The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The German Air Force as a whole was still a formidable weapon in the autumn of 1940. But after the cancellation of Sea Lion the rationale for its continued activity against Britain had to be reassessed. Hitler quickly lost interest in the air campaign and issued no fresh directives for it throughout the ten months that followed, except to reiterate the blockade strategy. He was, claimed von Below, one of the first German leaders to recognize that the air war ‘had neither achieved its objective nor was likely to’.¹⁰⁷ Historians too have shown much less interest in the German strategic bombing campaign, overshadowed as it is by the Battle of Britain at one end and the Barbarossa invasion at the other. In strategic terms the bombing campaign has generally been regarded as a failure. Yet it was here, between October 1940 and June 1941, that the first independent strategic bombing campaign took place. If the air force had been compelled to work within a broader inter-service strategy up until mid-September, it was now no longer obliged to do so and could fulfil its ambitions for independent action. On 16 September, unencumbered by Sea Lion, Göring ordered a new phase in the campaign of attacks across the breadth of the British Isles.¹⁰⁸

It is possible that Hitler hoped the British could still be induced to give up the war because of the moral and material damage that would be wrought by the bombing and that the campaign was sustained in hope of a political dividend. There is no doubt that there was a popular expectation in Germany that the bombing might win Germany a reprieve from a second winter of war. ‘When will Churchill capitulate?’ asked Goebbels in his diary in late November 1940 after more news of devastating raids on Britain’s cities.¹⁰⁹ Yet the surviving evidence suggests that Hitler remained sceptical about what air power might achieve and focused his attention on the campaign against the Soviet Union, whose successful outcome was intended to create the conditions that would make it possible to return to the problem of Britain a year hence. He was nonetheless trapped in a situation of his own making. He could not order the campaign to end because that would seem to admit defeat and privilege British resistance in the eyes of the German public and the wider world. Nor could he ignore what Stalin might think. The air campaign had to be kept going because it would persuade Stalin that Britain was still the principal object of German strategy and mask the eastward turn. Politics played its part in sustaining a campaign whose strategic purpose was no longer so clear-cut.

The bombing campaign can best be understood as a form of economic warfare. In his post-war interrogations at Nuremberg, Hitler’s chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, explained that the bombing in 1940–41 was designed to have two important economic purposes: first, a contribution to the food blockade strategy, in collaboration with the navy’s submarine arm, along the lines of the campaign in the Great War; second, a campaign of attrition against key military-economic targets.¹¹⁰ These aims were to be met principally by large-scale night-bombing attacks, sea-mining and daytime raids by small numbers of high-flying fighters, some converted to carry a 250-kg bomb. These daytime raids were designed during late September and October to lure the RAF into combat, and to attack with as much precision as possible a suitable military or economic target. As the weather deteriorated, the raids became less frequent and eventually petered out. Although these daytime Störangriffe imposed heavy losses on RAF fighters, it was found that the single bomb was difficult to drop with any accuracy, and on occasion had to be jettisoned to allow the converted fighter to return to its fighter role in self-defence.¹¹¹ The pattern of German bombing operations over the course of the England campaign is set out in Table 2.1. The high point of German bombing was achieved in October and November 1940, while poor weather from December to February made continual raiding difficult and costly. The blockade campaign was carried out according to the instructions established in the directive from July 1940 on the conduct of the trade war. It potentially involved the air force in closer collaboration with the German Navy, whose limited naval air arm and as yet small force of U-boats needed reinforcement by bombers and dive-bombers with experience of over-sea operations, but such cooperation threatened air force hopes that victory might be delivered by air power alone.

Table 2.1: Statistic on German Air Activity against Britain, August 1940–June 1941