Nashwan that's including directly and inderictly of starvation , disease, etc. that were mainly caused by the bombing raids is what I meant.
I'm confused here. Weren't those deaths, and some 30 million others mainly caused by Adolph Hitler's war of agression?
No Charon they just dropped incendiary and high explosive bombs over their heads killing thousands and wiping off entire towns in one night.
Glasses, I might as well post my standard reply then try to get some work done so I can enjoy our national holiday.
A lot of what we know about the relative success or failure of any bombing approach was learned after the fact. The bombing surveys did not come out until AFTER the war. At the time, both strategic and dehousing were considered to be more successful than they were (at least directly, see ancillary benefits below). [edit: Nashwan also provided some compelling, specific examples of the impact of the bombing campaign on production in that thread] However, they were very successful in some areas (petroleum) and provided at least short-term disruption in most areas attacked -- a week, two weeks, a month -- it all added up.
The terror concept was also still alive and well [as a military philosophy], in some circles at least. Hitler, for example, seems to have held on to it longer than most with his wasteful V-weapon programs. Terror hadn't been "soundly" rejected, though it was certainly questioned.
There were a lot of ancillary factors as well:
1. You have to factor in a reduction in quality, reliability and service life with the weapons produced.
2. You have to factor in the impact on resources with having to defend the homeland. Each plane defending the homeland couldn't be used out East. Each experienced pilot killed couldn't be replaced (some claim that this aspect made the campaign successful in its own right). Even the "bombing round the clock" concept, that started as a sales pitch to save daylight bombardment, caused a increased dilution of the defense infrastructure compared to a daylight only approach. All of these factors made D-day that much easier, the Russian advance that much easier, and helped speed the end of the war.
3. The fact that we don't know what the final German production numbers would have been without the disruption, drain from relocation, death of skilled workers, and the damage of heavy equipment that couldn't be replaced or relocated. Remember too, those surging production numbers late in the war reflect, in part, Germany's belated switch to a war economy and I believe Speer's partial cleaning of up of the corruption and lack of coordination that had plagued German industry earlier. 25 fewer submarines or several hundred fewer Tigers here or there, and the war is that much shorter with fewer allied causalities.
Hindsight is great, but what's the alternative at the time? Allow unhindered production and say: "The lives of my soldiers and sailors and the life and well being of all those people living [and dying daily in great numbers] in the occupied territories is less important than the lives of German civilians who are supporting their country's war of conquest?" How do you sell that to the families of your soldiers, whose husbands and sons wouldn't even be putting their lives on the line in the first place if it wasn't for Axis aggression? In my estimation, a soldier fighting in defense or to liberate occupied lands is no less valuable than a German housewife. And hell, even in America, hardly the worst sufferer of the war, we lost over 3 "World Trade Centers" a month in war dead.
In an industrial war, one lasting half a decade, production has to be stopped. Tanks that are not made don't kill your tank crews. Torpedoes that aren't fired, because a submarine is not in existence to be on station, allow your troops and weapons to arrive where they are needed...
...I've seen similarly horrible pictures of German housewives and children killed in an air raid. That is very tragic and horrible. But I would exchange their lives, as a necessary evil, to save as many lives as possible from an unnecessary evil. I would even be fairly generous about the ratio. I would even do it if I didn't know for sure it would be 100 percent effective But strategic bombing did have, in many facets including its main purpose, more than a minor effect on the length of the war. Tragic, but not as tragic as stopping Nazi aggression as rapidly as possible.
What would you have done to end the war in the same time frame without any additional allied losses? (And remember, the bombing surveys are not compiled until after the war.) Or are the lives of additional allied soldier ok to lose in this cause, but civilians supporting the Nazi war effort totally off limits?
From my point of view, I had a grandfather who missed the first five years of my mother's life -- and, in places like North Africa, Sicily, Normandy (later, in the Pacific, Iwo Jima and Okinawa) had his life threatened many times by bombers, bombs, glide bombs, shells, submarines and torpedoes manufactured by German civilians supporting their war effort. He was a coal miner from West Virginia who had no interest in a foreign war until one was thrust upon him, and I don't really see a distinction between the value of his life and that of a civilian supporting the war effort of a regime that started the most destructive war in world history [if their deaths mean the war is shortened and the toll on the non agressors is thus reduced].
Charon
