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Essay: Unravelling the Impact of Strategic Bombing: Exploring America's Military Operations in Europe During WW2

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  • Published: 25 February 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
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  • Words: 3,251 (approx)
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  • Tags: World War II

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Essay Question 1:  Explain the nature of American improvement in the conduct of military operations in Europe.

At the beginning of the second World War, America was somewhat of a fledgling military power.  America had plenty of industrial might but that industry was being used to improve infrastructure and enhance the everyday lives of Americans who were still recovering from the Great Depression and wanted nothing to do with another Great War.  Tactics were weak and being executed by inexperienced troops going into battle against tested Soldiers who had a far greater appreciation for the mistakes of war.  Military Technology also greatly improved as the war went on and Allied researchers found new ways to either defend assets, enhance the effectiveness of troops and equipment, or even build bombs that could bring entire nations to their knees.  These breakthroughs in military might allowed America to eventually become a great military power and even emerge from the conflicts as a world superpower.  

Experience is possibly the greatest of teachers.  American troops had to learn the hard way that the tactics of previous wars would no longer work.  The first such lessons happened very early in the war in places like Pearl Harbor and Dieppe, but the Americans did have the advantage that they did not enter the war until very late and commanders had learned a great deal from the failures of other leaders earlier in the war.  They didn’t make the mistake of preparing for trench warfare the way the French had for example.  Shipping losses at the beginning of the war were staggering but adopting the convoy system later in the war helped to deal with the U-boat threat effectively.  They underestimated the Japanese at the beginning of the war, believing they were subhuman, which only resulted in the greatest initial conquest in history during the first six months of Japan’s invasion of Asia and the Pacific.  They also had to learn from failures at Anzio and Market Garden in Europe.  But they did learn and later in the war, Patton was effectively able to push all the way into Germany with brilliant maneuver and exploitation tactics that seized the initiative and generally kept the Germans from effectively responding until it was too late.  

The attack on Pearl Harbor was said to have awakened a sleeping giant (Cook, 83).  Emerging from the Great Depression, the American economy was in tatters.  The new deal had mixed results and so America was seen to the world as a threat but not as the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen.  During the course of the war, 17 million new industrial jobs were created and productivity rose by a staggering 96 percent (Herman, 121).  The turnaround in the economy was so great that consumer goods actually rose despite rationing, wages rose dramatically, employment rates were full, and logistical procedures extended far beyond previous positions.  (Herman, 121).  Roosevelt took a very different approach to the wartime economies in Germany and socialist countries.  He brought in business leaders and asked them to help him run government commissions so that they had a way to influence decisions and most importantly make profits.  He even learned from the excess war taxes of WW1 that stifled growth and innovation.  By keeping those taxes reasonable, it allowed the business economy of WW2 to flourish even more.  This capitalist version of America at war created a new incentive to produce and the result was the greatest wartime economy in the history of mankind (Herman 114).

There were so many technological improvements throughout the war that it would not be appropriate for me to try and explain all of them in this format.  American technology and tactics improved in every phase of wartime operations.  They discovered that artillery fire was more effective if you had an observer on the most forward position calling on a radio back to the crew and adjusting fire based on where they saw the rounds impact and telling them when to mass fires.  They were able to create and improve existing radar and sonar technologies that helped them to find enemy fleets and attack in many ways with impunity.  They discovered the impact that weapons of mass destruction can have on war by dropping fire bombs with long-range bombers on Tokyo, which was made of wood and paper at the time, and then later by dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Searl 103-133).  The idea of fire and maneuver under machine gun fire emerged in infantry platoons.  Aircraft were able to launch attacks effectively from the sea with the development of aircraft carriers.  The Americans started to use coordinated attacks with aircraft bombing from above, artillery softening a target, naval bombings, airborne troops, and then tanks moving in swiftly followed by light infantry carried in vehicles with dazzling effects on enemy troops who were not prepared for such complicated tactics (Daley 64-69).  

All of these factors together, combined for a fledgling country to emerge as a great industrial giant capable of dictating the way the war would go by creating an assembly line that her enemies simply could not match.  The Japanese knew even before the attack on Pearl Harbor that America was a grave threat and had to be dealt with early before she was allowed to enter the war at a time and a place of her own choosing.  They failed to realize just how strong the economy would grow once the government really started to ramp up the military’s mobilization.  Once in the war, new tactics and technology born from a need to learn from failures pushed the Americans to innovate and develop new ways to both prevent the loss of life on a previously unprecedented scale but also to find new ways to engage the enemy and inflict maximum damage to end the war in a favorable conclusion.

Essay Question 2: Discuss the impact and importance strategic bombing campaigns had on Germany and Japan's ability to wage war (You may discuss either the Axis bombing campaign against the Allies or the Allies bombing campaigns against the Axis).

As we discussed in my previous essay, industry was king during World War 2.  This was just as true in Germany and Japan as it was in America.  Right from the start of the war, the German Luftwaffe bombed indiscriminately during the infamous blitzkrieg attack into Poland.  Strategic bombing really was designed to have three effects.  Destroy military targets, reduce production capability of the enemy, and to reduce morale or even encourage surrender in the face of staggering civilian casualties.  The effectiveness of strategic bombing was heavily debated throughout the war and even after it but it is largely accepted that the bombing raids did have a large effect on enemy industrial capacity and obviously the Atomic bombs on Japan induced an early surrender and vindication of brutal tactics.

During the early part of the war, the Allies restricted their bombing campaigns to mostly military targets of opportunity even though the Germans had made a deliberate policy of indiscriminate bombing.  America, who was still neutral at the time, made a desperate plea to governments on both sides to restrict bombing to military only targets and that policy was agreed to on all sides (Biddle, 91).  Of course, this was destined never to last.  As the war waged on and losses on both sides mounted tactics changed and permission was granted to target civilian industrial targets in order to stifle oil and industrial resources as well as demoralize the civilian population.  By the end of the war, it was actually America who committed to the fire bombings which would result in the single greatest wartime loss of human lives in a single day in the history of mankind (Biddle, 103).  The war in the Pacific would go on to be won by the Americans in fitting fashion, by dropping two atomic bombs and leaving the Japanese government the choice to either surrender or face absolute destruction at the hands of American airpower and the worst weapons ever known.  

Prior to the invasion of France countries on both sides held back for fear of unnecessary civilian casualties and provoking the other side.  On 16 March 1940 the Germans attacked the British fleet yard at Scapa Flow.  The British then counter-attacked, hitting a hospital, and it escalated on both sides from there.  By May, the Germans were bombing all over France and civilian casualties were already starting to mount.  Restrictions were essentially lifted after the German bombing of Rotterdam in an effort to force the Dutch to capitulate and surrender.  After this bombing, the Royal Air Force Commanders were authorized to start attacking oil and industrial targets and any target that was thought to be able to aid in the German war effort even if it might result in civilian casualties.  

As the war waged on, there was a raging debate on where limited resources should be invested.  Some people wanted to invest more in the Navy or the Army at the expense of the air force but Professor Frederick Lindermann was able to convince the government that strategic and area bombing would be the most effective way for the British to reduce morale and reduce production capabilities of the Germans (Biddle, 144).  On 14 February 1942, a general directive was issued to the Bomber command that bombing would shift again to civilian and industrial workers, essentially without restrictions.  These gradual shifts from military targets to more industrial and civilian targets marked a deliberate strategy that was terrifyingly brutal but also one of the most effective means of slowing down the German War Machine.  Following these raids, steel production was dropped by more than 200,000 tons, industrial workers were displaced with crushing efficiency, and many of the German Army’s most productive facilities were set back by months (Tooze, 158).  

Now enters America into the war and the United States Air Force with the new B-17 Bombers, known as flying fortresses, and immediately changed tactics with regards to strategic bombings.  They would now attack during the day and in far greater numbers and were willing to take on the Luftwaffe head on.  They also began to firebomb major cities such as the successful attack on Hamburg in July of 1943 which resulted in more than 50,000 civilians killed and the attack on Dresden which is estimated to have inflicted another 25,000.  Perhaps the worst of the fire bombings were in Tokyo though.  Operation Meetinghouse, conducted toward the end of the war is widely regarded as the single most destructive bombing raid in human history and resulted in more than 100,000 civilian deaths and displaced over a million people.  These types of raids have been widely criticized after the war but it is hard to deny that they were fantastically effective in what they were designed to do which is to demoralize the enemy, destroy infrastructure and encourage surrender.  

Strategic bombing was a huge part of the overall strategy of the allies and it is widely believed that the Japanese campaign may have gone on for months or even years longer at the expense of millions of more lives had the Americans not been willing to drop the Atomic bombs.  It is hard to say exactly what kind of impact the bombings had on casualties in Germany but if you look at the staggering loss of production capability it is safe to say that the overall bombing strategy had devastating consequences for civilians but they were effective at ending the war earlier and when viewed in the right context it is easy to summarize that they may have even prevented the deaths of millions of people.  The governments on all sides understood the stakes involved in this sort of warfare and were prepared to adopt the brutal tactics necessary to win such a conflict.  It is difficult to contextualize this sort of decision making from the perspective of a someone who has never faced that sort of conflict but the very identity and culture of entire nations were at stake and so the tactics were bound to escalate as the situation on both sides grew more and more desperate.  Not only did the raids end up being justified and vindicated with the surrender of Japan, looking through history it is difficult to see another option and these types of campaigns were an integral part of the overall strategy necessary to win the most savagely violent conflict in the history of the world.  

What was the turning point of the war? Is it possible to pick one event and say, "This was the decisive moment?" To come to any decision a judgment about what would have happened if things had been different (counterfactual history).

According to United States military doctrine, a decisive moment is a moment in which once I have decided this moment in my favor the overall battle is won despite what else might be happening.  To put this another way, a key terrain is something that is important to a battle but decisive terrain is something that the battle hinges on and victory or defeat will immediately be decided upon.  People who love history and are especially fascinated with the twists and turns of this war will disagree entirely on which moment was decisive and which matters the most.  Many people will choose Pearl Harbor as the moment in which the war became a true world war and the Americans were destined to overthrow the enemy.  I even saw one article in my research that suggested that Hitler’s massive gamble in the Ardenne forest was an early turning point because the only reason he succeeded was massive incompetence on the part of the Allies.  I tend to believe in a more literal turning point, however, and so I chose the battle of Stalingrad.  Had the Germans won at Stalingrad, it is likely Russia would have been forced to surrender and the Germans could have focused their efforts back in the west.  Instead, after that defeat, the war was never the same and they faced steady retreat all the way back to Berlin from that point forward (Rees, 1).

The battle of Stalingrad lasted five months, one week and three days.  It was one of the bloodiest and most violent battles of the entire campaign and vital to both sides.  Russia knew that if they lost Stalingrad, they would likely lose the war and Germany knew that if they could crush the Russian Army here they likely could turn their attention back west where they desperately needed to face the invasion of France.  Not only did the Germans need to end the threat on their eastern front, they needed the oil fields and resources that the Russians held.  Prior to operation Barbosa, the Germans felt overconfident and expanded their objectives again and again which was a huge mistake and possibly cost them the war.  Russia, on the other hand, understood very clearly the desperation of the battle of Stalingrad and so ordered every able-bodied person capable of holding a rifle to go to the defense of the city and help defend against the attack (Sandlin, 21).  The desperation of the Russians is reflected nowhere more clearly than in the staggering casualties they absorbed during the campaign.  The Red Army launched four major assaults prior to the Germans even entering the city just to slow down the German march because they knew that winter was an ally.  It worked but at the cost of more than 200,000 lives during these offensives and more than 1 million Russian lives lost during the actual battle for Stalingrad (Sandlin, 23)  

As the German Army advanced toward the city, the Luftwaffe launched a savage campaign across the city.  Stalin refused to evacuate civilians from the city and so it is estimated that as many as 300,000 civilians died during the bombing and ensuing siege of the city.  The Soviets recruited young females to from anti-aircraft regiments, they used students to attack tank divisions, they had workers form militias who did not even have rifles but were sent into battle anyways such was the desperation of the moment.  The initial defense failed and the front lines were pushed back all the way to the Vulga river and at this point essentially the battle degraded to house to house urban fighting (Bell, 107).  The initial blitz style attacks almost worked but the Russians were able to bring in reinforcements from across the Vulga and counterattacked at critical positions.  The railway station considered a primary tactical position, changed hands 14 times in six hours (Alexander, 562).  

The bravery and ferocity of the Red Army during this campaign has been rarely matched in history.  In one part of the city, a young Sergeant by the name of Yakov Pavlov earned the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for holding his position against overwhelming odds for more than two months.  A famous sniper by the name of Vasily Zaytsev was given credit for 225 confirmed kills during the battle (Bell, 154-55).  It was moments of bravery such as this that allowed the Russians to stop the Germans in their tracks and along with help from artillery across the Vulga river were able to start to push the invaders back.  The Russians not only had to slow the Germans but they had to hold the city against the most effective war machine in history for several months with little supplies and no relief in sight until they could get enough reinforcements, organize a counterattack force and winter could begin to set in.  

Finally, the Russians were able to get better organized and decided that a desperate counterattack was necessary before the Germans could push any further.  They launched a two-pronged attack, directly targeting the weaker armies on the flanks made up of mostly Italian and Hungarian Armies who were not as well equipped, trained, and did not have the equipment to successfully repel a tank attack.  This counterattack quickly crumbled the flanks of the German Army and surrounded the infamous 6th Army who would later be forced to surrender after the rest of the German army failed to break through to them and the Luftwaffe failed to properly supply them by air.  On Jan 7, 1943, the Russians sent terms of surrender to the Germans who were now completely cut off and could only receive sporadic supplies by air.  It wouldn’t be until the end of January before the Russians would finally break into the three German camps and their HQ’s which essentially forced surrender.

This moment of forced capitulation on the part of the Germans was, in my opinion, the true turning point of the war.  The German war machine would fail to march forward again in the war and from that moment were in a state of forced retreat on multiple fronts and even though it would take nearly another two years to truly end the war, it changed the mindset of everyone involved.  Germany was now on the defensive instead of attacking.  The Russians in the east and the British and Americans in the west had seized initiative and now it would be a long march home for the German Army.  The war was far from over and the Germans would still have successes and the allies still found plenty of failures but it was this moment where I feel the Germans truly lost the war.  Hitler was a gambler and those gambles paid off in spectacular ways during the early portion of the wars but it also led to sensational defeat at Stalingrad and ultimately cost him the war.  

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