The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945
The air war over Europe in WWII is estimated to have killed 600,000 civilians. Some of these deaths were, in today’s terms, collateral damage from attacks on military or industrial targets. But many deaths were the result of deliberate terror bombings in an effort to destroy houses of workers and to demoralize the population. The question posed by British history professor Overy in this superb work is, Was it worth it? Surprisingly, he doesn’t spend much time on the morality of bombing, although his descriptions of the horrible suffering of civilian populations are certainly startling. Rather, he relies on a massive trove of primary sources from both Allied and Axis sources to assert that the various bombing campaigns were a waste of military resources. Despite claims of success by the military, aerial bombing was ridiculously inaccurate, and the casualty rate for air crews was very high. The attacks tended to unite rather than demoralize civilians. There is, of course, another side to this question, but Overy has presented a very strong case in support of his view. --Jay Freeman