| Targeting of the Refugees |
The expulsions and genocide carried out by the communists put thousands upon thousands of
homeless, wandering refugees on the roads in harm's way to fulfill Stalin's objective to "modestly
reduce the German population" and the Allies were more than eager to assist him. These innocent
non-combatants, who already suffered from appalling rape, robbery, drowning and enslavement now
became targets for bombs as well.
During the first six months of 1944, out of each 1,000 RAF bomber crews who had flown missions
during that period, 712 were reported killed or missing and 175 were wounded, an astounding 89
percent casualty rate. British Chief of the Air Staff Charles Portal was promoted to marshal of the
RAF in June of that year. Even more zealous than Harris, and although much of Germany was in
ruins already, Portal strongly argued for using his hugely increased bomber force to not only continue
to carry out its murderous precision bombing, but to even more indiscriminately "area bomb" cities
into total and complete oblivion, confident that this would lead to "victory" within six months.
In February, 1945, Portal was present at the Yalta Conference which laid the blueprint for the deaths
and relocation of millions of German civilians in the east. Even in January 1945, when German
defeat was clearly immanent, Harris and Portal further advocated even more destruction being visited
upon Leipzig, Magdeburg, Chemnitz, Dresden, Breslau, Posen, Halle, Erfurt, Gotha, Weimar,
Eisenach, and the rest of Berlin, in other words, all points refugees were flocking to.
Part of the impetus of the British plan named "Operation Thunderclap" was to target the sorry lot of
frantic refugees fleeing from the Red Army, millions of terrified people who had already suffered
immensely. Thunderclap, in the words of a British bombing operations directorate in January 1945,
promised to adhere to "the basic principle of true morale bombing", which was "to provoke a state of
terror by air attack". Bomber Command was ordered to attack the anticipated destinations in order
to, in their own words, "cause confusion in the evacuation from the east," referring not to retreating
troops, but to these civilian refugees (only secondarily, to "hamper the movements of troops from the
west"). When ordering the bombing of Chemnitz following the destruction of Dresden, the Allied
commander stated the motive to his pilots: "The reason you are going there tonight is to finish off the
refugees who managed to escape Dresden." Women, children and old folks, human beings, were
now to be shot at and incinerated under the approved guidelines both the British and Americans had
set in place and implemented to eliminate the future "refugee problem" for their Soviet allies.
The Associated Press finally admitted that "the Allied air commanders have made the long-awaited
decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centers." General Carl
Spaatz, U.S. Strategic Air Force commander in Europe, concocted Operation "Clarion" in February
1945, targeting smaller towns "to spread the impact on the population." Although he was urged not to
by other figures of the Eighth Air Force in Europe, Spaatz got his way.
By February 3, 1945, there was no surprise when Berlin was attacked again in bombing orchestrated
by Spaatz, this time killing another 25,000 people, including thousands more undocumented refugees.
City after city was destroyed after Germany's doom was obvious, and under "Operation Clarion"
smaller towns and cities were incinerated under the flimsiest of pretexts. Nürnberg was attacked
because it was an "ideological" center, and likewise, Bayreuth and other small, ancient cities.
"We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You
either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they
can't just go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past." Roosevelt
homeless, wandering refugees on the roads in harm's way to fulfill Stalin's objective to "modestly
reduce the German population" and the Allies were more than eager to assist him. These innocent
non-combatants, who already suffered from appalling rape, robbery, drowning and enslavement now
became targets for bombs as well.
During the first six months of 1944, out of each 1,000 RAF bomber crews who had flown missions
during that period, 712 were reported killed or missing and 175 were wounded, an astounding 89
percent casualty rate. British Chief of the Air Staff Charles Portal was promoted to marshal of the
RAF in June of that year. Even more zealous than Harris, and although much of Germany was in
ruins already, Portal strongly argued for using his hugely increased bomber force to not only continue
to carry out its murderous precision bombing, but to even more indiscriminately "area bomb" cities
into total and complete oblivion, confident that this would lead to "victory" within six months.
In February, 1945, Portal was present at the Yalta Conference which laid the blueprint for the deaths
and relocation of millions of German civilians in the east. Even in January 1945, when German
defeat was clearly immanent, Harris and Portal further advocated even more destruction being visited
upon Leipzig, Magdeburg, Chemnitz, Dresden, Breslau, Posen, Halle, Erfurt, Gotha, Weimar,
Eisenach, and the rest of Berlin, in other words, all points refugees were flocking to.
Part of the impetus of the British plan named "Operation Thunderclap" was to target the sorry lot of
frantic refugees fleeing from the Red Army, millions of terrified people who had already suffered
immensely. Thunderclap, in the words of a British bombing operations directorate in January 1945,
promised to adhere to "the basic principle of true morale bombing", which was "to provoke a state of
terror by air attack". Bomber Command was ordered to attack the anticipated destinations in order
to, in their own words, "cause confusion in the evacuation from the east," referring not to retreating
troops, but to these civilian refugees (only secondarily, to "hamper the movements of troops from the
west"). When ordering the bombing of Chemnitz following the destruction of Dresden, the Allied
commander stated the motive to his pilots: "The reason you are going there tonight is to finish off the
refugees who managed to escape Dresden." Women, children and old folks, human beings, were
now to be shot at and incinerated under the approved guidelines both the British and Americans had
set in place and implemented to eliminate the future "refugee problem" for their Soviet allies.
The Associated Press finally admitted that "the Allied air commanders have made the long-awaited
decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centers." General Carl
Spaatz, U.S. Strategic Air Force commander in Europe, concocted Operation "Clarion" in February
1945, targeting smaller towns "to spread the impact on the population." Although he was urged not to
by other figures of the Eighth Air Force in Europe, Spaatz got his way.
By February 3, 1945, there was no surprise when Berlin was attacked again in bombing orchestrated
by Spaatz, this time killing another 25,000 people, including thousands more undocumented refugees.
City after city was destroyed after Germany's doom was obvious, and under "Operation Clarion"
smaller towns and cities were incinerated under the flimsiest of pretexts. Nürnberg was attacked
because it was an "ideological" center, and likewise, Bayreuth and other small, ancient cities.
"We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You
either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they
can't just go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past." Roosevelt
| Hell is big enough for more than one man |
"You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength
of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the
hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest." Winston Churchill
Centuries old castles, cathedrals and medieval villages were at this late stage needlessly destroyed.
The birth houses of Bach, Durer and Goethe (above left), Martin Luther landmarks, Leipzig's ancient
book district, libraries and universities were all targets. Towns having little or nothing to do with the
war effort and with no military significance were needlessly obliterated at this point in devastating
attacks on civilian populations. The most intense bombing occurred between January and May of
1945 when German cities were virtually without defense and bombed "round the clock".
The mounting devastation of European heritage had already been raised in vain in British parliament
by the Bishop of Chichester on February 9, 1944. The Bishop begged for a more humane approach:
"In the fifth year of the war it must be apparent to any but the most complacent and reckless how far
the destruction of European culture has already gone. We ought to think once, twice and three times
before destroying the rest." His words fell on deaf ears and he was ruthlessly vilified.
There were abysmal British losses from the time Arthur Harris took charge of the expanded bombing
operations until the end of war, yet Harris only allowed 26 per cent of Bomber Command's attacks to
be directed against Germany's remaining oil facilities between January and May of 1945, while he
fanatically continued to concentrate his resources on civilian area bombing, a policy which not only
murdered thousands more civilians unnecessarily, but killed hundreds of his own men as well.
In March of 1945, after the dirty deeds were done and hundreds of German cities and towns lay in
ruins, Churchill, ever the politician, "distanced himself" from the homicidal bombing campaign after
Dresden's destruction resulted at long last in some unfavorable publicity. He wrote that "the
destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied Bombing". Even so,
with the German military/industrial complexes already in ruins, the British and Americans compiled
new "hit lists" which included wanton civilian attacks on mainly small, rural towns that had not yet
been assaulted and whose populations were praying for peace.
In the vicinity of the great castle of Mad King Ludwig, lies Ellingen, a small town in Bavaria which
had 1,500 inhabitants, most of them farmers. Ellingen had nothing of military value to attack and was
totally unprepared on February 23, 1945 when 25 American bombers dumped 285 high explosive
bombs on the hamlet in a surprise attack which left 120 bomb craters and killed the town's farm
animals along with 98 villagers.
U.S. General Frederick Anderson explained that these late stage terror bombings were NOT carried
out to shorten the war but rather to teach the Germans a lesson: "if Germany was struck all over it
will be passed on, from father to son, thence to grandson, as a deterrent for the initiation of future
wars". This "noble" sentiment can no longer excuse the fact that at the dismal end of war, countless
thousands of innocent civilians were needlessly roasted alive and forced to watch their children die.
Allied bombing destroyed 3.5 million homes, leaving more than 20 million Germans homeless. It
destroyed 2000 medieval houses in Frankfurt, 1000 in Hildesheim, 1000 in Nuremburg, 2000 in
Braunschweig and thousands of others elsewhere. Only three medieval German cities, Bamberg,
Heidelberg and Göttingen, remained for the most part, intact. It wiped out such architectural gems as
the Baroque center and Archbishop's Residenz in Wurzburg, the Residenz in Munich, the Hanseatic
cities of Lubeck and Bremen, all of Dresden, the Prussian royal palaces at Potsdam and countless
others. Most major German town and cities suffered total destruction to their historic inner city areas
of at least 90%: Augsburg, Aachen, Cologne, Leipzig, Dortmund, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Hamburg,
Kassel, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Nürnberg, Worms, and many, many more. The most mind-boggling
fact is that most of the destruction occurred in the months of February and March 1945, just weeks
before the German surrender when German defenses were minimal or absent and the war was all but
over. Over 80 million incendiary sticks were dropped on German cities by war's end. The human
death count may never be known, but to this day continues, inexplicably and unforgivably, to be
intentionally lowered to an unbelievable and unrealistic level by whichever current formula is popular
among conformist social scientists and easy to digest by a public unwilling to give up their heroes.
of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the
hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest." Winston Churchill
Centuries old castles, cathedrals and medieval villages were at this late stage needlessly destroyed.
The birth houses of Bach, Durer and Goethe (above left), Martin Luther landmarks, Leipzig's ancient
book district, libraries and universities were all targets. Towns having little or nothing to do with the
war effort and with no military significance were needlessly obliterated at this point in devastating
attacks on civilian populations. The most intense bombing occurred between January and May of
1945 when German cities were virtually without defense and bombed "round the clock".
The mounting devastation of European heritage had already been raised in vain in British parliament
by the Bishop of Chichester on February 9, 1944. The Bishop begged for a more humane approach:
"In the fifth year of the war it must be apparent to any but the most complacent and reckless how far
the destruction of European culture has already gone. We ought to think once, twice and three times
before destroying the rest." His words fell on deaf ears and he was ruthlessly vilified.
There were abysmal British losses from the time Arthur Harris took charge of the expanded bombing
operations until the end of war, yet Harris only allowed 26 per cent of Bomber Command's attacks to
be directed against Germany's remaining oil facilities between January and May of 1945, while he
fanatically continued to concentrate his resources on civilian area bombing, a policy which not only
murdered thousands more civilians unnecessarily, but killed hundreds of his own men as well.
In March of 1945, after the dirty deeds were done and hundreds of German cities and towns lay in
ruins, Churchill, ever the politician, "distanced himself" from the homicidal bombing campaign after
Dresden's destruction resulted at long last in some unfavorable publicity. He wrote that "the
destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied Bombing". Even so,
with the German military/industrial complexes already in ruins, the British and Americans compiled
new "hit lists" which included wanton civilian attacks on mainly small, rural towns that had not yet
been assaulted and whose populations were praying for peace.
In the vicinity of the great castle of Mad King Ludwig, lies Ellingen, a small town in Bavaria which
had 1,500 inhabitants, most of them farmers. Ellingen had nothing of military value to attack and was
totally unprepared on February 23, 1945 when 25 American bombers dumped 285 high explosive
bombs on the hamlet in a surprise attack which left 120 bomb craters and killed the town's farm
animals along with 98 villagers.
U.S. General Frederick Anderson explained that these late stage terror bombings were NOT carried
out to shorten the war but rather to teach the Germans a lesson: "if Germany was struck all over it
will be passed on, from father to son, thence to grandson, as a deterrent for the initiation of future
wars". This "noble" sentiment can no longer excuse the fact that at the dismal end of war, countless
thousands of innocent civilians were needlessly roasted alive and forced to watch their children die.
Allied bombing destroyed 3.5 million homes, leaving more than 20 million Germans homeless. It
destroyed 2000 medieval houses in Frankfurt, 1000 in Hildesheim, 1000 in Nuremburg, 2000 in
Braunschweig and thousands of others elsewhere. Only three medieval German cities, Bamberg,
Heidelberg and Göttingen, remained for the most part, intact. It wiped out such architectural gems as
the Baroque center and Archbishop's Residenz in Wurzburg, the Residenz in Munich, the Hanseatic
cities of Lubeck and Bremen, all of Dresden, the Prussian royal palaces at Potsdam and countless
others. Most major German town and cities suffered total destruction to their historic inner city areas
of at least 90%: Augsburg, Aachen, Cologne, Leipzig, Dortmund, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Hamburg,
Kassel, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Nürnberg, Worms, and many, many more. The most mind-boggling
fact is that most of the destruction occurred in the months of February and March 1945, just weeks
before the German surrender when German defenses were minimal or absent and the war was all but
over. Over 80 million incendiary sticks were dropped on German cities by war's end. The human
death count may never be known, but to this day continues, inexplicably and unforgivably, to be
intentionally lowered to an unbelievable and unrealistic level by whichever current formula is popular
among conformist social scientists and easy to digest by a public unwilling to give up their heroes.
When people think of the Allied bombing of Germany, "Dresden" automatically springs to mind,
surely not Wesel, Nürnberg or Würzburg or the hundreds of other obliterated German towns and
cities. While people uselessly debate the death toll at Dresden, attention is diverted from the 45,000
to 50,000 civilians murdered in the bombing of Hamburg, or the 10,000 people intentionally burned
alive in Kassel, or the fact that 20% of Nordhausen's civilian population was killed in a mere fifteen
minutes attack or that one out of three Pforzheimers was murdered and thousands more hideously
injured from an unnecessary bombing based on nothing more that a rumor.
We were led to believe that a campaign which dropped environmentally catastrophic bombs with the
force of major earthquakes, bombs which actually changed weather patterns, exterminated whole
species of birds and insects and altered the shape of the map were all within the normal range of
warfare and implemented for the "greater good", carried out only in cases of sheer and utter necessity
to "shorten the war". We accepted the faulty premise that the carefully planned incineration of
thousands of innocent women and children was justified. We accepted the preposterous notion that
there was only one villain in this conflict, one supreme face of evil that absolved all others of any
wrongdoing. We were led in this direction by a relentless effort still being carried out to both conceal
activites prejudicial to the glowing image of our heroes and to excuse their own criminal behavior.
Until recently, nobody understood fully that the terror bombing of German civilians was not a
"friendly fire" mistake, or the result of a bomber missing its mark. We bought the fairy tale that
schools, churches, cathedrals and castles were hit only when "enemy soldiers were firing from them"
or because some small town mayor "refused to surrender".
Until the Internet leaked out uncensored, unfiltered information, most of the grim images and graphic
accounts of the horror which rained from the skies over Germany were hidden neatly away and free
from scrutiny, judgement or condemnation. Mortality figures from Allied bombing, kept top secret
for many years, now trickled out, as did photos, personal accounts and old newspaper clippings.
We were led to believe that the Allied bombings delivered on Germany were a legitimate response to
an equal number of bombings Germany was delivering on Britain, and the only images of wartime
bombings we were exposed to were those carried out by Germany, mainly of the Blitz. In reality,
Germany bombed Britain with a mere five percent of the tonnage that Britain slammed own on
Germany, and more British bombs fell on the city of Berlin alone than German bombs fell on Britain
during the entire war. The targeting of residential areas of Hamburg was a coldly calculated and
intentionally planned mass murder of civilians, and British and American bombers killed over a
hundred times as many civilians in that one event as did the German raid on the heavily defended,
major industrial center of Coventry, England, which resulted in the loss of around 400 civilian lives.
Initial RAF bombing of military targets was dangerously unsuccessful. Only one out of five bombs
reached within five miles of its intended target and nearly half of British bombers were being shot
down. Therefore, the British leadership was already coldly studying the idea of terror bombing city
centers instead. Contrary to public denials, in September 1941, deputy chief of the Air Staff Norman
Bottomley urged "saturation by incendiaries" to "break the morale of the population". His boss,
Charles Portal, told Winston Churchill in late 1941 that if Bomber Command were provided with a
force of 4,000 planes, huge damage could be inflicted on Germany, including the destruction of six
million homes and "civilian casualties estimated at 900,000 killed".
Already in 1941, Portal wrote: "We have caused death and injury to 93,000 civilians. The result was
achieved with a fraction of the bomb-load we hope to employ in 1943." By early 1942, there were
open suggestions that bombing be directed against German working-class houses, leaving factories
and military objectives alone. This policy was implemented in full in 1942 when, upon his taking over
the entire U.K. Bomber Command, Harris issued the following directive: "It has been decided that
the primary objective of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil
population and in particular, of industrial workers". Harris prepared a list of 60 German cities he
intended to destroy first.
“The aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of
civilised community life through-out Germany. It should be emphasised that the destruction of
houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented
scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and
intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy, they are not by-products
of attempts to hit factories." Arthur Harris
Upon its declaration of war against Germany, Britain immediately launched an offensive bombing
campaign: on the Kiel Canal, Sept. 3, 1939; On Sept. 4, Wilhelmshaven; on December 3, 1939,
Helgoland; On May 19-11, 1940, Mönchengladbach, all without provocation.
The first well-known cultural attack and destructive mass bombing of a historic city was the RAF
attack on Lübeck on Palm Sunday, March 28, 1942.This attack by over 200 heavy bombers was
ordered by Harris, not to destroy military targets in Germany, but as an experiment to test whether
bombing timber framed buildings could start an inferno large enough to be used as an easy aiming
point for later waves of bombers. In his words: "I wanted my crews to be well-blooded, as they say
in fox hunting, to have a taste of success for a change." It destroyed 80% of its timber framed core.
As early as 1942, 45,732 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany by the RAF, and even at that
early stage, only 4% of them were aimed at industrial targets or ports! The rest were squarely aimed
at city centers and civilians, not because their weapons were "inaccurate" or "unsophisticated" but
because it was planned. Allied bombing would be killing thousands of German civilians a day by the
later stages of the war because of this homicidal, morally corrupt and largely unsuccessful policy.
surely not Wesel, Nürnberg or Würzburg or the hundreds of other obliterated German towns and
cities. While people uselessly debate the death toll at Dresden, attention is diverted from the 45,000
to 50,000 civilians murdered in the bombing of Hamburg, or the 10,000 people intentionally burned
alive in Kassel, or the fact that 20% of Nordhausen's civilian population was killed in a mere fifteen
minutes attack or that one out of three Pforzheimers was murdered and thousands more hideously
injured from an unnecessary bombing based on nothing more that a rumor.
We were led to believe that a campaign which dropped environmentally catastrophic bombs with the
force of major earthquakes, bombs which actually changed weather patterns, exterminated whole
species of birds and insects and altered the shape of the map were all within the normal range of
warfare and implemented for the "greater good", carried out only in cases of sheer and utter necessity
to "shorten the war". We accepted the faulty premise that the carefully planned incineration of
thousands of innocent women and children was justified. We accepted the preposterous notion that
there was only one villain in this conflict, one supreme face of evil that absolved all others of any
wrongdoing. We were led in this direction by a relentless effort still being carried out to both conceal
activites prejudicial to the glowing image of our heroes and to excuse their own criminal behavior.
Until recently, nobody understood fully that the terror bombing of German civilians was not a
"friendly fire" mistake, or the result of a bomber missing its mark. We bought the fairy tale that
schools, churches, cathedrals and castles were hit only when "enemy soldiers were firing from them"
or because some small town mayor "refused to surrender".
Until the Internet leaked out uncensored, unfiltered information, most of the grim images and graphic
accounts of the horror which rained from the skies over Germany were hidden neatly away and free
from scrutiny, judgement or condemnation. Mortality figures from Allied bombing, kept top secret
for many years, now trickled out, as did photos, personal accounts and old newspaper clippings.
We were led to believe that the Allied bombings delivered on Germany were a legitimate response to
an equal number of bombings Germany was delivering on Britain, and the only images of wartime
bombings we were exposed to were those carried out by Germany, mainly of the Blitz. In reality,
Germany bombed Britain with a mere five percent of the tonnage that Britain slammed own on
Germany, and more British bombs fell on the city of Berlin alone than German bombs fell on Britain
during the entire war. The targeting of residential areas of Hamburg was a coldly calculated and
intentionally planned mass murder of civilians, and British and American bombers killed over a
hundred times as many civilians in that one event as did the German raid on the heavily defended,
major industrial center of Coventry, England, which resulted in the loss of around 400 civilian lives.
Initial RAF bombing of military targets was dangerously unsuccessful. Only one out of five bombs
reached within five miles of its intended target and nearly half of British bombers were being shot
down. Therefore, the British leadership was already coldly studying the idea of terror bombing city
centers instead. Contrary to public denials, in September 1941, deputy chief of the Air Staff Norman
Bottomley urged "saturation by incendiaries" to "break the morale of the population". His boss,
Charles Portal, told Winston Churchill in late 1941 that if Bomber Command were provided with a
force of 4,000 planes, huge damage could be inflicted on Germany, including the destruction of six
million homes and "civilian casualties estimated at 900,000 killed".
Already in 1941, Portal wrote: "We have caused death and injury to 93,000 civilians. The result was
achieved with a fraction of the bomb-load we hope to employ in 1943." By early 1942, there were
open suggestions that bombing be directed against German working-class houses, leaving factories
and military objectives alone. This policy was implemented in full in 1942 when, upon his taking over
the entire U.K. Bomber Command, Harris issued the following directive: "It has been decided that
the primary objective of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil
population and in particular, of industrial workers". Harris prepared a list of 60 German cities he
intended to destroy first.
“The aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of
civilised community life through-out Germany. It should be emphasised that the destruction of
houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented
scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and
intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy, they are not by-products
of attempts to hit factories." Arthur Harris
Upon its declaration of war against Germany, Britain immediately launched an offensive bombing
campaign: on the Kiel Canal, Sept. 3, 1939; On Sept. 4, Wilhelmshaven; on December 3, 1939,
Helgoland; On May 19-11, 1940, Mönchengladbach, all without provocation.
The first well-known cultural attack and destructive mass bombing of a historic city was the RAF
attack on Lübeck on Palm Sunday, March 28, 1942.This attack by over 200 heavy bombers was
ordered by Harris, not to destroy military targets in Germany, but as an experiment to test whether
bombing timber framed buildings could start an inferno large enough to be used as an easy aiming
point for later waves of bombers. In his words: "I wanted my crews to be well-blooded, as they say
in fox hunting, to have a taste of success for a change." It destroyed 80% of its timber framed core.
As early as 1942, 45,732 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany by the RAF, and even at that
early stage, only 4% of them were aimed at industrial targets or ports! The rest were squarely aimed
at city centers and civilians, not because their weapons were "inaccurate" or "unsophisticated" but
because it was planned. Allied bombing would be killing thousands of German civilians a day by the
later stages of the war because of this homicidal, morally corrupt and largely unsuccessful policy.
"What we want to do is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche and
to terrify the Boche." Arthur Harris
U.S. Allied commanders were at first opposed to the RAF bombing policy, and when they began
bombing runs over Germany in 1943 it was mutually agreed that the U.S.A.A.F would carry out
daytime raids on military and industrial targets, and the RAF would conduct the nighttime 'area'
bombing of civilian population centers. Nonetheless, the USA joined the British and Canadians to
bomb Hamburg in "Operation Gomorrah" and in several later civilian bombings.
The destruction of Hamburg came on the night of July 27, 1943 and followed a smaller bombing
three days earlier. In this second attack, a mix of munitions was used which had a higher proportion
of incendiaries, including deadly phosphorus. It was here, not Dresden, that term Feuersturm or
firestorm was first used, and at least 45,000 to 55,000 civilians were intentionally murdered in an
agonizing manner in the well-crafted firestorm that corralled the population, leaving them no escape.
The heinous ten day long firebombing not only murdered thousands, it left a million people homeless
and the historic ancient city wholly obliterated. An astounding 30,000 of those killed in Hamburg
were women and children. 1.2 million refugees fled the city in the immediate aftermath, many of
them with mental and physical baggage and some with other baggage: one distraught mother was
found to be carrying her dead infant in her suitcase. The choreographed inferno circled the city and
spread inward, creating a swirling column of super-heated air which generated ferocious 150 mile per
hour tornado-like winds capable of snatching up small children and plucking babies from their
mother's arms. People were fried to the melting pavement or slowly choked by poison gases in
cellars. At the same time the US military denied to the American public that any terror bombing was
taking place, they were supplying the British with the napalm-like phosphorous to burn German
civilians alive. The chemical cannot be extinguished once ablaze, and these bombs sprayed their
contents on people in such a way that a horrible death was the inevitable outcome.
"We have always adhered firmly to the principle that we attack none but military objectives,"
Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air, in the Commons in October 1943.
With Hamburg, the world media, starting in London, turned the mass murder of German civilian
populations into an “acceptable” and “legitimate” method of war, and RAF bombing runs would
often be blithely referred to as "Hamburgisations" by their crews from then on. Aside from the
"normal" terror bombings, cities incinerated by these fiendishly crafted firestorms included Dresden,
Wuppertal, Hamburg, Remscheid, Kassel, Braunschweig, Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Darmstadt,
Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Ulm, Pforzheim, Mainz, Würzburg and Hildesheim. All suffered an immense
amount of civilian casulaties. 10,000 died in Kassel's firestorm. Darmstadt, a harmless classic center
of German culture, produced less than two-tenths of one percent of Germany's total war production,
yet, a minimum of ten percent of Darmstadt's population died as a result of its intentionally created
firestorm. Pforzheim lost one-third of its people. Wurzberg was 89% destroyed with 90,000 people
left homeless and 5,000 civilian deaths with women and children making up 81 percent of that figure.
From July 1944 to January 1945, a low average of 14,000 German civilians, not including countless
undocumented refugees, were killed from bombings every month in just the western German areas.
While the US helped destroy some German cities, only 6% of American bombs actually fell on their
city centers. At the peak of the bombing in 1945, the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped fully half of its
bombs on transportation targets; the figure for the RAF was only 13%. Their Bomber Command
killed three German civilians for every one killed by the U.S.
to terrify the Boche." Arthur Harris
U.S. Allied commanders were at first opposed to the RAF bombing policy, and when they began
bombing runs over Germany in 1943 it was mutually agreed that the U.S.A.A.F would carry out
daytime raids on military and industrial targets, and the RAF would conduct the nighttime 'area'
bombing of civilian population centers. Nonetheless, the USA joined the British and Canadians to
bomb Hamburg in "Operation Gomorrah" and in several later civilian bombings.
The destruction of Hamburg came on the night of July 27, 1943 and followed a smaller bombing
three days earlier. In this second attack, a mix of munitions was used which had a higher proportion
of incendiaries, including deadly phosphorus. It was here, not Dresden, that term Feuersturm or
firestorm was first used, and at least 45,000 to 55,000 civilians were intentionally murdered in an
agonizing manner in the well-crafted firestorm that corralled the population, leaving them no escape.
The heinous ten day long firebombing not only murdered thousands, it left a million people homeless
and the historic ancient city wholly obliterated. An astounding 30,000 of those killed in Hamburg
were women and children. 1.2 million refugees fled the city in the immediate aftermath, many of
them with mental and physical baggage and some with other baggage: one distraught mother was
found to be carrying her dead infant in her suitcase. The choreographed inferno circled the city and
spread inward, creating a swirling column of super-heated air which generated ferocious 150 mile per
hour tornado-like winds capable of snatching up small children and plucking babies from their
mother's arms. People were fried to the melting pavement or slowly choked by poison gases in
cellars. At the same time the US military denied to the American public that any terror bombing was
taking place, they were supplying the British with the napalm-like phosphorous to burn German
civilians alive. The chemical cannot be extinguished once ablaze, and these bombs sprayed their
contents on people in such a way that a horrible death was the inevitable outcome.
"We have always adhered firmly to the principle that we attack none but military objectives,"
Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air, in the Commons in October 1943.
With Hamburg, the world media, starting in London, turned the mass murder of German civilian
populations into an “acceptable” and “legitimate” method of war, and RAF bombing runs would
often be blithely referred to as "Hamburgisations" by their crews from then on. Aside from the
"normal" terror bombings, cities incinerated by these fiendishly crafted firestorms included Dresden,
Wuppertal, Hamburg, Remscheid, Kassel, Braunschweig, Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Darmstadt,
Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Ulm, Pforzheim, Mainz, Würzburg and Hildesheim. All suffered an immense
amount of civilian casulaties. 10,000 died in Kassel's firestorm. Darmstadt, a harmless classic center
of German culture, produced less than two-tenths of one percent of Germany's total war production,
yet, a minimum of ten percent of Darmstadt's population died as a result of its intentionally created
firestorm. Pforzheim lost one-third of its people. Wurzberg was 89% destroyed with 90,000 people
left homeless and 5,000 civilian deaths with women and children making up 81 percent of that figure.
From July 1944 to January 1945, a low average of 14,000 German civilians, not including countless
undocumented refugees, were killed from bombings every month in just the western German areas.
While the US helped destroy some German cities, only 6% of American bombs actually fell on their
city centers. At the peak of the bombing in 1945, the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped fully half of its
bombs on transportation targets; the figure for the RAF was only 13%. Their Bomber Command
killed three German civilians for every one killed by the U.S.
| Harris Portal |
Kiel Canal, Sept. 3, 1939
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Lübec 1942 Hamburg 1943