[GandalfTheGrey]

After WWI the allies tried to cripple Germany so that she would never be a threat to Europe again. 20 years later the Germans were back in business and started the biggest mass slaughter the world has ever seen. I'm wondering if the strategic bombing campaign - which basically became flatten the shit out of as many German cities as possible - had more to do with destroying Germany's ability to ever start a war again rather than defeating her in the short term. In any case it was probably a non-issue since Germany was carved up and occupied by the allies - plus the fact that in the west the US pumped billions into the country and made it an industrial power once again.

[Cookie Monster]

What's the point of this thread?

[pugsville]

The Allied Bombing Campaign was driven by a number of factors, there was a vengenace factor but both British and Amercians efforts were in part driven by the Air Force politics and vision. In the Interwar period the if force arguments had argued strenously for strategic bombing as the main task and focus of the air force. This was strategic bombing was the task the justified an independent air force as it was not about working with other armed services. Both British and American advocates of independent air forces had huge investiment in strategic bombing "working". Both US & British bomber commanders had made huge claims about the accuracy and impact of the bombing. Both found out the accurate bombing failed and reverted to Area bombing. There were huge investiments in resources into the bombing forces, they were seen as the only war to go on the offensive before d-day. They were hardly going to turn around and call it a failure with the massive loss of face, prestiage for the air forces. They sort of slide into the are bombing of german cities, anything else would have been humilation and retreat.

[GandalfTheGrey]

What's the point of this thread?

err posing a question

My point is that the allies tried so hard to destroy Germany's future military capacity in 1919 - and they failed so spectacularly that 20 years later Germany was in a position to initiate the greatest mass slaughter of all time. Sooooooo my question is, did this failure have any bearing on the allies determination to flatten as many German cities as they could? Was it merely about vengeance and ending the war, or were they thinking of Germany's possible strength 20 years down the track? After all, by the time the strategic bombing campaign was in full swing, the outcome of the war was never in serious doubt.

[Cookie Monster]

The bombing was focussed on the military industry and military hardware and infrastructure. However this was not effective enough. So they started to target the cities to diminish German morale to fight the war. Remember that when they started to bomb the cities there was no Western front.

And the post-WWI recovery of Germany was partly, momentarily, due to American support. Besides Germany didn't really recover economically. They did rebuild their industries but if they hadn't started a war, Germany would have suffered economically because of all the non-productive expenses which had led to debts.

[soron]

My point is that the allies tried so hard to destroy Germany's future military capacity in 1919 - and they failed so spectacularly that 20 years later...

It's quiet interesting what the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch said when he heard about the conditions of the Versailles Treaty: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."

I think there was vengeance involved in the allied bombing, there wasn't a single German city that wasn't bombed, 'strategic targets' had nothing to do with it. The documentation especially on the selection of the 'secondary targets' shows that a town was considered a valid strategic target if a road leads to it (which is the case for every city) and a preferred target if the layout suggested that fires would spread easily due to narrow alleys between the houses.

However 'destroying' us failed due to other reasons as well. After WW1 for example we were bared from using most vhf frequencies - so we invented radios that used even higher frequencies. Our colonies were taken away which cut us off from raw materials like natural rubber - we invented synthetic rubber. We were forced to find substitutes and that triggered a lot of innovation which proved as well or superior than what we had to give up.
Similarly after WW2, South-West Germany was pretty much stripped bare by the French. They uninstalled everything that was left of our industry, so when we started to rebuild our entire industry obviously was build on the latest technoloy available, giving us an edge over our competition who used our own less productive former machines.

So one could say that the very attempt at bringing us down for good also contained the nucleus for our later rebirth from the ashes after 2 wars. Can't keep good men down

[Thunderhawk]

Countries (and civilization in general) are made by people, not artifacts of their creation. If the allies wanted to make a WWII Versailles by changing Germanys level of development, then crippling German infrastructure would not have been enough as rebuilding infrastructure post war is a great oppertunity for an otherwise developed country. To keep Germany or any developed country down, the intellectuals have to be massacred. Even the Morgenthau Plan went no where near that in concept.

[Otebo]

I think there was vengeance involved in the allied bombing, there wasn't a single German city that wasn't bombed, 'strategic targets' had nothing to do with it. The documentation especially on the selection of the 'secondary targets' shows that a town was considered a valid strategic target if a road leads to it (which is the case for every city) and a preferred target if the layout suggested that fires would spread easily due to narrow alleys between the houses.

There probably was an element of vengance in Allied air operations over Germany but the bombing of German cities was legitimate when we had been forced into a situation of "total war" by Berlin. RAF Bomber Command were quite open that the aim of the air campaign was the "destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany".

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." - Bomber Harris

bringing us down for good also contained the nucleus for our later rebirth from the ashes after 2 wars. Can't keep good men down

"Good men"? Not words generally associated with the generation of Germans who created the most barbaric regime humanity has ever known and committed crimes on a scale never before seen in history.

[Siberian Fox]

Not disagreeing with what's been posted, but another consideration was that most German targets of any real value were too well defended for precision attacks without suffering unacceptable losses. Area-bombing was safer for the allies (and yet they still suffered extremely high casualties). The British going that step further, opting for night bombing - safer still, and even more inaccurate.

Like pugsville says, Britain and America invested a lot in long-range strategic bombers, which gave their air forces a longer reach than the Germans, but the aircraft were not suited to precision attacks.

did this failure have any bearing on the allies determination to flatten as many German cities as they could? Was it merely about vengeance and ending the war, or were they thinking of Germany's possible strength 20 years down the track? After all, by the time the strategic bombing campaign was in full swing, the outcome of the war was never in serious doubt.

I think it would be unfair to not also consider the possibility that some people in the Air force actually believed that destroying Germany's manufacturing base and transport network could bring the war to a quicker end than would otherwise be the case. Not an unreasonable assumption. There also might be the possibility that concern about the U.S.S.R. would lead to a political will to obliterate East Germany to stop it's industry falling into Soviet hands.

[soron]

There probably was an element of vengance in Allied air operations over Germany but the bombing of German cities was legitimate when we had been forced into a situation of "total war" by Berlin. RAF Bomber Command were quite open that the aim of the air campaign was the "destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany".

You had been 'forced into a situation of total war' ? I guess that justifies the bombing of Warzaw, Coventry, London or Rotterdam then, because we had been forced into a situation of total war by the allies.
BS aside, the way Harris carried out the bombing campaign was a breach of the rules of warfare even back then - there was a reason the Bomber command neither received their own campaign medal after the war - the only part of the service who did not. Also if you care to check history you will notice that not a single person during the Nuremberg trials was charged because of generally bombing of cities because THAT would immediately have marked the Nuremberg trials as 'victor's justice', given the level of destruction in every German city, and the allies went through great lengths to avoid that impression.

"Good men"? Not words generally associated with the generation of Germans who created the most barbaric regime humanity has ever known and committed crimes on a scale never before seen in history.

I agree that the systematic killing was never before 'industrialized' on that level, but otherwise Britannia doesn't need to boast in that regard. The British empire did their own fair share of genocides - you were simply blessed by an age when communicaton was slow and selective, and killing some 'wogs' wouldn't be considered 'murder'.

But wasn't the invention of concentration camps a British invention during the Boor wars, just to name an example ?

I think it would be unfair to not also consider the possibility that some people in the Air force actually believed that destroying Germany's manufacturing base and transport network could bring the war to a quicker end than would otherwise be the case. Not an unreasonable assumption.

Yes, but you have to differentiate: The bombings of German cities had nothing to do with destroying industry. Bombing industrial targets was a clearly defined mission, and so was the bombing of civilians, using different weapon payloads such as 'blockbuster' bombs that would destroy the roofs in the area for a chimney effect, followed by firebombs in order to create firestorms. And those weapons were dropped in the centres of the cities, not the industrial outskirts.

[MB.]

I'm wondering if the strategic bombing campaign - which basically became flatten the shit out of as many German cities as possible - had more to do with destroying Germany's ability to ever start a war again rather than defeating her in the short term.

The Allied strategic bombing campaign was a hugely variable and complicated endeavor the goal of which changed as political maneuvering superseded military necessity and technological dissemination accelerated.

My point is that the allies tried so hard to destroy Germany's future military capacity in 1919 - and they failed so spectacularly that 20 years later Germany was in a position to initiate the greatest mass slaughter of all time. Sooooooo my question is, did this failure have any bearing on the allies determination to flatten as many German cities as they could? Was it merely about vengeance and ending the war,