The oil bombing campaign was only one of the successes of US and Britain’s strategic air campaign over Europe. I wish TG were here so he could explain it better, but I will try my best. In my argument I site the US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), authorized by President Franklin Roosevelt, which employed over a thousand analysts who began their work in November 1944. This produced 208 volumes of charts, tables, and analysis. Another lesser document was the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU) employed only a few dozen individuals, and did begin collecting data until after the war ended. Overall, these reports paint a detailed and favorable assessment of the bombing campaign.
Repeated with dozens of graphs and tables, it documents the collapse of the German economy under the weight of the bombing offensive. Germany’s transportation network of rail junctions, convoys, and marshalling yards were also hard hit by air attacks, prevent Germans from staging successful counterattacks and bleeding away German reinforcements. Absenteeism among factory workers due to the bombing exceeded 25 percent in some areas, and oil, steel, chemicals, explosives, rubber, and fertilizer production plummeted once the bombing campaign began in earnest in the summer of 1944. Due to the slow buildup of Allied air forces and their use in operations in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and the Battle of the Atlantic as well as preparations for Overlord, the actual tonnage dropped on Germany was relatively slight for much of the war: 72 percent of all bombs dropped on Germany fell after D day.
By the third quarter of l944, coping with the aftermath of the Allied air strikes tied down an estimated four and one-half million workers, about 20 percent of the non-farm labor force, in cleaning and rebuilding operations. Bombing had annihilated half of the sum total of all petroleum products by December 1944. In turn, reserves of aviation gasoline had plummeted by 90 percent of their availability from May 1944 when the Allied air campaign against aviation gasoline had formally begun. The assault on German rail transportation that had commenced in September 1944 had in the course of five months lessened the volume of railroad car loads by 75 percent.
The report also notes that Allied armies overrunning Germany and occupying factory districts did not cause these production drops. The Allies did not enter Germany until late February 1945, and by then the economy had already been destroyed from the air. The bombing campaign utilized only 7 percent of the total British war effort to achieve these gains, whereas the British army absorbed eight times the resources while also incurring heavier casualties.
Obliteration of a nation’s war making capacity was only part of the equation for the proponents of Allied bombing. The annihilation of the enemy’s will to make war and resist attackers of its air space and territory was of equal significance. The postwar United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) showed how a besieged population fared under relentless American and British bombing:
The Survey further supports the findings in Germany that no nation can long survive the free exploitation of air weapons over its home-land…… It is important to fully grasp the fact that enemy planes enjoying control of the sky over one’s head can be as disastrous to one’s country as its occupation by physical invasion. Herman Goering latter admitted that the war was over when American P-51s freely reigned over the skies of Berlin unopposed and undaunted.
“Axis and Allies stands not only as one of the most stupendous works of man, but also as one of the most beautiful of human creations. Indeed, it is at once so great and so simple that it seems to be almost a work of nature.”
[ This Message was edited by: TM Moses VII on 2002-04-19 18:09 ]
