Richard Overy: The Bombing War

In The Bombing War, Richard Overy gives the first full narrative account of the aerial devastation of the European continent during World War II. From Stalingrad to the ports of the French west coast, from Clydeside to Malta, bombing was experienced by millions of ordinary Europeans. Why the bombing was undertaken and how the bombed societies survived are the two key questions answered in this remarkable book. Before 1939 there were exaggerated ideas about what a bombing war could achieve, with Europeans prepared for a nightmarish and immediate war of obliteration. Bombing was supposed to shorten wars by destroying industry and paralyzing the enemy will. These expectations proved false. Bombing was a long drawn out affair, failed to undermine morale and imposed only limited economic damage. Yet the more bombing failed to deliver the expected knockout blow, the more effort went in to attacking cities and their civilian populations, eroding any legal or moral constraints that had operated at first for the German, British and American air forces. Once the campaigns had started, the momentum for escalation became irreversible, with terrible consequences. The assault of the home front contributed little directly to the outcome of the war but it did distort the strategy of both sides by creating a new sphere for military combat which absorbed huge resources. It was this military dimension of the bombing war that really affected how Britain or Germany or the United States won or lost by 1945. The Bombing War brings together strategy, politics, technology, combat and social policy to understand the real experience of both bombing and being bombed. It strips away the many post-war myths and shows how quickly bombing came to be taken for granted on all sides and the established rules of war, even for liberal democracies, replaced by a moral expediency. 'We have got to kill a lot of Boche before we win this war.' 'Bomber' Harris, 1942