“And another thing: I have not heard a single person curse the enemies or blame them for the destruction. When the newspapers published epithets like ‘pirates of the air’ and ‘criminal arsonists’ we had no ears for that. A much deeper insight forbade us to think of an enemy who was supposed to have caused all this; for us, he, too, was at most the instrument of unknowable forces that sought to annihilate us. I have not met a single person who comforted himself with the thought of revenge. On the contrary, what was commonly said or thought was: Why should others be destroyed as well?”–Hans Erich Nossack, witness to the destruction of Hamburg, Germany, in 1943 by Allied strategic bombing. The End: Hamburg 1943. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Since World War II, the allied bomber offensive against Germany has become a controversial topic. Did the allies damage their cause and moral certainty by inflicting so much destruction and so many casualties within German society, away from the battle fronts? Or were these attacks justifiable efforts to hasten the end of the war by disrupting Nazi efforts? The following video outlines various aspects of the debate.
Bombing Japan
A B-29 unleashing bombs over Japan, 1945. U.S. Air Force Photo
In the last year of the war, the USAAF conducted a shorter, but devastating strategic bombing campaign against Japanese cities. Employing a new, bigger bomber, the B-29, the U.S. Twentieth Air Force adopted tactics similar to the RAF: dropping incendiaries, and starting cataclysmic firestorms. Over 60 raids on Japanese cities killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, and destroyed urban industries in the process. Months before two atomic bombs vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki, USAAF airmen destroyed entire city centers with conventional bombs. In one sense, atomic warfare was merely the logical next step in strategic bombing, where mass civilian casualties had gradually become acceptable.
At first glance it appears that these raids compelled Japanese leaders to surrender without U.S. forces having to invade Japan, a potential operation that would have undoubtedly cost many lives on both sides. But it is difficult to tell if the catastrophic B-29 raids of 1945 had a measurable effect on the will of Japanese citizens as a whole to continue resisting the Allies. Less destructive but more focused attacks by tactical airpower also depleted Japan’s remaining resources, together with the complete isolation of the Japanese homeland by the U.S. Navy.
The USAAF bombed Japan without RAF help and likely killed more Japanese citizens that Germans. In that light, the European bomber campaigns seem less significant, but it was in Europe that the USAAF gradually adopted city-smashing tactics. By March of 1945, U.S. Army Air Force leaders seem to have implicitly concluded that while strategic attacks on an enemy homeland were crucial to winning the war, precision bombing was no longer a priority or even practical. Racism toward the Japanese might play a role in the firebombing tactics, but by February 1945 USAAF bomber commands in Europe had already begun widespread bombing of non-industrial or even non-military areas in German cities.
The Combined Bomber Offensive leaves us with important questions concerning public policy, ethics, and war. What levels and types of violence are justified when combating injustice, aggression or genocide? Presuming a just war, or military operations to promote justice, how do we define legitimate targets living within other societies? How much or little should we presume that citizens of hostile states are liable to be killed, wounded, or otherwise distressed by our methods? How far should we expect that emerging technologies can enable us to wage less destructive wars? What kinds of tactics are or are not justified, when confronting a stubborn enemy who, while no longer winning the war, may continue to commit evil if they can force a settlement of the war on terms that preserve their regime?