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Unlock This CourseThis lesson is part of the Paper 2 Section B breadth study on the changing nature of warfare, 1919-2011. By 1942 Britain and the United States (at war with Germany since December 1941) could not yet land armies in Western Europe. Bombing was the one way to hit Germany directly. Leaders hoped it would destroy factories, railways and oil supplies, and wear down the German people's will to fight.
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At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the Allies agreed on a Combined Bomber Offensive. The British and Americans would bomb Germany round the clock, each in their own way.
RAF Bomber Command, led from 1942 by Air Marshal Arthur Harris, flew at night, when German fighters and guns found it harder to hit them. In the dark, bombers could not find small targets, so whole cities became the target. Bomber Command's "thousand-bomber raid" on Cologne came in May 1942. In July-August 1943 the raids on Hamburg created a firestorm, a huge fire that sucked in air and killed about 40,000 people.
The American Eighth Air Force flew by day in heavily armed B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. The aim was precision bombing of key industries such as aircraft factories and ball-bearing plants. Daylight made targets easier to see, but the bombers were also easier for German fighters to attack.
In 1943 the American raids were too costly. On 14 October 1943, about 60 B-17s were lost in a single raid on Schweinfurt, because the fighters then available could not escort the bombers all the way to Germany and back.
The answer was the P-51 Mustang. With extra fuel tanks under its wings it had the range to escort bombers deep into Germany, even to Berlin, from early 1944. It was also a match for German fighters. Now the Luftwaffe had to fight the Mustangs, and it lost many experienced pilots that it could not replace. By the time of D-Day in June 1944 the Allies had won air superiority over much of Europe, so bombers could attack almost anywhere by day.
Historians still argue about this. Here are the main points on each side.
Germany's answer was to strike back with new weapons. Nazi propaganda called them "revenge weapons".
A small pilotless plane with a jet engine, first fired at London on 13 June 1944, a week after D-Day. People called it the "doodlebug". It made a loud buzzing noise and, when the noise stopped, it dived. It was slow enough for fighters, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons to shoot many down.
The first long-range ballistic rocket used in war, first fired at London on 8 September 1944. It travelled faster than sound, so there was no warning and no defence. It was very costly to build.
About 6,000 people in Britain were killed by V-1s and about 2,700 by V-2s. Antwerp, the port the Allies needed, was also heavily attacked. The V weapons terrified civilians, but they did not change the result of the war. They were inaccurate, they came too late, and they cost huge amounts of money and labour that could have gone on fighters and tanks. As the Allied armies advanced through France and Belgium in autumn 1944, many launch sites were captured. The last V weapons fell on Britain in March 1945.
What changed: in 1917 small, slow aircraft dropped a few bombs. In 1944-45 fleets of heavy bombers escorted by long-range fighters attacked day and night, and Germany used pilotless weapons: a flying bomb and then a rocket that could not be stopped. What stayed the same: bombing civilians still did not quickly break the will of a people.
Reminder: in the Blitz of 1940-41 the Luftwaffe bombed British cities, mostly at night, including London and Coventry, and about 43,000 civilians were killed.
Explain TWO ways in which the Allied bombing of Germany in 1942-45 was similar to the German bombing of Britain in the Blitz of 1940-41. [6 marks]
One similarity is that both campaigns relied on night bombing of cities. In the Blitz the Luftwaffe turned to night raids on London, Coventry and other cities because daylight raids were too costly. In the same way RAF Bomber Command bombed German cities such as Cologne and Hamburg at night, because the bombers were safer from fighters in the dark. In both cases the bombing was very inaccurate, so homes were hit as well as factories.
A second similarity is that both aimed to break the enemy's morale and failed. The Germans hoped that bombing would force Britain to ask for peace, but despite about 43,000 civilian deaths and the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940, Britain went on fighting and war production continued. Harris hoped the same of Germany, but the firestorm at Hamburg, which killed about 40,000 people, did not cause the German people to rise against Hitler. Each campaign killed tens of thousands of civilians without ending the war.
What lifts it to the top level: each way compares both campaigns, with a precise fact about each.
In a "similar" or "different" question, put a fact from both sides in every paragraph. A paragraph that only describes one campaign cannot show a comparison, and one way alone scores at most 3 out of 6.