The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

As it was, strategic bombing remained a relatively unimportant part of overall German strategy. Apart from the blockade campaign of 1940–41, whose material effects were at best disappointing, bombing in the west was confined largely to tactical support missions or small-scale spoiling attacks. Hitler did not share Churchill’s or Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for air power, nor did he fully grasp its political potential beyond the propaganda effects of ‘vengeance’ for the German public. Göring did appreciate that air power was transforming the nature of warfare. ‘He looked at the army,’ one of his adjutants told an American interrogator in 1945, ‘and thought it a miserable, obsolete branch of the armed force. The fleet was in his eyes, superseded.’²⁴³ Yet he failed to persuade Hitler to reshape German strategy to embrace air power more effectively, and failed to supervise the development of the usable, high-quality technology that Germany was capable of developing and producing during the war. Nor in the end did Göring think that air power could be decisive on its own. Air forces, he told one of his first interrogators, shortly after his capture, ‘can only disrupt, interfere and destroy’ as a vital adjunct to the decisive ground campaign.²⁴⁴

The German experience demonstrated the real limitations of bombing strategy under current conditions. The weapons used for the first strategic bombing offensive were insufficient to achieve its aims, despite the limited and poorly planned opposition the bomber force faced. The bomber aircraft had limited range, carried too small a bomb load, relied on a navigation system that was highly vulnerable to interruption and, most significantly, divided their operations among a wide number of targets, few of which were hit often enough, heavily enough or ruthlessly enough to undermine activity more than temporarily. The German air offensive was a classic example of a strategy pursued before its time.

3 Taking it? British Society and the Blitz

In mid-September 1940 a London East End pacifist wrote a letter to the Quaker activist Ruth Fry refusing her offer of a bed outside the capital to escape the bombs, preferring to wait and be killed if fate so dictated. It was a frank and certainly prejudiced view of the crisis: ‘People remain calm, yes, but happy? Certainly not.’ The writer continued: ‘No gas, tea shops closed, takes two hours to boil a kettle when a trickle of gas comes through. Thousands sleeping in the underground… but Churchill remains a great man, “the man of destiny” and the House of Commons just meets now and then to listen to a carefully studied speech. How low have we fallen?’ The writer thought Churchill might even sell Britain short by reaching a backstairs agreement with Hitler. ‘Some may well think that we deserve to be bombed,’ the writer reflected, ‘but the RIGHT people don’t get hurt. A nice winter in prospect.’¹

In almost every respect – except the perception of calmness – this letter defies the popular image of British society under the impact of the Blitz, and of the iconic status enjoyed by Britain’s most famous prime minister. It suggests that in the face of the bombing, there were many historical realities, not one. Ordinary people responded to the sudden catastrophe in a myriad of ways, and if some fulfilled the popular image of placid fortitude, there were others like the letter-writer who saw injustice and bad faith in high places. Behind the rhetoric of ‘we can take it’ the social response to the German bombing was complex and fractured.