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Book How efficient was the Strategic Bombing Offensive of the Allied Forces against Germany from 1939 1945

Download or read book How efficient was the Strategic Bombing Offensive of the Allied Forces against Germany from 1939 1945 written by Stefan Trepke and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2003 in the subject History of Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 2, University of Westminster (School of Social Science, Humanities & Languages), course: Total War: A Military History of the Second World War 1939-1945, language: English, abstract: The Strategic Bombing Offensive of the Allied Forces was one of the great military operations against Hitler-Germany. Despite of the meaning of the Strategic Bombing Offensive its significance and efficiency to the final victory over Hitler-Germany was always a topic of controversy. This controversy about the significance and efficiency of the Strategic Bombing Offensive to the final victory over Hitler-Germany took not just place under the contemporaries of the Second World War as Winston Churchill and his military advisers. This controversy is still alive, eg in the argumentations of historians as Richard Overy 1 and Noble Frankland 2 . In the following essay will be considered the efforts and results of the Strategic Bombing Offensive from 1939 to 1945. It will be discussed the efficiency of the Allied bombing to conclude finally the significance of the Strategic Bombing Offensive to the victory over Hilter-Germany. For this purpose shall be considered various primary sources as the Butt Report, the Singleton Report and the British and American surveys about the Strategic Bombing Offensive. Beside own points of view, shall be opposed the arguments of Richard Overy and Noble Frankland, the two opinion leaders of this historical subject. The Strategic Bombing Offensive is to understand as the strategic planning’s and operations of the Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force against the Hitler-Germany between 1939 and 1945. Since 1943, the entry of the US 8th Air Force and later the US 25th Air Force in the Strategic Bombing Offensive is this operation as well known as Combined Bombing Offensive. The Strategic Bombing Offensive was "aimed at destroying an enemy’s war capacity through destroying war production" 3 but also aimed w ere the infrastructure and the moral of the German population. The first considerations about a strategic bombing war goes back to the First World War, however this topic went to a real issue in late 1937 when the British Bomber Command got the order to plan the destruction of the economy of its most potential enemy, Hitler-Germany. Despite of this effort, virtually less was done as the war broke out in September 1939. The Bomber Command possessed about 488 light bombers, which did not fulfill the needs. Based on the lack of range and carrying capacity of bombs the demands of a realistic destruction of Germany were not practical. [...]

Book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Strategic Air War Against Germany  1939 1945

Download or read book The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 1945 written by British Bombing Survey Unit and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the close of the Second World War both the RAF and the United States Army Air Forces sent teams of investigators to the continent of Europe to try and assess the effectiveness of Allied strategic bombing. The British Survey was originally classified and is published here for the first time. By combining the original Report and an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses, together with a short history of the genesis of the British Survey, this work is an important contribution to the continuing historical debate over the effects of the strategic bombing offensive in the Second World War.

Book To Destroy A City

    Book Details:
  • Author : Herman Knell
  • Publisher : Da Capo Press
  • Release : 2009-06-16
  • ISBN : 0786748494
  • Pages : 398 pages

Download or read book To Destroy A City written by Herman Knell and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herman Knell was nineteen and living in Würtzburg in March of 1945 when hundreds of Allied planes arrived overhead, unleashing a torrent of bombs on the city. Würtzburg's tightly packed medieval housing exploded in a firestorm, killing six thousand people in one night and destroying 92 percent of the city's structures. Despite the fact that Würtzburg had no strategic value, the city emerged from World War II second only to Dresden in material destruction inflicted from the air. The experience led Knell to years of research on the history, development, and effects of the strategy of area bombing.To Destroy a City is the result of the author's long and unrelenting investigation. His analysis of this form of warfare, which reached its zenith during World War II, covers the history and the development of wide-area bombing since 1914, examines its wartime effectiveness and the consequences. But the extra dimension that Knell's book offers is his firsthand experience of the tension, fear, tentative defiance, and, finally, utter catastrophe of being on the receiving end of overwhelming air power. For Americans, who fortunately did not experience bombing during the war, this is essential reading.

Book The Strategic Bombing of Germany  1940 1945

Download or read book The Strategic Bombing of Germany 1940 1945 written by Alan Levine and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1992-07-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the only full-scale account of the strategic air offensive against Germany published in the last twenty years, and is the only one that treats the British and the Americans with parity. Much of what Levine writes about British operations will be unfamiliar to American readers. He has stressed the importance of winning air superiority and the role of escort fighters in strategic bombing, and has given more attention to the German side than most writers on air warfare have. Levine gets past a simple account of what we did to them and describes the target systems and German countermeasures in detail, providing exact yet dramatic accounts of the great bomber operations--the Ruhr dams, Ploesti, and Regensburg and Schweinfurt. The book is broad-guaged, touching many matters, from the development of bombing doctrine before the war to the technical development of the Luftwaffe and the RAF, jets and V-weapons, to the role of the heavy bombers in supporting land and sea operations. Levine stresses the impact of bombing on the war, and generally endorses the strategic air campaign as worthwhile and effective. But he concludes that many mistakes were made by the Allies--both the British and the Americans--in tactics, the development of equipment, and in the selection of targets. Levine sees strategic bombing as a powerful tool that was often misused, particularly when the doctrine of area bombing flourished. Scholars, students, and buffs interested in World War II and/or the history of aviation will find this study of great interest.

Book The Bomber War

Download or read book The Bomber War written by Robin Neillands and published by . This book was released on 2001-07-23 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bomber campaign against Germany is one of the most contentious of World War II. Was anything achieved by the deaths of thousands of German civilians-many of them women and children? Or were all means justified against Nazi Germany? Acclaimed military historian Robin Neillands examines every detail of the allied campaign led by British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris: the strengths and fundamental flaws, the technical difficulties and developments and, above all, the day-to-day, night-by-night endurance of the crews flying to the limit in discomfort and danger, facing flak and enemy fire. Personal experiences of British, American, Canadian, Australian and other ally fliers play a key part in this account, along with those of German airmen and civilians. Though The Bomber War discusses Guernica and the destruction of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it concentrates on the European theater, on Germany's air war against the allies - over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry-which led the fierce allied raids carried out against Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and the Ruhr and-most notorious of all-the tremendous destruction of Dresden in the last months of the war. Robin Neillands also examines the complex moral issues involved in the air war, and of the case made against "Bomber" Harris. This is a timely addition to the history of conflict; the age of free-fall bombs has passed, but many veterans-on both sides-are still alive to state their case, and to tell a knew generation what their war was like.

Book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany

Download or read book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Senior Research Fellow Charles Webster and published by . This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This, the third in the four volumes of the British Official History of the Second World War dealing with Bomber Command s air offensive against Germany, covers the final year of the offensive: from April1944 to May 1945. It is a story of growing allied strength and technical effectiveness. In July 1944, more than 5,000 RAF and USAF bombers were raining down bombs on Germany from their bases in Britain and Italy. In March 1944, the peak month, the RAF alone dropped more than 67,000 tons of bombs, and the Allies between them more than 130,000 tons. Yet all this was achieved against a background of continued controversy among the Allied air chiefs over the purpose of the bombing . The old squabbles over whether precision or general area bombing should be the main aim re-opened now that the allies had the capacity to do either, both at night and in daylight. In addition the allied offensive was, from early 1944 onwards, increasingly subjected to the needs of Operation Overlord - the invasion of German-occupied Europe. As well as pounding the industrial heart of Germany to achive air superiority; disruption of German production and a slump in German civilian morale; the RAF and USAF were expected to prepare for, and subsequently support, the invasion. Despite this diversion, as Bomber Command switched to devastating the French railway system, relentless attacks on Germany went on - particulalry on oil production. But the head of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, continued to insist on the primacy of area bombing of German cities, in the teeth of growing doubts among Sir Charles Portal s Air Staff, and in October 1944, write the authors, the strategic air offensive was resumed with unprecedented violence . But the unresolved differences between Portal, Harris, and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, who favoured attacking enemy communications above all, remained, say the authors a tragic deadlock . Probably the darkest shadow hanging over the final months of the air offensive, however, was the massive raid on Dresden in Februrary 1944. In this attack, made by the RAF by night and the USAF by day, many thousands of civilians died and the city centre was totally razed. Dresden was, and remains, hugely controversial, and was even criticised by Churchill, although, as the authors point out: it was he himself who contributed much of the incentive to carry it out . Despite such clashes and controversies however, as the authors insist, the actual operations were an undoubted triumph and the war in Europe ended with Harris s aim achieved: a devastated Germany with her industrial productivity destroyed and the centres of her cities in ruins. With 14 maps and 29 photographs.

Book Storm from the Skies

Download or read book Storm from the Skies written by Robert Jackson and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945

Download or read book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945 written by Charles Kingsley Webster and published by Naval & Military Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No aspect of the Second World War has become more controversial in recent years than Britain s Strategic Air Offensive against Germany. Argument has raged over both the morality of mass bombing of heavily populated cities; over its effectiveness in seriously impairing Germany s war effort and over the horrendous casualty rates caused - both to civilians on the ground, and to the aircrew of RAF Bomber Command who lost some 52,000 men - a higher attrition rate than any other branch of the armed services. In assessing the campaign the official British history of the offensive, of which this is the fourth and final volume, is indispensible. This book contains the background documents - some highly secret - on which the previous narratives of the campaign are based. There are chapters on radar - that war-winning British invention - on navigational aids; on bombs and bombsights and on post-war British and US surveys into the effectiveness of their devastating attacks. There are minutes, mem oranda, operational orders and reports from the key figures involved in directing the air war: Sir Arthur B omber Harris himself; Sir John Dill, Sir Charles Portal and from the father of the RAF, Lord Trenchard. There are also important papers from the other side of the hill - the Germans, including police reports on the firestorm which swept away the port of Hamburg; and personal reports from Armaments MInister Albert Speer to Hitler on the results of the RAF blitz on German oil and fuel production in June 1944. The book also contains fascinating facts and figures on losses to aircrew, tonnage of bombs dropped, the RAF s order of battle and estimates of damage done and civilian casualties. Altogether this essential book gives the hard facts on which any conclusions about Britain s air offensive must ultimately be based.

Book The Bombing War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard Overy
  • Publisher : Penguin UK
  • Release : 2013-09-26
  • ISBN : 0141927828
  • Pages : 711 pages

Download or read book The Bombing War written by Richard Overy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ultimate history of the Blitz and bombing in the Second World War, from Wolfson Prize-winning historian and author Richard Overy The use of massive fleets of bombers to kill and terrorize civilians was an aspect of the Second World War which continues to challenge the idea that Allies specifically fought a 'moral' war. For Britain, bombing became perhaps its principal contribution to the fighting as, night after night, exceptionally brave men flew over occupied Europe destroying its cities. The Bombing War radically overhauls our understanding of the War. It is the first book to examine seriously not just the most well-known parts of the campaign, but the significance of bombing on many other fronts - the German use of bombers on the Eastern Front for example (as well as much newly discovered material on the more familiar 'Blitz' on Britain), or the Allied campaigns against Italian cities. The result is the author's masterpiece - a rich, gripping, picture of the Second World War and the terrible military, technological and ethical issues that relentlessly drove all its participants into an abyss. Reviews: 'Magnificent ... must now be regarded as the standard work on the bombing war ... It is probably the most important book published on the history of he second world war this century' Richard J Evans, Guardian 'Monumental ... this is a major contribution to one of the most controversial aspects of the Second World War ... full of new detail and perspectives ... hugely impressive' James Holland, Literary Review 'This tremendous book does what the war it describes signally failed to do. With a well-thought-out strategy and precision, it delivers maximum force on its objectives ... The result is a masterpiece of the historian's art' The Times 'It is unlikely that a work of this scale, scope and merit will be surpassed' Times Higher Education 'What distinguishes Mr Overy's account of the bombing war from lesser efforts is the wealth of narrative detail and analytical rigour that he brings to bear' Economist 'Excellent ... Overy is never less than an erudite and clear-eyed guide whose research is impeccable and whose conclusions appear sensible and convincing even when they run against the established trends' Financial Times 'Hard to surpass. If you want to know how bombing worked, what it did and what it meant, this is the book to read' Times Literary Supplement About the author: Richard Overy is the author of a series of remarkable books on the Second World War and the wider disasters of the twentieth century. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia won both the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize. He is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Penguin publishes 1939: Countdown to War, The Morbid Age, Russia's War, Interrogations, The Battle of Britain and The Dictators. He lives in London.

Book Bombs Away

    Book Details:
  • Author : John R. Bruning
  • Publisher : Quarto Publishing Group USA
  • Release : 2011-05-22
  • ISBN : 1610602595
  • Pages : 299 pages

Download or read book Bombs Away written by John R. Bruning and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2011-05-22 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bombs Away! covers strategic bombing in Europe during World War II, that is, all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature which took place between 1939 and 1945. In addition to American (U.S. Army Air Forces) and British (RAF Bomber Command) strategic aerial campaigns against Germany, this book covers German use of strategic bombing during the Nazi’s conquest of Europe: the Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa, and the V 1 and V 2, where the Luftwaffe targeted Warsaw and Rotterdam (known as the Rotterdam Blitz). In addition, the book covers the blitzes against London and the bombing of other British industrial and port cities, such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff, and Coventry bombed during the Battle of Britain. The twin Allied campaigns against Germany—the USAAF by day, the RAF by night—built up into massive bombing of German industrial areas, notably the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, Pforzheim, Mainz, Cologne, Bremen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Dortmund, Frankfurt, and the still controversial fire-bombing of Hamburg and Dresden. In addition to obvious targets like aircraft and tank manufacturers, ball bearing factories and plants that manufactured abrasives and grinding wheels were high priority targets. Petroleum refineries were a key target with USAAF aircraft based in North Africa and later Italy, bombing the massive refinery complexes in and around Ploesti, Romania, until August 1944 when the Soviet Red Army captured the area. Other missions included industrial targets in southern Germany like Regensburg and Schweinfurt. Missions to the Nazi capital, Berlin, started in 1940 and continued through March 1945. Throughout the war there were 314 air raids on Berlin. All of this is covered in detail with authoritative text and hundreds of archival photographs, many rare or never before published.

Book The Effects of Strategic Bombing on German Morale

Download or read book The Effects of Strategic Bombing on German Morale written by United States Strategic Bombing Survey and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Determination And Effectiveness Of Wwii Strategic Bombing Strategy

Download or read book Determination And Effectiveness Of Wwii Strategic Bombing Strategy written by Colonel T. Tracey Goetz and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the collapse of France in 1940, American (US) and British (UK) leadership became keenly aware that the continued security of their nations required the defeat of the Axis powers, particularly Germany. The Allies chose a strategy utilizing a combination of various military actions, most notably a combined bomber offensive (CBO). The CBO would be carried out through a combination of US daylight precision and UK night area bombing. The purpose of this paper is to show why the Allies chose this strategy and evaluate its success. To accomplish this task, the paper will first describe the events that brought about the conflict and the strategy. Crowl’s Questions are used as a framework to analyze the factors that influence strategy development and adoption and will illustrate why Allied leaders chose this path. This is followed by a detailed description of the campaign. The principles of war (mass, objective, offensive, maneuver, surprise, security, simplicity, unity of command, and economy of force) are accepted as proven methods for employing forces in combat and are used to evaluate the CBO’s effectiveness The paper closes with a summary of the findings and doctrinal implications. The paper will show the Allies adopted US daylight precision and UK night area bombing based on leadership’s belief that it could most effectively reduce Germany’s means of war and hasten its earliest possible defeat. The Allies successfully achieved this objective primarily through adherence to the principles of mass, objective, offensive, and maneuver.

Book Raiding the Reich

    Book Details:
  • Author : Roger A. Freeman
  • Publisher : Arms & Armour
  • Release : 1997
  • ISBN : 9781854093875
  • Pages : 160 pages

Download or read book Raiding the Reich written by Roger A. Freeman and published by Arms & Armour. This book was released on 1997 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War II was marked by the Allied forces' aerial bombardment of Nazi Germany. More than 50 years after the bombing campaign, much research has gone into supplying the who, when, where, and why of the subjects depicted in the pictures taken for the daily press and off the record. Breathtaking photos reveal the first operation of the Avro Manchester on February 24th and 25th, 1941, bombing a Hipper-class cruiser; the March 30th, 1941, introduction of the "blockbuster bomb"; squadrons preparing for the "Thousand Plan" rain on Bremen on June 25th, 1942; and, against regulations, on May 8th, 1945, the release of brightly colored flares in celebration of the war's ending; and over 250 more. An already fascinating subject has just become even more remarkable!

Book  Bomber  Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive  1939 1945

Download or read book Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive 1939 1945 written by Charles Messenger and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bogen beskriver de Allieredes strategiske bombeangreb på Nazityskland. "Bomber" Harris, luftmarskal Sir Arthur Harris, leder af Bomberkommandoen, RAF Bomber Command spillede en vigtig rolle i udformningen af de allieredes strategiske planlægning under 2. Verdenskrig som resulterede i de massive bombninger af tyske byer. Det betød voldsomme og omfattende ødelæggelser - og massemord på den tyske civilbefolkning. Harris blev en del kritiseret for for mange "overflødige" bombemissioner med unødvendige tab af fly og flybesætninger.

Book Bombing the European Axis Powers

Download or read book Bombing the European Axis Powers written by Richard G. Davis and published by www.Militarybookshop.CompanyUK. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bombing the European Axis Powers Dr. Richard G. Davis, currently a division chief for the US Army Center for Military History, provides a detailed chronological narrative of the Anglo-American strategic bomber offensive against Hitler's Germany, his European allies, and German-occupied territory. Davis also includes several in-depth discussions covering such topics as the evacuation of Sicily, Allied airpower and the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, and overall Anglo-American policy concerning city-area bombing. An accompanying web site contains a spreadsheet key and seven Excel worksheets that chronicle bombing data from 1939 through 1945. Originally published in 2006.

Book The Bombers and the Bombed

Download or read book The Bombers and the Bombed written by Richard Overy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.