The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

370. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/1, BBSU Advisory Committee, minutes of 1st meeting, 6 June 1945; Note for Air Ministry and SHAEF, 13 June 1945; Cox (ed), The Strategic Air War Against Germany, xx–xxi.

371. TNA, AIR 14/1779, Minutes of meeting, 27 Feb 1945, on the future of the RE8 Department. The personnel were absorbed into the Air Ministry establishment on 1 March 1945.

372. CCAC, BUFT 3/51, ‘Proposals for the Establishment of a British Strategic Bombing Unit’, 30 May 1945, 1–3.

373. CCAC, BUFT 3/65, ADI (K) Report, ‘Factors in Germany’s Defeat’, 17 May 1945.

374. LC, Spaatz papers, Box 68, HQ USSTAF, ‘The Allied Air Offensive against Germany and Principal Criticisms by Enemy Leaders’, 4–5, 6.

375. Ibid., Table D, Ninth Air Force interrogation of Hermann Göring, 1 June 1945; interrogation of Milch, 23 May 1945; Table E, SHAEF interrogation of Speer, 3 June 1945; Gentile, How Effective is Strategic Bombing?, 69.

376. Gentile, How Effective is Strategic Bombing?, 7; LC, Spaatz papers, Box 134, ‘Interrogation of Reich Marshal Hermann Goering’, 10 May 1945, 5.

377. LC, Spaatz papers, Box 134, USSBS Interrogation no. 8, Lt. Gen. Karl Koller, 23–24 May 1945, 6–7.

378. USSBS, Over-all Report (European Theatre), 25–6, 37–8, 73–4; Gentile, How Effective is Strategic Bombing?, 55–6. For a convincing case on the diminishing returns from bombing, see the recent economic analysis by Jurgen Brauer, Hubert van Tuyll, Castles, Battles & Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History (Chicago, IL: 2008), 211–13, 217–19, 235–6.

379. Cox (ed), The Strategic Air War Against Germany, 129–34.

380. Ibid., 154.

381. Ibid., 94–7.

382. CCAC, BUFT 3/51, Bufton to Portal, 3 Jan 1945. The report was passed on to Harris by Portal, but with the reference to Hamburg deleted.

383. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/3, Exercise Thunderbolt, précis no. 8, ‘The Course of the Combined Bomber Offensive from January 1943 to April 1944’, 2; précis no. 18, ‘The Course of the Combined Strategic Bomber Offensive from 14 April 1944 to the End of the European War’, 3–4.

384. Ibid., Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/2, précis of lecture by Wing Commander G. A. Carey Foster, ‘On the Effects of Strategic Bombing on Germany’s Capacity to Make War’.

385. Ibid., Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/3, Zuckerman, rough notes on Exercise Thunderbolt, 13–16 Aug 1947.

386. Ibid., Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/103, Nicholas Kaldor typescript, ‘The Nature of Strategic Bombing’, 4–6; Kaldor typescript, ‘Capacity of German Industry’, 2–5.

387. Nicholas Kaldor, ‘The German War Economy’, Review of Economic Statistics, 13 (1946), 20ff; see Richard Overy, ‘Mobilization for Total War in Germany 1939–1941’, English Historical Review, 103 (1988), 613–39, and more recently Adam Tooze, ‘No Room for Miracles: German Industrial Output in World War II Reassessed’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 31 (2005), 439–64.

388. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 469–70, 494, App 49 (iii), 49 (xxii).

389. Richard Overy, ‘The Economy of the German “New Order”’, in Johannes ten Cate, Gerhard Otto, Richard Overy (eds), Die ‘Neuordnung’ Europas: NS- Wirtschaftspolitik in den besetzten Gebieten (Berlin: 1997), 14–26; on financial contributions, Willi Boelcke, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg (Paderborn: 1985), 98, 110. On labour Ulrich Herbert (ed), Europa und der ‘Reichseinsatz’. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945 (Essen: 1991), 7–8. The totals were: POWs 1,930,087; forced labourers, 5,976,673. On booty policy and its results, Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und Nationaler Sozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: 2005), 59ff.

390. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/103, ‘Nature of Strategic Bombing’, 6–7.

391. LC, Spaatz papers, J. K. Galbraith, ‘Preliminary Appraisal of Achievement of Strategic Bombing of Germany’, 2.

392. TNA, AIR 48/33, USSBS, Civilian Defense Report no. 4, Hamburg Field Report, vol 1, 83.

393. Details from BA-B, R3102/10031, Reichsministerium für Rüstung- und Kriegswirtschaft, ‘Vorläufige Zusammenstellung des Arbeiterstundenausfalls durch Feindeinwirkung’, Tables 1 and 4, 4 Jan 1945.

394. Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (London: 1976), 360, entry for 12 Apr 1959: ‘No-one has yet seen that this was the greatest lost battle on the German side.’