The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

It was not the Jewish question that invited Allied bombing in November 1943, though many Bulgarians assumed that it was. The first raids seemed to presage an onslaught of aerial punishment and the population of the capital gave way to a temporary panic. Yet the first two attacks in November were followed by two desultory operations the following month and nothing more. Some 209 inhabitants in Sofia had been killed and 247 buildings damaged. The ‘sharp lesson’ was not sharp enough for the Allies because it did little to encourage Bulgaria to seek a political solution while the military value of the attacks was at best limited, hampered by poor bombing accuracy and gloomy Balkan weather. On Christmas Day 1943, Churchill wrote to Eden that the ‘heaviest possible air attacks’ were now planned for Sofia in the hope that this might produce more productive ‘political reactions’.¹³ On 4 January 1944 a large force of 108 B-17 Flying Fortresses was despatched to Sofia, but with poor visibility the attack was aborted after a few bombs were dropped on a bridge. Finally, on 10 January 1944 the first heavy attack was mounted by 141 B-17s, supported during the night of 10–11 January by a force of some 44 RAF Wellington bombers. This attack was devastating for the Bulgarian capital: there were 750 dead and 710 seriously injured, and there was widespread damage to residential housing and public buildings. The air-raid sirens failed to sound because of a power cut. This time the population panicked entirely, creating a mass exodus. By 16 January, 300,000 people had left the capital. The government abandoned the administrative district and moved out to nearby townships. It took more than two weeks to restore services in the capital, while much of the population abandoned it permanently from fear of a repeat attack. On 23 January the German ambassador telegraphed back to Berlin that the bombing changed completely the ‘psychological-political situation’, exposing the incompetence of the authorities and raising the danger of Bulgarian defection.¹⁴ The government ordered church bells to be pealed as an air-raid warning, in case of further power cuts.¹⁵

The second major raid, of 10 January, did pay political dividends. While Filov tried unsuccessfully to persuade a visiting German general, Walter Warlimont, Deputy for Operations on Hitler’s staff, to mount a revenge attack on neutral Istanbul – whose consequences might well have been even more disastrous for Bulgaria – most Bulgarian leaders had come to realize that the German connection had to be severed as soon as possible and a deal struck with the Allies.¹⁶ The Bishop of Sofia used the occasion of the funeral for the victims of the bombing to launch an attack on the government for tying Bulgaria to Germany and failing to save the people from war. That month an effort was made to get the Soviet Union to intercede with the Western Allies to stop the bombing, but instead Moscow increased its pressure on Bulgaria to abandon its support for the Axis.¹⁷ In February the first informal contacts were made with the Allies through a Bulgarian intermediary in Istanbul to see whether terms could be agreed for an armistice. Although hope for negotiation had been the principal reason for starting the bombing, the Allied reaction to the first Bulgarian approach following the raids was mixed. Roosevelt wrote to Churchill on 9 February suggesting that the bombing should now be suspended if the Bulgarians wanted to talk, a view shared by British diplomats in the Middle Eastern headquarters in Cairo.¹⁸ Churchill scrawled ‘why?’ in the margin of the letter. He was opposed to ending the bombing despite a recent report from the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which observed that the first bombing in November 1943 had achieved no ‘decisive political result’. He had already authorized the bombing of the Bulgarian ports of Burgas and Varna, which were added to the list of priority targets, subject to political considerations.¹⁹ In January 1944 the British War Cabinet, in the event of a German gas attack, considered the possibility of retaliatory gas bomb attacks against Germany and its allies, and included Bulgaria on the list.²⁰ On 12 February Churchill replied to Roosevelt that in his view the bombing had had ‘exactly the effect we hoped for’ and urged him to accept the argument that bombing should continue until the Bulgarians began full and formal negotiations: ‘if the medicine has done good, let them have more of it’.²¹ Roosevelt immediately wired back his full agreement: ‘let the good work go on’.²²