S T R A T E G I C BOMBING I N

W O R L D W A R I1

AIR POWER had a mighty vindication in World War 11. But

it was Mitchell's conception of it-"anything that flies"-
rather than Douhet's that was vindicated. It was in tactical
employment that success was most spectacular and that the
air forces won the unqualified respect and admiration of the
older services. By contrast, the purely strategic successes,
however far-reaching in particular instances, were never
completely convincing to uncommitted observers. Against
Germany they came too late to have a clearly decisive effect;
against Japan they were imposed on an enemy already
prostrated by other forms of war. If airmen were like labora-
tory animals running a maze, they would seek to repeat
successes and to recoil from frustrations. They would now
be all in favor of tactical as against strategic uses of air power.
But being instead very human, and knowing also the power
of nuclear weapons, they have remained intensely loyal to !
their original strategic ideas.
The conditions of any future war in which nuclear weap-
ons are used will be critically different from those of World
War I1 in almost every significant respect. Nevertheless,
because the experience of World War I1 is often appealed
to as having "proved" this or that about air power, there is
value in summarizing that experience briefly and objectively.
It is, for all practical purposes, the only experience we have
with strategic bombing. Small wonder that it has influenced
importantly the ideas we still carry around on the subject,
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

especially with respect to the amount of destruction neces- the relevant facts of any importance are available. All one
sary to win a war by strategic bombing. has to do is read the appropriate publications carefully with
The Allied strategic bombing campaigns against Germany an open mind.
and Japan in World War I1 are, despite their complexity and
The Attack on the German War Economy
magnitude, among the most brilliantly illuminated military
campaigns of all time. The United States Strategic Bombing With respect to the German campaign, study of the survey
Survey (U.S.S.B.S.) carried out its survey of Allied bombing findings leads to three major conclusions: ( I ) our strategic
in Europe on the heels of the advancing Allied armies, in bombing brougnt the German war economy to the point of
the hope of applying the resulting lessons to the strategic collapse; (2) that result came very late in the war, too late
bombing of Japan. However, the victory over Japan fol- to develop its full potential effects on the ground and naval
lowed soon thereafter, and the Survey organization pro- campaigns, which were already proceeding to a decisive con-
ceeded at once to make a comparable study of the campaign clusion; and (3) given only the air power actually in Allied
against Japan. hands, but assuming better understanding of the capabilities
The resulting work comprises 208 separate published items of strategic bombing and especially a wiser choice of targets,
for the European war and 108 items for the Pacific war. The the positive results achieved by bombing could have come
much sooner than they did. Had they come sooner by six
Survey staff was in most fields marked by very high com-
months, their beneficial influence for shortening the war
petence and talent, and the manner in which the members
and saving Allied lives would have been unequivocal.
were selected provided about as good a guarantee against
Let us examine the first conclusion. The oft-repeated argu-
bias as could be found. There were also some complementary
ment, based on U.S.S.B.S. statistics, that German war produc-
studies carried on by other organizations or individuals,
tion in almost all categories increased drastically between the
some of which benefited from being under less pressure of
middle of 1942 and the middle of 1944, is beside the point,
time than was imposed on the authors of the Survey.' Thus,
because the scale of bombing which brought about the final
l The British work most nearly comparable to the U.S.S.B.S. is that significant results had barely begun by mid-1944. The weight
by the British Bombing Survey Unit (called during the war the RAF
Bombing Analysis Unit). However, the publications of that organization- --

most of them classified-have had only the most limited distribution within to targets within France, one must mention also the work of the French
the United States. The basic volume in the series is entitled The Strategic Operational Research Group.
Air War Against Germany, 1939-45. In America, there have been some The general, semi-officialhistories which might be studied in conjunction
distinctive publications (also originally classified) by an agency of the with the abovezited reports are, for the United States, W. F. Craven and
Air Force called the AAF Evaluation Board, which was rather more con- J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War 11, 7 vols., University of
cerned with tactical targets and operations, such as those incident to the Chicago Press, Chicago, 1948-1955; and for the British, Denis Richards
Normandy landing, than with strategic air operations. The British Bomb- and Hilary St. George Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, 3 vols., H. M.
ing Survey Unit tended to straddle both strategic and tactical operations. Stationery Office, London, 1953-1954. See also Burton H. Klein, Germany's
It was, unlike the other surveys mentioned, very largely directed by persons Economic Preparations For War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
who had made heavy commitments to operational decisions. With respect '959.
 ~
I
I
O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY

of Allied attack, which in 1942 averaged under 6,000 tons

S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

In an overlapping campaign they also effectively knocked out

monthly, rose in 1944 to an average of 131,000 tons monthly- the German transportation services, upon which everything
I a more than twenty fold increase. The greategt rate of in- else depended.
I crease occurred just prior to the Normandy invasion, which German oil-production facilities were recommended as a
itself absorbed in tactical operations for many months the top-priority target on March 5, 1944, and oficially designated
major part of our strategic-bombing capabilities. Along with as such in a directive of June 8, two days after the Normandy
I
this increase in tonnage of bombs dropped came a great im- landing. There had meanwhile been two days of attacks on
provement in operational techniques, especially in the use the industry during May, but the full-scale attack started at
of radio direction devices. And beginning only in February the end of June and continued until March 1945. There were
I 1944, large numbers of P-51 long-range fighters became avail- 555 separate attacks on 135 different targets, including every
able for escorting bomber sorties practically anywhere within synthetic-fuel plant and major refinery known to be in oper-
Germany. ation.
Also, until mid-1942 the German war economy contained The beginning of the onslaught started a precipitous drop
a large amount of slack. Contrary to general opinion, that in German oil production. From an average of 662,000 tons
economy was far from fully mobilized for war either in the per month, it went down to 422,000 tons in June, z60,ooo
kind of commodities produced or in the rate of production. tons in December, and 80,ooa tons--or 12 per cent of the pre-
The labor force was essentially on a single-shift basis and in- attack level-in March 1945. As for aviation and motor gas-
I cluded relatively few women. The great increases in German oline, the results were even better. Practically all German
war production over the next two years, despite our bomb- aviation gasoline was made by the hydrogenation process
ing, resulted mostly from the taking up of this slack. Even in synthetic-oil plants, and those plants were the first to be
so, judged by the standard of British industrial mobilization, hit. Aviation gasoline production declined from 170,000 tons
per month to 52,000 tons only one month after the oil bomb-
I the German economy never attained anything like its full
ing offensive began, and it had been eliminated completely
~ war potential.'
In any case, from our point of view it would not matter
by the following - March.

' The effect on Luf twaff e operations was tremendous. Ger-

I

whether or not production as a whole diminished if the

man gasoline stocks had been tight to begin with, and pro-
Germans had been denied even one truly indispensable war
duction losses meant immediate curtailment of consumption.
commodity, such as liquid fuel. In the final stages of the war,
Flight training was steadily shortened, and toward the end
that is just what happened. Allied bombers knocked out the
of the war pilots were sent into action who had had only
German industries producing liquid fuels and chemicals.
forty to forty-five hours in the air. Their inexperience made
2 See U.S.S.B.S., The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War
them easy marks for our highly-trained air crews. Germany's
Economy (Item #3 for European War), especially pp. 6-11.See also Klein,
0p.d. large reserve of military aircraft was grounded with empty
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N WORLD W A R I1

tanks. Only fighter missions against our bombers were per- over-all production. By late November and early December
mitted, and even those became few and ineffective. all munitions production had been severely affected by the
Effects on ground combat were somewhat slower. Use of failure to move critical materials.
gasoline was restricted first in motor transport, but in the Even as early as August 1944, the Germans could no longer
last stages of the war huge numbers of German tanks were supply coal to the steel plants of Lorraine and Luxembourg.
unable to reach the fighting areas, or were abandoned on the By February 1945, the Ruhr was just about completely iso-
battlefields, for lack of fuel. Before the end, wood or coal- lated. Such coal as was loaded was often confiscated by the
burning gas generators, such as had been only moderately railroads for locomotive fuel; even so, by March, locomotives
successful on buses and trucks, had been put on some fifty were standing idle for lack of coal in districts where some
tanks. traffic could otherwise have moved. On March 15, when al-
Chemicals were never singled out as a target, but since most the whole of the Allied army was still west of the Rhine,
most of the chemical industry was closely integrated with Speer reported to Hitler: "The German economy is heading
synthetic-oil production, attacks on the latter served to dam- for an inevitable collapse within four to eight weeks." At
age the former as well. When two plants (Leuna and Lud- that time over-all carloadings were 15 per cent of normal and
wigshafen) were shut down as a result of air attacks, Ger- moving toward zero.'
many lost 63 per cent of its synthetic-nitrogen production and It was the collapse of transportation which caused the Stra-
40 per cent of its synthetic-rubber production. Damage to tegic Bombing Survey to state in one of its most often-quoted
five additional oil plants brought the loss in synthetic nitro- passages: "Even if the final military victories that carried
gen to 91 per cent. Nitrogen is essential for all explosives the Allied armies across the Rhine and the Oder had not
and powder propellants. As early as August 1944, Albert taken place, armaments production would have come to a
Speer was reporting to Hitler that the attacks on chemicals virtual standstill by May; the German armies, completely
were threatening Germany's ability to carry on the war. Be- bereft of ammunition and of motive power, would almost
fore V-E Day the Germans were filling their artillery shells certainly have had to cease fighting by June or J ~ l y . " ~
with as much as 70 per cent inert rock salt.' But these results of the bombing of Germany came late.
German transportation, including the extensive canal net- On the credit side, the fact that our ground forces during
work as well as the railways, became a strategic target sys- the last year of the war had little enemy air opposition to con-
tem in March 1944, although heavy attacks did not start tend with, while our own planes were making things very
until September 1944. By the end of October, carloadings rough for the German armies, owed much to our strategic
were declining rapidly and showing immediate effects in
bombing, especially to our bombing of enemy air fields (al-
8U.S.S.B.S., Ordnance Industry Report (Item # I O I for European War),
p. 29; also Oil Division Final Report (Item # ~ o gfor European War), pp. U.S.S.B.S., The Eflects of Strategic Bombing on German Transporta-
40-47. Incidentally, the latter item is one of the most illuminating reports tion (Item #zoo for European War).
in the entire series. 6U.S.S.B.S.,Eflects on German War Economy, p. 14.
 ORIGINS OF AIR STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

ways considered good unloading spots for lanes coming Russians would make a separate peace. If, as is more likely,
home with unused bombs) and to the air battles that attended the Russians had gone on fighting, and if our bombing had
our bombing forays. Moreover, the shortage of materials, espe- guaranteed the success of Soviet ground forces, it would have
cially oil, which our bombing was imposing on the Germans, been their armies and not ours that would have "liberated"
did in fact hasten the final collapse of their armies. More western Europe, and that might very well have been there
important, the Germans in the last year of the war were now.
devoting at least a third of their total war resources to air The strategic bombing of Germany during World War I1
defense, resources which would otherwise have been avail- was almost totally a new experiment, in which much had
able to their armies. We must remember also that some of to be learned the hard way. We steadily tried to reach out
our attacks, like that on the German V-weapon program, after greater capabilities, especially in carrying capacity, depth
had important defensive results. of penetration, and accuracy of bombing; and we sought,
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the ultimate destruc- partly and inescapably through trial and error, to find good
tion of the German armies was practically assured from the target systems. In both respects we can now see many critical
time of the successful Allied break-out west of St. Lo late and perhaps unnecessary errors which delayed our success.
in July 1944, at which time the tangible battlefield results The U.S.A.A.F. paid dearly for the prewar conviction,
of our strategic bombing, apart from its important contribu- inherited from Douhet, that fighter escort was unnecessary
tion to suppressing enemy air activities, added up to very for bombers like the B-17, unhappily called the "Flying
little. By the time those results were making themselves felt Fortress." The disastrous second Schweinfurt raid of October
seriously, the Battle of the Bulge was a thing of the past and 10, 1943, in which the attacking squadrons lost 30 per cent
the Allied armies were well into Germany. of their aircraft, indicated that deep daylight penetrations
If prior to mid-1943 we had put into our strategic air force into Germany had to await the availability of large numbers
some of the resources used in building up a great army and of long-range fighters. Starting in early 1944, the P-51s played
invasion armada, as some argued we should have done, we a major part in destroying the German Air Force. Similarly,
would no doubt have got our strategic bombing results faster. the British paid heavily for their early conviction that night
However, that is not the same as saying that the war would bombing could be precise enough for specific industrial tar-
have ended sooner. The fact is that we did put into strategic gets. When that was disproved, they adopted in 1942 Chief of
bombing a colossal effort. We were also committed to an Bomber Command Sir Arthur Harris' compensating con-
invasion of France, and there were at the time few grounds viction that area bombing was the most promising method
for calling that a bad commitment. At the time we made the of aerial attack anyway, since the search for specific target
relevant decisions, our government feared, probably wrongly, systems was only a futile search for "panacea targets." Sir
that if we limited ourselves to an air and naval effort the Arthur, incidentally, had not lost that conviction even when
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R 11

he wrote his memoirs after the war's end; nor had some of tinuance of the bomber offensive; (b) destruction of the
the senior officers who had served under him.' German Air Force would provide the best short-term stra-
The basic strategy for the Combined Bomber Offensive tegic-bombing contribution to the planned invasion of the
was laid down in the Casablanca Conference of January Continent; and (c) the immediately preceding months, with
1943, where the relevant directive stated the primary objec- their brilliant victories at sea, had brought the submarine
tive of the strategic air offensive: "the progressive destruction menace under control and had shown, moreover, that the
and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and eco- destruction of submarine yards and bases along with the
nomic system, and the undermining of the morale of the other desired target systems was simply beyond the capabil-
German people to a point where their capacity for armed ities of existing bomber forces. The June 1943 directive thus
resistance is fatally weakened." The directive went on to name recognized the need for adjusting to limited capabilities by
five primary target systems in the following order: ( I ) sub- ordering concentration on a single specifically-designated
marine construction yards, (2) the aircraft industry, (3) target system. All other systems were made secondary, and
transportation, (4) the oil industry, ( 5 ) generalized targets individual force commanders were given minimum dis-
in the enemy war industry. In the absence of specific instruc- cretion with regard to choice among systems to be attacked.
tions to the contrary, air force commanders retained the In principle, the selection of the German Air Force as a
authority to alter the order of priority for individual raids target system, and especially of its fighter contingent, was
according to their own judgment. right. It placed first things first according to common sense
On June 10, 1943, a new and much more pointed directive as well as to the well-known Douhet dictum that command of
from the Combined Chiefs of Staff set down the "Point- the air must be won before it can be exploited. However, the
blank" target system, and created the so-called "Jockey" offensive against the German aircraft industry, which reached
Committee as an advisory body on targets; this Committee its greatest intensity in the period February-April 1944, was
carried out its function until it merged with the Combined a failure. Attacks upon airframe plants simply induced the
Strategic Targets Committee in September 1944. Under Germans to disperse their facilities, which proved relatively
"Pointblank," German fighter plane production and existing easy to do since the tools mainly used were fairly mobile.
strength were made unequivocally top-priority targets for the The temporary loss of production resulting from such move-
American bomber forces. The governing considerations were: ment of equipment was about all that could be chalked up to
(a) air dominance had to be established in the face of in- the credit of the attacks.
creasing German fighter strength, which threatened the con- The fact remains that front-line German fighter air
See Marshal of the R.A.F. Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive, Col- strength increased sharply during the Allied offensiveagainst
lins, London, 1947, especially pp. 75, 220-234. Sir Arthur's Senior Air Staff it. No doubt the increase was less than it would have been
Officer (or Chief of Staff), now Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundb~,has
espoused the same views in his numerous articles in British professional but for our bombing. The Aircraft Division of the U.S.S.B.S.
journals. estimated that some 18,000 aircraft of all types were denied
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

the German Air Force in the period between July 1943 and have made a better target system than airframes, because
December 1944.~That figure, based on the disparity between the engines were made in a much smaller number of fac-
planned and actual production, is ventured against an al- tories. But others pointed out that engine-manufacturing
leged total production for the same period of 53,000 air- plants were of much lower physical vulnerability than air-
craft-a quite improbable figure. The economists who pre- frame factories, especially to the light bombs (maximum 500
pared the over-all economic-effects report of u.s.S.B.S. were lbs.) we were then using.@
more cautious, offering the opinion that "it is possible that The marked and immediate success achieved against the
production would have been 15-20 per cent higher in the ab- oil-producing industry seemed to indicate that the enemy
sence of bombing."' air force was far more vulnerable through denial of liquid
In short, the attack on airframe production paid dividends fuel than through direct attack upon it. The great fuel-pro-
-any diminution of enemy strength is a dividend-but they ducing plants could not be dispersed, their essential produc-
were not in the category of "decisive." They did not bear out ing facilities were quite vulnerable to blast and incendiary
what had been promised for a concentrated offensive by air damage, and they were difficult to conceal. Yet only about
forces of the size we were operating in early 1944. Moreover, I per cent of the half-million tons of bombs dropped on Ger-
we do not know how effectively the German Air Force could many before May 1944 had been aimed at the oil industry.
have used those "lost" aircraft, in view of shortages in fuel This omission resulted from the belief that the major fuel-
and pilots. The moment we started our attacks upon oil producing plants lay beyond our range capabilities, from our
production in May 1944, the Germans began to find them- consistent overestimation of the reserves of fuel which the
selves with more planes than they could fly. Their aircraft Germans had in storage, and from our anxiety to get quick
production began to lag only in the fall of 1944, after the results. The total weight of bombs ultimately aimed at oil-
aircraft industry had ceased to be a primary target for the production facilities and storage depots was about 240,000
Combined Bomber Offensive. And, as we have noted, the tons, or about half the total tonoage that had been dropped
major losses of German aircraft, together with trained pilots, on Germany proper prior to May 1944.
occurred as a result of air battles which our bombing forays Our failure to make a direct and comprehensive attack on
forced upon them and of our attacks on enemy airfields. the German chemical industry, including the synthetic-rub-
Possibly it was our method of attacking the aircraft target ber plants, was also a serious error. The fact that that industry
manufacturing rather than the choice of the system itself collapsed as a wholly unexpected result of our attack on oil
that was wrong. Hermann Goring and Albert Speer argued reveals how vulnerable it was. Had we elevated it to the
after their capture that aircraft-engine production would status of a target system in itself, we could have demolished
U.S.S.B.S., Airrraft Division Industry Report (Item #4 for European
it much earlier in the war than we did and with only a small
War), p. 6. percentage of the bombs ultimately aimed at oil. The German
u.s:s.B.s., Effects on German War Economy, p. 12.
U.S.S.B.S., Aircraft Division Report, pp. 53f.
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

General Heinrici told our U.S.S.B.S. interrogators that if Bombing accuracy was greatly improved later on, espe-
Allied effort had been concentrated on ammonia plants, cially during the summer of 1944. Nevertheless, the limita-
Germany could have been knocked out of the war a full year tions described above could be accepted, and a campaign
earlier.'' That may not be so, but it is an interesting opinion. carried out despite them, only if the attacker expected sub-
stantial results from area bombing. Air Marshal Sir Arthur
The Failure of City Bombing in Germany
Harris of Bomber Command did expect such results, because,
The bombing of cities turned out to be a great waste of despite his utter disdain for what we now call "psychological
effort. To be sure, cities were easier to find and hit than were warfare," he shared Douhet's faith in the critical vulnerability
particular industrial plants, and the kind of weather encoun- of civilian morale. We shall consider the effects of bombing
tered over Germany often left no choice. Also we must re- on civilian morale in a separate section, though it should
member the special limitations imposed on the R.A.F. by already be obvious that whatever morale decline took place
the fact that it was built and equipped as a night-bombing was of limited effect upon the over-all strategic situation.
force : There was immense destruction and damage wrought on the
Prior to the development of long-range fighters and the discovery buildings in German cities, and it is really surprising that the
and improvement of non-visual bombing aids and techniques, the war industries gathered in those cities should have suffered
RAF could not undertake daylight bombing without prohibitive so little impairment or loss of production.
losses, nor could it achieve sufficient accuracy in night bombing The tonnages expended on city bombing were enormous.
to attack other than very large targets. Even with the earlier forms Prior to our oil offensive, 53 per cent of the bombs dropped
of radar, an attack on a target smaller than a city area of at least
on Germany were aimed at area targets, and only 13 per cent
roo,ooo population was not economical.
at specific industries. Even during the oil offensive, over 27
For example, using "GEE," the first radar navigational aid (which per cent of the million-and-a-half tons dropped were aimed
became available in March 1gq2), Bomber Command of the RAF,
at cities and only 22 per cent at specific industries, the latter
in attacks on towns in the Ruhr, could drop approximately 50
per cent of its bombs within five miles of the aiming point and including the 16 per cent assigned to oil targets.
10 per cent within two miles. This meant that only 5 to 10 per What were the results? The Report of the Area Studies
cent of the tonnage dispatched could be dropped on a town the Division of the U.S.S.B.S. opens with the following para-
size of Essen and only two to three per cent on the Krupp works graph:
within Essen. Thus, economy required that attacks be aimed at
the city center, ensuring that the maximum tonnage of bombs The major cities of Germany present a spectacle of destruction
would fall somewhere on the target." so appalling as to suggest a complete breakdown of all aspects of

loU.S.S.B.S., Powder, Explosives . . . (Item # I I I for European War: War), pp. jf.This kind of inaccuracy, incidentally, is one reason why
Oil Division; Ministerial Report No. I ) , p. 4; see also Oil Division Final electric power stations, which Speer and others considered an extraor-
Report, PP. 40-73. dinarily choice target system, were not in fact targeted. The vulnerable
l1 U.S.S.B.S., Area Studies Division Report (Item #31 for European
portions of electric power stations generally take up a very small area.
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

urban activity. On the first impression it would appear that the production to the repair of machine tools damaged as a result
area attacks which laid waste these cities must have substantially
of air attack."" If the buildings which housed machines im-
eliminated the industrial capacity of Germany. Yet this was not
the case. The attacks did not so reduce German war production portant to war production were too severely damaged, the
as to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the war. machines often could be moved to other locations. Otherwise
the structures were roughly patched up and the workers pre-
The reasons for this indecisive effect were several, and
vailed upon to continue.
we can only mention a few. One was the fact that in most
We should not assume that the damage done to over-all
German cities the industrial areas were on the perimeter, and
production was trivial. An area raid could drive production
area attacks on previously unbombed cities were always aimed
in a city down by as much as 55 per cent in the month im-
at the centers. Even with the considerable improvement in
nonvisual bombing aids between 1943 and 1944, it was prac-
mediately following the attack. But recovery was rapid; most ,
cities were back to 80 per cent of normal within three months,
tically impossible to concentrate bombing attacks upon the
and had recovered com~letelywithin six to eleven months.
industrial portions of built-up areas. Where industrial plants
Naturally the recovery was most rapid in the most essential
were hit, the nonessential as well as the essential were affected.
industries. No doubt the "cushion" in consumer goods was
The halting of the former only helped to speed the flow of
being eroded away. No doubt, too, indirect effects, as ex-
labor and other resources to the latter. Such essential services
pressed in absenteeism of workers, were growing steadily
as electricity, gas, and water were disrupted by heavy attacks,
more serious.
but in most cases they were readily restored. The cutting of
Certainly the terrible shock given to the entire German
the Ruhr gas lines in 1944 shut down important plants in
state by the series of extremely heavy attacks directed at Ham-
Diisseldorf, Essen, Krefeld, and Berlin and contributed to the
burg at the end of July and the beginning of August 1943
collapse of German steel production, but that was an excep-
suggests what might have happened if attacks of comparable
tional occurrence. It must be remembered too that the same
intensity could have been directed also against a substantial
bombing which inevitably reduced some of the supply of
number of other German cities at about the same time and
essential utilities also reduced some of the demand.
in rapid succession. There is clearly no basis at all for assum-
Another important fact about city bombing is that the dam-
ing that conclusions about German urban bombing in World
age was done primarily to buildings rather than to the ma- War II would apply to war in the atomic age. A different re-
chines or machine-tools which some of those buildings sult, as we shall see, obtained even in the same war in the
housed. Not more than an estimated 6 to 7 per cent of all case of Japan. But the fact remains that "the over-all index
machine tools in Germany were damaged or destroyed by of German munitions production increased steadily from
air attack, and not all of those had to be replaced. "In 1944, IOO in January 1942 to 322 in July 1944,"'~ a period that in-
the year of the heaviest bombing, it is estimated that it was cluded a tremendous amount of general city bombing.
necessary to devote only 10 to 12 per cent of machine tool U.S.S.B.S., Area Studies Division Report, p. 22.
18 Ibid.,p. 19.
123
 O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

The bombing of German cities cost the Germans much in Even in the successful offensive against the oil industry
production and more in the diversion of military resources there was a generally poor selection of "ground-zeros"'"
to defense; but we must nevertheless state that no critical within the plants selected for attack. Although accuracy. in
shortages in war commodities of any kind are traceable to it. general was far below the "pickle-barrel" precision adver-
To cause inconvenience and unhappiness to the enemy is tised before the war, vulnerable areas when chosen consist-
a reasonable military aim in war, but in view of the promises ently as the bull's-eye were invariably destroyed. In only a
made by Douhet and his followers, and in view also of the small minority of the cases, however, were the most critical
great military resources invested in it, the urban-area bomb- and vulnerable sections of the plant so chosen.
ing of World War I1 must be set down unequivocally as a Also, the bombs used were usually too light for the job.
failure. The U.S.A.A.F.'s attacks were "based on the observation that
Trial and Error in Bombing Tactics it is easier to hit an elephant with a shotgun than with a
For World War I1 types of bombs it was necessary not rifle." The average weight per unit of the bombs we dropped
only to pick the right target systems but also to find the right on oil and chemical targets was 388 pounds, but it was the
facilities within those systems and the right target centers heavy bombs of two to four thousand pounds each, used
within those facilities. In our attack upon railroad transpor- toward the very end of the war, which were alone able to do
tation, for example, a large proportion of the bombing was really permanent damage to heavy industrial installations.
directed against freight-car marshalling yards, and usually The British, incidentally, were considerably more advanced
we aimed at the center of the yards in order to hit the great- than we in this respect, the average weight of the bombs
est amount of trackage. As a result, such bombing usually dropped by the R.A.F. during our oil oflensive being some-
left some fairly intact stump yards near the entrance to the thing like 660 pounds. A considerable improvement in effec-
original yards, which the Germans could use for high-prior- U.S.S.B.S. The British Bombing Survey Unit credited much greater effec-
ity traffic while proceeding with repairs. The entrance, or tiveness to the bombing of marshalling yards, but, as we have noted, the
Survey was directed by persons who had been deeply involved in the
throat, of the yard would have been a far better target center, operational decisions.
but was rarely so designated. Moreover, the Germans not only l5 This awkward term is forced upon me by shifts in terminology since

had a large surplus capacity in yards, but some of the impor- World War 11. What for bombing would correspond to the "bull's-eye"
in pistol or rifle target shooting used to be called the "aiming point,"
tant traffic, including troop movements, tended to use com- which is the sense in which the latter term is used through most of the
plete trains which did not require the use of marshalling U.S.S.B.S. However, with the development of bombing sights that per-
yards at all. By far the most effective way of interdicting rail- mitted offset bombing, the "aiming point" might well be miles from the
center of the target (making it rather like the offset "aiming point" used
road transportation, at least with the H.E. (high explosive) in archery target shooting). The atomic bomb has encouraged the habit
bombs of World War 11, proved to be by way of line cuts at of using the term "ground zero" to indicate the point on the surface im-
mediately under the center of burst, and "designated ground zero," often
bridges, underpasses, viaducts, tunnels, and the like." abbreviated D.G.Z., is therefore comparable to "bull's-eye." In short, it is
"At least this is the conclusion of the Transportauon Division of the point aimed at, not the "aiming pointWl
 ORIGINS O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

tiveness could also have been obtained through cutting down the second a clear aflirmative. But that such a campaign
the proportion of bombs in both forces which failed to could have been decisive even in the absence of ground oper-
explode. erations-with all the freeing of resources for the air battle
One does not have to think in terms of perfect planning, that such a situation would have implied for both sides-must
perfect intelligence, or perfect anything else to admit that be regarded as neither proved nor provable. Assertions to the
better planning and testing before the war and more flex- contrary, on either side of the argument, can be only decla-
ibility of doctrine would have brought vastly better results rations of faith.
than were achieved. The bombs aimed at what proved to be
The Strategic Bombing of Japan
the right targets, the destruction of which caused the collapse
of the German economy, comprised only a minute percentage Any appraisal of results of the strategic bombing of Japan
of the total tonnage dropped on Germany and German- must start from consideration of the military conditions
occupied territory. prevailing at the time the campaign really got under way,
In this brief r h m t of the strategic bombing of Germany, which was quite late in the war. The raids that began in the
we have not been concerned with whether the campaign was fall of 1943 by B-29's based in China, and supplied entirely
worth its con. If we were trying to appraise the total payoff by air transport over the "hump" from India, were on much
of the campaign, we should have to sum up the direct and too small a scale to have strategic significance. The U.S.S.B.S.
also all the indirect results which we can find, including the report suggests that with their limited sortie rate, those forces
great effort which the Germans put into active military and would have been more effectively used in the campaign
non-military defenses against our bombing. We should espe- against Japanese shipping. The inauguration of the strategic
cially have to take into full account the fact that, from Dun- air offensive against Japan is reasonably dated not earlier than
kirk to the time of the invasion of Italy, there was no way November 1944. Toward the end of that month bomber at-
other than bombing by which the British and ourselves could tacks were initiated from recently won Saipar,, and later
strike at Germany in Europe. The question whether strategic from Tinian and Guam.
bombing on the scale applied represented the optimum use However, the intensive air attack on the Japanese that
of the resources expended in it is essentially unanswerable; marked the latter stages of the war began only in March
but there is a strong prima-facie case for its having been a 1915, at which time some radically new tactics worked out in
good use of those resources. General Curtis LeMay's headquarters were introduced. These
The questions to which we have addressed ourselves are, tactics involved "maximum effort" low-level attacks at night,
first, whether the campaign produced decisive results, and, with great compression of force in space and time. The in-
1 secondly, whether such results could have been achieved tensity of attacks increased gradually, until an attack oc-
, earlier with a better use of the resources actually available. curred on the southwest portion of Tokyo on May 23, 1945
I The answer to the first question is a qualified "yes," and to in which 520 bombers dropped 3,646 tons of incendiary bombs
 ORIGINS O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

on an area of about eleven square miles. For two hours dur- and especially so long as we were eager to achieve it as
ing that attack the bombs were dropping at an average rate quickly as possible, there seemed at the time to be no ques-
of ~,ooopounds per second.'' tion that some kind of direct assault on the Japanese home
The plight of the Japanese Empire at the time this cam- islands was necessary. A full-scale invasion was accordingly
paign began is summarized by a single sentence from the being projected for the following November. It is unequivo-
U.S.S.B.S. report: "By March 1945, prior to heavy direct air cally to the credit of the strategic-bombing offensive that it
attack on the Japanese home islands, the Japanese air forces secured all the objectives of the planned invasion before the
had been reduced to Kamikaze forces, her fleet had been sunk latter could be mounted. It did so at immeasurably less cost
or immobilized, her merchant marine decimated, large por- in American lives, and no doubt also in Japanese lives, than
tions of her ground forces isolated, and the strangulation of might otherwise have been the case. Nothing can diminish
her economy well begun."" or gainsay the value and importance of this accomplishment,
At that time, moreover, the Japanese had already lost the which had no parallel in Europe. By the same token, it is
Philippines and Iwo Jima, and were suffering the investment both unreasonable and ungracious to the other services-as
of Okinawa. They were sending no further supplies to their well as to the tactical air forces which conducted four years
ground forces outside the home islands, and they were con- of marvelously successful and effective operations over land
centrating solely on defense against invasion. How long they and water-to equate that accomplishment with the winning
would have continued to endure even in the absence of a of the war.
concentrated strategic-bombing campaign is questionable, The strategic air offensive against Japan was remarkably
because the blockade resulting from destruction of the J a p different from that against Germany in character as well as
anese merchant marine had, among other things, brought result. It was much more concentrated in time, and had the
the national diet to below subsistence levels. The situation benefit of the more advanced technology then available.
was thoroughly understood by many Japanese military Japan was more urbanized than Germany, its cities were
leaders. Some of the senior naval officershad been secretly more vulnerable to fire, and its active defenses at the time of
working since the previous September, that is, since before the campaign were of a low order of effectiveness, being al-
the Battle for Leyte Gulf, to take the country out of the war.'' most confined to antiaircraft guns." Thus, more was accom-
So long as the American goal was unconditional surrender, plished with fewer bombs. Only 160,800 tons of bombs were
dropped on the home islands of Japan, compared with
'$1 am indebted for this information, and for much more that I have
not been able to include, to my colleague Dr. Alexander W. Boldyreff. 1,360,000 tons dropped within the borders of Germany. Sixty-
ITU.S.S.B.S., Summary Report (Pacific W a r ) , p. g. six Japanese cities received 104,000 tons of bombs (mostly
U.S.S.B.S., lapan's Struggle to End the War, p. 4. See also Robert J. C.
Butow, lapan's Decision to Surrender, Stanford University Press, Stanford, incendiaries) as compared with 542,554 tons dropped on
1954, which effectively supersedes the U.S.S.B.S. document and which pro- Of which, however, there were some 500 heavy guns (88 rnrn. or
vides an excellent and fascinating narrative of relevant events. larger) in the Tokyo area alone.
 ORIGINS OF AIR STRATEGY
S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1
sixty-one German cities. Also, a disproportionately large part duced the demands which the military forces were making
of the Japanese tonnage was dropped on a very few large upon the economy.
cities. Of the sixty-six Japanese cities attacked, only six were Japan was already defeated. It was necessary only to make
struck before the last three months of the war." Yet some 40 her government develop a clear consensus on that fact, and
per cent of the built-up areas of those sixty-six cities was then openly concede it. The U.S.A.A.F. may not have cor-
destroyed. rectly appreciated the situation, but it acted as if it had. What
In Japan, unlike Germany, the urban-area bombing seems was wanted was not a discriminating pruning out of this or
to have contributed more to achieving the desired results that kind of military production, but simply the maximum of
than did the precision bombing of specific industries. This
direct military pressure upon the population and the govern-
was due not alone to the fact that there was less opportunity ment. The awful terror of the great fire raids on the cities,
for recuperation among Japanese cities than there had been culminating in the two atomic attacks, copiously provided
in Germany, but more importantly to the fact that in Japan that pressure.
economic objectives counted for less than psychological ones.
The precision bombing was, as in Germany, much more ef- The Attack on German Morale
fective per bomb in reducing Japanese war production, and It is difficult to tell just what proportion of the bombs
immeasurably more discriminating about the kind of pro- dropped on Germany in World War I1 was deliberately
duction reduced, than was the urban-area bombing. But aimed at German morale, but it was unquestionably very
Japan had already lost the battle of production; her economy large. A good deal of the area bombing of cities was so
had already proved grossly inadequate to the political and directed, especially by the R.A.F. Although Sir Arthur Har-
strategic ambitions of her leaders; her losses in a merchant ris in his Bomber Offensive speaks sarcastically of "psycho-
fleet that had been inadequate from the start had already logical" objectives as among the "panaceas" thrust upon him
caused, through denial of raw materials, a sharp contraction by uncomprehending but meddling civilians, it is abundantly
in production. Greater contractions would have followed clear from the whole text of his memoirs that the "German
inevitably, even without bombing." It must be added that will to resist" was precisely what he was most interested in
her overwhelming military defeats, by practically wiping out attacking. Douhet too, as we have seen, had considered it the
her navy and isolating most of her army, had greatly re- most important target after the enemy air force.
20 U.S.S.B.S., Eflects of Air Attack on Iapanese Urban Economy, Sum-
The huge share of Allied bombs spent in the attack on
mary Report, pp. ivf. German morale failed to achieve any important end results.
21The U.S.S.B.S. estimated that by August 1945, "even without direct
air attack on her cities and industries, the over-all level of Japanese war
Bombing did indeed seriously depress the morale of German
production would have declined below the peak levels of 1944 by 40 to 50 civilians. The oft-expressed view that the bombing of cities 1, ,P
per cent solely as a result of the interdiction of overseas imports." (Sum- stiffens the will of the populace to resist finds no support -
mary Report [Pacific W a r ] , p. 15.)
in experience. But in Germany the depressed morale had no
 O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

critical effects-at least until the very last months of the ingly frightened by the war's toll and its potential threat to
war, when all was lost anyway-on either the political struc- himself and his family, and persuaded with growing cer-
ture or the capability of the German war economy to support tainty that all would end in defeat. Yet he stuck to his job
the troops in the field. and his machine for as long as it was physically possible to
The reason that this was so is to be found largely in a do so, and in so doing kept a disastrous war going to its ulti-
distinction, which the German Internal Security Service mate ruinous conclusion. Why did he do so? The answer is
consistently emphasized throughout the latter part of the to be found in need combined with habit, in coercion, and
war, between Stimmung (attitude or feeling) and Haltung in propaganda-in descending order of importance-all add-
(behavior). It was one of the important discoveries of the ing up to the plain circumstance that the German worker
war that the influence of the former upon the latter was much had no real alternative open to him.
less immediate and direct than had been generally supposed. The effect of habit is in part reflected in the fact that un-
Some degree of influence there was bound to be, but from the authorized absenteeism was much more marked among
Allied point of view it was disappointingly small. women than among men, especially in those occupations in
The attack upon Stimmung or attitude was remarkably which female labor was strictly a wartime phenomenon. The
successful, but this success did not have much meaning for man kept to his job largely because that was what he had
the things that counted. Depressed morale, plus the problem always done, in calm and in crisis, and because he and his
of coping with the physical deprivations resulting from bomb family needed his wages in order to eat.
ing, significantly increased absenteeism of industrial workers The coercion of the government extended to all sorts of
beyond the normal. It also significantly lowered the produc- restrictions about changing or leaving one's job without per-
tivity of those who reported for work. In combination, these mission, and applied with special vengeance to overt expres-
effects-and notice that morale was depressed by defeats in sion of feeling-let alone action-against the regime. More
the ground battles as well as by air raids-resulted in a loss telling was the fact that over the years the regime had suc-
of output of at least 25 per cent during the last year of the ceeded in eradicating practically all organized political op-
war. That looked serious enough to those responsible for position, so that no means existed for giving direction to and
keeping the war machine going. But as for stopping or vitally translating into action the feelings of disaffection which un-
impairing the functioning of that machine, the effects were doubtedly developed. There could be no peace party in Ger-
spread too broadly across all industries, were at best marginal, many (outside the army, where the dissident group was '
and therefore counted as nothing compared to the knocking liquidated after the abortive putsch of July 1944) simply be-
out of a single essential industry such as oil production or cause there could be no party outside the control of the Nazi
transportation. leadership.
From at least the beginning of 1944 the average German This absence of organized opposition is the feature of
had become disillusioned with the Nazi leadership, increas- totalitarian countries that must give pause to those who would ,
 ORIGINS OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

count heavily on defeating them by psychological means. took the place of a will to win was an apathy about politics
In that connection, a critical difference between wartime combined with a driving fear of what defeat would bring.
Germany on the one hand and Italy and Japan on the other One of the grimmer aphorisms then current in Germany was
was that the latter two countries, though quasi-totalitarian, "Geniess den Krieg; der Friede wird schrec~lichsein" (En-
had in their monarchiai systems a latent means of crystalliz- joy the war; the peace will be terrible). The number of Al-
ing an effective and legal opposition to the war party. Those lied casualties in the last year of the war testifies to the e£-
countries surrendered before hostile troops had effectively fectiveness of this combination of negative incentives.
invaded their main territories, while Germany did not sur- One lesson the bombing attack on morale brought home
render until Hitler was dead and the eastern and western was that a people accustomed to responding to authority-
fronts had merged in the center of the Reich. and all peoples are, in modestly varying degrees-will con-
Although habit and coercion worked exclusively for the tinue to respond even under very great physical stress. As
benefit of the German government, propaganda was the one physical conditions approach chaos, the population becomes
means by which the Allied governments could hope to com- more dependent upon authority, because of greater need for
pete with the Nazis in giving guidance to the German work- guidance and succor combined with the absence of alterna-
man and soldier. The Allied bombing helped induce Ger- tive. Besides, the person of independent mind who forms his
mans to listen to enemy radio broadcasts, partly because its own opinions on the evidence of his senses and the fruits of
success gave the lie to so many Nazi claims, and also because his logic is an ideal form of human being which, like other
German stations had to go off the air to avoid serving as ideal forms, rarely exists in nature. Even most intellectuals-
beacons. The invading aircraft themselves dropped millions always a small minority in a population-tend in their think-
of leaflets. Allied propaganda during the last year or more ing merely to follow more refined fads. Moreover, it takes
of the war concentrated on the hopelessness of the German a very profound revolution of the mind and spirit to accept
military position, something which the huge formations of those cues for behavior provided by the acknowledged enemy
British and American bombers ranging freely over Germany as against those offered by one's own leaders.
effectively drove home. That was all right so far as it went, Granting that it is behavior rather than morale that most
but it left a hiatus into which Goebbels and Company interests both attacker and defender, there are nevertheless
promptly moved. a few features about the response of German morale to Al-
The great propaganda achievement of Goebbels, in which lied bombs which are especially interesting in view of the
he was aided and abetted by Allied word and actions, was new weapons that have appeared since World War 11.
to exploit sheer desperation as a means of keeping the Ger- One surprising finding of the U.S.S.B.S. was that the most
mans fighting. There was no "will to win" because, espe- heavily-bombed cities did not necessarily show lower morale
cially after the collapse of the hopes based on "secret than those less severely hit. As between unbombed towns
weapons," there could be no expectation of winning. What and lightly-bombed ones, morale was much lower in the lat-
 O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

ter. It suffered a further but less sharp decline as the status the regime merely from being given coffee at the refugee
of bombing progressed from "light" to "medium." But as station.
the weight of bombs progressed from "medium" to "heavy," On the other hand, we learned also that depression in
the morale of the target population appeared, if anything, to morale, while not necessarily proportional to weight of
recover somewhat." Much, of course, depends on how one bombs dropped, does vary with degree of personal involve-
measures morale, and the returns used in the survey were ment, such as the death or severe injury of members of one's
undoubtedly too gross to confirm a real upturn in morale. family, or the destruction of all one's worldly goods, or
But what is firmly established is the absence, after a relatively forced evacuation. Despite the large amount of physical de-
modest weight of bombing, of any significant correlation struction in German cities, the statistics of personal involve-
between additional bombs dropped and further depression ment were quite different from what one would expect-
in morale. certainly different from what one would have to expect
with nuclear weapons. Only one-third of all Germans lived
Why is this so? One reason, no doubt, is the simple fact
in cities that were subjected to bombing. One-half of I per
that the person preoccupied with dodging enemy missiles
cent of all Germans were killed by bombing, and I per cent
does not find much time to think about other matters which
were injured; that is, only 5 per cent of that minority of
might otherwise disturb him. He is unlikely to be brooding
Germans actually subjected to bombing were killed or in-
on the historic sins and errors of a government to which he
jured. One-fifth of all civilians were at one time or another
can scarcely conceive an alternative. He is politically apa-
deprived of water, gas, or electricity. And one out of fifteen
thetic, and his apathy may look a good deal better to those civilians was evacuated.
whose job it is to control him than did the discouraged rest- These figures are impressive when converted to absolute
lessness that perhaps preceded it. Besides, if he has been numbers of people, and it is also true that virtually no Ger-
bombed out of house and home, he is grateful for small of- man escaped some measure of hardship or suffering as a
ferings, and he may acquire a more favorable attitude toward result of the bombings. But the great majority of Germans
The following classification for degrees of bombing was adopted by escaped the more serious kinds of heartbreak or horror. Un-
the Morale Division of U.S.S.B.S.: Group I (heavily bombed), cities re- der atomic weapons, even ignoring the effects of fallout, the
ceiving 19,100 tons to 47,200 tons (average: 30,000 tons); Group I1 (medi-
um bombed), cities receiving 1,700 to 13,100 tons (average: 6,100 tons); proportion of persons exposed to risk in the cities would be
Group III (lightly bombed), cities receiving 300 to 800 tons (average: 500 much greater, the incidence of casualties and of lost homes
tons). Since these figures and categories ignore the size of the city con- would be multiplied, and the disorganizing effects upon the
cerned, they cannot give a good index of the intensity of bombing for any
one city. However, a recheck of the results described in the text above surrounding countrysides would be immeasurably more im-
according to the percentage of destruction for each city confirms the mediate and direct. Certainly the amount of warning per-
general conclusions reached. See The Eflects of Strategic Bombing on
German Morale, vol. I, Morale Division, U.S.S.B.S. (Item #64b for Euro- mitted by missiles and by attacking cells of planes moving
at or above the speed of sound would be much less.
 O R I G I N S OF A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

It is true that the effects of reduced morale upon German Emperor's announcement of the surrender was apparently
production look very different if one concentrates on the last greeted by a majority of the population with stunned dis-
two months of the war rather than on the entire two years belief and dismay. Only a relatively small minority of the
of heavy bombing. In the end, the overwhelming conviction whole population later admitted to their American inter-
that there simply was no use in going on did indeed control rogators a feeling of relief at hearing that the war was over.
events. The efforts to restore damaged facilities finally col- Even among those who had personally experienced ten or
lapsed for complete want of incentive. With nuclear bombs more air raids, barely 52 per cent were ready to cite cessation
such a state of affairs would occur within days or hours of of such raids as a sufficient reason for satisfaction at the end-
the onset of the attack. ing of the war.23
That is not to say that the low state of public morale
The Attack on Japanese Morale played no part in bringing about the surrender. In the
The physical and social context of the bombing attack on peculiar oligarchical system by which wartime Japan was
Japanese morale was sufficiently different from that of Ger- ruled, the peace faction which gradually emerged and moved
many to provide distinctive instruction; yet it serves also to toward ascendancy had to proceed most cautiously-even
emphasize the striking similarity of the results. The bombing conspiratorially-with respect to the die-hard faction. The
of urban areas in Japan was both more concentrated in time leaders of the peace-seeking party, ostensibly led by the
and more intense than in Germany, and it resulted in a Premier, Admiral Kantaro S u z ~ k i , ~had ' to assure them-
higher incidence of both physical destruction and casualties. selves that the people knew enough of the general state of
Also, the campaign reached its awesome and dreadful cul- affairs to accept a surrender decision and to refrain from s u p
mination in two atomic explosions. porting a possible coup d'etat by the army die-hards. The
As in Germany, only more so, the effect of the bombing latter faction also had to be persuaded that the mood and
on Japanese morale was to produce, by whatever kind of condition of the people made absurd any talk of a last-ditch
measurement one adopts, an immediate and precipitous de- defense in which civilians would fight off the invaders with
cline. In Japan as in Germany, low morale was reflected in bamboo spears. Even so, the maneuvers of the peace group
loss of the people's confidence in their leaders and in one were delicate in the extreme, and required finally the per-
another, as well as in their becoming, as the U.S.S.B.S. puts sonal intervention of the Emperor.
it, "more and more obsessed with finding individual solu- The part played by the two atomic bombs cannot be un-
tions to their own severe and urgent personal problems." 2a See The Effects of Strategic Bombing on \apanese Morale, U.S.S.B.S.

In Japan there was no more tendency than there was in (Item #14 for Pacific War), pp. 15of.
24 The real leader of the movement was Shigenori Togo, whom Admiral
Germany for the low morale to find expression in any or- Suzuki had selected as Foreign Minister, knowing that he had been o p
ganized popular movement to revolt, or in manifest pressure posed to the war from the beginning; but Togo on one or two critical
occasions had to stiffen Suzuki's determination to end the war. See Butow,
upon the government to surrender. On the contrary, the opht., chs. 1x1 and vrx.

138
 O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

equivocally determined by what was said or not said in In summary, we can say that, insofar as the low morale
cabinet meetings and comparable conferences. It would be of the Japanese people influenced the governmental decision
hard to believe that they failed to have a positive and power- to surrender, it did so in a quite passive way. The leaders
ful effect on the surrender deliberations, but very little seems who spearheaded the peace movement had been convinced
to have been said about them in those deliberations. So far for more than a year before the end that Japan had lost. The
as the populace was concerned, few people outside the target terrible destruction and death rained down on Japan in the
areas had any real comprehension of what the bombs meant, summer of 1945 naturally compelled a mood of urgency on
and those within the areas seem to have been psychologically the part of the peace-seekers, and made speedier and easier
affected in no significantly different way from the people of the acceptance by the erstwhile die-hards of almost-uncondi-
other cities who had experienced severe H E or incendiary tional surrender. No reasonable observer can deny that the
attacks.26 aerial bombardment hastened the end of the war and sufficed
The cabinet had already initiated peace proposals to the to make invasion unnecessary. But what must be denied, for
Soviet government before the atomic bombs were dropped, the sake of clarity in strategic thinking, is that this process
and there is no reason to suppose that acceptance of the Pots- operated to any important degree through the direct pressure
dam Declaration would have been long delayed in the ab- of public feeling.27
sence of such bombing. In the meeting of August 9-10 (after All this must of course be related to the singular political
the second bomb had exploded) the cabinet was still dead- and social structure of wartime Japan. But under any form
locked on the minimum terms under which Japan could of government, an orderly surrender usually requires the
agree to quit the hopeless fight, and it was this deadlock that initiative of political leaders who are already in authority
the Emperor personally resolved. No doubt the atomic bombs or close enough to it to acquire it without waiting upon
affected him; but they could hardly have affected him de- popular r e v o l u t i ~ nPopular
.~~ revolutions do not thrive under
cisively, because he had impressed upon the new Premier
weight than I do to the influence of the two atomic bombs in ending the
as early as the preceding April the need for finding the war (Strategic Surrender, pp. 199-206).
quickest possible means of ending the war." 27 The authors of the abovecited U.S.S.B.S. morale report go so far
as to insist, in their ch. XI, that the Japanese leaders ended the war when
="bid., p. 94. See also Part I of Air War and Emotional Stress, by Irving they did to conserve not lives but rather their own special privileges under
L. Janis, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1951. A remarkable document in this the existing class structure of Japan. The authors, however, produce no
connection is Dr. Michihiko Hachiya's Hiroshima Diary: The 1ournal of a evidence in support of that view, for the insistence upon the retention of
lapanese Physican, August &September 30, 1945, University of North the Imperial institution cannot be so regarded. No doubt the Japanese
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1955. leaders, conservatives all, were interested in preserving as much as they
26 See Butow, op.cit., pp. 63f. My RAND colleague, Dr. Paul Kecskemeti, could of the social and political structure of Japan, but we have no reason
argues cogently in his Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and to assume they were callous in the face of the miseries being inflicted on
Defeat (Stanford University Press, 1958) a position very close to the the populace.
one that I have presented here, based on a completely independent 28A much qualified exception is the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,
examination of the same evidence. He tends, however, to allow even less followed by a Russian withdrawal from the war under peace terms (at
I
, I

I
I

I
O R I G I N S O F A I R STRATEGY

conditions of wholesale destruction from the air. The kind of

extreme destruction that can be envisaged with nuclear
weapons is rather more likely to dissolve all government than
to cause the replacement of an incorrigible regime by an
amenable one.
The Japanese experience suggests also that to compel huge
S T R A T E G I C B O M B I N G I N W O R L D W A R I1

short enough to impress the reader with its specificity, four

or five cities usually being named in each series, yet long
enough to avoid giving any marked assistance to the Japanese
air defenses. The attendant commentary took care to stress
that other cities besides those named might also be hit.
Unfortunately, the U.S.S.B.S. interrogators failed to ques-
evacuations is more profitable as well as more humane than tion people seriously on what they had done as a result of
to produce corpses. During the American air campaign, some hearing or reading about such warnings. They asked instead
eight and one-half million Japanese left their homes to be- how many had seen the warnings or heard of them, and
I come refugees. This figure must be considered not only in how many of those who did had believed them. But the
relation to the whole national population but even more to evidence indicates (I) that the warnings were received by
the populations of those larger industrial cities which mainly most of the targeted populations, (2) that they were gen-
I fed the exodus. Although - evacuations also took place in erally believed, and (3) that they were acted upon through
1~
I I

Germany, the flight of urban dwellers from Japanese cities flight. Relatively few people left their homes until the cities
was more concentrated in time and hence more disorganized,
~ and it included very much larger proportions of workers
previously engaged in war industries. These panicked humans
in which they lived had received some bombing, but after
such bombing the warnings had a most receptive audience.
Many were unquestionably stimulated to move who would
not only spread throughout Japan the full account of the otherwise have tarried.
horrors occurring in the cities, but they also created for the The military situation peculiar to the closing months of
government burdens with which it showed itself unable to World War 11 in the Pacific was as favorable as it could be
cope. to the use of warnings, which literally cost us nothing in
This rout of citizens would no doubt have resulted in any planes or air crews. Nevertheless, the warning technique
case from the fury of our attack, but it was given strong addi- could undoubtedly be applied even in the future under a
tional impetus by an American practice introduced in the wide variety of military circumstances. Whether it would be
last months of the war. That was the explicit warning of employed, however, in that massive interchange of blows
impending bombing attack, which was done chiefly by which is the usual mental image of the onset of World War
dropping leaflets (scarcely 2 per cent of Japanese civilians
I11 is another matter
ever heard enemy radio broadcasts) listing cities to be des-
troyed "in the next few days." Each list was designed to be Relevance for the F~tture
Brest Litovsk) that were comparable to surrender. On conditions of sur- The World War I1 experience with strategic bombing was
render in general see the aforementioned study by Paul Kecskemeti. the first of its kind in the history of warfare, and also, we
 O R I G I N S OF A I R STRATEGY

can be reasonably certain, the last. No campaign on a com-

parable scale is likely ever again to be carried on between
great belligerents with HE or other chemical bombs, not
only because of the availability of nuclear weapons but-in
the unlikely event that nuclear weapons could be outlawed
and stay outlawed in an otherwise total war-also because
technological developments have made long-range sorties
with bombers or missiles far too costly to be acceptable as
means of delivering bombs of such very limited capability.
We have offered the above chapter out of the conviction
that relevant experience is always valuable, the more so as
it is scarce, but insofar as our interest is not purely historical,
we have to acknowledge that in this instance the relevance
is qualified. There are, however, hints about the future to
be found in it, perhaps the most obvious and also the most
important being the reminder that men's predictions about
the outcome of a wholly new kind of campaign are likely
to prove highly fallible.28
2o For a systematic dfort to apply the lessons of various disaster studies,
including the strategic bombing of World War 11, to future war, see Fred
C. IklC, The Social Impnct of Bomb Destruction, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1958.