retreat from the fixed idea that had gripped him.

“It is ridiculous to believe that the largest industrial power in Europe can be brought to its knees by such a ridiculous tool as six hundred or seven hundred bombers. But give me thirty thousand strategic bombers and the war will end tomorrow morning,” he told Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reporting on the success of another bombardment. Harris did not receive thirty thousand bombers, and he had to develop a fundamentally new way of destroying cities - the "firestorm" technology.

“Theorists of the bomb war have come to the conclusion that the enemy city is a weapon in itself - a structure with a gigantic potential for self-destruction, you just need to put the weapon into action. It is necessary to bring a wick to this barrel of gunpowder, says Jörg Friedrich. German cities were extremely susceptible to fire. The houses were predominantly wooden, the attic floors were dry beams ready to catch fire. If you set fire to the attic in such a house and knock out the windows, then the fire that has arisen in the attic will be fueled by oxygen penetrating into the building through the broken windows - the house will turn into a huge fireplace. You see, every house in every city was potentially a fireplace - you just had to help it turn into a fireplace.

The optimal technology for creating a "firestorm" was as follows. The first wave of bombers dropped so-called air mines on the city - a special type of high-explosive bombs, the main task of which was to create ideal conditions for saturating the city with incendiary bombs. The first air mines used by the British weighed 790 kilograms and carried 650 kilograms of explosives. The following modifications were much more powerful - already in 1943, the British used mines that carried 2.5 and even 4 tons of explosives. Huge cylinders three and a half meters long poured onto the city and exploded on contact with the ground, tearing tiles from the roofs, as well as knocking out windows and doors within a radius of up to a kilometer.

"Loosened" in this way, the city became defenseless against a hail of incendiary bombs that fell on it immediately after being treated with air mines. When the city was sufficiently saturated with incendiary bombs (in some cases up to 100 thousand incendiary bombs were dropped per square kilometer), tens of thousands of fires broke out simultaneously in the city. Medieval urban development with its narrow streets helped the fire to spread from one house to another. The movement of fire brigades in the conditions of a general fire was extremely difficult. Particularly well engaged were cities in which there were no parks or lakes, but only dense wooden buildings dried up for centuries.

Simultaneous fires of hundreds of houses created a thrust of unprecedented force over an area of ​​several square kilometers. The whole city turned into a furnace of unprecedented dimensions, sucking in oxygen from the surroundings. The resulting thrust, directed towards the fire, caused a wind blowing at a speed of 200-250 kilometers per hour, a giant fire sucked oxygen from bomb shelters, dooming even those people who were spared by the bombs to death.

Ironically, the concept of "firestorm" Harris peeped from the Germans, Jörg Friedrich continues to tell with sadness.

“In the autumn of 1940, the Germans bombed Coventry, a small medieval town. During the raid, they covered the city center with incendiary bombs. The calculation was that the fire would spread to the motor factories located on the outskirts. In addition, fire trucks were not supposed to be able to drive through the burning city center. Harris took this bombing as an extremely interesting innovation. He studied its results for several months in a row. No one had carried out such bombings before. Instead of bombarding the city with land mines and blowing it up, the Germans carried out only a preliminary bombardment with land mines, and the main blow was inflicted with incendiary bombs - and achieved fantastic success. Encouraged by the new technique, Harris tried to conduct a completely similar raid on Lübeck - almost the same city as Coventry. Small medieval town,” says Friedrich.

Horror without end

It was Lübeck that was destined to become the first German city to experience the "firestorm" technology. On the night of Palm Sunday 1942, 150 tons of high-explosive bombs were poured into Lübeck, cracking the tiled roofs of medieval gingerbread houses, after which 25,000 incendiary bombs rained down on the city. The Lübeck firefighters, who understood the scale of the disaster in time, tried to call for reinforcements from neighboring Kiel, but to no avail. By morning the center of the city was a smoking ashes. Harris was triumphant: the technology he had developed had borne fruit.

Harris's success encouraged Prime Minister Churchill as well. He instructed to repeat the success in a large city - Cologne or Hamburg. Exactly two months after the destruction of Lübeck, on the night of May 30-31, 1942, the weather conditions over Cologne turned out to be more convenient - and the choice fell on him.

The raid on Cologne was one of the most massive raids on a major German city. For the attack, Harris gathered all the bomber aircraft at his disposal - including even coastal bombers, critical to Britain. The armada that bombed Cologne consisted of 1047 vehicles, and the operation itself was called the Millennium.

To avoid collisions between planes in the air, a special flight algorithm was developed - as a result, only two cars collided in the air. The total number of losses during the night bombing of Cologne amounted to 4.5% of the aircraft participating in the raid, while 13 thousand houses were destroyed in the city, another 6 thousand were seriously damaged. Still, Harris would be upset: the expected "firestorm" did not occur, less than 500 people died during the raid. The technology clearly needed improvement.

The best British scientists were involved in improving the bombing algorithm: mathematicians, physicists, chemists. British firefighters were giving advice on how to make it difficult for their German counterparts. English builders shared their observations on the technologies of building fire walls by German architects. As a result, a year later, the "firestorm" was implemented in another large German city - Hamburg.

The bombing of Hamburg, the so-called Operation Gomorrah, took place at the end of July 1943. The British military was especially pleased that all the previous days in Hamburg had been unusually hot and dry weather. During the raid, it was also decided to take advantage of a serious technological innovation - the British for the first time risked spraying millions of the thinnest strips of metal foil into the air, which completely disabled German radars designed to record the movement of enemy aircraft across the English Channel and send fighters to intercept them. The German air defense system was completely disabled. Thus, 760 British bombers, loaded to capacity with high-explosive and incendiary bombs, flew up to Hamburg, experiencing almost no opposition.

Although only 40% of the crews were able to drop their bombs exactly inside the intended circle with a radius of 2.5 kilometers around the church of St. Nicholas, the effect of the bombing was amazing. Incendiary bombs set fire to the coal that was in the basements of the houses, and after a few hours it became clear that it was impossible to put out the fires.

By the end of the first day, the execution was repeated: a second wave of bombers hit the city, and another 740 aircraft dropped 1,500 tons of explosives on Hamburg, and then flooded the city with white phosphorus ...

The second wave of bombing caused the desired "firestorm" in Hamburg - the speed of the wind sucked into the heart of the fire reached 270 kilometers per hour. Streams of hot air threw the charred corpses of people like dolls. "Firestorm" sucked oxygen out of bunkers and cellars - even untouched by either bombing or fire, underground rooms turned into mass graves. A column of smoke over Hamburg was visible to residents of surrounding cities for tens of kilometers. The wind of the fire carried the burnt pages of books from the libraries of Hamburg to the outskirts of Lübeck, located 50 kilometers from the bombing site.

The German poet Wolf Biermann, who survived the bombing of Hamburg at the age of six, later wrote: “On the night when sulfur poured from the sky, before my eyes people turned into living torches. The roof of the factory flew into the sky like a comet. The corpses burned and became small - to fit in mass graves.

“There was no question of putting out the fire,” wrote Hans Brunswig, one of the leaders of the Hamburg fire department. “We just had to wait and then pull out the corpses from the cellars.” For many weeks after the bombing, columns of trucks dragged along the rubble-littered streets of Hamburg, taking out charred corpses sprinkled with lime.

In total, at least 35,000 people died during Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg. 12,000 air mines, 25,000 high-explosive bombs, 3 million incendiary bombs, 80,000 phosphorus incendiary bombs, and 500 phosphorus canisters were dropped on the city. To create a "firestorm" for every square kilometer of the southeastern part of the city, 850 high-explosive bombs and almost 100,000 incendiary bombs were needed.

Murder by plan

Today, the very idea that someone technologically planned the murder of 35,000 civilians looks monstrous. But in 1943 the bombing of Hamburg did not evoke any notable condemnation in Britain. Thomas Mann, who lived in exile in London, a native of Lübeck, also burned by British aircraft, addressed the inhabitants of Germany by radio: “German listeners! Did Germany really think that she would never have to pay for the crimes she had committed since her plunge into barbarism?

In a conversation with Bertolt Brecht, who was also living in Britain at the time, Mann spoke even more harshly: "Yes, half a million German civilians must die." “I was talking to a stand-up collar,” Brecht wrote in his diary, horrified.

Only a few in Britain dared to raise their voice against the bombings. For example, the Anglican Bishop George Bell, in 1944, declared: “The pain that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on people cannot be healed by violence. Bombing is no longer an acceptable way to wage war." For the bulk of the British, any methods of war against Germany were acceptable, and the government understood this very well, preparing an even greater escalation of violence.

In the late 1980s, the German historian Gunther Gellermann managed to find a previously unknown document - Memorandum D 217/4 dated July 6, 1944, signed by Winston Churchill and sent to the Air Force leadership. From a four-page document written shortly after the first German V-2 rockets fell on London in the spring of 1944, it appeared that Churchill had given the Air Force unequivocal instructions to prepare for a chemical attack on Germany: “I want you to seriously consider the possibility use of war gases. It is foolish to condemn from the moral side the method that during the last war all its participants used without any protests from the moralists and the church. In addition, during the last war, the bombing of undefended cities was prohibited, but today it is a common thing. It's just a matter of fashion, which changes just like the length of a woman's dress changes. If the bombing of London becomes heavy, and if the rockets cause serious damage to government and industrial centers, we must be ready to do everything to inflict a painful blow on the enemy ... Of course, it may be weeks or even months before I ask you to drown Germany in poison gases. But when I ask you to, I want 100% efficiency."

Three weeks later, on July 26, two plans for a chemical bombardment of Germany were placed on Churchill's desk. According to the first, the 20 largest cities were to be bombarded with phosgene. The second plan provided for the treatment of 60 German cities with mustard gas. In addition, Churchill’s scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, an ethnic German born in Britain to a family of German immigrants, strongly advised that German cities should be treated with at least 50,000 anthrax bombs - just the amount of biological weapons ammunition that was in Britain's arsenals. . Only great luck saved the Germans from realizing these plans.

However, conventional ammunition also inflicted catastrophic damage on the civilian population of Germany. “A third of the British military budget was spent on the bombing war. The bomb war was carried out by the intellectual elite of the country: engineers, scientists. The technical course of the bomb war was provided by the efforts of more than a million people. The whole nation waged a bomb war. Harris only stood at the head of the bomber aviation, it was not his "personal war", which he allegedly waged behind the backs of Churchill and Britain, - continues Jorg Friedrich. - The scale of this gigantic enterprise was such that it could only be carried out by the efforts of the whole nation and only with the consent of the nation. If it had been otherwise, Harris would have simply been removed from command. There were also supporters of point bombing war in Britain. And Harris got his position precisely because the concept of carpet bombing won. Harris was the commander of the bomber force, and his boss, Air Force Commander was Sir Charles Portell, and Portell gave instructions back in 1943: 900,000 civilians must die in Germany, another million people must be seriously injured, 20 percent of the housing stock must be destroyed. says: "We have to kill 900,000 civilians! He will be immediately put on trial. Of course, this was Churchill's war, he took the decisions and is responsible for them.”

Raising the stakes

The logic of the bomb war, like the logic of any terror, required a constant increase in the number of victims. If until the beginning of 1943 the bombing of cities did not take away more than 100-600 people, then by the summer of 1943 the operations began to sharply radicalize.

In May 1943, four thousand people died during the bombing of Wuppertal. Just two months later, during the bombing of Hamburg, the number of victims crept up to 40 thousand. The chances for city dwellers to perish in the fiery nightmare increased at an alarming rate. If earlier people preferred to hide from the bombings in the basements, now, with the sounds of air raids, they increasingly ran to the bunkers built to protect the population, but in few cities the bunkers could accommodate more than 10% of the population. As a result, people fought in front of bomb shelters not for life, but for death, and those killed by the bombs were added to those crushed by the crowd.

The fear of being bombed reached its peak in April-May 1945, when the bombings reached their peak intensity. By this time, it was already obvious that Germany had lost the war and was on the verge of surrender, but it was during these weeks that the most bombs fell on German cities, and the number of civilian deaths in these two months amounted to an unprecedented figure - 130 thousand people.

The most famous episode of the bombing tragedy in the spring of 1945 was the destruction of Dresden. At the time of the bombing on February 13, 1945, there were about 100,000 refugees in the city with a population of 640 thousand people.

At 10:00 pm, the first wave of British bombers, consisting of 229 vehicles, dropped 900 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city, which set fire to almost the entire old city. Three and a half hours later, when the intensity of the fire reached its maximum, a second, twice as large wave of bombers hit the city, pouring another 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs into the burning Dresden. On the afternoon of February 14, the third wave of attack followed - already carried out by American pilots, who dropped about 400 tons of bombs on the city. The same attack was repeated on 15 February.

As a result of the bombing, the city was completely destroyed, the number of victims was at least 30 thousand people. The exact number of victims of the bombing has not yet been established (it is reliably known that individual charred corpses were removed from the basements of houses until 1947). Some sources, whose reliability, however, is being questioned, give figures of up to 130 and even up to 200 thousand people.

Contrary to popular belief, the destruction of Dresden not only was not an action carried out at the request of the Soviet command (at the conference in Yalta, the Soviet side asked to bomb railway junctions, not residential areas), it was not even agreed with the Soviet command, whose advanced units were in close proximity from the city.

“In the spring of 1945, it was clear that Europe would be the prey of the Russians - after all, the Russians fought and died for this right for four years in a row. And the Western allies understood that they could not oppose anything to this. The only argument of the allies was air power - the kings of the air opposed the Russians, the kings of the land war. Therefore, Churchill believed that the Russians needed to demonstrate this power, this ability to destroy any city, destroy it from a distance of a hundred or a thousand kilometers. It was a show of strength by Churchill, a show of Western air power. That's what we can do with any city. In fact, six months later, the same thing happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” says Joerg Friedrich.

Bomb Kulturkampf

Be that as it may, despite the scale of the tragedy of Dresden, his death was only one of the episodes of the large-scale destruction of the German cultural landscape in the last months of the war. It is impossible to understand the composure with which British aircraft destroyed in April 1945 the most important cultural centers of Germany: Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn - small cities of great importance for German history. These cities were cultural symbols of the nation, and until 1945 they were practically not bombed, since they were insignificant both from a military and economic point of view. Their hour came precisely in 1945. Bomb attacks methodically destroyed palaces and churches, museums and libraries.

“When I was working on the book, I thought: what am I going to write about in the final chapter? Jörg Friedrich recalls. – And I decided to write about the destruction of historical substance. About how historical buildings were destroyed. And at one point I thought: what happened to the libraries? Then I took up the professional journals of librarians. So, in the professional journal of librarians, in the 1947-1948 issue, it was calculated how much of the books stored in libraries were destroyed and how much was saved. I can say that it was the biggest book burning in the history of mankind. Tens of millions of volumes were committed to the fire. A cultural treasure that was created by generations of thinkers and poets.

The quintessence of the bombing tragedy of the last weeks of the war was the bombing of Würzburg. Until the spring of 1945, the inhabitants of this town, considered one of the most beautiful places in Germany, lived in the hope that the war would bypass them. During all the years of the war, practically not a single bomb fell on the city. Hopes increased even more after the American aircraft destroyed the railway junction near Würzburg on February 23, 1945, and the city completely lost even the slightest military significance. A fantastic legend has spread among the inhabitants of the town that young Churchill studied at the local university for some time, so life was granted to the city by the highest decree.

“Such hopes flickered among the population of many German cities that held out until the spring of 1945,” explains Joerg Friedrich. – For example, the inhabitants of Hanover believed that they were not bombed because the English queen comes from a family of Hanoverian kings. For some reason, the inhabitants of Wuppertal decided that their city is known throughout Europe for its zealous Christian faith, and therefore they will not be bombed by those who are at war with the godless Nazis. Of course, these hopes were naive.

The inhabitants of Würzburg were also mistaken in their hopes. On March 16, 1945, the British command considered that ideal weather conditions had created over the city for the emergence of a “firestorm”. At 1730 GMT, the 5th Bombardment Group, consisting of 270 British Mosquito bombers, took off from a base near London. It was the same bombing formation that had successfully destroyed Dresden a month before. Now the pilots had the ambitious goal of trying to surpass their recent success and perfect the technique of creating a "firestorm".

At 20.20, the formation reached Wurzburg and, according to the usual pattern, brought down 200 high-explosive bombs on the city, opening roofs of houses and breaking windows. Over the next 19 minutes, the Mosquitos dropped 370,000 incendiary bombs on Würzburg with a total weight of 967 tons. The fire that engulfed the city destroyed 97% of the buildings in the old city and 68% of the buildings on the outskirts. In a fire that reached a temperature of 2000 degrees, burned 5 thousand people. 90 thousand inhabitants of Würzburg were left homeless. The city, built over 1200 years, was wiped off the face of the earth in one night. The loss of British bombers amounted to two cars, or less than 1%. The population of Würzburg will not reach its pre-war level again until 1960.

With mother's milk

Similar bombings took place at the end of the war throughout Germany. British aviation actively used the last days of the war to train their crews, test new radar systems, and at the same time teach the Germans the last lesson of "moral bombing", brutally destroying everything that they cherished before their eyes. The psychological effect of such bombings exceeded all expectations.

“After the war, the Americans did a massive study of what exactly the consequences of their wonderful bomb war had for the Germans. They were very disappointed that they managed to kill so few people, Jörg Friedrich continues. “They thought they had killed two or three million people, and they were very upset when it turned out that 500-600 thousand died. It seemed to them that it was unthinkable - so few people died after such a long and intense bombardment. However, the Germans, as it turned out, were able to defend themselves in basements, in bunkers. But there is another interesting observation in this report. The Americans came to the conclusion that, although the bombing did not play a serious role in the military defeat of Germany, the character of the Germans - this was said back in 1945! - the psychology of the Germans, the way the Germans behave - has changed significantly. The report said - and it was a very clever observation - that the bombs did not really go off in the present. They destroyed not houses and people not living then. The bombs broke the psychological basis of the German people, broke their cultural backbone. Now fear sits in the heart of even those people who did not see the war. My generation was born in 1943-1945. It has not seen the bomb war - the baby does not see it. But the baby feels the mother's fear. The baby lies in the arms of his mother in the basement, and he knows only one thing: his mother is mortally afraid. These are the first memories in life - the mortal fear of the mother. Mother is God, and God is defenseless. If you think about it, the relative proportion of the dead, even in the most terrible bombings, was not so great. Germany lost 600,000 people in the bombings - less than one percent of the population. Even in Dresden, in the most effective fire tornado then achieved, 7 percent of the population died. In other words, even in Dresden, 93 percent of the inhabitants were saved. But the effect of psychological trauma - the city can be burned with one wave of the hand - turned out to be much stronger. What is the worst thing for a person today? I'm sitting at home, the war starts - and suddenly the city is on fire, the air around me burns my lungs, there is gas around, and the heat, the surrounding world changes its state and destroys me.

Eighty million incendiary bombs dropped on German cities radically changed the appearance of Germany. Today, any major German city is hopelessly inferior to a French or British one in terms of the number of historical buildings. But the psychological trauma was deeper. It is only in recent years that the Germans have begun to reflect on what the bombing war actually did to them - and it seems that the realization of the consequences may drag on for many years.

Hamburg, Lübeck, Dresden and many other settlements that fell into the firestorm zone survived the terrible bombardment. Vast areas of Germany were devastated. Over 600,000 civilians were killed, twice as many were injured or maimed, and 13 million were left homeless. Priceless works of art, ancient monuments, libraries and scientific centers were destroyed. The question, what are the goals and true results of the bombing war of 1941-1945, is being investigated by Inspector General of the German Fire Service Hans Rumpf. The author analyzes the results of strategic bombing of German territory and evaluates their effectiveness from a military point of view.

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Fire storm. Strategic bombing of Germany. 1941-1945 (Hans Rumpf) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

STRATEGY OF AIR WAR

It is now considered indisputable that the German concept of air warfare was wrong, even fatal for the country, while the British doctrine proved its correctness and effectiveness. In Germany, this opinion is fueled by a general disappointment in the results of the aviation opposition of the parties. This disappointment was experienced by both the military and the civilian population. This was greatly facilitated by the publication of the pessimistic works of wartime pilots X. Rickhoff (Trumpf oder Bluff (“Trump or Bluff”?) and W. Baumbach (Zu Spat (“Latecomers!”), Written in 1945 and 1949, respectively. Similar thoughts repeatedly But anyone who has studied the more thoughtful publications of recent years, which dealt with the problem of the combat use of aviation, must ask himself whether it is possible to speak so categorically and unambiguously about a subject that requires careful comprehensive study.

The main theme of the attacks of the disappointed Germans is that the leaders of the country were too carried away by tactical aviation and issues of its interaction with army units on the battlefield, which could not but negatively affect the plans for the deployment of a strategic aviation war and did not allow working out an appropriate strategy for air counteraction to the enemy. In 1935, the first Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe made a recommendation for the development of a four-engine long-range bomber as part of the general German rearmament plan. This, of course, would open up the prospects for the creation of strategic aviation to the Germans. Then they might have been able to catch up with the British in this matter. But it is believed that his narrow-minded followers failed to understand or simply ignored the very essence of the strategy of modern air warfare: achieving air superiority in order to organize a decisive strategic air offensive behind enemy lines. Thus, as the official story goes, Germany was left without a fleet of heavy bombers, and as a result (although this is not usually stated directly) she lost the war in the sky and, as a result, the war itself.

Against such a simplified concept, it can be objected that from the very beginning and as events developed further, the strategy for the use of military aviation was determined by the geographical location of the country's two main opponents.

From this point of view, it is important to understand whether the enemy is on the same continent or is separated from the country by an ocean, whether the enemy is mainly a land or sea power. Island states depend on maritime power; continental countries need a strong army to provide defense. Aviation, which has become a new type of armed forces, is most closely associated with the navy, and war in the sky is somewhat like war at sea.

British developments

As for the UK, air operations were closely linked to operations at sea, and the Air Force interacted with the Navy in matters of ensuring the security of sea lanes. Therefore, the crews of British aircraft resembled sailors in character, and in the reports on the progress of the operation, the expression "captains and crews" was typical. One can just as easily compare air marshals with admirals. At the same time, representatives of the senior command staff of the Luftwaffe had the rank of field marshal. Many of them did have the rank of field marshal before being transferred to the Air Force.

According to British tradition, strategic aviation is a separate branch of the armed forces. It is relatively small, but has a highly developed technical support structure. It was believed that such an organization reduces the number of losses and contributes to a more successful implementation of the combat mission. An old English song sings of the great heroes of the nation who died in the Battle of Trafalgar. The same is true of folk tales. The 185 men who laid down their lives in that decisive battle at sea did more for their country than the 800,000 British soldiers who died in battles of attrition on the fields of France and Flanders during the First World War. The typical British view of warfare is that it should be won with as little loss and liability as possible.

But in those days when the war was just beginning, no one could have imagined that the losses of the Royal Air Force in World War II would amount to 79,281 people killed. At the same time, only the command of the bomber aviation lost 44 thousand killed, 22 thousand wounded and 11 thousand missing. In other words, the losses of the Air Force exceeded the losses of the army in the operations of invasion and liberation of Europe. The horrendous loss figures gave rise to a lot of reproaches against the command that the bomb war was “the most illiterate, cruel and most bloody of all forms of warfare” (Captain Cyril Falls), “the world has not known such uncivilized methods of warfare since the time of the Mongol devastation "(B.G. Liddell Hart).

Despite the fact that England was clearly inclined towards the option of waging a strategic bombing war, they never forgot about air defense issues either. At the initial stage of the war, air defense forces were actually given priority. At that time, fighter aviation was given such importance in ensuring the defense of the islands that it was not inferior to the forces of the Luftwaffe Fighter Command, and, according to the latest data, even surpassed them. In any case, fighter aircraft were carefully prepared to repel an enemy attack, if any. At the same time, the bomber command then complained that it "had no meat to cover its bones."

From 1935 full support was given to the four-engine bomber program, an aircraft that was to stop the heart of German industry. Seven years passed before the British authorities were satisfied that they got what they were striving for: in 1942, the first Halifax and Lancaster bombers entered service. Despite its relatively small size, the Lancaster could carry 9 tons of bomb load without compromising its flight performance. In this "no other bomber could compare with it." Until then, Britain had not had a bomber at its disposal that could cause serious damage to Germany.

The head of the British Air Force Bomber Command requested 4,000 heavy bombers of this type for the needs of bomber aviation, as well as a thousand Mosquito light high-speed bombers in order to be able to operate over German territory around the clock. Later, when the war came to a head, he asked for more: "30,000 bombers and tomorrow the war will be over."

But even a more modest request could only be met at the expense of other branches of the armed forces. In fact, the first air attack on the cities of Germany began in the spring of 1942, when only 69 heavy bombers were under the command of the bomber command.

At the peak of the massive air attack on Germany in the autumn of 1943, the British had 1,120 heavy and 100 fast light bombers to do so. But by that time, the Royal Air Force was supported by about a thousand more Flying Fortresses from the US Air Force.

Air power of Germany as a land power

So, as can be seen from the above, Great Britain has constantly worked towards the development of its Air Force, which became an independent branch of the armed forces from 1918, trying to make aviation an "air force" in the full sense of the word. At the same time, the prevailing trend in Germany was to create "ground aviation", designed to work closely with ground forces on the battlefield. The views of the Russians and the French on the development of aviation were closer to the German concept. Everything indicates that Hitler and his generals thought primarily in terms of land warfare. In peacetime, the Air Force was called upon to serve as an instrument of foreign policy pressure. During the war, their main task was to provide direct support for the conduct of a "blitzkrieg" war on the ground.

This was the basic idea for which the Luftwaffe command is now usually accused of adopting the "wrong" concept of warfare in the air. Allegedly, this concept forced to pay undeservedly increased attention to the creation of a dive bomber (Ju-87). In addition, there were twin-engine medium-range bombers capable of diving. At the same time, the role of the long-range heavy bomber was seriously underestimated.

But German military doctrine was not based on defense. And Hitler held completely opposite views. Thus, from the very beginning, offensive tasks were set before the Luftwaffe. The bomber was considered "an aircraft for conquering the battlefield", although not a single air offensive of an operational scale was ever carried out. It will forever remain a mystery. Hitler and Goering were not interested in fighters, they needed bombers. And yet they never set themselves the task of creating an effective long-range bomber. They had to choose among the following options:

a) heavy, armored, low-speed four-engine bomber with a crew of 7 to 10 people, having a high fuel consumption;

b) a faster twin-engine medium lightly armored bomber with a crew of 3 to 5 people and a bomb load of 500 to a thousand kilograms (Junkers-88 took on board up to 3 thousand kg of bombs, Heinkel-111 up to 2 thousand kg, "Dornier-17" up to a thousand kg. - Ed.);

c) a one- or two-seat high-speed bomber, the speed of which, if possible, should have exceeded the speed of a fighter.

There were different opinions as to whether a dive bomber or a bomber that bombed from level flight would have better flight characteristics and, therefore, higher efficiency in air warfare. There were also discussions about range, speed, ceiling, takeoff and landing speeds. Even now it is not known exactly why the long-range bomber was never built in the end. The reasons for this are still a topic of heated debate.

The conditions in which England and Germany found themselves before the start of the feverish arms race were not the same. As for Germany, one should not forget about the monstrous race that the country had to undertake after 15 years, when its armed forces were practically disarmed. In addition, the re-equipment of the Air Force had to be carried out in an even greater hurry compared to the army and navy. In addition, it was at that time that the period came when technology around the world developed by leaps and bounds. When a combat aircraft prototype, after several years of work on it, was finally ready for production, it often became obsolete. In an environment of rapid technological leap, the recommendations of even the most perceptive and experienced experts could easily be wrong.

Those problems which in Germany still had to be carefully and attentively examined, had long since been solved in England. Prototypes of strategic bombers were already undergoing flight tests and were to go into production in the very near future. The situation in the USA was just as favorable. Both countries, in the strictest secrecy, successfully developed long-range strategic bombers.

In Germany, a long, unfavorable period of forced disarmament, during which she was generally forbidden to build military aircraft, canceled out the obvious benefits of starting everything from scratch. Perhaps the situation would have been different if the Luftwaffe had been built up gradually, without constant pressure. But Goering and his staff were too impatient to wait for competent answers to fundamental technical questions. This impatience, as well as the nervousness and unease caused by the uncertain situation, reflected a state of internal uncertainty, the fear that too much time had been lost and now England might take them by surprise.

Hitler was an amateur in matters of aviation and was constantly dependent on the opinion of his experts, such as Goering, Udet, Eschonnek, who, at a young age during the First World War, proved to be outstanding fighter pilots. But, having become politicians and statesmen, they had neither the time nor the opportunity to acquire fundamental knowledge in the field of aviation strategy. In the Ministry of the Air Force, which was headed by Goering, there were seven heads of departments, four of whom were from the army and had no experience in aviation at all. Therefore, it is obvious that such people were simply not able to compete with the more experienced specialists of the British Air Ministry in determining the strategy for the construction and use of the Air Force.

It seems likely that Hitler was actually afraid of the prospect of being drawn into an all-out air war, having some idea of ​​how such a confrontation might end. This explains the readiness with which he seized on the new idea of ​​establishing protected areas put forward in 1936, as well as his many attempts to put an end to massive bombing. Such steps were, of course, carefully considered and never entirely sincere. Hitler's last active attempts to stop air terror were made in 1940, when his army occupied advantageous positions, occupying ports along the English Channel. He tried to find his own method of warfare, which could be countered by the strategic air offensive of the British. When he failed, the policy of the two countries in the construction and use of combat aviation began to differ so much that finally a situation developed when Germany had no strategic aviation, and England had practically no tactical aviation. And during the war, both sides, due to technical difficulties, simply could not restore the situation. For Germany, this was mainly due to two reasons: firstly, the disastrous campaign in Russia greedily absorbed everything created by the military industry. And secondly, what happened later, the needs of the defense of their own territory made the production of fighters more and more vital. There are critics who are inclined to regard the underestimation of the need for a tactical air force in England as a profound mistake as the failure of Germany to build its own strategic bomber force capable of attacking industrial facilities and undermining enemy morale in a war to destroy the economy and production. In addition, these aircraft, if necessary, could inflict retaliatory air strikes on the enemy.

From the very beginning, Hitler viewed the Luftwaffe as a weapon of foreign policy pressure and even blackmail. An example is Prague, where this worked effectively for the first time. On the other hand, the propaganda had so inflated the alleged power of the Luftwaffe that the actual use of the Air Force was inevitably associated with a feeling of great disappointment. This is what happened with Goering's famous promise to create such a barrier to enemy aircraft in the West that not a single Allied aircraft could overcome it. Both at home and abroad, German propaganda tirelessly repeated that the Luftwaffe was so much stronger than the aviation of any other country that they were simply invincible. And, as is often the case with propaganda, she allowed herself to play a great game with numbers. This was also a factor that acted against the creation of strategic aviation, since all efforts were aimed at hitting opponents with unprecedented figures regarding the volume of aircraft production in the country.

At that time, Udet had the greatest influence on the technical policy of Germany in the field of aviation. His views were very categorical: "We do not need expensive heavy bombers, since their creation requires too much raw material, compared with the production of a twin-engine dive bomber."

Perhaps here lies the key to the failures of the Luftwaffe? Maybe Germany could not afford to maintain a powerful strategic bomber aircraft due to the lack of raw materials, production capacity and sufficient fuel reserves? The country had to save. Of course, not in money - huge sums of money were spent on the creation and development of the Luftwaffe. We had to conserve raw materials, such as aluminum, as well as high-octane gasoline. Here neither Germany nor England possessed unlimited resources.

Finally, the lightly armored Ju-88 ("Junkers-88") was created in Germany. For its time, it was a high-speed car (480 km / h), but nevertheless it could not compete in speed with the Royal Air Force fighters (520 km / h Hurricane, 600 km / h Spitfire). But this program had advantages in purely quantitative terms: instead of one long-range bomber, three short-range bombers could be built.

For the entire duration of the war, approximately 100 thousand aircraft were produced in Germany against 400 aircraft produced in England. However, one should not forget that Germany produced 41,700 tanks, while England produced 26,000. Hitler and Goering pretended to be ignorant of the vast manufacturing power of the United States, as if they did not consider them an important factor in the outbreak of conflict. But it is unlikely that they themselves seriously believed in this, since both remembered the times of the First World War, when everyone had the opportunity to see what role the US economy had on the course and results of the war. During World War II, Detroit alone produced 27,000 heavy bombers and 5 million high-explosive aircraft bombs.

Lessons from the Battle of England

As is now known, the leaders of Germany, responsible for the country's policy in the field of building the Air Force, did not abandon the creation of heavy long-range bombers capable of carrying a large bomb load. It's just that this task has been postponed to the future. As a consequence of this decision, all efforts were concentrated on the release of dive bombers, as well as medium-range bombers, intended for close support of ground forces. As a result, Germany hoped to create the most powerful tactical aircraft in the world for its time. The Germans hoped to partially compensate for their lack of strategic bomber aviation by the fact that, having occupied vast areas on enemy territory, they would deprive him of the opportunity to wage a serious air war against the Reich. In accordance with this basic postulate, the Luftwaffe was created solely as a means of supporting army units and formations on the battlefield. The German Air Force was consolidated into so-called air fleets, each of which had squadrons of medium bombers designed to solve limited operational tasks. But they did not have the capability of bombing long distances and over large areas for an extended period. As the data of the strategic analysis of the results of the bombing war in Europe conducted by the Americans showed, at the first stage of the war this form of air countermeasures was absolutely successful for the Germans. The first time the Luftwaffe was defeated was during the Air Battle of England. But even then it did not hurt the German leadership too much. Everyone was sure that after Russia was defeated, Germany would have plenty of time to deal with England once and for all.

In an address to the Imperial Defense Committee on November 8, 1943, Goering, as if defending himself, pathetically exclaimed: "At the beginning of the war, Germany was the only country that had an effective air force, which is an independent branch of the armed forces and armed with first-class aircraft." You can already comment on this statement, but what the Reichsmarschall said next clearly demonstrates the confusion that reigned in his brains regarding the strategy of air war: “At that time, all other states crushed the power of their aviation, distributing it between the ground forces and the fleet. Aircraft were considered as auxiliary weapons. Therefore, they did not have a means of delivering massive strikes. But in Germany we had it from the very beginning. The bulk of our Air Force had a structure that made it possible to strike in the depths of enemy territory and achieve strategic results. Although, of course, a small number of our dive bombers and, of course, our fighters also operated over the battlefield.

With certain limitations, these words can be considered more or less true in order to characterize the first months of the war, when the few and obsolete aircraft of Poland, as well as the French air force, were taken by surprise and were mostly destroyed on their own airfields. But Goering ignores the exact opposite fact that took place during the Battle of England. They were not inferior to the Luftwaffe (the British fighter aircraft, of course, were inferior to the German ones both in quantity and quality, especially in the initial period of the Battle of England. But there were many factors on the side of the British. Here are the short duration of the action of German fighters, and anti-aircraft artillery, and radars ( i.e. early detection), and wrong tactics. Ed.) The Royal Air Force dispelled this myth. Then it became very quickly clear that neither as a branch of the armed forces, nor as a conceptual means of the Luftwaffe were not suitable for waging the unfolding strategic aviation war. The war in the air, which the leaders of Germany expected to fight in the autumn of 1940, had nothing to do with real events. Everything went completely wrong. There was no clear vision of the situation. There was no practical experience in waging such a war; technical issues were especially poorly worked out. The "effective air force" that Goering spoke of acted in an obviously disorderly and even confused manner in the rapidly changing situation at different phases of the air war. Sometimes they were used hesitantly and at random, even when conducting operations of a not very large scale. And sometimes, on the contrary, German pilots recklessly rushed into battle during large-scale operations in a rapidly changing environment. This did not take into account, for example, the fact that actions against certain targets require a different approach in the daytime and at night. After five months of fierce fighting, in which the Luftwaffe suffered heavy losses, the political leadership of the country decided to attack Russia. During the preparations for a new war, the German Air Force was forced to first weaken the onslaught on England, and then completely curtail the air offensive.

For a while, public opinion in Germany managed to be misled. People didn't know the truth about what was going on. The populace had no idea of ​​the extreme strain that all crews and ground services had to endure from the start of the Battle of England. Reality showed that the tasks set during the strikes on British territory, namely the conquest of air supremacy and the achievement of decisive strategic results after bombing industrial and administrative centers, turned out to be impossible. For this, the country simply did not have the necessary technical means. Not only for this reason, but the Luftwaffe never again had the opportunity to benefit from the experience, which had to be so heavily paid for, since they were no longer able to conduct large-scale operations. Unlike the Germans, the British Royal Air Force later used this experience to the fullest.

The truth is that even if all the leaders of the Luftwaffe were geniuses in their field, the equipment that was then in service with the German Air Force could not achieve decisive goals and seriously affect the course of the war. Today it is known that even 20-30 times more significant aviation forces, that is, those that the Allies concentrated to carry out bombing attacks on German territory, were not enough to seriously affect the work of the country's military industry enterprises. Some tangible results were achieved only towards the end of the war, when the Allied aviation had absolute air superiority and was able to unhinderedly deliver accurate bombing strikes on selected objects of key industries: ball bearing factories, aircraft factories, factories for the production of synthetic fuel. In parallel, highways and railways were bombed. Therefore, it is not surprising that even the most desperate efforts of the Luftwaffe at the beginning of World War II were not enough, and the results achieved were very different from what was envisaged by ambitious plans. The fact remains that, given a really difficult task, the Luftwaffe, who at that time was less than five years old, did not have enough experience and did not even know how to competently start solving it.

German public opinion is still inclined to see the country's lack of strategic aviation as the cause of the catastrophic situation that had developed in the country by the end of the war. But, as the data of the research group of the US Air Force Strategic Command show, despite the fact that Hitler, of course, planned to create a highly effective air force in the country, he did not attach much importance to the problem of destroying the enemy’s military economy by bombing. The reason for this lies in the fact that Germany planned to conquer enemy territories so quickly that there was no need to separately plan the destruction of enemy military enterprises.

Air Marshal Harris writes in his book Bomber Offencive (P. 86): “They [the Germans] actually did not have strategic bombers at all, since all their bomber aircraft, which included more than a thousand vehicles, had to provide problem solving by the army. It was used for bombing cities only when it was not required to provide support to the German army units. Even in the daytime, it was suitable for solving only tactical, but not strategic tasks.

The physicist and Nobel Prize winner Professor Blackett writes in his book The Military and Political Consequences of the Development of Atomic Energy: “It is clear that the German Air Force was built in such a way that it was designed to perform primarily tactical tasks, mainly for interaction with units of the ground forces ... They acted in this way, and, with the exception of the destruction of parts of Warsaw, Rotterdam and Belgrade as a result of air raids in front of the advanced units of their troops, the German offensive in Europe was carried out without massive attacks on enemy cities.

Speight attributes this tactic to a lack of understanding. Indeed, he is inclined to believe that the Germans lack intelligence. “The Germans never understood anything about the sky,” he claims smugly. In this, Lord Tedder agrees with him: “They [the Germans] could not understand what air power means, even more than they understood nothing about what sea power means” (Air power in war. P. 45) . Most, but, as we shall see later, not all representatives of the victorious countries share these views. And even in Germany itself, there are now those who retroactively reproach the Luftwaffe command, since allegedly "none of them possessed a strategic talent on the scale of Moltke." This refers to the great German "railroad strategist", a man for whom "technological progress was only a favorable means to wage swift victorious wars." (Meaning Moltke Sr. (1800 - 1891). - Ed.)

It is easy to understand that this comparison has a very dubious value. By the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the railway network in both countries was already quite highly developed. Therefore, one can easily call that conflict "the world's first railroad war." But the bombing of the enemy for the first time began to be used only in the Second World War. And even in World War II, there was only one operational line of strategic communications and supply by air (from West Africa to Egypt).

Such reckless criticism once again demonstrates how much easier it is sometimes to create a preconceived opinion than to determine the real state of the problem. When they begin to investigate the issue for real, they come to much more objective conclusions. Thus, for example, Professor Blackett, analyzing what might happen if Germany devoted most of its military industry to the construction of strategic bomber aircraft, writes: “It is clear that by the time of the surrender of France, such a turn in German policy would have been detrimental to her major military forces. campaigns. On the one hand, such a turn would have to be carried out through perfectly organized interaction between the ground forces and aviation. On the other hand, this did not promise any obvious benefits in the near future, since the campaigns in Poland, France and the Netherlands were won too quickly for the Germans to have time to feel the need to have their own strategic aviation ... If at that time Hitler had more long-range bombers and fewer fighters, then in 1940 he would have been even less prepared for the capture of England” (pp. 27-28).

Of course, given the terrible destruction in the heart of Europe, many Germans regret that Germany did not have an effective retaliatory force at its disposal, which, perhaps, would make the "bombers" consider whether to continue air raids. But, one way or another, in Germany many times they began to work on the creation of a modern heavy bomber, but, for one reason or another, these attempts constantly ended in failure. Several German-produced four-engine aircraft were quickly lost in the epic, grueling battles in the East, or shot down on long-range reconnaissance flights over the Atlantic. The light bomber "Lightning", which for many years was Hitler's cherished dream, was created too late for it to be used in large numbers. And one of the main reasons for this lies in the fact that previous failures made Hitler suspicious and incredulous. They forced him to try himself as a designer. The He-177 heavy bomber was developed between 1942 and 1944. This aircraft had an unusual design, it was equipped with four twin engines. However, its creators never managed to overcome the so-called "growth problems", and in the end the project was abandoned. If you believe that before the project was finally buried, 1146 aircraft were produced, then this was another disaster for the country, which few people know about.

But much more important than the lack of effective strategic bomber aviation in Germany was the lack of training there for a competent organization of strategic air defense, although in this case the lack of raw materials cannot figure as an intelligible reason for this. When a significant number of fighter planes were produced in Germany by the summer of 1944, they found themselves chained to the ground, as they were practically left without trained flight personnel.

At the same time, the leaders of the Luftwaffe really rarely had a clear idea of ​​the tasks before them. Organization, equipment and operational planning were often not carried out in the best way. Until, finally, one day everything collapsed at once. The German military industry has never been powerful enough to fully satisfy all the needs of the Luftwaffe, so the conclusions set out in the books of X. Rickhoff and W. Baumbach "Trump or Bluff?" and "Latecomers!" only give a distorted picture of reality. Perhaps the most accurate situation could be described in the book "Too weak!". And the people who unleashed the war in 1939 are guilty of all this.

strategic bombing

Of all aspects of the use of air power, strategic bombing seems to have been the subject of the most heated debate. The beginning of these discussions dates back to 1920, when the Italian aviation specialist Douai suggested that victory in the war could only be won by long-range bombardment from the air; the ground forces and the navy are "only auxiliary means used for transport purposes and the occupation of territory." This view existed before, after the war, some senior American officers suggested that strategic atomic bombing, carried out on a large scale, could go a long way towards winning the war. The point of departure for this point of view was Clausewitz's position that war is a continuation of politics. This view suggests that the devastating bombardment of Germany and Japan created fertile ground for the growth of communist sentiment in those countries and made them more hostile to the Anglo-Saxon democracies that destroyed their cities. Let's try to look into the future. Let us assume that the European continent or any part of Europe was captured by the Red Army. Will they ever be able to reunite politically with the West if their release is linked to the atomic bombing? There are many other contentious issues regarding strategic bombing. Should strategic bomber aviation be independent of the army and navy, and even of the rest of the air force? Should it report directly to the Department of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or should it be an integral part of the air force, regardless of its form of organization? What is the best way to plan the sequence of bombardment of targets? When is it better to carry out daytime bombardment and when - at night? Etc.

Aviation strategists up until 1950 were widely divided on the significance of strategic bombing. The advent of the atomic and hydrogen bombs and modern strategic bombers with a range of up to 8,000 km, extended by air refueling, made the governments and commanders of every country clearly understand that strategic bombing could be the main means of achieving victory in a war or stabilizing an international politicians. At present, bombers from their bases can reach and attack targets anywhere in the world, delivering bombing strikes of unprecedented force.

The devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo and Berlin was horrendous, but it is nothing compared to what can be produced by concentrated repeated bombardments of ever-increasingly powerful atomic bombs. This is now so real that governments and air defense commands cannot ignore it. Now the claim that strategic bombing can be the main way to win a war or keep the peace is not an empty idea. Alexander Seversky in the second chapter of his book "Air Power - the Key to Salvation" noted this provision. There are two states, Russia and the US, that must keep the peace, and in the volatile atmosphere of the Cold War, the "Soviet's" fear of the bombing power of the United States is the main deterrent to war. Russia does not need to be afraid of the American navy, since it is not afraid of a naval blockade and does not depend on sea communications. The territories owned and controlled by Russia are vast expanses.

Russia also has nothing to fear from the ground armies of America and its allies, since the number of communist divisions will always greatly outnumber those of its opponents. These divisions will receive good weapons and will fight well. The air power of the Americans, and especially its strategic air forces, which can easily be used for offensive operations against the USSR without being constrained by any restrictive conditions, inspires the greatest fear. One should not judge by such facts as the events in Korea and Malaya, where wars can be waged on unfavorable terms dictated or supported by the Kremlin. The technical and scientific achievements of the West can be most advantageously demonstrated by the example of strategic aviation. In addition, Russia has relatively little experience in the use of strategic aviation. Winston Churchill often emphasized in his speeches that the American atomic bombers helped bring about stabilization during the volatile Cold War period of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Few on this side of the Iron Curtain would disagree with him. There is every reason to believe that the Soviets' fears for their strategic air defense confirm Churchill's assessment of the situation in the five years since the end of the Second World War.

In the period between the two world wars, the role of strategic bombing was repeatedly evaluated and re-evaluated in the aviation headquarters of various countries. Probably the most significant, fundamental change occurred in the Soviet air force in the thirties. Although the Russians initially viewed aviation as a means to serve the tactical requirements of the army and navy, the USSR was the first state in history to begin building a large air fleet of four-engine bombers. These were TB-3 bombers designed by Tupolev. By 1935, there were already several hundred of them in the Soviet air force. However, the need to build transport aircraft to transport airborne troops, the failure to prototype four-, six- and eight-engined bomber transport aircraft in the thirties, the need for a rapid expansion of fighter aircraft to counter the potential threat from Japan and Germany - all this delayed construction of the Soviet strategic bomber aviation. The origins of the Russian heavy bomber date back to World War I, when Russia temporarily pioneered the use of the four-engine heavy bomber, which even then had almost the same wingspan as the Flying Fortress bomber of World War II.

In 1942 there was a new change in the Soviet air force. Stalin was concerned about the heavy losses of tactical aviation in the first months of the war with Germany. He wanted, like the British, to strike back directly at Germany at a time when the Red Army was retreating and did not set as its immediate task the return of the vast territories captured by the Germans in the Baltic republics, Eastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. That is why Stalin instructed General (later Marshal) Golovanov to reorganize heavy bomber aviation and unite it into an independent organizational unit subordinate to the State Defense Committee. This new organization, called ADD (long-range aviation), was militarily weak. Most of the aircraft were twin-engine American B-25 Mitchell aircraft supplied under Lend-Lease, and Soviet IL-4 aircraft. Later, several squadrons of Soviet-made four-engine PE-8 aircraft appeared. These aircraft, however, had insufficient range and payload, and lacked radar for navigation and blind bombing. The operations of these aircraft against the oil fields in Rumania, as well as the several raids they carried out on Berlin, Budapest and Warsaw, caused very little concern to the German air defense. In the German air force, however, a night fighter aircraft was created to deal with Soviet bombers, but it never had much significance.

However, since 1945, the Soviet air force has done everything possible to create a strong strategic bomber aviation. In the West, many were struck by the speed with which aircraft were built, which are an exact copy of the American B-29 Superfortres bombers that made an emergency landing on the territory of the USSR in the period 1946-1947. By 1950, the Soviet Air Force had several hundred Tupolev-designed four-engine bombers. Engine power, bomb load and range have been significantly increased. Ilyushin, the leading designer of tactical bombers, was switched to designing a heavy jet bomber. The Ilyushin-16 four-engine jet bomber was not accepted into service, but Ilyushin was involved in the design of another heavy four-engine jet bomber currently in service with the Soviet air force. In 1949, the first atomic bomb was detonated in the USSR. At present stockpiles of atomic bombs are being created there, hydrogen bombs are being produced.

In a published report on air power in the Pacific, Major Alexander Seversky, one of the leading proponents of strategic bombing, stated that the United States, like Japan, did not plan to use air power at the start of the war except in the interest of providing close air support. This statement fully applies to the Japanese, who intended to subordinate their air force to the tactical requirements of the army and navy. The Americans were different. Mitchell was not the only person to point out the need for a heavy bomber force independent of the US Army. He was simply the most popular of the "prophets". Generals Arnold and Spaatz believed in the future of strategic bomber aircraft, but they were in the US Army Air Forces and were baffled by the ever-increasing demands and primacy of the ground forces. It is significant that the budget of the US Army in 1940 provided for appropriations insufficient even to create one squadron of Flying Fortress bombers. In Bomber Offensives (p. 53), Lord Harris pointed out that the United States had taken over "the basic idea of ​​the strategic use of air power from the British Air Force." Many US Air Force officers, as well as British Air Force officers, will disagree with Seversky's assertion that the tactical use of air power was "the only goal that the military leaders of all the belligerents at first envisioned."

Britain's priority in developing a general concept of strategic bombing is generally recognized. Before the end of the First World War, General Smuts presented a serious report to the military cabinet, in which he suggested that military aviation would soon be used for strategic purposes. The reason for this assumption was the daytime raids of German aircraft on London in June - July 1917. These raids caused great concern, since the air defense was unprepared to deal with them. In his report, Smuts made an unusual statement for that time, which has become common truth in our time. He wrote: “The day is not far off when air actions, entailing the devastation of enemy territory and the destruction of industrial and administrative centers on a large scale, can become the main ones, and the actions of the army and navy - auxiliary and subordinate.” He also stated in his report that he "sees no limits for the independent use of military aviation."

Perhaps it is appropriate here to try to explain the concept of an independent air force. There are many known cases of poor planning for long-range bombardment due to the fact that the concept of independent bomber aircraft was the subject of disputes between the branches of the armed forces. The organization of the air force, which exists only on paper, does not matter for the effectiveness of air operations and is only a secondary factor. Göring's air force during the Second World War was independent only on paper, but in reality it was not used independently in the sense that General Smuts had in mind in 1917. This was mainly because the command of the German air force, in view of the existing economic policy in the pre-war period, did not develop its four-engine long-range bombers of the Junkers-90 and Focke-Wulf-200 types, but adhered to the trend towards the development of twin-engine Heinkel bombers, " Dornier and Junkers. When in 1942 the command of the German air force wanted to change this situation, the harsh combat situation, the unbridled and ignorant commander Hitler, as well as the inability of industry to produce a sufficient number of heavy bombers - all this effectively prevented the creation of an effective strategic aviation force. At the same time, the example of the United States Army Air Force showed that the organization scheme is not a barrier to independent action. The American Flying Fortress and Superfortress bomber squadrons were theoretically an integral part of General Marshall's armed forces and, despite this, they operated almost as effectively as if they were an independent bomber command, like that of the British air force. The personal fighting qualities of US Air Force Generals Arnold, Spaatz, Kenya, Andersen, and Doolittle played a greater role than the Pentagon's decision.

When in 1942 the heavy bomber aviation of the Soviet Union was singled out as an independent branch of the armed forces, it did not become a more effective means of this. In the past, too much attention has been paid to the organizational structure of the air force and too little to the necessary flexibility in its use. Talk about independent bomber aircraft is, in a sense, completely absurd and even dangerous. Even more dangerous is the tasking of bomber aviation with tasks that do not meet the requirements of the land army and navy. The purpose of long-range bombardment is to help achieve victory in the war. The best way for the air force to win the war is to gain air superiority, then use heavy bomber aircraft to cripple the enemy's industrial capability, destroy lines of communication, undermine the morale of the people, and assist in the transportation of troops destined to occupy enemy territory. At the same time, it is assumed that the enemy air defense can be suppressed and deprived of the ability to resist for a long time.

However, most aviation experts believed that in the summer of 1943 the American strategic bombing program against Nazi Germany was in jeopardy. This was because the U.S. Eighth Air Force did not have long-range escort fighters, and the German air force had reinforced day fighter aircraft to such an extent that they could inflict almost irreparable losses on the American bomber squadrons participating in the raids. At that time, Regensburg and Schweinfurt were too costly bombing targets for the Americans. The bombing of Japan and the subsequent bombing of Germany in 1944 and 1945 was a relatively easy task, since the enemy's air defenses were weakened. When B-29 bombers set about bombing Japan in 1944, the latter had hundreds of heavily armed anti-aircraft fighters that were faster than the American Super Fortresses. Due to the insufficient interaction between parts of the fighter aviation of the army and the navy, as well as the imperfection of the radar stations, the Japanese were not able to effectively use fighters with a speed of 640 km / h (such as the Frank). It is believed that if Japan had had a fighter force equal in strength to the RAF Fighter Command in 1940, it is not known whether American heavy bombers could have set a classic example of achieving victory through air power. Despite the presence of atomic bombs, in any war of the near future, effective means of defense will be found that can neutralize the effect of weapons of attack. Under conditions of warfare by means of strategic aviation, the advantage can sometimes be on the side of the defenders, since they have an early detection system that provides data on the number of enemy aircraft participating in the raid, the height and direction of their flight; because supersonic fighters are faster than supersonic bombers and, finally, because radio-controlled rockets, launched from the ground or from the air, can be more effective at short range, that is, in strategic defense than in a strategic offensive, as already called Lord Trenchard. In raids on the Soviet Union, American strategic bombers will not enjoy the same freedom of action that they enjoyed in the raids on Japan in 1945. Russia faces difficult defense problems. However, it remains doubtful: who (defense or attack forces) will win complete air superiority over the entire territory of the Soviet Union? American bombers can succeed under heavy fighter cover, against ports and secondary targets, but over inland heavily protected target areas such as Irkutsk and Moscow, they will encounter strong opposition both on their way to the target area and on the return route.

It is hard to believe that some proponents of strategic bombing have a complete understanding of the strategic defensive potential. Seversky, for example, states that “the whole strategy of the Second World War was determined by the insufficient range of the air force. Aircraft possessed destructive power sufficient to upset the military production of the enemy country, but the range of aircraft was insufficient for such strikes.

Bloody battles during the war were fought in the final analysis for the advancement of airfields of bomber aviation” (Seversky's italics). Of course, the main problem was the shortage of aircraft, not their range, as Air Chief Marshal Harris complains about in his book Bomber Offensives. He asked for 4,000 heavy bombers to carry out air raids on Europe and did not receive them. And it is not known what caused the limited operations of the US 8th Air Force in Europe in 1942 and 1943: the insufficient range of the bombers, their insufficient number, or the strong air defense of the Germans? Moreover, the Red Army on the Eastern Front and the Americans in France and Germany in 1944-1945 fought bloody battles, the purpose of which was by no means to capture advanced airfields for bomber aircraft. The importance of strategic aviation will not diminish if we say that strategic defense can negate the full power of a strategic attack, especially when fighter units and anti-aircraft artillery units can be easily and quickly switched from performing tactical tasks to ensure offensive operations of ground forces to combat strategic bombers. The emergence of guided missiles, launched from the ground, from an aircraft or from other guided projectiles, once again underlines the high flexibility of air defense systems in this regard. In assessing the power of strategic bombing, one must constantly consider how many serviceable, manned and ready to fly bombers there are, how strong the enemy's air defenses are, and how accurate and effective bombing can be. In the heat of debate, these important points are often overlooked or ignored. The choice of targets for strategic bombing will always be influenced by such factors as the state of the enemy's air defenses, the importance of the objects of attack, and the amount of intelligence available about the enemy. Meteorological conditions are no longer as important a factor as they were, for example, during US Air Force operations against Germany in 1943 and 1944. At present, bombers can fly at high altitudes, well above the area of ​​bad meteorological conditions. Radar bombers have become more advanced, and the presence of heavier and more powerful aerial bombs means that point bombing in good visibility is relatively less important. With the advent of the atomic bomb, area bombing has become such a natural method that it is unlikely that in the future it will be possible to separate the strategic bombing of civilians from the bombing of military installations.

One of the most important lessons of strategic bombing, which has yet to be fully explored, is that the order in which objects are bombed according to their importance cannot play any role until the latest intelligence on the target is obtained. During the Second World War, most of the bomber force was wasted and many civilians were killed simply because the targets of attack were not chosen correctly. One can recall, for example, how cities in neutral countries - Eyre and Switzerland - were accidentally bombarded. This was not so much due to errors in aeronautical calculations, which also happened quite often, but due to ignorance of one's target of bombardment. If the Allied intelligence data on oil production in Germany, on the productivity of oil refineries, were accurate enough, then the Anglo-American strategic bombing of oil industry facilities would have begun much earlier than May 1944. If the Allies had been more aware of the enemy's aviation industry, there would have been no need for intensive bombing of airframe factories, aircraft engine factories and aircraft assembly plants. There are many ways to kill a cat, but one way for one cat is enough. Intelligence and strategic bombing, like Darby and John, are inseparable from each other, but it is very difficult to achieve full recognition of this need in both peacetime and wartime. Moreover, during the Second World War, Allied air reconnaissance was often unable to assist in assessing the results of the bombing of targets. If the commander of a strategic bomber does not know exactly to what extent his bombs destroyed the target, then how can he tell which targets he should attack next.

During the Second World War, bomber aircraft were often tasked with attacking targets for which there was virtually no fresh reliable information that could be relied upon. Why did we seek to destroy Monte Cassino by continuous bombing raids that had no military effect? Why, in June, July and August 1940, very small groups of British bombers were sent to bomb German aluminum plants, while Germany had just captured France with all its bauxite stocks and aluminum plants? Unfortunately, there are many such examples.

Apparently, when strategic bombing becomes the basis of strategy, the air command feels the need to carry out the bombing of a certain complex of objects, but often has little idea of ​​the purpose of such an event. Air Marshal Harris, in a sense, justifies such actions when he writes: “If the task was to check the strength of the enemy’s defenses, then it was necessary to immediately attack, albeit with small forces. The policy of keeping our fighting forces as long as they could be used on a large scale would mean that we would deprive ourselves of the opportunity to keep up with the enemy's countermeasures. This seems to be the main reason for the error. Reconnaissance bombers can do a lot in terms of probing enemy air defenses, but they can also help make them more solid by giving the defender the opportunity to test their defenses in practice. Of course, strategic bomber aviation must be kept in reserve only until the military value of the facilities is known. What is the use of studying the problems of the bombing of Baku or Berlin and wasting money and effort in vain? At the same time that the bombers are trying to find the weak points of the air defense, the latter is studying ways to deal with the bombers. Getting a brief briefing before taking off on a mission does not mean being well prepared to launch an attack with the appropriate forces. As Harris himself wrote, “the Dortmund-Ems canal would never have been blocked for long if it had not been for accurate, often repeated attacks that did not allow the destruction to be restored.” An English Air Force pilot was awarded the Victoria Cross for hitting this target. Harris adds with regret: "A feat worthy of the Victoria Cross is of such a nature that it cannot be repeated often."

The question of selecting the forces appropriate to the assigned task, as well as providing intelligence data of an economic nature, cannot be fully resolved. In the future, it will play an even more important role than in the past. The use of the atomic bomb requires more careful reconnaissance of targets than before. This is due to two main reasons. First, the atomic bomb is terribly expensive: a large caliber bomb costs almost a million dollars. Secondly, it cannot be used with the same effect against any military target, and no one will risk throwing away such a huge amount of public money. If at one time crews and aircraft were the most expensive means of strategic aviation, now, in the atomic age, atomic bombs have become such means. The main direction of the economics of using the air force has changed; atomic bombs are becoming more important than crews, which requires increased intelligence and better planning. The atomic bomb did not change the strategy of air power or the principles of strategic bombing. The atomic bomb did not increase the destructive power to those incredible proportions that were discussed in the first days after the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Strategic Bombing Research Office has calculated that for such destruction as was done with the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, it would take 120 Superfortres bombers carrying 10 tons of conventional bombs each, and for such destruction as in Hiroshima - 210 bombers. Seversky points out: "It is true that Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and many other large German cities received the same heavy destruction and on the same scale as Hiroshima and Nagasaki." It is also true that the suffering of the population, the loss of property and the destruction of industries as a result of firebombing was enormous in Tokyo and other cities in Japan. The use of the atomic bomb inevitably caused emotional experiences that do not contribute to a correct military analysis. The mikado's entourage deliberately exaggerated the destructive power of the atomic bomb in order to convince the Japanese people that it was a new supernatural weapon. This was done to preserve the prestige of the Mikado and to justify Japan's surrender to General MacArthur. In the name of humanity, not in the name of military strategy, John Hersey wrote his horrifying account of the devastation and tragedy in Hiroshima. American readers are more familiar with this document than they are with the more reliable data from the Atomic Energy Commission and reports from the Office of the Study of the Results of Strategic Bombing. It is not easy to overcome the influence of the flood of sensational reports about the atomic bombing that flooded the pages of the press for two or three years after the end of the Second World War. “The greatest tectonic force that has ever hit the earth ... a catastrophe, a world revolution, a flood, a rout and a disaster merged into one,” journalists wrote about this event. It was said that in Hiroshima, on the soil contaminated by the atomic bomb, it was possible to grow cucumbers the size of a skyscraper, as well as a large number of other vegetables of gigantic size, which overshadow all the achievements in the field of horticulture. In fact, it turned out that one Japanese farmer applied more fertilizer than his neighbor, and harvested more. It is now understood by most military commentators that the atomic bomb is not the universal air weapon that was previously believed. It may be appropriate to enumerate some of the limitations in the use of the atomic bomb, without diminishing, however, its power and significance as a deterrent.

It is unwise to use the atomic bomb against strong defensive fortifications. Dropping one large-caliber atomic bomb means risking too much at once. There are small-caliber atomic bombs for fighter planes, but their cost is high. In a future war, jet fighters will have almost the same range and strike power as any heavy bomber of the Second World War. The creation of smaller atomic bombs and the increase in the rate of their production will reduce the cost of the bomb, but will not make it cheap. If we set ourselves the goal of using atomic bombs economically, then we must strive for the greatest possible number of aircraft carrying them to reach the goal. The high cost of atomic bombs does not allow making big miscalculations when using them. The successful conduct of an attack with the help of atomic bombs urgently requires special care in the planning of the operation and the best possible support for it in terms of reconnaissance. It is necessary to take special diversionary actions, create radio interference and organize fighter cover. If the atomic bombers are to penetrate inland beyond the range of the escort fighters, they must take advantage of the darkness of the night or poor weather conditions, which means that the accuracy of the bombing will be reduced. If the target cannot be detected visually, then it can be identified using radar bombsights; but at present the defender has the ability to create radar interference that can distort the image of the target on the radar screen or mislead the scorer into identifying a ghost town somewhere far away from the real target. There are many different objects against which the effect of an atomic explosion will be much less effective than against the light wooden dwellings of the Japanese. An analysis of the destruction caused by the use of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as during the post-war tests at Bikini and New Mexico, showed that against some concrete and steel structures, the atomic bomb may be less effective than a series of rocket projectiles or armor-piercing bombs. The use of atomic bombs against reinforced concrete submarine bases, as well as against underground aviation or other factories, is wasteful. Modern cities with their steel and reinforced concrete structures will not suffer to the same extent as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially if there is a well-organized anti-nuclear defense, ready to eliminate the consequences of an attack. The use of an atomic bomb against airfields is tantamount to firing a cannon at sparrows. For the same reasons, it is unprofitable to use the atomic bomb against many railway objects, for example against small stations and road junctions. The cost of atomic bombing such targets would be unacceptably high. The consequences of an atomic raid will be effective for about a day. The experience of using the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other data lead to the conclusion that the main restoration work can be carried out in most cases only after a few days. Of course, some modern atomic bombs are more powerful than the 1945 atomic bombs, but this does not change the essence of the matter. It may take one or two days to eliminate the consequences of an atomic bombing. The zone of continuous destruction now seems to be about one square mile, and not a quarter of a square mile, as was the case in Hiroshima. Finally, most of the shock wave strength and thermal effect is lost because the atomic bomb is detonated at high altitude, or because the bulk of the atomic bomb's energy is expended over a limited area.

The above may seem to be the result of an underestimation of the atomic bomb as a military weapon. The atomic bomb is undoubtedly the most terrifying weapon of destruction ever used in war. But the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot serve as a typical example that could be used to assess the effect of the atomic bomb on the future. The press, politicians, and even some military leaders of the period 1946-1948 were inclined to draw historical conclusions about the role of the atomic bomb. It was a big political mistake that the atomic bomb became the main subject of disagreement on the issue of disarmament between the USSR and the West at that time. This suggests that both in Moscow and in Washington, the importance of the atomic bomb for winning or losing the war was exaggerated. Japan's surrender was prepared many months before the first atomic bomb was dropped (editor's emphasis).

But the main task of the air headquarters of NATO and Moscow is to conduct atomic and non-nuclear bombing in the future, not in the past. What questions arise in the higher planning bodies? First of all, what is the ratio of American and Russian strike power in relation to atomic and other strategic bombing, and how can this ratio change? At present (1954-1955), the US has a clear advantage. Its B-36 and B-52 strategic bombers can reach any target on the globe and return to their air base. To reach certain targets on US soil, Russian long-range Tupolev and Ilyushin-designed bombers will be forced to undertake suicidal non-return flights or risky mid-air refueling in combat. Although the range advantage of the US bombers over the next few years may diminish as the USSR develops further long-range jet bombers, the US stockpiles of atomic bombs will be significantly larger than the USSR. This means that US Air Force squadrons, until the end of the fifties, and possibly beyond, will be able to drop more destructive weapons at greater distances from their bases. American bomber squadrons have more experience in strategic bombing (including some experience in Korea) than Soviet ones. American means of air navigation and radar bombing are superior to similar equipment used on aircraft of the long-range bomber squadrons of the Soviet Union. The American aircraft industry, assisted in part by British jet specialists, has more experience in producing the required types of long-range jet bombers. American air bases, located in all parts of the globe, are better located for conducting raids on the USSR than Soviet bases for raids on the United States.

After the Second World War, military and civil aviation made a lot of efforts to find the possibility of regular flights from Europe to North America and back through the Arctic regions. The Soviet Union has been conducting research flights in the polar regions for more than twenty years in order to study arctic currents, winds and magnetic fluctuations. It is now clear that both the US and the USSR have solved almost all the problems associated with flying in arctic conditions. Alternate landing sites have been organized along the entire length of the polar route and special meteorological stations have been set up. New types of compasses have been installed on airplanes, which provide navigation near the Earth's magnetic poles, and anti-icing devices have also been significantly improved. Canada and the United States clearly understand the need to repulse possible long-range Soviet bomber raids through the Arctic regions and jointly carry out defensive measures. These activities include the construction of three concentric radar detection lines, supplemented by the means of naval surveillance units that patrol far out at sea, and reinforced by fighter and anti-aircraft units in critical areas. United States and Canadian civil defense exercises are also being held. Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Air Force has established airbases for bombers in the Arctic. Successful flights along the polar route by aircraft of the Scandinavian Aviation Company in 1954 further strengthened confidence in the possibility and necessity of polar flights. Over the past ten years, the strategic importance of the polar route has been repeatedly pointed out. This route will certainly save many hours of flying time for the new jet bombers that are coming into service with Soviet aviation units. In view of the highly skilled flight crews required for the polar route and the high pressure of ground support personnel, it is unlikely that large forces will ever be used on this route. But in the age of the H-bomb, that doesn't matter. The successful development of this route is of greater strategic importance for the USSR than for the United States, since American strategic bomber aviation has a large number of bases located in milder climates. Therefore, it can be assumed that over the next years the USSR will strengthen strategic bomber aviation in the Arctic.

But the US will get a lot of help in conducting strategic bombing from its allies. The command of the British Air Force in the post-war period strongly spoke out in favor of the development of long-range bomber aviation. This may not be the wisest policy. However, such aircraft will be an important addition to NATO's global strike power. The British four-engine jet bombers "Valient", "Volcano" and "Victor" by the end of the fifties will be able to reach targets in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, all objects in the territory of the USSR are inaccessible to them, and, in modern terms, they are mainly medium bombers, but these bombers will be able to fly more than 1500 km with atomic bombs, which are currently being manufactured in England. These bombers will help curb the Kremlin's military ambitions.

There is no doubt that at the present time strategic bombardment must be carried out both day and night. First, the current range of American bombers is 8,000 km, and the average speed of many of them is unlikely to exceed 800 km/h in the near future. This means that they will need about ten hours of flying time to reach some areas in the USSR. In Europe, at certain times of the year, they will be forced to operate at night. The round-the-clock operations of Anglo-American aviation against Germany proved the expediency of combining daytime raids with night ones. Such actions forced the Germans to split their fighter aircraft into two parts and divert a large number of squadrons of single-engine and twin-engine fighters from carrying out tasks in support of the German army. There was a need to have two types of fighters: single-engine - with a short range of the Messerschmit and Focke-Wulf types, for operations during the day and in good meteorological conditions, and twin-engine - of the Junkers and Messerschmit types - for operations at night and in bad meteorological conditions. Of course, sometimes both performed the same tasks. Most of the American bomber raids on Japan were carried out during the daytime, so the defense of Japan was carried out by single-engine day fighters. It would be very instructive to see what would happen to the air defense of Japan if the daytime operations of the American Air Force were supplemented by the nighttime raids of the British Air Force. If Japan had not capitulated, then the Lancaster bomber squadrons would have begun to conduct combat raids from about. Okinawa. Then the population of the cities of Japan would be forced to suffer from round-the-clock devastating bombardments, as was the case in Hamburg, Leipzig and other German cities. The Japanese fighters would have to work with great tension, and, most importantly, this would affect the composition of the kamikaze air units. It would have been much better in 1944 and 1945 to destroy Japanese fighters during dangerous night battles than to allow them to be used in large numbers against American and British naval vessels. In July 1944, seventeen squadrons were armed with "Zero" (Zeke-52) fighters equipped for use by suicide pilots. Fourteen of these squadrons operated against the American fleet in the fall of that year during the fighting off the Philippines. In addition to transports and cruisers, three American aircraft carriers were damaged: Hornet, Franklin and Hancock. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, it had 5,000 suicide bomber planes ready, mostly fighters. One of the most effective countermeasures against the suicide pilots who threatened the US Navy in the last year of the Pacific War would have been intensive round-the-clock strategic air operations against Japan.

There is no doubt that those who prepare NATO operational plans will take into account the importance of strategic air operations around the clock when they plan to block the maximum number of Soviet fighters, forcing them to play a passive role in the defense of the USSR. A heavy bombardment of enemy artillery firing positions will give good results regardless of whether it is light or heavy guns, unguided rockets or guided missiles. At the end of World War II, about two-thirds of all German guns were used for the defense of Germany proper. This came at the cost of reducing the amount of artillery needed to directly support ground forces in battle. The threat of strategic bombing compels the defenders to create a communications service in the air defense system with the involvement of highly qualified specialists in radio and telephone communications. This measure will weaken the composition of the front-line radio engineering units that provide aviation combat operations. Finally, passive defense, diverting masses of people to build structures to protect against enemy air raids and eliminate the consequences of air raids, can significantly affect the production of a country even before serious damage is caused by bombardment. There is ample evidence of this proposition in German documents from the war period. Albert Speer, who was then in charge of the German war industry, pointed out that in 1945 over a million Germans were employed in work related to the elimination of the consequences of the bombing.

Chapter 23

From the book Okinawa, 1945 by Volna Anthony

The strategic situation in the Western Pacific at the beginning of 1945. The militaristic system of power in Japan was a kind of military dictatorship. All democratic organizations in the interwar period were liquidated. The ruling circles of Japan assured their

From the book Air Power by Asher Lee

Chapter I Strategic Bombing Of all aspects of the use of air power, strategic bombing seems to have been the subject of the most heated debate. The beginning of these discussions dates back to 1920, when the Italian aviation specialist Douai expressed

From the book Rzhev Massacre author Gerasimova Svetlana Alexandrovna

Beginning: the first attempt to encircle the Rzhev-Vyazemsky strategic offensive operation January 8 - April 20, 1942

From The Tudors. "Golden age" author Tenenbaum Boris

Chapter 35 Who was Shakespeare? An additional and investigative chapter I Francis Bacon was a man of astonishing intellect, and the scope of his interests was extremely wide. By education he was a lawyer, over time he became Lord Chancellor, then

From the book BATTLE OF KURSK. CHRONICLE, FACTS, PEOPLE. BOOK FIRST. author Zhilin Vitaly Alexandrovich

The strategic situation on the Soviet-German front by July 1943 By July 1943, the length of the Soviet-German front line was reduced and amounted to 4375 km. The most significant feature of its configuration was the presence of the "Kursk ledge", which had

From the book Spanish-American War the author Zhilinsky

Strategic defensive operation July 5-23, 1943 During the preparation of the strategic defensive operation in the Kursk direction, active operational and military reconnaissance was continuously conducted. This made it possible to identify the operational and combat formation of troops

From the book World War II author Churchill Winston Spencer

Oryol strategic counter-offensive operation July 12 - August 18, 1943 Operational situation by July 12, 1943 Troops of three fronts participated in the operation: the left wing of the Western Front (50A, 11 Guards A); the Bryansk Front (61, 3, 63A, 3 Guards TA from 14.07, 15 VA); Central Front (48,

From the book Every nation has a homeland, but only we have Russia. The problem of the unity of the peoples of Russia in extreme periods of history as a civilizational phenomenon author Sakharov Andrey Nikolaevich

Belgorod-Kharkov strategic counter-offensive operation August 3-23, 1943 Operational situation by August 3, 1943 2 VA); Stepnoy (53, 69A, 7 Guards A, 5 VA). The task that was set

From the book In Search of Energy. Resource wars, new technologies and the future of energy by Yergin Daniel

X. Bombardment of the cities of Matanzas and Cardenas Immediately after the declaration of war, the American fleet undertook a series of bombardments on the northern coast in order to ascertain their defensive strength and select the most convenient point for landing.

From the author's book

XI. The bombing of the city of Cienfuegos During the first bombardments on the southern coast of the island of Cuba, the Americans, judging by their actions, had in mind the capture of cables in order to deprive the island of communication with Spain. A cable goes from Cienfuegos to Santiago, and from there through Kingston to Europe. Capturing or

From the author's book

XII. Bombardment of the cities of Casilda, Tunas and Manzanillo After the defeat of the lighthouse and cable station in Cienfuegos, the American fleet bombarded the ports of Casilda, Tunas and Manzanillo on the south coast. Through the first two points there is a shore cable to Manzanillo and the American fleet apparently had a goal, like

From the author's book

From the author's book

Document No. 12 “The bombing did not last long - 20-25 minutes, but for us it seemed like an eternity ...” From a conversation with Konstantin Vasilyevich Zubanov, chief engineer of the Stalingrad power plant. March 13, 1943 Stalingrad. With such a heart in the city of Stalingrad

From the author's book

The Strategic Importance of the Weather Great attention was also paid to the weather. As part of the International Geophysical Year, an unprecedented number of scientists were involved in weather research. In addition to scientific curiosity, there were also strategic considerations. During

German war economy

A protracted world war was never part of the plans of the supreme leadership of the Reich. Hitler counted on achieving all his goals by skillful diplomacy and a series of lightning wars, extensively building up the military and economic power of Germany - with the expectation that England and France would never keep up with the rapid growth of Germany. The German General Staff, in particular General Thomas, protested against this concept of "armament in breadth". Instead, they pushed "weapons in depth", namely: to direct significant efforts to increase steel production; significantly cut civilian consumption of steel and other natural resources; to use additional steel not only for the production of weapons, but also for increasing the production of other basic resources. According to the calculations of the General Staff, in this case, by 1945-1950, Germany could be ready for a protracted strategic war.

Hitler's point of view won. To give some idea of ​​the priorities of the German economy, consider the use of steel in the pre-war years (there are no exact statistics, the figures are approximate). About 10-15% of the monthly steel production went to the railways (mostly scheduled maintenance/replacement of tracks). The same amount went to non-military and semi-military construction. 30% went to the production of consumer goods (TNP) and private construction. The remaining 40% was spent on the production of military products: by 1939 it was planned to create enough weapons for 100 divisions; by 1942 - for another 80. Plus, the programs for the construction of military aviation and navy, no less ambitious.

The choice of such a path of development largely predetermined many of the problems of the Germans during WWII. In particular, the program for the construction of synthetic fuel plants in 1936-1941 was assessed by the German General Staff as absolutely unsatisfactory; however, the Reich leadership was unwilling to increase the steel quota for the construction of these factories. After all, steel is needed for the production of weapons, and a protracted war is not expected.

raids

About the British / American side of the matter, I will definitely write sometime in more detail. The pre-war doctrines of strategic raids, disagreements over targets, casualties, aircraft production - it's all very interesting. But for now I will limit myself to just brief statistics about the raids.

The total tonnage of bombs dropped by the Americans and the British on Germany (including the countries occupied by it) and its allies during WWII:

Red - monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by the RAF (England Air Force)
Blue color - monthly tonnage of bombs dropped by the USAAF (United States Air Force)

Tonnage by target (larger image available):

Targets, left to right, top to bottom:
aircraft factories
Various production
Water transport
Start points V-1 and V-2
Airfields
Production of petroleum products, chemicals, rubber
Military
Industrial targets (which is a euphemism for carpet bombing cities)
Ground transport network (which partly also includes carpet bombing of cities)
Other

Monthly losses of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe:

The black curve is the total losses of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe
The red curve is the loss of single-engine aircraft of the Luftwaffe minus the eastern front (i.e. the USSR)

In general, a separate post should also be written about the battle over Germany, because it's worth it. IMHO the most significant result of strategic raids.

Work force

Graph of the state of the German labor force during the war:

Top down:
Losses -- irretrievable losses
Armed Force -- armed forces
Foreigners & Prisoners of War -- foreign workers and prisoners of war
Civilians (male / female) -- civilians (men / women)

As you can see, 11.5 million German workers were drafted into the Wehrmacht from September 39 to September 44; their place was taken by 7 million workers and prisoners of war who arrived or brought from abroad, as well as 1 million new German workers. This adds up to a loss of 3.5 million workers, or 10% of the labor force.

Let's take a look at exactly how strategic raids have affected the workforce.

Direct damage (killed and maimed) - by the middle of 1944, about 250 thousand workers

Unproductive labor force, i.e. people who could not work due to bombings - destruction of factories, transport routes, etc. From September 43 to October 44 - the period for which there are German data on reports of category "A" firms on productive / unproductive work - did not work on average 1.5 million people employed in manufacturing.

The threat of destruction of certain nodes of the economy made it necessary to disperse production. By the summer of 1944, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were involved in additional construction and repair of damage caused by the bombing. An additional 250-400 thousand supplied them with materials and services.

The production of consumer goods, to replace those that were destroyed by the bombing. This is of course extremely difficult to isolate, but you can look at employment in the production of consumer goods. In May 1939, 6.8 million workers worked there. In the period 39-40, a drop of 1.7 million. In the period 40-42, a drop of 1.5 million. In the period 42-44 (i.e. the period of intense raids), the fall was only .5 million people.

Production of air defense artillery and ammunition for it - 250 thousand people. Plus air defense troops. The issue has been resolved in more detail.

If you add all this up, it turns out that strategic bombing in one way or another pulled off 17-22% of the German labor force available outside of agriculture.

It is worth noting here that by 1944 and even 1945 the Germans were far from exhausting their labor reserves. For example, both Germany and England started the war with approximately the same number of working women. During the war, the number of employed English women increased by 45%, while in Germany it remained almost at the pre-war level. Another example - during the war, the number of servants and other domestic workers in the UK fell from 1.2 million to .5, in Germany - from 1.5 million to 1.2. The German bureaucratic system numbered 3.5 million until the end of the war, and even Speer could do nothing about it.

Fixed assets

Before the war, the products of the machine-building industry were one of the main export items of Germany (in fact, it is still the case today). Naturally, with the outbreak of hostilities, trade with most of Germany's partners ceased, and therefore quite large capacities were unoccupied. So, with the exception of factories producing aircraft engines and some other specific things, German production worked one shift for almost the entire war - unlike the USA, the USSR and England. Thus, in 1942, 90% of German workers worked the first shift; 7% in the second, 3% in the third (mining workers not included).

In 1944, the machine park in Germany amounted to 2,260,000 machine tools. There are no exact statistics on destroyed and damaged machines; post-war estimates are 110,000 damaged and 36,500 destroyed by machine raids (both are the maximum estimates). A rough estimate of machine hours lost due to damage or destruction of machines is between 2 and 2.5 percent. Don't forget - this is a ceiling estimate. So, on the whole, we can conclude that the destruction of the German means of production did not cause significant damage to the German war economy. The exception here is the chemical industry; it will be discussed below.

Common consumption goods

In general, the Nazis tried to keep the production of consumer goods at a more or less acceptable level. Here's a detail: In the fall of 1943, Hitler protested Speer's decision to stop allocating resources for the production of curling irons.

Top down:
GNP including foreign participation (read - robbery of occupied countries)
GNP without it
Home capital gain
The share of civilian spending in the GNP of Nazi Germany (black part of the graph)

Table on the dynamics of civil spending:

Level 1939 == 100

Well, as a bonus, the percentage of industrial workers employed in the civil / military sphere:

The white part of the graph is civil industry
The shaded part of the graph is the military industry

All in all, it is safe to say that the destruction of consumer goods was not directly related to the military collapse of Nazi Germany. The only thing is that the regular destruction of houses during the raids generated a surge in demand for certain consumer goods, and thereby prevented the transfer of a certain part of the civilian industry to a military footing. For example, the production of kitchenware in 1943 was 25% higher than in 1942; bed frame production increased by 150% in the same period.

military production

At the beginning of the war and until the defeat near Moscow, and especially near Stalingrad, German military production was limited by one thing - the lack of orders from the military leadership. As described earlier, Hitler did not count on a protracted war. Moreover, some euphoria from the successes in the west and the general underestimation of the enemy played a bad joke on the Germans.

So, as of May 11, 1940 (that is, before the start of the operation on the western front), the Luftwaffe had 4782 aircraft of all types. A year later, on June 21, 1941 (that is, before the invasion of the USSR), there were 4882 aircraft, only a hundred more. In particular, the Germans had 200 fewer bombers (!) than before the start of the invasion of the Benelux and France. Military production was 1% higher than the 1940 production level.

And even after the defeat near Moscow, the situation was largely preserved. For example, back in March 1942, the Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, Hans Jeschonnek, told Milch, who was pushing at that time a program to increase the production of aircraft: "I don't even know what to do with an additional 360 fighters!" By the way, the same Jeshonnek shot himself a year later when British planes razed Peenemünde to the ground.

The fact that Germany did get involved in a total war, the German leadership really realized only after Stalingrad. But, as they said in my childhood, it was already too late to rush about.

German military production index:

Level 1940 == 100

So, now let's look at how strategic raids directly affected German military production.
Note: I decided to leave the bombing of the ball bearing factories behind the scenes. These raids had no effect on the war economy, although Speer, in his own words, did knock out a couple of bricks after the bombing of Schweinfurt. I can write more in the next post, when I describe the differences in the doctrine of the Americans and the British.

First half of 1943

The Allies tried to reduce the production of German submarines by bombing. The effect is near-zero; production continued to go almost without deviation from the schedule.

Second half of 1943

In the second half of 1943, the Allies decided to switch to the bombing of fighter factories, because by that time the scales in the Atlantic had already tipped quite noticeably in the direction of the Allies. Thanks to the raids, 13% fewer fighters were produced from the planned number. It should be noted that only part of the fall is a direct consequence of the raids; a significant share of the fall is due to the start of a large-scale program of dispersal of production. I won't dwell on the re-drinking of the bombings, on how the production of fuselages was first bombed (in vain), then they switched to engines.

First half of 1944

Significantly stronger raids on aircraft industry plants. But - a paradox! - The production of fighters doubles from December 1943 to July 1944. This fact (and the generally strong growth of German military production) is liked by supporters of the version that the bombings were absolutely useless. True, this hypothesis does not fit well with the fact that the Germans went for such a large and disproportionate increase in the production of single-engine fighters (see graph below). Well, okay, God bless him, I hope that above I was able to explain to some extent why it happened with production.

German aircraft production:

Top down:
Single engine bombers
Twin-engine bombers
Four-engine bombers
Single engine fighters
twin-engine fighters
Assault
Other

The growth in fighter production is the result of two things: 1) increasing production efficiency (i.e., reduced labor costs and increased efficiency in the use of resources); 2) an increase in the production of fighters was planned as early as 1943. It is difficult to say what the true figure would have been without strategic raids. Estimated figure - the Germans missed 18% of the possible number of fighters.

Well, little things. Tanks. Here the Germans missed 5% (thanks to the RAF raid on Friedrichshafen). Ammunition. Production is less than potential by 6-7%.

Second half of 1944

The raids are intensifying, the allies, in addition to the aircraft, are beginning to concentrate on the tank and automobile industries.

The decline in aircraft production by December 1944, in comparison with June, was 60%. Losses in aircraft production as a result of direct raids on airlines - 23%. Losses in the production of tanks and vehicles as a result of direct raids on factories - 20% and 20%.

On the whole, no decisive effect on the German military machine has been achieved by direct bombing of military production, but a significant drop in production has been achieved in certain areas.

Natural resources

And here is the most interesting, IMHO. So.

Germany's dependence on imported natural resources has always been seen as the main weakness of its military potential. Just before the start of the war, Germany imported 70% of its iron ore, 90% of copper, 100% of chromium, manganese, nickel, tungsten, and much more. By and large, the Germans had plenty of only coal.

The Germans were certainly aware of this weakness. Two solutions were chosen:
1) The beginning of the development of domestic deposits of iron ore (albeit of poor quality), the construction of factories for the production of synthetic fuel and rubber.
2) Creation of stocks of strategic resources before the start of the war.

When the war began, the Germans had nine months' worth of iron ore, copper, lead, and magnesium; manganese - for 18 months. However, measures to increase the efficiency of production, coupled with the conquest of a number of countries and trade with other pro-Nazi states, made it possible to delay serious interruptions in supply until mid-1944.

Fuel

The weakest point of the German military machine.

Imports before the war - 4.4 million tons, mostly by sea. After the start of the war, the only significant external source of oil and oil products was Romania, which by 1941 exported to Germany 2114 thousand tons of oil and oil products per year. Plus, something came from Hungary and Poland (about 500 thousand tons of oil), plus the USSR in 1940 supplied the Germans with 617 thousand tons of oil.

The Germans also developed domestic production to the best of their ability: 2 million oil was produced in Austrian oil fields, plus synthetic fuel plants steadily increased production, from 1.6 million tons in 1938 to 6 million in early 1944. It should be noted that according to the plan, 1938 to 1944 11 million tons were to be mined, but as mentioned above, confidence in the quick end of the war, plus the intrigues of industrialists, prevented.

Sources of German oil, 38-43 (in thousands of tons):

Sources of German petroleum products (gasoline), first quarter 1944 (in thousands of tons):

For comparison, the USSR at that time produced 29 million tons of oil per year; USA - 168 million tons.

Influence of raids

Strategic raids on synthetic gasoline plants began in May 1944. Consequences:

Aviation gasoline production

red curve. Start level 1944 == 100

Production, consumption and stocks of aviation gasoline

Top down:
Stocks - stocks (left side of the graph - at the end of the year, right - at the end of the month)
consumption -- consumption
Production -- production (including imports)

Since May, 350,000 workers have been repairing synthetic fuel plants and building new, underground plants.

A little later, raids on Ploiesti began. In June, Romanian exports of petroleum products accounted for only 25% of the monthly average in the first half of the year; in July, exports ceased altogether. The oil fields were captured by Soviet troops on August 22.

As a result, by September 1944, the Luftwaffe was forced to reduce fuel consumption by 2/3 compared to June. Those. there was a reduction in the number of sorties, and a drop in the level of German pilots (due to the lack of gasoline for training) - and this despite the fact that just at that time a record number of fighters left the assembly lines, which simply could not take to the skies.

On the ground, the lack of fuel was also felt very acutely. For example, such an episode, told by both Speer and Jodl: in February 45, after the Soviet troops crossed the Vistula, the Wehrmacht gathered about 1200-1500 tanks to attack Upper Silesia. However, the fuel needed for the counteroffensive was simply not found.

Rubber

There were practically no direct raids on synthetic rubber factories. However, since in the process of its production, German factories used gas and hydrogen that came from synthetic fuel factories, it is only natural that rubber production has dropped significantly.

Rubber production (thousand tons)

The dotted line is the planned production.
Four colors -- different rubber factories

There is no evidence that the lack of rubber greatly affected the German war machine. However, if the war had lasted longer, it was more than likely that the shortage of rubber would have seriously affected German armaments production.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a necessary ingredient for the production of explosives. Like rubber, nitrogen was never a priority target for Allied bombers. However, the two largest nitrogen plants were part of synthetic fuel complexes. Since nitrogen and synthetic fuel use the same low-pressure tanks, the damage from the bombings was added by the fact that part of the nitrogen production capacity began to be converted to gasoline.

Monthly production of nitrogen and explosives (thousand tons):

Black curve - nitrogen
Different colors - different types of explosives

Steel

Ruhr raids -- last quarter 44. Production fell from 2 million tons in September (including occupied territories) to 1 million in December, 80% of the drop was due to air raids.

Steel production (million tons):

Top down:
Losses due to other reasons
Losses due to lack of gas, electricity, energy, natural resources, labor
Losses due to damage from strategic bombing
Losses due to air raids

Electricity

Electric Power (GW)

As you can see, by the end of 1944, 15.5% of the capacities were put out of action by raids.

The effect on the economy is difficult to isolate, but it is quite obvious that it was great: electricity was Germany's weak point for almost the entire war; restrictions on use began as early as October 41. By 43-44 the situation had become so serious that the supply of aluminum and nitrogen plants was cut from time to time - despite their importance to the German war machine.

It should be noted that the bombing of power plants was never a priority goal for the Allies, because they (erroneously) believed that the Germans had enough spare capacity.

Transport

Along with the attack on fuel, one of the most effective targets of strategic bombers.

They decided to test full-scale raids on the transport network on the eve of the landing in France. Beginning in March 1944, Allied strategic bombers began the systematic destruction of the transport network in Western Europe. Plus, 800 Spitfires, Thunderbolts and Typhoons destroyed or damaged 500 locomotives between May 20 and May 28. By July, traffic on French railways was only 10% of the January level. See the following charts:

The upper curve is general traffic, the lower curve is military traffic. Vertical lines - bomb strikes

On the example of a specific railway (direction Valenton-Juvisi):

The upper curve is general traffic, the lower curve is military traffic. Vertical lines - bomb strikes

In the second half of 1944, the already tested method was applied in Germany itself. The consequences are in the next two graphs.

Number of loaded wagons

Number of tonne-kilometers

The collapse of the transport system served as a very significant reason for the very rapid disintegration of the German military industry in late 1944 - early 1945. Additional difficulties were created by the fact that many industries were dispersed in order to minimize the damage from the bombing, and therefore required a fairly well-functioning system of cargo transportation.

The total air raids of the Second World War convincingly showed the uncompromising means of the participants in the conflict. Massive bombing attacks on cities destroyed communications and factories, led to the death of thousands of innocent people.

Stalingrad

The bombing of Stalingrad began on August 23, 1942. Up to a thousand Luftwaffe aircraft took part in it, which made from one and a half to two thousand sorties. By the time the air raids began, more than 100 thousand people had been evacuated from the city, but most of the residents could not be evacuated.

As a result of the bombing, according to the most rough estimates, more than 40 thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed. First, the bombing was carried out with high-explosive shells, then with incendiary bombs, which created the effect of a fiery tornado that destroyed all life. Despite significant destruction and a huge number of victims, many historians believe that the Germans did not achieve their original goals. Historian Aleksey Isaev commented on the Stalingrad bombing in the following way: “Everything did not go according to plan. Following the bombing, the planned development of events did not follow - the encirclement of Soviet troops west of Stalingrad and the occupation of the city. written plan, it would seem logical.

It must be said that the "world community" responded to the bombing of Stalingrad. Residents of Coventry, destroyed by the Germans in the autumn of 1940, showed particular interest. The women of this city sent a message of support to the women of Stalingrad, in which they wrote: "From the city, torn to shreds by the main enemy of world civilization, our hearts are drawn to you, those who are dying and suffering much more than ours."

In England, a "Committee of Anglo-Soviet Unity" was created, which organized various events and collected money to be sent to the USSR. In 1944, Coventry and Stalingrad became sister cities.

Coventry

The bombing of the English city of Coventry is still one of the most discussed events of the Second World War. There is a point of view expressed, including by the British writer Robert Harris in the book "Enigma", that Churchill knew about the planned bombing of Coventry, but did not increase the air defense, because he was afraid that the Germans would realize that their ciphers were solved.

However, today we can already say that Churchill really knew about the planned operation, but did not know that the city of Coventry would become the target. The British government knew on November 11, 1940, that the Germans were planning a major operation called "Moonlight Sonata", and it would be undertaken on the next full moon, which fell on November 15th. The British did not know about the purpose of the Germans. Even if the targets were known, they would hardly be able to take proper action. In addition, the government relied on electronic countermeasures (Cold Water) for air defense, which, as you know, did not work.

The bombing of Coventry began on 14 November 1940. Up to 437 aircraft took part in the air raid, the bombardment lasted more than 11 hours, during which 56 tons of incendiary bombs, 394 tons of high-explosive bombs and 127 parachute mines were dropped on the city. More than 1,200 people died in Coventry in total. The water and gas supply was actually disabled in the city, the railway and 12 aircraft factories were destroyed, which affected the defense capability of Great Britain in the most negative way - the productivity of aircraft manufacturing decreased by 20%.

It was the bombing of Coventry that opened a new era of all-out air raids, which would later be called "carpet bombing", and also served as an excuse for the retaliatory bombing of German cities at the end of the war.

The Germans did not leave Coventry after the first raid. In the summer of 1941, they carried out new bombardments of the city. In total, the Germans bombed Coventry 41 times. The last bombing took place in August 1942.

Hamburg

For the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition, Hamburg was a strategic object, oil refineries, military industrial plants were located there, Hamburg was the largest port and transport hub. On 27 May 1943, RAF Commander Arthur Harris signed Bomber Command Order No. 173 on Operation Gomorrah. This name was not chosen by chance, it referred to the biblical text "And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord from heaven." During the bombing of Hamburg, British aircraft for the first time used a new means of jamming German radars, called Window: strips of aluminum foil were dropped from aircraft.

Thanks to Window, the Allied forces managed to minimize the number of losses, the British aircraft lost only 12 aircraft. Air raids on Hamburg continued from July 25 to August 3, 1943, about a million inhabitants were forced to leave the city. The number of victims according to various sources varies, but they amount to at least 45,000 inhabitants. The largest number of victims was on 29 July. Due to climatic conditions and massive bombardment, fiery tornadoes formed in the city, literally sucking people into the fire, asphalt burned, walls melted, houses burned like candles. For three more days after the end of the air raids, it was impossible to carry out rescue and restoration work. People waited for the wreckage, which had turned into coals, to cool down.

Dresden

The bombing of Dresden is one of the most controversial events of World War II to this day. The military necessity of Allied air raids has been disputed by historians. Information about the bombing of the marshalling yard in Dresden was transmitted by the head of the aviation department of the American military mission in Moscow, Major General Hill, only on February 12, 1945. The document did not say a word about the bombing of the city itself.

Dresden was not one of the strategic goals, besides, by February 45th, the Third Reich was living out its last days. Thus, the bombing of Dresden was more of a show of US and British air force. The officially declared target was German factories, but they were practically not affected by the bombing, 50% of residential buildings were destroyed, in general, 80% of city buildings were destroyed.

Dresden was called "Florence on the Elbe", it was a museum city. The destruction of the city caused irreparable damage to world culture. However, it must be said that most of the works of art from the Dresden gallery were taken to Moscow, thanks to which they survived. Later they were returned to Germany. The exact number of victims is still disputed. In 2006, historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll from the bombing of Dresden ranged from 25,000 to 250,000. In the same year, in the book of the Russian journalist Alyabyev, the sum of the dead was from 60 to 245 thousand people.

Lübeck

The bombing of Lübeck by the Royal Air Force of Britain on March 28-29, 1942 was an operation of retaliation by the British for air raids on London, Coventry and other British cities. On the night of March 28-29, on Palm Sunday, 234 British bombers dropped about 400 tons of bombs on Lübeck. The air raid took place according to the classical scheme: first, high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy the roofs of houses, then incendiary ones. According to British estimates, almost 1,500 buildings were destroyed, more than 2,000 were seriously damaged, and more than 9,000 were slightly damaged. As a result of the raid, more than three hundred people died, 15,000 were left homeless. The irretrievable loss of the bombing of Lübeck was the loss of historical and artistic values.