A German city destroyed to the ground by the Americans. War without rules

What do we know about the war in the West? And on the Pacific Ocean? Was there a war in Africa? Who bombed Australia? We are laymen in these matters. We know quite well about the ancient Romans. We know the Egyptian pyramids like the back of our hands. And here it’s as if a history textbook was torn in half. I became fixated on the Great Patriotic War. But World War II never happened. The Soviet ideological machine passed these events by. There are no books or films. Historians have not even written dissertations on these topics. We did not participate there, which means there is no need to talk about it. The states have lost memory of the Union's participation in the war. Well, in retaliation, we remain silent about any war other than our own, the Soviet-German one.

Erasing the blank spots in the history of World War II, we will talk about one of its stages - the blitz bombing of Great Britain.

The bombing of the Island was carried out by Germany from September 7, 1940 to May 10, 1941, as part of the Battle of Britain. Although the Blitz targeted many cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London and continued for 57 consecutive nights. By the end of May 1941, more than 43,000 civilians had died as a result of the bombing, half of them in London. A large number of houses in London were destroyed or damaged. 1,400 thousand people lost their homes. The largest bombing of London occurred on September 7, when more than 300 bombers attacked the city in the evening and another 250 at night. Large-caliber bombs caused significant damage to dams and other hydraulic structures protecting the Thames. More than a hundred significant damages were noted, threatening to flood low-lying parts of London. To prevent a disaster, city utilities carried out regular restoration work. To avoid panic among the population, the work was carried out in strict secrecy.

Despite the fact that the London authorities had been preparing air-raid shelters since 1938, there were still not enough of them, and most of them turned out to be simply “dummies”. About 180 thousand Londoners fled the bombings in the subway. And although the government initially did not welcome this decision, people simply bought tickets and waited out the raids there. Photos of cheerful people singing and dancing in the subway, which censorship allowed to be published, cannot tell about the stuffiness, rats and lice that one had to encounter there. And even metro stations were not guaranteed against a direct bomb hit, as happened at the Bank station, when more than a hundred people died. So most Londoners simply crawled under the covers at home and prayed.

On May 10, 1941, London suffered its last major air raid. 550 Luftwaffe bombers dropped about 100 thousand incendiary and hundreds of conventional bombs on the city within a few hours. More than 2 thousand fires broke out, 150 water mains and five docks were destroyed, 3 thousand people died. During this raid, the Parliament building was heavily damaged.

London was not the only city to suffer during the air raids. Other important military and industrial centers such as Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Clydebank, Coventry, Exeter, Greenock, Sheffield, Swansea, Liverpool, Hull, Manchester, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Nottingham, Brighton, Eastbourne, Sunderland, and Southampton survived heavy air raids and suffered large numbers of casualties.

The raids were carried out by forces of 100 to 150 medium bombers. In September 1940 alone, 7,320 tons of bombs were dropped on southern England, including 6,224 tons on London.

By the early summer of 1940, British authorities decided to evacuate children from large cities as potential targets for bombing into the countryside. In a year and a half, two million children were taken from the cities. Londoners' children were settled in estates, country houses, and sanatoriums. Many of them remained away from London throughout the war.

The British Army is helping to clear the city.

Fighting a fire after an air raid. Manchester. 1940

Meanwhile, Stalin and Hitler were dividing Europe. The USSR and Germany put into practice the agreements of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Without a minute of failure, exactly according to schedule, dozens of trains with grain, metal, oil, gasoline, cotton, and so on, went into the millstones of the Nazis. It was from our metal that the bombs that fell on Britain were cast, it was our bread that the German aces ate before flying to the island. This is our fuel that was poured into the tanks of Luftwaffe bombers. But we were silent about it then, and we remain silent today.

Of course, the British, together with their allies, took revenge on the Nazis, and very brutally. Carpet bombings of German cities still cause horror with their consequences. Our next article is about this.

Many deplorable and terrible pages of human cruelty. It was during this war that the tactic of carpet bombing cities became widespread. As the famous proverb says, he who sows the wind will reap the storm. This is exactly what happened to Hitler's Germany. Starting in 1937 with the bombing of Spanish Guernica by the Condor Legion, and continuing with raids on Warsaw, London, Moscow and Stalingrad, from 1943 Germany itself began to be subjected to Allied air strikes, which were many times more powerful than the raids carried out by the Luftwaffe in the initial period of the war. . Thus, one of the symbols of the tragedy of the German people was the Allied air raid on the large city of Dresden in February 1945, which led to enormous destruction of the city’s residential infrastructure and large casualties among civilians.

Even after the end of the war for more than 60 years, there are calls in Europe to recognize the destruction of the ancient city of Dresden as a war crime and genocide against its inhabitants. Many in Europe and the United States are of the opinion that the bombing of German cities in the final months of the war was no longer dictated by military necessity and was unnecessary in military terms. The Nobel Prize in Literature laureate German writer Günther Grass and former editor of the English newspaper The Times Simon Jenkins are currently demanding that the bombing of Dresden be recognized as a war crime. They are also supported by the American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who believes that the bombing of the last months of the war was carried out only for the purpose of training young pilots in bombing techniques.

The number of victims of the bombing to which the city was subjected from February 13 to 15, 1945 is estimated at 25,000 - 30,000 people, with many estimates exceeding 100,000. During the bombing, the city was almost completely destroyed. The area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in the city was 4 times larger than the area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Nagasaki. After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, leaving only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that used to be here on the site of Dresden. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the remaining parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

Bombardment

Before World War II, Dresden was recognized as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Many tourist guides called it Florence on the Elbe. There were many objects of great cultural significance here: the famous Dresden Gallery, the world's second largest porcelain museum, an opera house that rivaled La Scala in acoustics, the Zwinger palace ensemble, and many churches built in the Baroque style. Towards the end of the war, large numbers of refugees flocked to the city. Many residents were confident that the city would not be bombed. There were no large military factories here. There were rumors in Germany that after the war Dresden could become the new capital.

During the entire war, the Allies bombed the city only twice, not perceiving it as a military target. Bombs fell on the city on October 7, 1944, when about 30 B-17 Flying Fortresses, which failed to bomb the primary target, struck Dresden, which had been the flight's alternate target. And also on January 16, 1945, when the railway marshalling yard was bombed by 133 Liberators.

Corpses on the streets of Dresden

Before the war, Dresden had about 650,000 inhabitants; by February, at least 200,000 more refugees had arrived in the city, their exact number impossible to calculate. By 1945, the British and Americans were already great specialists in the destruction of German cities. They developed special techniques that increased the effectiveness of bombing. The first wave of bombers dropped high-explosive bombs, which were supposed to destroy the roofs of houses, break out windows, and expose wooden structures, followed by a second wave of bombers that dropped incendiary bombs on the city. After this, high-explosive bombs were again dropped on the city, which were supposed to complicate the work of fire and rescue services.

At about 10 pm on February 13, residents of the outskirts of Dresden heard the rumble of approaching planes. At 22:13 the first bombs were dropped on the city; the city was bombed by the first wave of British heavy bombers - 244 Lancasters. In a matter of minutes, the entire city was engulfed in flames, which were visible more than 150 km away. The main attack on the city occurred between 1:23 and 1:53 a.m., when the city was bombed by 515 British heavy bombers. After the first wave hit, nothing prevented the spread of fires in the city; high-explosive bombs of the second wave only contributed to the expansion of the area engulfed in fire and interfered with fire brigades. In total, on the night of February 13-14, about 1,500 tons of high-explosive and 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. The total number of incendiary bombs dropped on the city was 650,000.

Bodies of Dresden residents piled up for burning

One RAF pilot who took part in the raid recalled: “The fantastically bright light became brighter the closer we got to the target, at an altitude of about 6,000 meters, details of the terrain could be distinguished that had never been seen before; for the first time during all the operations, I felt sorry for the residents who were below.” Another participant in the bombing, the navigator-bomber, noted: “When I looked down, I saw a wide panorama of the city, which was burning from one end to the other, you could see thick smoke that was blowing to the side. My first reaction was the coincidence of the carnage taking place below with the evangelical sermons that I heard before the war.”

As a result of the bombing of Dresden, it was planned to create a fiery tornado on its streets, and these plans came true. This tornado occurs when scattered flames unite into one fantastic fire. The air above it warms up, its density decreases, and it rises. The temperature in the firestorm that engulfed the city reached 1500 degrees.

Historian from England David Irving described the fire tornado that arose in Dresden. Based on surveys, the firestorm that formed as a result of the bombing consumed more than 75% of the entire area of ​​destruction in the city. Its strength made it possible to tear out giant trees by the roots; crowds of people trying to escape were picked up by this tornado and thrown straight into the fire. Torn off roofs of buildings and furniture were thrown into the center of the burning historical part of the city. The tornado reached its peak in the three-hour interval between air raids, at a time when city residents who had taken refuge in basements and shelters tried to flee to its outskirts. On the streets of Dresden, asphalt melted, and people falling into it merged with the road surface.

A railway worker, who was hiding near Poshtovaya Square, saw a woman with a baby carriage dragged along the street and thrown into the flames. Other residents of the city, who tried to escape along the railway embankment, which was not blocked by debris, saw how railway cars on open sections of the tracks were simply blown away by the storm.

According to the Dresden police report, which was compiled after the raids, 12 thousand buildings burned down in the city. 3 theaters, 5 consulates, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 19 hospitals and 19 post offices, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 24 banks, 26 insurance companies, 26 brothels, 31 hotels, 31 trading stores, 39 schools, 63 administrative buildings were destroyed , 256 trading floors, 640 warehouses, 6470 stores. In addition, the fire destroyed a zoo, a waterworks, a railway depot, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges on the Elbe.

Formally, the Allies had grounds for bombing the city. The USA and England agreed with the USSR on the bombing of Berlin and Leipzig, but there was no talk of Dresden. But this large 7th largest city in Germany was indeed a major transport center. And the Allies stated that they bombed the city in order to make it impossible for traffic to bypass these cities. According to the American side, the bombing of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden was important and contributed to the destruction of these transport hubs. The effectiveness of the bombing was indirectly confirmed by the fact that the advanced units of the Allied forces met near Leipzig, in Torgau, on April 25, cutting Germany in two.

However, even the memorandum, which was read to the British pilots before the bombing flight on February 13, revealed the true meaning of this military operation: Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany... by far the largest enemy area still not bombed. In the middle of winter, with streams of refugees heading west and troops needing to be stationed somewhere, housing is in short supply as it is necessary to house not only workers, refugees and troops, but also government offices evacuated from other areas. Once widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center... The aim of the attack is to strike the enemy where he will feel it most, behind the partially collapsed front... and at the same time show the Russians, when they arrive in the city, what they are capable of Royal Air Force.

In February 1945, Germany was already on the verge of a catastrophe that nothing could delay. The task of defeating Germany was completely resolved, the Western allies of the USSR looked to the future, concerned about their post-war relations with Moscow.

The flames from the fire in Dresden were visible 200 km away. from the city on the Soviet sector of the front. More than half of the residential buildings in the city were destroyed, many architectural monuments, while large marshalling stations did not receive serious damage, one of the railway bridges across the Elbe was untouched, and the military airfield located in the vicinity of the city was also not damaged. Great Britain and the USA needed to show their power and impress Stalin, which is why a city that was practically undamaged by the bombing was chosen for the demonstration. The lives of its inhabitants became for Anglo-American strategists only a bargaining chip in their political game.

Dresden. Chronicle of the tragedy (Alexey Denisov)

The film by Alexei Denisov is dedicated to the events of February 13, 1945 - the bombing of Dresden by Anglo-American aircraft during the Second World War. This action was interpreted by the allies as an act of assistance to Soviet troops advancing from the east, supposedly in confirmation of the Yalta agreements.
The barbaric bombing took place in three passes with a force of almost three thousand aircraft. Its result was the death of more than 135 thousand people and the destruction of about 35,470 buildings.
One of the main questions that the authors of the film tried to answer was whether there really was such a request from the Soviet side and why, to this day, former allies from England and America are stubbornly trying to shift the blame for the senseless bombing of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, which also has no military significance, to Russia.
The film features German and Russian historians, American pilots and eyewitnesses of this tragedy.

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Six hundred thousand dead civilians, seventy thousand of them children - this is the result of the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. Was this large-scale, high-tech mass murder driven solely by military necessity?

“We will bomb Germany - one city after another. We will bomb you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue her mercilessly. City after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and this list will only grow,” with these words the commander of the British Bomber Aviation, Arthur Harris, addressed the residents of Germany. This is exactly the text that was distributed on the pages of millions of leaflets scattered over Germany.

The words of Marshal Harris were inevitably translated into reality. Day after day, newspapers published statistical reports.

Bingen – 96% destroyed. Dessau - destroyed by 80%. Chemnitz – destroyed by 75%. Small and large, industrial and university, full of refugees or clogged with war industry - German cities, as the British marshal had promised, one after another turned into smoldering ruins.

Stuttgart - destroyed by 65%. Magdeburg - 90% destroyed. Cologne - destroyed by 65%. Hamburg - destroyed by 45%.

By the beginning of 1945, the news that another German city had ceased to exist was already perceived as commonplace.

“This is the principle of torture: the victim is tortured until she does what is asked of her. The Germans were required to throw off the Nazis. The fact that the expected effect was not achieved and the uprising did not occur was explained only by the fact that such operations had never been carried out before. No one could imagine that the civilian population would choose bombing. It’s just that, despite the monstrous scale of destruction, the probability of dying under bombs until the very end of the war remained lower than the probability of dying at the hands of an executioner if a citizen showed dissatisfaction with the regime,” reflects Berlin historian Jörg Friedrich.

Five years ago, Mr. Friedrich's detailed study, Fire: Germany in the Bomb War 1940–1945, became one of the most significant developments in German historical literature. For the first time, a German historian tried to soberly understand the causes, course and consequences of the bomb war waged against Germany by the Western allies. A year later, under the editorship of Friedrich, the photo album “Fire” was published - a more than poignant document documenting step by step the tragedy of German cities bombed into dust.

And here we are sitting on the terrace in the courtyard of Friedrich’s Berlin house. The historian calmly and calmly - it seems, almost meditating - tells how the bombing of cities took place and how his own house would have behaved if it had been under a bomb carpet.

Sliding into the abyss

The carpet bombing of German cities was neither an accident nor the whim of individual pyromaniac fanatics from among the British or American military. The concept of bombing a civilian population, successfully used against Nazi Germany, was merely a development of the doctrine of British Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, developed by him during the First World War.

According to Trenchard, during an industrial war, enemy residential areas should become natural targets, since the industrial worker is as much a participant in the hostilities as the soldier at the front.

This concept was in quite obvious contradiction with the international law in force at that time. Thus, articles 24–27 of the Hague Convention of 1907 directly prohibited the bombing and shelling of unprotected cities, the destruction of cultural property, as well as private property. In addition, the belligerent side was instructed, if possible, to warn the enemy about the start of shelling. However, the convention did not clearly state the ban on the destruction or terrorization of the civilian population; apparently, they simply did not think about this method of warfare.

An attempt to ban air warfare against civilians was made in 1922 in the draft Hague Declaration on the Rules of Air Warfare, but failed due to the reluctance of European countries to join the strict terms of the treaty. Nevertheless, already on September 1, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the heads of state that entered the war with a call to prevent “shocking violations of humanity” in the form of “the deaths of defenseless men, women and children” and “never, under any circumstances, undertake bombing from the air of the civilian population of unprotected cities." The then British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain also stated at the beginning of 1940 that “Her Majesty’s government will never attack civilians.”

Jörg Friedrich explains: “During the first years of the war, there was a fierce struggle among the Allied generals between supporters of targeted and carpet bombing. The first believed that it was necessary to strike at the most vulnerable points: factories, power plants, fuel depots. The latter believed that the damage from targeted strikes could be easily compensated for, and relied on the carpet destruction of cities and terrorizing the population.”

The concept of carpet bombing looked very profitable in light of the fact that it was precisely this kind of war that Britain had been preparing for during the entire pre-war decade. Lancaster bombers were designed specifically for attacking cities. Especially for the doctrine of total bombing, the most advanced production of incendiary bombs among the warring powers was created in Great Britain. Having established their production in 1936, by the beginning of the war the British Air Force had a stockpile of five million of these bombs. This arsenal had to be dropped on someone's head - and it is not surprising that already on February 14, 1942, the British Air Force received the so-called “Area Bombing Directive.”

The document, which gave then-Bomber Commander Arthur Harris unfettered authority to use bombers to suppress German cities, stated in part: "From now on, operations should be focused on suppressing the morale of the enemy civilian population - particularly industrial workers."

On February 15, RAF Commander Sir Charles Portal was even less ambiguous in a note to Harris: “I think it is clear to you that the targets should be residential areas and not shipyards or aircraft factories.”

However, it was not worth convincing Harris of the benefits of carpet bombing. Back in the 1920s, while commanding British air forces in Pakistan and then Iraq, he ordered the firebombing of unruly villages. Now the bomb general, who received the nickname Butcher1 from his subordinates, had to test the aerial killing machine not on Arabs and Kurds, but on Europeans.

In fact, the only opponents of raids on cities in 1942–1943 were the Americans. Compared to British bombers, their planes were better armored, had more machine guns and could fly farther, so the American command believed that it could solve military problems without mass killing of civilians.

“The views of the Americans changed seriously after the raid on the well-defended Darmstadt, as well as on the bearing factories in Schweinfurt and Regensburg,” says Jörg Friedrich. – You see, there were only two bearing production centers in Germany. And the Americans, of course, thought that they could deprive the Germans of all their bearings with one blow and win the war. But these factories were so well protected that during a raid in the summer of 1943, the Americans lost a third of their vehicles. After that, they simply didn’t bomb anything for six months. The problem was not even that they could not produce new bombers, but that the pilots refused to fly. A general who loses more than twenty percent of his personnel in just one flight begins to experience problems with the morale of the pilots. This is how the area bombing school began to win.”

Nightmare technology

The victory of the school of total bombing meant the rising of the star of Marshal Arthur Harris. A popular story among his subordinates was that one day a policeman stopped Harris's car while he was driving too fast and advised him to obey the speed limit: "Otherwise you might accidentally kill someone." “Young man, I kill hundreds of people every night,” Harris allegedly responded to the officer.

Obsessed with the idea of ​​bombing Germany out of the war, Harris spent days and nights at the Air Ministry, ignoring his ulcer. During all the years of the war, he was only on vacation for two weeks. Even the monstrous losses of his own pilots - during the war the losses of British bomber aviation amounted to 60% - could not force him to give up the fixed idea that gripped him.

“It is ridiculous to believe that the largest industrial power in Europe can be brought to its knees by such a ridiculous instrument as six or seven hundred bombers. But give me thirty thousand strategic bombers and the war will end tomorrow morning,” he told Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reporting the success of the next bombing. Harris did not receive thirty thousand bombers, and he had to develop a fundamentally new method of destroying cities - the “firestorm” technology.

“Bomb war theorists have come to the conclusion that the enemy’s city itself is a weapon - a structure with a gigantic potential for self-destruction, you just need to put the weapon into action. “We need to put the fuse to this barrel of gunpowder,” says Jörg Friedrich. – German cities were extremely susceptible to fire. The houses were predominantly wooden, the attic floors were dry beams ready to catch fire. If you set fire to the attic in such a house and break out the windows, then the fire that breaks out in the attic will be fueled by oxygen entering the building through the broken windows - the house will turn into a huge fireplace. You see, every house in every city was potentially a fireplace - you just had to help it turn into a fireplace.”

The optimal technology for creating a “firestorm” looked like this. The first wave of bombers dropped so-called aerial mines on the city - a special type of high-explosive bombs, the main purpose of which was to create ideal conditions for saturating the city with incendiary bombs. The first aerial mines used by the British weighed 790 kilograms and carried 650 kilograms of explosives. The following modifications were much more powerful - already in 1943, the British used mines that carried 2.5 and even 4 tons of explosives. Huge cylinders three and a half meters long rained down on the city and exploded upon contact with the ground, tearing tiles off roofs and knocking out windows and doors within a radius of up to a kilometer.

“Reared up” in this way, the city became defenseless against a hail of incendiary bombs that rained down on it immediately after being bombarded with aerial mines. When the city was sufficiently saturated with incendiary bombs (in some cases, up to 100 thousand incendiary bombs were dropped per square kilometer), tens of thousands of fires broke out in the city at the same time. The medieval urban development with its narrow streets helped the fire spread from one house to another. The movement of fire crews in conditions of a general fire was extremely difficult. Cities that had neither parks nor lakes, but only dense wooden buildings that had been dried out for centuries, did especially well.

The simultaneous fire of hundreds of houses created a draft of unprecedented force over an area of ​​​​several square kilometers. The entire city was turning into a furnace of unprecedented proportions, sucking in oxygen from the surrounding area. The resulting draft, directed towards the fire, caused a wind blowing at a speed of 200–250 kilometers per hour, a gigantic fire sucked oxygen out of bomb shelters, condemning to death even those people who were spared by the bombs.

Ironically, Harris picked up the concept of a “firestorm” from the Germans, Jörg Friedrich continues to say sadly.

“In the autumn of 1940, the Germans bombed Coventry, a small medieval city. During the raid, they bombarded the city center with incendiary bombs. The calculation was that the fire would spread to the engine factories located on the outskirts. In addition, fire trucks should not have been able to drive through the burning city center. Harris saw the bombing as an extremely interesting innovation. He studied its results for several months in a row. No one had carried out such bombings before. Instead of bombarding the city with land mines and blowing it up, the Germans carried out only a preliminary bombardment with land mines, and delivered the main blow with incendiary bombs - and achieved fantastic success. Inspired by the new technique, Harris tried to carry out a completely similar raid on Lubeck - almost the same city as Coventry. A small medieval town,” says Friedrich.

Horror without end

It was Lübeck that was destined to become the first German city to experience the “firestorm” technology. On the night of Palm Sunday 1942, 150 tons of high-explosive bombs were rained down on Lübeck, cracking the tiled roofs of medieval gingerbread houses, after which 25 thousand incendiary bombs rained down on the city. Lübeck firefighters, who realized the scale of the disaster in time, tried to call for reinforcements from neighboring Kiel, but to no avail. By morning the city center was a smoking ashes. Harris was triumphant: the technology he had developed bore its first fruits.

Harris's success also inspired Prime Minister Churchill. He gave instructions to repeat the success in a large city - Cologne or Hamburg. Exactly two months after the destruction of Lübeck, on the night of May 30-31, 1942, weather conditions over Cologne turned out to be more favorable - and the choice fell on him.

The raid on Cologne was one of the most massive raids on a major German city. For the attack, Harris assembled all the bomber aircraft at his disposal - including even coastal bombers, critical for Britain. The armada that bombed Cologne consisted of 1047 vehicles, and the operation itself was called “Millennium”.

To avoid collisions between planes in the air, a special flight algorithm was developed - as a result, only two cars collided in the air. The total number of losses during the night bombing of Cologne was 4.5% of the aircraft participating in the raid, while 13 thousand houses were destroyed in the city, and another 6 thousand were seriously damaged. Still, Harris would have been upset: the expected “firestorm” did not occur, and fewer than 500 people died during the raid. The technology clearly needed improvement.

The best British scientists were involved in improving the bombing algorithm: mathematicians, physicists, chemists. British firefighters gave advice on how to make the work of their German colleagues more difficult. English builders shared observations about the technologies used by German architects to construct fire walls. As a result, a year later the “firestorm” was realized in another large German city, Hamburg.

The bombing of Hamburg, the so-called Operation Gomorrah, occurred at the end of July 1943. The British military was especially happy that all the previous days in Hamburg there had been unprecedentedly hot and dry weather. During the raid, it was also decided to take advantage of a serious technological innovation - for the first time, the British risked spraying millions of the thinnest strips of metal foil in the air, which completely disabled German radars designed to detect the movement of enemy aircraft across the English Channel and send fighters to intercept them. The German air defense system was completely disabled. Thus, 760 British bombers, loaded to the brim with high-explosive and incendiary bombs, flew up to Hamburg, experiencing virtually no opposition.

Although only 40% of the crews were able to drop their bombs exactly within the intended circle of 2.5 kilometers around the Church of St. Nicholas, the effect of the bombing was stunning. Incendiary bombs set fire to the coal located in the basements of the houses, and within a few hours it became clear that it was impossible to put out the fires.

By the end of the first day, the execution was repeated: a second wave of bombers hit the city, and another 740 planes dropped 1,500 tons of explosives on Hamburg, and then flooded the city with white phosphorus...

The second wave of bombing caused the desired “firestorm” in Hamburg - the wind speed, sucked into the heart of the fire, reached 270 kilometers per hour. Streams of hot air threw the charred corpses of people like dolls. The “Firestorm” sucked oxygen out of bunkers and basements - even underground rooms untouched by bombing or fire turned into mass graves. The column of smoke over Hamburg was visible to residents of surrounding cities tens of kilometers away. The wind of the fire carried the charred pages of books from Hamburg libraries to the outskirts of Lübeck, located 50 kilometers from the bombing site.

The German poet Wolf Biermann, who survived the bombing of Hamburg at the age of six, would later write: “On the night when sulfur rained from the sky, before my eyes people turned into living torches. The roof of the factory flew into the sky like a comet. The corpses burned and became small to fit in mass graves.”

“There was no question of putting out the fire,” wrote one of the leaders of the Hamburg fire department, Hans Brunswig. “We could only wait and then pull the corpses out of the basements.” For many weeks after the bombing, columns of trucks carrying charred corpses sprinkled with lime continued along the rubble-strewn streets of Hamburg.

In total, at least 35 thousand people died during Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg. 12 thousand air mines, 25 thousand high explosive bombs, 3 million incendiary bombs, 80 thousand phosphorus incendiary bombs and 500 canisters of phosphorus were dropped on the city. To create a “firestorm”, each square kilometer of the south-eastern part of the city required 850 high-explosive bombs and almost 100 thousand incendiary bombs.

Murder according to plan

Today, the very idea that someone technologically planned the murder of 35 thousand civilians looks monstrous. But in 1943 the bombing of Hamburg did not provoke any significant condemnation in Britain. Thomas Mann, who lived in exile in London - a native of Lübeck, which was also burned by British aircraft - addressed the residents of Germany on the radio: “German listeners! Did Germany think that she would never have to pay for the crimes she had committed since her descent into barbarism?

In a conversation with Bertolt Brecht, who was also living in Britain at the time, Mann spoke even harsher: “Yes, half a million of the civilian population of Germany must die.” “I was talking to a stand-up collar,” Brecht wrote in horror in his diary.

Only a few in Britain dared to raise their voice against the bombings. For example, Anglican Bishop George Bell stated in 1944: “The pain that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on people cannot be healed by violence. Bombing is no longer an acceptable way to wage war." For the bulk of the British, any methods of war against Germany were acceptable, and the government understood this perfectly well, preparing an even greater escalation of violence.

At the end of the 1980s, the German historian Gunter Gellermann managed to find a previously unknown document - a memorandum dated July 6, 1944 D 217/4, signed by Winston Churchill and sent by him to the leadership of the Air Force. The four-page document, written shortly after the first German V-2 rockets fell on London in the spring of 1944, showed that Churchill had given explicit instructions to the Air Force to prepare for a chemical attack on Germany: “I want you to seriously consider the possibility use of combat gases. It is stupid to morally condemn the method that during the last war all its participants used without any protests from moralists and the church. In addition, during the last war, bombing undefended cities was prohibited, but today it is common practice. It's just a matter of fashion, which changes just as the length of a woman's dress changes. If the bombing of London becomes heavy and if the missiles cause serious damage to government and industrial centers, we must be prepared to do everything to inflict a painful blow on the enemy... Of course, it may be weeks or even months before I ask you to drown Germany in poison gases. But when I ask you to do this, I want it to be 100% effective.”

Just three weeks later, on July 26, two plans for the chemical bombing of Germany were placed on Churchill’s desk. According to the first, the 20 largest cities were to be bombed with phosgene. The second plan provided for the treatment of 60 German cities with mustard gas. In addition, Churchill's scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, an ethnic German born in Britain into a family of emigrants from Germany, strongly advised that German cities be bombarded with at least 50 thousand bombs filled with anthrax spores - this is exactly the amount of biological weapons ammunition that Britain had in its arsenals. . Only great luck saved the Germans from realizing these plans.

However, conventional ammunition also caused catastrophic damage to the German civilian population. “A third of Britain’s military budget was spent on the bombing war. The bomb war was carried out by the country's intellectual elite: engineers, scientists. The technical progress of the bomb war was ensured by the efforts of more than a million people. The whole nation waged a bomb war. Harris only stood at the head of bomber aviation, it was not his “personal war”, which he allegedly waged behind the backs of Churchill and Britain, continues Jörg Friedrich. “The scale of this gigantic enterprise was such that it could only be accomplished through the efforts of the entire nation and only with the consent of the nation. If it were otherwise, Harris would simply be removed from command. In Britain there were supporters of the precision bombing war. And Harris received his position precisely because the concept of carpet bombing won. Harris was the commander of bomber aviation, and his chief. The commander of the Air Force was Sir Charles Portell. And Portell gave instructions back in 1943: 900 thousand civilians should die in Germany, another million people should be seriously injured, 20 percent of the housing stock should be destroyed. Imagine that today the commander-in-chief in Iraq. says: we need to kill 900 thousand civilians! He will be brought to justice immediately. Of course, this was Churchill’s war, he made the appropriate decisions and is responsible for them.”

Raising the stakes

The logic of the bomb war, like the logic of any terror, required a constant increase in the number of victims. If until the beginning of 1943 the bombing of cities did not kill more than 100–600 people, then by the summer of 1943 the operations began to radicalize sharply.

In May 1943, four thousand people died during the bombing of Wuppertal. Just two months later, during the bombing of Hamburg, the number of victims approached 40 thousand. The likelihood for city residents to die in a fiery nightmare increased at an alarming rate. If earlier people preferred to hide from bombing in basements, now, at the sound of an air raid raid, they increasingly fled to bunkers built to protect the population, but in few cities the bunkers could accommodate more than 10% of the population. As a result, people fought to the death in front of the bomb shelters, and those killed by the bombs were added to those crushed by the crowd.

The fear of death by bombs reached its maximum in April-May 1945, when the bombing reached its peak intensity. By this time, it was already obvious that Germany had lost the war and was on the verge of capitulation, but it was during these weeks that the most bombs fell on German cities, and the number of civilian deaths in these two months amounted to an unprecedented figure - 130 thousand people.

The most famous episode of the bomb tragedy of the spring of 1945 was the destruction of Dresden. At the time of the bombing on February 13, 1945, there were about 100 thousand refugees in the city with a population of 640 thousand people.

At 22.00, the first wave of British bombers, consisting of 229 aircraft, dropped 900 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city, which led to a fire throughout almost the entire old city. Three and a half hours later, when the intensity of the fire had reached its maximum, a second, twice as large wave of bombers fell on the city, pouring another 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs into the burning Dresden. On the afternoon of February 14, a third wave of attack followed - this time carried out by American pilots, who dropped about 400 tons of bombs on the city. The same attack was repeated on February 15.

As a result of the bombing, the city was completely destroyed, the number of victims was at least 30 thousand people. The exact number of victims of the bombing has not yet been established (it is reliably known that individual charred corpses were removed from the basements of houses until 1947). Some sources, whose reliability, however, is questioned, give figures of up to 130 and even up to 200 thousand people.

Contrary to popular belief, the destruction of Dresden not only was not an action carried out at the request of the Soviet command (at the conference in Yalta, the Soviet side asked to bomb railway junctions, not residential areas), it was not even coordinated with the Soviet command, whose advanced units were in close proximity from the city.

“In the spring of 1945, it was clear that Europe would become the prey of the Russians - after all, the Russians had fought and died for this right for four years in a row. And the Western allies understood that they could not oppose anything to this. The Allies' only argument was air power - the kings of the air opposed the Russians, the kings of land warfare. Therefore, Churchill believed that the Russians needed to demonstrate this power, this ability to destroy any city, destroy it from a distance of a hundred or a thousand kilometers. It was Churchill's show of force, a show of Western air power. That's what we can do with any city. Actually, six months later the same thing happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” says Jörg Friedrich.

Bomb Kulturkampf

Be that as it may, despite the full scale of the Dresden tragedy, its death was just one episode of the large-scale destruction of the German cultural landscape in the last months of the war. It is impossible to understand the composure with which British aircraft destroyed the most important cultural centers of Germany in April 1945: Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn - small cities of great importance for German history. These cities were cultural symbols of the nation, and until 1945 they were practically not bombed because they were insignificant both from a military and economic point of view. Their time came precisely in 1945. Bomb attacks methodically destroyed palaces and churches, museums and libraries.

“When I was working on the book, I thought: what will I write about in the final chapter? – recalls Jörg Friedrich. – And I decided to write about the destruction of historical substance. About how historical buildings were destroyed. And at one point I thought: what happened to libraries? Then I picked up professional librarians' journals. So, in the professional magazine of librarians, in the 1947-1948 issue, it was calculated how many books stored in libraries were destroyed and how many were saved. I can say: it was the largest book burning in the history of mankind. Tens of millions of volumes were burned. A cultural treasure that was created by generations of thinkers and poets."

The quintessential bomb tragedy of the last weeks of the war was the bombing of Würzburg. Until the spring of 1945, the residents of this town, considered one of the most beautiful places in Germany, lived in the hope that the war would pass them by. During all the years of the war, practically not a single bomb fell on the city. Hopes grew even stronger after American aircraft destroyed the railway junction near Würzburg on February 23, 1945, and the city completely lost even the slightest military significance. A fantastic legend spread among the residents of the town that young Churchill studied at the local university for some time, so the city was granted life by the highest decree.

“Such hopes glimmered among the population of many German cities, which held out until the spring of 1945,” explains Jörg Friedrich. – For example, the residents of Hanover believed that they were not bombed because the Queen of England came from the family of Hanoverian kings. For some reason, the residents of Wuppertal decided that their city was known throughout Europe for its zealous Christian faith, and therefore they would not be bombed by those who were fighting the godless Nazis. Of course, these hopes were naive.”

The residents of Würzburg were also mistaken in their hopes. On March 16, 1945, the British command considered that ideal weather conditions had been created over the city for a “firestorm” to occur. At 1730 GMT, the 5th Bomb Group, consisting of 270 British Mosquito bombers, took off from a base near London. This was the same bomber force that had successfully destroyed Dresden a month earlier. Now the pilots had an ambitious goal to try to surpass their recent success and perfect the technique of creating a “firestorm”.

At 20.20 the formation reached Würzburg and, according to the usual pattern, dropped 200 high-explosive bombs on the city, opening the roofs of houses and knocking out windows. Over the next 19 minutes, the Mosquito dropped 370,000 incendiary bombs with a total weight of 967 tons on Würzburg with pinpoint precision. The fire that engulfed the city destroyed 97% of buildings in the old city and 68% of buildings on the outskirts. In a fire that reached a temperature of 2000 degrees, 5 thousand people burned. 90 thousand residents of Würzburg were left homeless. The city, built over 1,200 years, was razed to the ground overnight. British bomber losses amounted to two aircraft, or less than 1%. The population of Würzburg would not reach its pre-war level again until 1960.

With mother's milk

Similar bombings took place throughout Germany at the end of the war. British aviation actively used the last days of the war to train its crews, test new radar systems, and at the same time teach the Germans a final lesson in “moral bombing,” brutally destroying before their eyes everything they held dear. The psychological effect of such bombings exceeded all expectations.

“After the war, the Americans conducted a large-scale study of exactly what consequences their remarkable bomb war had for the Germans. They were very disappointed that they managed to kill so few people, continues Jörg Friedrich. “They thought they had killed two or three million people, and were very upset when it turned out that 500–600 thousand had died. It seemed to them that this was unthinkable - so few died after such a long and intense bombing. However, the Germans, as it turned out, were able to defend themselves in basements and bunkers. But there is another interesting observation in this report. The Americans came to the conclusion that, although the bombing did not play a serious role in the military defeat of Germany, the character of the Germans - this was said back in 1945! – the psychology of the Germans, the way Germans behave, has changed significantly. The report said - and this was a very smart observation - that the bombs did not really explode in the present. They did not destroy houses and people who were not living then. The bombs cracked the psychological foundation of the German people and broke their cultural backbone. Now fear sits in the hearts of even those people who have not seen the war. My generation was born in 1943-1945. It did not see a bomb war; a baby does not see it. But the baby feels the mother's fear. A baby lies in his mother's arms in the basement, and he knows only one thing: his mother is deathly afraid. These are the first memories in life - the mortal fear of the mother. Mother is God, and God is defenseless. If you think about it, the relative proportion of deaths even in the most terrible bombings was not so great. Germany lost 600 thousand people in bombings - less than one percent of the population. Even in Dresden, the most effective firestorm achieved at that time, 7 percent of the population died. In other words, even in Dresden, 93 percent of the inhabitants were saved. But the effect of psychological trauma - the city can be burned with one wave of the hand - turned out to be much stronger. What is the worst thing for a person today? I’m sitting at home, the war begins - and suddenly the city is burning, the air around me is burning my lungs, there is gas and heat all around, the world around me changes its state and destroys me.”

Eighty million incendiary bombs dropped on German cities radically changed the appearance of Germany. Today, any large German city is hopelessly inferior to French or British in terms of the number of historical buildings. But the psychological trauma turned out to be deeper. Only in recent years have Germans begun to think about what the bomb war actually did to them - and it seems that the realization of the consequences may drag on for many years.

According to official data published by the German government in 1962, during the Second World War, Anglo-American bomber aircraft dropped 2.690 million tons of bombs on continental Europe, of which 1.350 million tons - on Germany, 180 thousand tons - on Austria and Balkans, 590 thousand tons - to France, 370 thousand tons - to Italy, 200 thousand tons - for various purposes in Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland. Luftwaffe aircraft dropped 74,172 tons of bombs on targets in Great Britain.

AFTER THE "EAGLE ATTACK"

On August 13, 1940, in accordance with the Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack) plan, Germany launched an air offensive against Great Britain. After several bombs were accidentally dropped on London on August 24, the British launched a retaliatory strike on Berlin. On September 6, Hitler gave the order to begin bombing English cities. Particularly devastating was the raid on Coventry on November 14, 1940, during which 554 people were killed and 865 were injured. In total, during the war, during raids on this city in 1940-1942. 1236 people died.

The British responded with massive raids on German military installations and cities. Prime Minister W. Churchill promised: “We will turn Germany into a desert.” Under his pressure, on October 30, 1940, the British Air Force headquarters adopted a directive that provided for night air strikes on oil refineries and massive bombing of German cities. This directive, according to the English military historian B. Liddell Hart, “actually recognized the idea of ​​indiscriminate bombing.” Note that the decisions of the British government on the issue of “carpet” bombing were not initially brought to the attention of even parliament.

In November 1941, the Unison list was compiled in England, which included 19 large German cities to be destroyed and ranked according to their degree of “flammability.” The main focus was not on high-explosive bombs, but on incendiary ones, because It was they who caused large-scale fires and led to the greatest devastation in cities. In 1942, US aircraft joined the Royal Air Force in the European theater of operations. According to the leaders of the Western Allies, the actions of bomber aircraft should be considered as a kind of replacement for the second front in Europe, the opening of which the Soviet leadership so persistently asked. This idea was also intensively introduced into the consciousness of the world community.

On February 14, 1942, the British Bomber Command received a directive from Churchill, the main idea of ​​which was the instruction: “Bomb Germany out of the war.” When asked what exactly “bombed” means, the prime minister replied: “This means that if Germany does not stop the war, it will be charred from edge to edge.” B. Liddell Hart in his work “The Second World War” emphasizes that from that moment “intimidation unconditionally became the clearly expressed policy of the English government.” "Carpet" bombing at night was officially recognized as the main method of combat operations of British bomber aviation. Unlike the British, the American command relied on targeted bombing during daylight hours. Subsequently, US aviation did not adhere so firmly to this rule.

After the raids on the industrial cities of the Ruhr basin turned out to be ineffective, it was decided to attack other cities that contained highly flammable objects - old wooden residential buildings and buildings, and in addition, there was a weak air defense system. Taking these criteria into account, Lübeck and Rostock were selected in particular. The most successful, according to the British air command, was the massive raid on Lubeck on the night of March 29, 1942. 300 tons of bombs were dropped, half of them incendiary.

At the beginning of 1942, the commander of the RAF Bomber Command, Air Marshal A. Harris, developed “Plan 1000,” under which in May-June 1942, about 1,000 bombers carried out devastating night raids on Cologne, Essen and Bremen. Residential areas were mostly destroyed. Thus, during the raid on Essen, the Krupp factories located there were not damaged at all.

Harris set a goal: to significantly increase the number of bombers and destroy at least 50 major German cities. In 1942, Berlin, Emden, Düsseldorf, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Danzig, Kiel, Duisburg, Frankfurt, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart, Warnemünde, etc. were subject to air raids. However, the impact of the raids on Germany's industry and economy was extremely insignificant - weapons production increased steadily. The morale of the German population was also not undermined. In this regard, the modern English historian and former pilot R. Jackson writes: “The strategic offensive of the British Bomber Command against Germany during the first three years of the war ended in complete failure.”

"DIRECT FIRE"

In 1943, a new phase of Allied strategic bombing in Europe began. On January 21, at a conference in Casablanca, OKNSH directive CCS 166/1/D “On strengthening the joint air offensive against Germany” was adopted. Its main goal: “The consistent and increasing destruction and disorder of the military, industrial and economic system of Germany and the undermining of the morale of the German people to such an extent that their ability for armed resistance will inevitably weaken.” At the conference, it was possible to resolve disagreements regarding bombing tactics: the US 8th Air Force under the command of Lieutenant General A. Eaker was supposed to conduct targeted bombing of industrial facilities during the day, and British bomber aircraft led by A. Harris were to carry out night bombing massive bombings across areas. From now on, air raids were to be carried out around the clock. From the beginning of February to the end of June 1943, British bombers carried out 52 massive night raids on German cities.

In early June, on the basis of the mentioned directive, a plan was developed for the “United Bomber Offensive from the British Isles”, codenamed “Pointblank” (“Direct Fire”). As part of this plan, on August 17, the Americans carried out targeted strikes on large ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt and Regensburg. As a result, the output of products that are extremely important for completing military equipment decreased by 38%. According to the German Minister of Armaments A. Speer, “we continued to be saved by the fact that British aircraft continued to randomly bomb other cities.”

According to the Point Blanc plan, from July 25 to August 3, 1943, Operation Gomorrah was carried out - a massive multi-day raid on the second largest city in Germany - Hamburg. 3095 British and American bombers took part in it. 8621 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, 2/3 of which were incendiary. After the bombing, the fire raged in the city for several more days, and the column of smoke reached 6 km. According to the post-war report of the British Strategic Bombing Office, the city was 55-60% destroyed, with 75-80% of this destruction being the result of fires. According to various sources, from 46 thousand to 100 thousand people died, over 200 thousand were wounded, burned and maimed. 750 thousand people were left homeless. Until the end of the war, another 69 raids were carried out on this city.

According to official British data, by November 1943, 167,230 tons of bombs were dropped on 38 main German cities, and about 8,400 hectares of built-up area were destroyed (25% of the total area subject to raids). However, the level of German production continued to rise, mainly due to the skillful reorganization and dispersal of enterprises. On November 18, 1943, the “Battle for Berlin” began, which lasted until March 1944, although subsequently the city was subjected to repeated air strikes. 33 massive raids were carried out on the capital of the Third Reich by 10 thousand bombers, 50 thousand tons of bombs were dropped.

After ensuring preparations for Operation Overlord (the Allied landing in Normandy, which began on June 6, 1944), Anglo-American bomber aircraft resumed the strategic offensive against Germany. Cities remained among the main targets. Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Freiburg, Heilbronn and others were destroyed. According to B. Liddell Hart, from April 1944 to May 1945, British bomber aircraft dropped 53% of their bombs on urban areas and only 14% on oil refineries and 15% on transport facilities.

It is surprising why, until the spring of 1944, the German chemical industry, which supplied the Wehrmacht with artificial liquid fuel, oils, synthetic rubber, and explosives, was practically unaffected. As a result, Germany was able in 1943 to increase the production of artificial liquid fuel by 256%, gunpowder and explosives by 333%, and synthetic rubber by 2240% compared to 1938!

In this regard, I would like to touch upon such a topic as the close ties of the largest English and especially American corporations with German capital and industry. This is written in detail in the book of the American historian Charles Higham, “Deals with the Enemy: Exposing the Nazi-American Monetary Collusion of 1939-1949.” There is evidence that branches of these corporations in Germany and the countries it occupied continued their activities and carried out Hitler’s military orders during the war. According to some historians, this is why allied aviation “didn’t try very hard” to strike at oil refineries and some other industrial enterprises of the enemy.

The bombing operations of England and the United States acquired particular scope in the last four months of the war - from January to April 1945. At the same time, in January and early February 1945, Soviet troops carried out a number of major strategic offensive operations and moved uncontrollably to the west, liberating city after city. The fascist bloc in Europe completely collapsed. It became obvious that the collapse of Germany was a foregone conclusion.

At this time, the military-political leadership of the United States and Great Britain decided to conduct an operation under the code name "Thunderclap" ("Thunderclap"). It provided for a series of massive attacks on the largest cities in Germany with the aim of creating panic and chaos among the civilian population in order to force the Nazi command to announce immediate surrender. At the beginning of 1945, cities in eastern Germany were chosen as targets: Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. On the official website of the Royal Air Force of Great Britain, this choice of targets is explained as follows: “At that time, the most critical situation had developed on the Eastern Front, and in order to help the advancing Soviet troops, it was decided to launch air strikes on these cities - major transport hubs. What would have prevented the evacuation of German troops and refugees from the east and would complicate the transfer of reinforcements from the Western Front to the Eastern Front."

The first raid on Dresden, which had not previously experienced the horror of massive bombing, began late in the evening of February 13, 1945.

805 British bombers dropped 1,478 tons of high-explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs on the capital of Saxony in two stages. On February 14, 311 American "Flying Fortresses" took part in a daytime raid, dropping 771 tons of bombs on the city, with the railway marshalling yards as the main target. The next raids on the city by American bomber aircraft took place on February 15 and March 2. It is generally accepted that the greatest damage was caused by the first English attack.

As a result, the ancient city was turned into ruins. It is not for nothing that after the atomic attacks on Japanese cities, it, like Hamburg, began to be called “German Hiroshima.” 13 square meters were completely burned out. km of the historical center of the city, 27 thousand residential and 7 thousand public buildings were destroyed, including the most ancient cultural and architectural monuments. The camp for Soviet and allied prisoners of war located in the city was also almost completely destroyed. The exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden will apparently never be established. According to official data from the historical department of the British Royal Air Force, the number of victims exceeded 50 thousand people.

"BOMBER - SAVIOR OF CIVILIZATION"?

For more than 60 years, the debate among military historians about the military expediency and justification of striking Dresden has not subsided. The "Historical Analysis of the Bombing of Dresden, 14-15 February 1945," prepared by the US Air Force History Department, as well as the report of the British Royal Air Force History Department, state that, firstly, the raids were carried out "in accordance with the request of the Soviet command to carry out attacks on the Berlin-Dresden-Leipzig railway complex,” allegedly voiced at the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945). Secondly, our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition believe that the strikes on Dresden were completely justified, since it was a “legitimate military target,” and “the supreme allied command and the Soviet side were interested in these strikes.”

However, the question arises: why, instead of carrying out targeted strikes on railway tracks and marshalling yards (according to official American data, bombing accuracy at the end of the war was at least 70%), it was necessary to raze the entire city to the ground? The opinion that Dresden was a “legitimate target” from a military point of view is also shared by the famous English historian F. Taylor in the book “Dresden: Tuesday February 13, 1945.” However, he believes that this did not justify the total destruction of the city. Other historians, and among them the vast majority of Russians, believe that there was no military need for such a large-scale attack on Dresden. These raids could not have had a decisive impact on the immediate outcome of the war.

But what information we find in documents from British archives. Firstly, the assertion that the decision to raid Dresden was made in response to Stalin’s request in Yalta does not stand up to criticism. According to documents, already on January 26, 1945, the Chief of Staff of the British Air Force Charles Portal, under pressure from Churchill, announced the possibility of “delivering a powerful massive strike on a number of large cities” in the eastern part of Germany: Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig. On the same day, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Royal Air Force, Air Marshal N. Bottomley, in a telephone conversation with Harris, demanded that “such attacks be launched as soon as possible” in order to “take advantage of the confusion likely to reign in these cities due to the successful Russian offensive.” The next day, Aviation Minister A. Sinclair informed the Prime Minister about these negotiations and the progress of preparations for Operation Thunderclap.

Secondly, it is quite obvious that this “thunderclap” was not at all intended to help the advancing Soviet troops. The official justification for the operation stated: “The main purpose of such bombings is directed primarily against the morale of the civilian population and serves psychological purposes. It is very important that the operation be carried out precisely for this purpose and not spread to the suburbs, as well as to such targets as tank factories, aircraft manufacturing enterprises, etc."

The following opinion is also widespread among historians: the bombing of Dresden pursued rather a political goal. As the end of the war approached, anti-Soviet sentiments began to intensify among the Anglo-American leadership. In an effort to downplay the decisive contribution of the USSR to the defeat of the enemy, as well as to demonstrate their air power in order to “intimidate the Kremlin,” the allies launched an apocalyptic blow to Dresden, and then to many other cities that were retreating into the Soviet zone of occupation. For example, the American researcher A. McKee writes about this in the book “Dresden, 1945: Gehenna of Fire”: “The main reasons for carrying out the air raid were political and diplomatic: to show the Russians that ... the USA is a superpower, possessing weapons of terrible destructive power ".

There is also an opinion: massive raids were carried out with the aim of retaliating for the destroyed English cities in 1940 and punishing the entire German people for fascist atrocities during the war. It is clear that the thesis about the guilt of all Germans and the need for their punishment is very doubtful. The people were defamed by powerful Nazi propaganda, and only a few realized the crime of fascist ideology and philosophy. In this matter, all the i’s were dotted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which unequivocally stated that not the entire German people were subject to trial and punishment, but only the main war criminals of the European Axis countries and Nazi organizations. We can only talk about the moral responsibility of all Germans, which is recognized by public opinion in modern Germany.

The Nuremberg verdict is clear and cannot be revised. Just as the devastating bombing by the German Luftwaffe of Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, the cities of England and many thousands of cities and towns in the Soviet Union and other countries cannot be forgotten and deserve the harshest condemnation. The question is: is it possible to become like an aggressor in achieving your goals? American historian P. Johnson called the destruction of Dresden “the greatest Anglo-American moral disaster of the entire war against Germany.” Another Western researcher, F. J. Veale, holds approximately the same opinion in his book “On the Road to Barbarism: The Development of the Theory of Total War from Sarajevo to Hiroshima.”

It is known that immediately after the end of the war, the practice of terrorizing civilians from the air was condemned by the wider world community and the overwhelming majority of politicians and military personnel, including in the USA and Great Britain. Only a few continued to believe, in the figurative expression of former British Assistant Secretary of Aviation J. Speight, that “the bomber is the savior of civilization.” But the lessons of history, unfortunately, are quickly forgotten. Very soon, the leadership of the United States and a number of other NATO countries again turned their attention to the bomber as the “savior of civilization” in order to achieve their geopolitical goals and forcibly impose misunderstood “democratic values.” Civilians in the cities of North Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq experienced what the residents of Hamburg and Dresden experienced more than 60 years ago.

By the end of 1942, far from joyful moods prevailed in Germany. It became clear to everyone that German air defense was unable to protect the cities of the Reich. Even the losses on the German side were too high compared to the British: more than 10% of aircraft, including 5,000 fighters and 3,800 other types of aircraft. Although the number of Luftwaffe aircrew had doubled, the new recruits had little training. About 9 thousand pilots graduated from flight schools every month, but the quality of training had dropped significantly. Now the Luftwaffe pilots were inferior in skill to their opponents from the Royal Air Force, who were also increasingly strengthened by pilots from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the United States, according to the President's message to Congress, aircraft production in December 1942 reached 5,500 units, which was almost twice the capabilities of German production capacity. And production continued to grow steadily. By the end of the year, the United States had produced 47,836 aircraft, including 2,625 heavy bombers of the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator types.

During the remaining months of 1942, the Germans tried to increase and improve their fleet of night fighters, while the British carefully prepared for the destruction of 50 more German cities from the air.

In 1942, British and American aircraft dropped 53,755 tons of bombs on German territory, while the Luftwaffe dropped only 3,260 tons on England.

We will bomb Germany, one city after another. We will bomb you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue her mercilessly. City after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and the list will only grow - this was the promise of the commander of the British Bomber Command, Marshal A. Harris, which was printed on millions of leaflets that were scattered over German territory.

The air defense of Germany and neighboring countries occupied by it was carried out by the forces of the 3rd Air Fleet and the Mitte Air Fleet, which had more than 1 thousand single-engine and twin-engine fighters. Of these, only Berlin was covered by up to 400-600 aircraft.

Heavy defeats and huge losses on the Soviet-German front in the winter of 1942-1943. forced the German command to form, at the expense of the Luftwaffe, which included air defense troops, the so-called airfield divisions. By the spring of 1943, the Luftwaffe had to additionally allocate about 200 thousand people from its composition for this purpose. All this significantly weakened the Reich's air defense.

In the context of the growing strength of night strikes by allied aviation, the problem of providing air defense with radar aircraft detection systems and night fighters became especially important. The Germans did not have special night fighters, and they used ordinary twin-engine aircraft (Me-110, Yu-88, Do-217). The situation with anti-aircraft artillery was no better. Until 1942, the country's targets were covered by 744 batteries of heavy and 438 batteries of light anti-aircraft artillery (a total of up to 10 thousand guns). During 1942, the number of anti-aircraft batteries remained practically the same. Despite continuous efforts to increase combat power, the Eastern Front, like a huge magnet, attracted all available forces. Therefore, the German command in 1942-1943, despite the general increase in the production of fighters, was unable to strengthen the German air defense system.

From January 14 to 24, 1943, a conference of the heads of government of the United States and Great Britain, as well as the joint committee of the chiefs of staff of these countries, took place in Casablanca. Churchill wrote the following about this conference in his memoirs:

“The directive adopted in Casablanca to the commands of the British and American bomber aircraft based in the United Kingdom (dated February 4, 1943) formulated the task facing them as follows:

Your primary goal will be to further and further destroy and disrupt the military, industrial and economic system of Germany, to undermine the morale of the people to such an extent that their ability to arm themselves. Within the framework of this general concept, your primary objects for the moment are the following, in the order they are listed:

• a) German shipyards building submarines;
• b) German aircraft industry;
• c) transport;
• d) oil refineries;
• e) other facilities of the enemy’s military industry.”

But something else happened at this conference, which Churchill wisely kept silent about: the decision taken by the British War Cabinet on February 14, 1942 on “bombing strikes on areas” was approved. This meant that from now on, the targets of bombing were not military and industrial facilities in Germany, but residential areas of its cities, regardless of civilian casualties. This criminal, inhumane document went down in history as the “Casablanca Directive.” The death sentence planned a year ago for German cities and the people who inhabited them was confirmed, and carpet bombing was officially declared a normal method of warfare.

Here is what Harris wrote about this in his memoirs: “After the conference in Casablanca, the range of my responsibilities expanded [...] It was decided to sacrifice moral considerations. I had to begin implementing the joint Anglo-American plan for a bombing offensive with the goal of the general “disorganization” of German industry [...] This gave me quite broad powers in choice. I could give the order to attack any German industrial city with a population of 100 thousand inhabitants or more […] The new instructions made no difference in the choice.”

Ultimately, three general groups of targets were selected as the primary targets for the strategic bombing offensive:

• 1) the cities of the Ruhr basin, which were arsenals of Germany;
• 2) large cities in inner Germany;
• 3) Berlin as the capital and political center of the country.

Bombing attacks on Germany were planned to be carried out jointly by US and British aviation. The American Air Force aimed at destroying certain important military and industrial facilities through targeted daytime bombing, while British aviation aimed at carrying out massive night raids using area bombing.

The implementation of these tasks was directly assigned to the British Bomber Command (commander Air Chief Marshal A. Harris) and the American 8th Air Force (commander General A. Eaker). The first units of the 8th Air Force arrived in Great Britain on May 12, 1942. The first American air raids on targets in France in the summer of 1942 were too small in scale and went quite smoothly; only on September 6 did the Americans suffer their first losses of two aircraft. After this, the Army was seriously weakened as most of the B-17s were transferred to the North African theater of operations. The October raids, with a weakened force, on German submarine bases in France were not successful.

This gave Churchill a reason to reproach Eaker for inaction at the Casablanca conference. Churchill recalled this: “...I reminded him that 1943 had already begun. The Americans have been involved in the war for more than a year. During all this time they have been strengthening their air force in England, but have not yet dropped a single bomb on Germany during daylight raids, except on one occasion when a very short raid was carried out under the cover of British fighters. Eaker, however, defended his point of view skillfully and persistently. He admitted that they had not really struck yet, but give them another month or two and then they would begin operations on an increasing scale."

The first American air raid on Germany took place on January 27, 1943. On this day, the Flying Fortresses bombed material warehouses in the port of Wilhelmshaven.

By this time, American pilots had developed their own air attack tactics. It was believed that the B-17 and B-24, with their numerous heavy machine guns, flying in close formation (“battle box”), were invulnerable to fighters. Therefore, the Americans carried out daytime raids without fighter cover (they simply did not have long-range fighters). The basis of the “box” was a formation of 18-21 aircraft of the group, assembled from fragments of three aircraft, while the squadrons were echeloned vertically to provide a better field of fire for the machine gunners in the dorsal and ventral turrets. Already two or more groups formed attack wings stratified vertically (the “assembled wing” scheme, including up to 54 bombers), but the number of operations did not allow the transition to the permanent use of such a formation. Thus, such an arrangement of aircraft ensured the maximum possible use of on-board weapons when repelling attacks. The boxes could again be located at different heights. There were also disadvantages: when bombing, no maneuvers to evade anti-aircraft guns or fighters were possible, since there was always the possibility of getting hit by bombs higher than a flying aircraft.

From the beginning of 1944, the presence of fighter escort along the entire route allowed bomber crews to concentrate entirely on bombing with the help of several aircraft equipped with special equipment. One such leader led a 12-vehicle bomber squadron, with three squadrons forming an arrowhead formation. And finally, the last improvement, introduced in February 1945, when the Germans began to cover cities with concentrated masses of anti-aircraft batteries, was expressed in the formation of a group of four squadrons of nine bombers, flying at different altitudes in order to make it difficult for enemy anti-aircraft gunners to correctly install sights and shell tubes .

In April 1943, Bomber Command had 38 heavy and 14 medium bomber squadrons, for a total of 851 heavy and 237 medium bombers. The American 8th Air Force had 337 heavy bombers and 231 aircraft in tactical aviation formations.

From 6 March to 29 June 1943, Bomber Command authorized 26 massive raids on the Ruhr cities, during which the Allies dropped 34,705 tons of bombs for the loss of 628 aircraft. In addition, in March-April 1943, three massive raids were carried out on Berlin, four on Wilhelmshaven, two each on Hamburg, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, and one each on Bremen, Kiel, Stettin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim.

On the night of May 17, 1943, British bombers destroyed the dams on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe rivers. This action, known as Operation Spanking, is considered the most brilliant operation carried out by the British Air Force up to that time in terms of precision and results. Edertal has 160 million cubic meters. m of water rushed in a nine-meter wave in the direction of Kassel, destroying five settlements along the way. The number of deaths is unknown, only 300 people were buried in coffins. A large number of livestock also died. In Mön, in the Ruhr Valley, the consequences were no less terrible. The main impact of the wave fell on the town of Neaim Husten, where 859 people died. In total, 1,300 residents drowned in the area near the city. In addition, 750 women (mostly Ukrainians) employed here in forced agricultural labor became victims.

The British experience in destroying dams was later eagerly used by the Americans during the Korean War. But that was later, and for now the actions of American aviation in Germany were limited. So, on May 14, 126 American heavy bombers bombed Kiel. Only after the Americans had sufficiently increased their presence in England did their planes begin to regularly participate in air raids.

The air offensive on the Ruhr began on March 6, 1943 with a raid on Essen, where Krupp factories were located, by 450 British bombers. They were guided to the target by 8 Mosquito guidance aircraft. During 38 minutes of intense bombing, more than 500 tons of high-explosive bombs and over 550 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. The city was reduced to ruins. The leadership of Bomber Command was jubilant - British bombers had finally managed to put Krupp's most important enterprises out of action for months. It was only at the end of 1943 that it was discovered that three quarters of the bombs had been dropped on a false plant built south of Essen.

In the spring of 1943, raids on Germany were carried out without fighter escort, since their range was insufficient. But the Luftwaffe has already begun to receive Focke-Wulf-190A with improved weapons, as well as the Messerschmitt-110 night fighter. Using improved radar sights, German fighters inflicted significant damage on Allied aircraft both day and night. For example, the American attempt on April 17 to attack the Focke-Wulf plant near Bremen with 115 B-17 “Flying Fortress” aircraft ended unsuccessfully for them: 16 “fortresses” were shot down and another 48 were damaged. The losses of the British Air Force alone during attacks on Germany in April 1943 amounted to 200 heavy bombers and approximately 1,500 members of their crews. And in just 43 raids carried out during the “Battle of the Ruhr” (March-July 1943), 872 (or 4.7%) Allied bombers were shot down. Bomber Command suffered 5,000 casualties.

One important point should be noted. Thanks to competent propaganda, a very favorable atmosphere of public opinion was formed in England itself regarding the bombing of Germany carried out by the Royal Air Force. Public polls in April 1943 showed that 53% of the British agreed with the bombing of civilian targets, while 38% were against. Later, the number of people encouraging such bombings increased to 60%, the number of those who disagreed dropped to 20%. At the same time, the government argued that airstrikes were carried out exclusively against objects of military significance. In particular, the Minister of Aviation A. Sinclair in all his public speeches diligently emphasized that Bomber Command carried out bombing strikes only on military targets. Any suggestions about attacks on residential areas were immediately declared absurd and regarded as slanderous attacks on the good name of English pilots risking their lives for the good of the country. Although in reality everything looked completely different.

Proof that Sir Archibald Sinclair was lying like a gray gelding was the devastating raid on Wuppertal. The “double” city of Wuppertal, located in the east of the Ruhr, was divided into two parts: Barmen and Elberfeld. The plan for the attack on the city was simple: a formation of 719 British bombers was to cross Wuppertal at a heading of 69 degrees. This route allowed the main forces to cover the entire “double” city with bombs. Wuppertal-Barmen was chosen as the aiming point, since it was assumed that in conditions of severe air defense counteraction, many crews who showed cowardice would drop bombs earlier than the intended target, but even in this case they would hit Wuppertal-Elberfeld (in every raid on an object covered by strong air defense, such Enough pilots were recruited that Harris contemptuously called them “rabbits”). This time, the British bombers, which were heading through Maastricht and Mönchengladbach, were discovered 45 minutes before the attack. But the unexpected happened. Despite the fact that the city's air defense was in full combat readiness, the anti-aircraft guns were silent: until the last moment the control center did not believe that Wuppertal would be bombed, and did not give the command to open fire so as not to detect the city (until now this has been possible, from above the foggy lowland in which the valley of the Wupper River lay looked like a lake). First, Mosquito reconnaissance planes dropped marking bombs and accurately marked the city center, then the first wave of 44 aircraft dropped containers with incendiary bombs there. The resulting fires became a guide for others. As a result, the entire bomb load fell concentrated on Wuppertal-Barmen. 1895 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped. More than 10% of the planes went off course and bombed Remscheid and Solingen, but 475 crews dropped their bombs in the heart of Wuppertal (Barmen). The air defense that came to its senses managed to shoot down 33 aircraft and damage another 71.

But Wuppertal-Elberfeld remained unharmed. But not for long: a month later, Harris’ bombers carried out “work on the mistakes.” While 2,450 people were killed in the first attack on Barmen, a month after the attack on Elberfeld the total number of dead in Wuppertal was 5,200.

It became clear that the air war had taken on a new form, turning into an aerial battle. It was the first air raid to result in so many civilian casualties. The bombing attracted the attention of not only the Reich leadership. In London, many who saw press photographs of the ruins of Wuppertal were impressed by the scale of the destruction. Even Churchill shed a stingy crocodile tear, expressing his regret in The Times on May 31 and explaining that casualties among the population are inevitable with all the precision of the Allies’ bombing of military targets and the highest precision of the Royal Air Force (of course! Churchill’s Falcons, which bombed Wuppertal without a miss, destroyed 90 % of the built-up part of the city - downright sniper accuracy!)

And on June 18, 1943, at a funeral ceremony in Wuppertal, another grieving cannibal, Dr. J. Goebbels, among other things, uttered the following maxim: “This type of air terrorism is the product of the sick mind of dictators - destroyers of the world. The long chain of human suffering in all German cities caused by Allied air raids has produced witnesses against them and their cruel, cowardly leaders - from the murder of German children in Freiburg on May 10, 1940 to the events of today.

It’s hard to disagree with the first sentence of Goebbels’ passage, because the idea of ​​using carpet bombing against the population of cities could only have arisen in the brains of psychopaths, enraged by impunity, who imagined themselves to be gods. But for the rest... Perhaps Goebbels, in deep sadness, forgot who really started this terrible war on September 1, 1939. But as for Freiburg, no one, but he, initially knew whose Heinkels dropped bombs on German children. By the way, just a few days later, Goebbels said in an informal conversation: “If I could tightly close the Ruhr, if there were no such things as letters or telephones, I would not allow a word about an air attack to be published. Not a single word!

This is just another proof that morality and war, conscience and politics are practically incompatible concepts. By the way, the Allies (like the Germans and Freiburg) also played for a long time and skillfully the dirty card with the bombing of Rotterdam - from the very beginning, the Dutch government, which surrendered the country and safely fled to London, loudly indignant and stomped its foot, blamed the German side for the death in Rotterdam as much 30 thousand Dutch! And many, particularly in the United States, then believed outright nonsense. Alas, these are the laws of this vile genre.

At the end of May 1943, Churchill visited the United States, where he addressed Congress. In his speech, he made it clear that he had no idea whether strategic bombing was effective.

It’s incredible, considering that in October 1917, as the British Minister of War Supply, he had a full understanding of this, which he himself wrote about in his own memorandum: “... It is unreasonable to think that an air offensive in itself can decide the outcome of the war. It is unlikely that any kind of intimidation of the civilian population through air raids can force the capitulation of the government of a great power. A habit of bombing, a good system of shelters or shelters, the firm control of the police and military authorities are all sufficient to prevent the weakening of national power. We saw from our own experience that German air raids did not suppress, but raised the morale of the people. What we know about the capacity of the German population to endure suffering does not suggest that the Germans can be intimidated or subjugated by such methods. On the contrary, such methods will increase their desperate determination...”

Further, with his characteristic cynicism, he literally told Congress the following: “Opinions are divided. Some believe that the use of strategic aviation alone could lead to the collapse of Germany and Italy. Others take the opposite point of view. In my opinion, the experiment should be continued, while not neglecting other methods.”

Like this! For Churchill, the total bombing of the civilian population is just an experiment in which hundreds of thousands of people are assigned the role of guinea pigs. It is clear that Churchill was not the only one who had such a fascinating hobby - experiments on people. But, if the sadistic doctor Mengele with his experiments in Auschwitz was recognized as a Nazi criminal, then who should be considered the English leader after such statements? After all, when in the 20s, the British Minister of Defense Industry and Colonies, W. Churchill, was informed about the bloody arts in Iraq of the commander of the 45th air squadron, Harris, he, in his own words, was “ deeply shocked to hear of such cruelty towards women and children" At that time, Churchill was very wary of the publicity of such “exploits” of British pilots. Of course, after all " if such information were leaked to the press, our air force would be forever dishonored" But now, having personally appointed that same executioner Harris as commander of Bomber Aviation with the right to genocide, the deceitful prime minister was calm for the honor of the Royal Air Force.

Be that as it may, the Allies had to admit that they had lost the “Battle of the Ruhr”. Despite great destruction in industrial areas and enormous difficulties for the civilian population, the volume of military production continued to grow steadily. By mid-June, the total tonnage of bombs dropped on the cities of the Ruhr had decreased significantly. The losses of British bombers exceeded 5% (to put it simply, the survivability of one bomber was 20 sorties). The concentration of air defense forces in this area has reached a dangerous level. In order to weaken it, it was decided to transfer the attack to the cities of Central Germany.

Meanwhile, the allied command, concerned about high losses, revised the order of bombing targets back in May. And on May 18, 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the “Plan for a Combined Bomber Offensive from the British Isles,” codenamed Point Blanc. This plan formed the basis of the directive of June 10, 1943, according to which the main task of the Air Force was the destruction of German fighters and the destruction of industrial enterprises associated with their production. “Until this is achieved,” the directive stated, “our bomber aviation will not be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to it.” The main role in the implementation of the Point Blanc plan was assigned to the American 8th Air Force. To work out issues of interaction, an Anglo-American joint operations planning committee was created.

According to the plan, the combined bomber offensive consisted of four stages. At the first stage (it ended in July), the main objects were to be submarine shipyards. In the second (August-September), the main efforts were concentrated on fighter aircraft base areas and factories producing fighter aircraft. During this time, the number of heavy bombers was supposed to be increased to 1192 aircraft. In the third (October-December) it was planned to continue the destruction of German fighter aircraft and other means of warfare. By January 1944 it was planned to have 1,746 heavy bombers. The tasks of the last stage (January-March 1944) were reduced mainly to ensuring preparations for the invasion of the Allied forces on the continent. By March 31, the number of heavy bombers was to increase to 2,702 aircraft.

In July 1943, British bomber aircraft carried out raids on Cologne, Aachen, Essen and Wilhelmshaven. The most serious was the raid on Essen on July 26, which involved 705 bombers. 627 vehicles reached the target, dropping 2032 tons of bombs on the city. The attackers lost 26 aircraft.

The horrific and brutal air raids on Hamburg that began on July 24 marked a new bloody round of aerial carnage. It was here that the Allies first managed to successfully use a new diabolical technology of mass destruction, the so-called “firestorm”. At the same time, the thoughtful, savage extermination of living people by fire was, naturally, justified solely by military necessity - of course, where would we be without it! it, my dear, will arise many times in the future: it will blaze as a giant crematorium in Dresden and Tokyo, it will shoot up like nuclear mushrooms over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it will rain abundant napalm rain on Vietnam, it will hit Iraq and Serbia with a hail of missiles. It was precisely because of this necessity that what then happened in Hamburg defies description. However, there is a word in the Russian language that can be used to describe the fiery horror of Hamburg. This word is “burnt offering” or in Greek “holocaust.” According to eyewitnesses who miraculously survived in that man-made hell, many people suffocated or literally baked under the influence of incredible heat. Many drowned after jumping into the city canals. A few days later, when it finally became possible to approach the red-hot ruins, they began to open the city basements, where they found thousands of dead people, as if roasted in ovens.

But in good old England this bothered few people. The Archbishop of York, for example, in the London Times, in a Christian manner, kindly explained to the humble, unreasonable flock that massive raids on cities were necessary because they would help “shorten the war and save thousands of lives.”

The butcher in the cassock was supported by the butcher in uniform: Marshal Harris publicly expressed sincere regret that he could not immediately do the same with other major cities in Germany.

Of course, there were sensible people in England who opposed the barbaric methods of warfare. Thus, Bishop of Chichester George Bell stated in the Upper House of Parliament back in February 1943: “To put Nazi murderers guilty of crimes on a par with the German people is sheer barbarity!” A year later he appealed to the government: “I demand that the government express its attitude towards the policy of bombing enemy cities. I am aware that during raids on military-industrial centers and transport hubs, the death of the civilian population as a result of actions carried out with the belief that they are purely military in nature is inevitable. But here there must be proportionality between the means used and the goal achieved. To wipe out an entire city just because there are military and industrial facilities in some of its areas is not proportionate. Allies represent more than strength. The key word on our banner is “right.” It is extremely important that we, who together with our allies are the saviors of Europe, use force in such a way that it is controlled by law.”

Unfortunately, those to whom these words were addressed did not want to hear them, because they were busy developing another brilliant plan for the liberation of Europe from Nazism. Around this same time, Professor Lindeman enthusiastically and colorfully described to Churchill the principle of action of anthrax bacteria. Back in the winter of 1943, the Americans, according to an English project, manufactured a 1.8 kg bomb containing the causative agent of this terrible disease. Six Lancasters were enough to evenly scatter these gifts and destroy all living things in an area of ​​2.5 square meters. km, making the area uninhabitable for a long time. Churchill reacted to Lindemann's message with interest. At the same time, he gave instructions that he would certainly be notified as soon as the bombs were ready. The “fighters against Nazism” planned to take this issue seriously in the spring of 1944. And they did. Already on March 8, 1944, the United States received an order for the production of half a million (!) of these bombs. When two months later the first series of 5 thousand such bombs was transported across the ocean to England, Churchill noted with satisfaction: “We consider this as the first delivery.”

However, on June 28, 1944, the British military leadership noted in the minutes of a monthly meeting their intention to temporarily refrain from using bacteriological weapons in favor of a more “humane” method: the destruction of a number of German cities using gigantic, devastating “firestorms.”

Churchill was extremely dissatisfied: “Well, of course, I cannot resist everyone at the same time - both the priests and my own military. This possibility needs to be reconsidered and discussed again when the situation worsens.”

Be that as it may, in the arsenal of the “victors” only the old reliable Holocaust remained, and its most effective version was the carpet one, guaranteeing the burnt offering of the German civilian population through all-out air raids. And the allies got down to business without hesitation.

The destruction of Hamburg, which went down in the history of World War II as Operation Gomorrah, will be discussed in the next part of the story, for it was one of the key events of the total air massacre. Here, for the first time, the British used a technical novelty - the “Window” system, which became the prototype of modern electronic warfare systems. With the help of this simple trick, the Allies managed to completely paralyze the Hamburg air defense system. The so-called “double strike tactics” were also used here, when a few hours after the air raid the same target was struck again. First, on the night of July 25, 1943, the British bombed Hamburg. During the day, American planes also carried out a raid on the city (the results of the suppression of air defense during the first raid were used), and at night it was repeated again by British aircraft.

And on August 18, Bomber Command launched a powerful bombing attack on a very important target, which seriously threatened the security of London: 600 bombers, of which 571 aircraft reached the target, dropped 1937 tons of bombs on the experimental missile weapons center in Peenemünde. At the same time, the British skillfully deceived the entire German air defense. Twenty Mosquitoes carried out a mock raid on Berlin. By dropping flare bombs, they created the impression among the Germans that the target of the raid was the capital of the Reich. Two hundred night fighters, scrambled into the air, scoured Berlin unsuccessfully. The deception was revealed when bombs were already falling on Peenemünde. The fighters rushed north. Despite the ploy, the British lost 40 aircraft and another 32 bombers were damaged.

Over the last ten days of August, three raids were carried out on the capital of the Reich, which were the prologue to the upcoming “Battle for Berlin”. Although the areas of Siemens-Stadt, Mariendorf and Lichtenfelde were heavily damaged, these raids were unsuccessful due to bad weather and the inability to use the Oboe system. At the same time, German night fighters could freely strike, since they were guided by radar stations, which by that time had mastered the principle of operation of the Window system so much that they could identify the main stream of attacking aircraft (but not individual bombers).

Having lost 125 bombers during three raids (about 80 were destroyed by night fighters), Bomber Command temporarily stopped attacks on Berlin, switching to other targets. On September 6 and 24, about 600 aircraft carried out two massive raids on Mannheim; in September-October, Hanover, Kassel and Düsseldorf were attacked from the air.

Between the end of September and mid-October, four raids were carried out on Hanover, during which 8,339 tons of bombs were dropped on the city.

Of particular note was the massive raid undertaken by British aviation on the night of October 23 against Kassel, the center of the tank industry and locomotive production. In Kassel, the British again managed to cause a firestorm. To neutralize Kassel's air defenses, a diversionary raid was launched. In conjunction with this ploy, a new tactic was used, codenamed "Crown". Its essence is as follows. Fluent German-speaking personnel radioed messages from the interception point in Kingsdown, Kent. These specialists gave false instructions to the ever-increasing German fighter force, delaying aircraft sorties or even causing them to respond to a diversionary attack, passing it off as a main night strike. A secondary responsibility of the Corona operators was to transmit incorrect weather information to the German night fighters. This forced them to land and disperse.

The attack of the main forces on Kassel was scheduled for 20.45 on October 22, but at 20.35 the air defense forces were informed that the most likely target would be Frankfurt am Main, and night fighters were sent there. And when at 20.38 a false report was received that Frankfurt was under attack, the air raid warning was cleared for the Kassel anti-aircraft batteries. Thus, with the help of the skillful use of the “Crown”, the bombers were able to deliver a powerful blow to the city, which was virtually devoid of protection. When the night fighters returned from their futile flight to Frankfurt, the first wave of British planes had already bombed Kassel.

1823.7 tons of bombs were dropped on Kassel. At least 380 of the 444 bombers that took part in the raid were to strike within a 5 km radius of the chosen target. Within just half an hour, the second fire tornado in the history of air warfare broke out, against which 300 city fire brigades were powerless.

According to preliminary reports, 26,782 houses were completely destroyed, while 120 thousand people were left homeless. The raid on Cassel provided a classic example of the theory behind the attack on the area, a chain reaction of disruption that first paralyzed the city's public services and then brought the undamaged factories to a standstill (something similar happened in Coventry). The city was supplied with electricity from the city power station and from the Losse power station. The first was destroyed, the last was stopped after the destruction of the coal conveyor. The entire city's low-voltage power system failed. At the same time, despite the fact that with the loss of only three gas tanks the gas supply system itself was not undermined and the gas pipelines could be restored, without the electricity necessary to operate the gas pipeline equipment, the entire industrial region of Kassel was left without gas supply. Again, although the fire water pumping stations were not damaged, their operation was impossible without electricity. Without gas, water and electricity, Kassel's heavy industry was paralyzed.

The city's population was 228 thousand inhabitants. However, despite the eruption of a firestorm similar to that of Hamburg, Kassel's death toll was surprisingly low - 9,200 people. The fact is that strict air defense precautions were taken throughout the city. Back in 1933 (long before the war!), a program was launched to demolish dilapidated houses in order to create wide escape routes on the outskirts in case of a fire in the city. In addition, after an air raid on the Ruhr dams on the night of 17 May 1943, the city center was partially flooded due to the collapse of the Eder dam. After the evacuation, only 25 thousand residents needed to carry out the work remained in the center, and large concrete bunkers were erected for them.

The raid on Kassel had one more feature. It was found that 70% of the victims died from suffocation and poisoning by combustion products. At the same time, the bodies of the dead acquired bright shades of blue, orange and green. Therefore, at first a version arose that the British used bombs with toxic substances. The Germans were preparing to take measures for an adequate response. But autopsies refuted the presence of toxic substances, and Europe avoided the very possible outbreak of a chemical war.

On November 4, the British bombed Düsseldorf. The GH airborne radio navigation device was used for the first time in this raid. Unlike the previously used Oboe system, the GH system could be used by an unlimited number of aircraft. The accuracy of bombing has increased, bombs began to fall within a radius of 800 meters from the aiming point. By the fall of next year, most Lancasters were equipped with this device.

The Americans in 1943 were actually still opposed to raids on cities. Compared to British bombers, their planes were better armored, had more machine guns and could fly farther, so American aircraft were believed to be capable of accomplishing military missions without massacring civilians. But when operations were undertaken to greater depths, losses increased sharply. During the raid on Bremen on April 17, of the 115 aircraft that took part, 16 were shot down and 44 were damaged.

The raid on Kiel and Bremen on June 13 was marked by an increase in German fighter resistance - the Americans lost 26 bombers out of 182 aircraft that attacked the target.

During the raid on Hanover in July, 24 of 92 bombers were lost; during the bombing of Berlin on July 28 by 112 American aircraft, 22 of them were shot down.

In the summer and autumn of 1943, the American 8th Air Force attacked mainly cities located in the depths of Germany and suffered heavy losses. In five operations in July (a total of 839 sorties), the Americans were missing 87 bombers (or 10%). Looking ahead, it can be noted that 50% of American aviation losses in World War II fell on the 8th Air Force: 26 thousand killed and over 21 thousand wounded.

The Germans took the American threat seriously: another group of interceptor fighters appeared in the west, transferred from the Eastern Front to fight the 8th Air Army.

Then the American command went all-in. Schweinfurt was a major center for the production of ball bearings. And the Americans decided to win the war with several powerful blows, depriving the Germans of all their bearings. However, such objects were covered so well that, having received severe repulse from air defense, the American command became increasingly inclined to bombing areas.

August 17 was a black day for American pilots. On this day, during a raid of 146 bombers on the Messerschmitt factories in Regensburg-Prufenig, German fighters shot down 24 Flying Fortresses. Another group of 229 aircraft, which attacked factories in Schweinfurt, lost another 36 aircraft. After such a defeat, the “fortresses” did not appear over the Reich for almost five weeks.

As Speer wrote in his memoirs, “despite the great vulnerability of Schweinfurt, we had to establish the production of ball bearings there. The evacuation would lead to a complete shutdown of production for three to four months. Our difficult situation did not allow us to move the production of ball bearings from the factories in Berlin-Erkner, Kantstatt or Steyr, although the enemy knew their location."

According to Speer, the Americans then made a serious miscalculation by spreading their forces across two targets. The British were busy doing what they loved - indiscriminate bombing of residential areas, and not industrial enterprises. But if British aviation had switched to attacks on the same Schweinfurt, the course of the war could have changed even then!

Moreover, after the war, in June 1946, the Royal Air Force headquarters asked Speer to analyze the possible consequences of attacks on ball bearing factories. Speer gave the following shocking scenario: “Military production would decline in the next two months and would be completely paralyzed in four, provided

• 1. if the attack were carried out simultaneously on all ball bearing factories (Schweinfurt, Steyr, Erkner, Kantstatt, as well as in France and Italy);
• 2. if the raids, regardless of photographing the results of the bombing, were repeated three or four times with an interval of two weeks;
• 3. if after this, every two months for six months, massive raids would eliminate all restoration work.”

In other words, the war could have been ended by February 1944, and without the destruction of German cities, avoiding a colossal number of casualties! We draw our own conclusions.

In the fall, the Americans again carried out a series of raids on the ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt, during which 12,000 tons of bombs were dropped. October 14 went down in history as “Black Thursday”. The raid that day was extremely unsuccessful. Of the 228 bombers that took part in the raid, 62 were shot down and 138 were damaged. The cause of the disaster was an unreliable cover. Thunderbolt fighters could accompany the bombers only to the Aachen line, and then left them unprotected. It was the culmination of a terrible week during which the Eighth Air Force lost 148 bombers and crews in four attempts to penetrate German defenses beyond fighter escort range. The Luftwaffe hit was so severe that further bombing of Schweinfurt was delayed for four months. During this time, the factories were restored to such an extent that, as the official report noted, there remained “no indication that the raids on the ball bearing industry had any noticeable impact on this important branch of war production.” After such terrible losses, the main problem for the Americans was not the lack of bombers, but the morale of the crews, who simply refused to fly on combat missions without cover! This continued until the arrival in December of the P-51 Mustang fighters, which had a long range. From that time on, the decline of German air defense fighter aircraft began.

Both the American Eighth Army and especially the British Bomber Command adhered to the plan for an air offensive against Germany only in general terms. Instead of raiding important military-industrial targets, British aviation concentrated its main efforts on bombing the largest cities in Germany. Air Chief Marshal Harris stated on 7 December 1943 that "by the end of October 1943, 167,230 tons of bombs had been dropped on the 38 main cities of Germany, destroying about 8,400 hectares of built-up area, representing 25% of the total area of ​​the cities attacked."

In this regard, it is appropriate to quote an excerpt from the memoirs of Freeman Dyson, a world-famous scientist, one of the creators of quantum electrodynamics: “I arrived at the headquarters of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command just before the big raid on Hamburg. On the night of July 24 we killed 40,000 men with the loss of only 12 bombers—the best ratio we have ever had. For the first time in history, we created a barrage of fire that killed people even in bomb shelters. Enemy losses were approximately ten times greater than in a normal raid of the same power, without the use of barrage tactics.

I occupied a fairly high position in the Strategic Bomber Command, knowing much more about the general direction of the campaign than any officer. I knew much more about the details of the campaign than the Ministry staff in London, I was one of the few who knew the goals of the campaign, knew how little we were able to achieve them and how dearly - in money and human lives - we were paying for it. Bombing accounted for about a quarter of England's entire war effort. Protection and restoration of bombing damage cost the Germans much less. Their defense was so effective that the Americans were forced to stop daylight bombing throughout almost all of Germany from the fall of 1943 to the summer of 1944. We stubbornly refused to do this, although the German air defense deprived us of the possibility of accurate bombing. We were forced to abandon the destruction of precise military targets. The only thing we could do was burn German cities, which is what we did. Our efforts to target civilians were also quite ineffective. The Germans killed one person for every ton of bombs dropped on England. In order to kill one German, we were forced to drop an average of three tons.”

And now these warriors are proclaiming themselves winners!

Further, F. Dyson writes: “I felt the deepest responsibility, having all that information carefully hidden from the British public. What I knew filled me with disgust for war. Many times I wanted to run out into the street and tell the English what stupid things were happening in their name. But I didn't have the courage to do it. So I sat in my office until the very end, carefully calculating how to most economically kill several thousand more people.

When the war ended, I happened to read reports about the trial of Eichmann's group. Just like me, they sat in their offices, wrote memos and calculated how to kill people more efficiently. The difference was that they were sent to prison or to the gallows as criminals, while I remained free. By God, I even felt some sympathy for them. Probably many of them hated the SS, as I hated Bomber Aviation, but did not have the courage to say so. Probably, many of them, like me, have not seen a single person killed in all six years of service.”

An amazing confession that needs no comment!

However, the destruction of housing estates did not and could not lead to a decrease in military output. The English historian A. Verrier in his book “The Bomber Offensive” writes: “We now know that German heavy industry and main production facilities did not suffer serious damage in 1943. Despite the devastation of the Ruhr, metallurgical and other enterprises continued to operate; there was no shortage of machinery; there were no acute shortages of raw materials.”

Another English historian, A. Taylor, supports his conclusion that the air attack on Germany did not live up to the hopes placed on it with specific data. “In 1942, the British dropped 48 thousand tons of bombs; the Germans produced 36,804 weapons (heavy guns, tanks and aircraft). In 1943, the British and Americans dropped 207,600 tons of bombs; the Germans produced 71,693 weapons."

By the end of 1943, neither the British Bomber Command nor the command of the 8th American Air Force managed to fully accomplish the tasks provided for by the Point Blanc plan. One way or another, from the fall of 1943, aerial bombing began to become increasingly subordinate to the preparation of the Allied invasion of France.

From November 1943 to March 1944, the “Battle for Berlin” lasted. Churchill encouraged her. During this battle, there were 16 major raids on the German capital, as well as 12 raids on other important installations, including Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Leipzig. In total, more than 20 thousand sorties were made.

The results of this massive offensive were far from what Harris predicted. Neither Germany nor Berlin were brought to their knees. Losses reached 5.2%, and damage from bombing was minimal. The morale of bomber pilots fell sharply, and this is not surprising, since the British lost 1,047 bombers and 1,682 aircraft were damaged. Bomber Command was forced to shift attacks to targets located south of Berlin, and to use an increasing part of its forces on diversionary raids.

The culmination was the disastrous raid on March 30, 1944. 795 Royal Air Force aircraft took off on the important mission of destroying Nuremberg. But from the very beginning everything went wrong. Bad weather conditions over the North Sea did not give the aircraft moving in a wide front any opportunity to maneuver. In addition, the bombers were off course.

450 km from the target, continuous air battles began, which included more and more Luftwaffe night fighters equipped with the Liechtenstein SN-2 and Naxos Z systems, thanks to which German pilots picked up the beams emanating from the bombers' radars and attacked them.

The bomber armada crossed the Rhine between Bonn and Bingen, and then continued through Fulda and Hanau towards Nuremberg. The Mosquito bombers flying ahead unsuccessfully tried to clear their route.

The Halifax formation suffered the heaviest losses. Of the 93 vehicles, 30 were shot down. The English Lieutenant Smith said this about that raid: “Between Aachen and Nuremberg I counted 40 burning aircraft, but probably at least 50 bombers were shot down before the formation managed to reach the target.” The other 187 bombers simply did not find the target, since the target-marking aircraft were 47 minutes late, and the city was also located in thick clouds. Meanwhile, hundreds of aircraft at the appointed time unsuccessfully circled over the target and searched for marking lights.

German fighters were on a roll, shooting down 79 bombers. 600 spotlights were turned on. Shooting from the ground was carried out from all guns, which created an impenetrable barrier in front of the bombers. The British crews, completely confused, dropped their bombs anywhere. Vehicles not equipped with H2S devices bombed the searchlights of anti-aircraft guns in full confidence that they were over Nuremberg.

Of the 795 aircraft that took off for the operation, 94 did not return (of which 13 were Canadian), 71 aircraft were seriously damaged, and another 12 crashed during landing. 108 bombers were not subject to restoration. Luftwaffe losses—only 10 aircraft. An investigation into this operation revealed that the Germans had adopted new defensive tactics. Since they did not know the purpose of the raid in advance, the fighters began to attack the enemy while still approaching. Thus, the 2,460 tons of bombs dropped caused only limited damage. In Nuremberg a factory was partially destroyed and several others were slightly damaged. The population of Nuremberg lost 60 citizens and 15 foreign workers killed.

It was truly a "black night" for the Royal Air Force. In addition to the aircraft, the crews were killed - 545 people. 159 pilots were captured. This was the largest number of pilots ever captured.

Such a major defeat led to sharp criticism of Harris' strategy. Air Force headquarters was forced to admit that precision bombing of pre-designated targets was more consistent with the idea expressed at the Casablanca conference that the invasion of Northern Europe was the main goal of the Allies, but it could only be achieved by gaining air supremacy.

Harris, whose views were increasingly being questioned, tried to enlist the Americans in the raids on Berlin, but this proved impossible as they were not prepared for night operations, and daylight raids in late 1943 would have been tantamount to suicide. In early 1944, Air Force headquarters rejected Harris's idea that Germany could be brought to its knees by April using Lancasters alone, and demanded targeted strikes on German industry, such as the ball-bearing plant in Schweinfurt.

In April, British bomber forces were switched, as previously planned, to operations against the French railway network in anticipation of a cross-Channel invasion. This helped hide the heavy defeat suffered in the air offensive against Germany. The tasks of bomber aviation were greatly simplified with the start of Operation Overlord, when the situation in the air changed decisively in favor of the Allies.

By that time, the German air defense system was no longer able to repel Allied air strikes, although these strikes had not yet had a significant impact on the state of the country's economy. The number of bombers shot down remained approximately the same, but the number of raids on German territory increased fourfold. This means that the strength of German fighter aircraft was increasingly dwindling. In 1943, the total number of German fighters shot down or seriously damaged in air battles was 10,660 aircraft. In addition, in the second half of the year, during daytime raids, 14 fighter aircraft factories located in various parts of Germany were attacked and received significant damage. For the Allies, losses in equipment and people, no matter how high they were, were easily compensated for by enormous resources.

At the beginning of 1944, the Luftwaffe tried to snap back, making a desperate attempt to strike England in order to force the enemy to reduce the number of raids on German cities. For the retaliation operation, which went down in the history of the air battle under the code name “Little Lightning,” it was possible to assemble about 550 aircraft from all fronts. The operation was supposed to involve everything that was capable of flying. This formation, after a three-year break, resumed raids on England. From the end of January to the end of April 1944, 12 raids were carried out, during which 275 tons of bombs were dropped on London, and a further 1,700 tons on other targets in southern England. On the night of April 19, 125 aircraft of Major General Peltz's 9th Air Corps appeared in the skies of London. This was the last major raid on London in this war.

The raids had to be stopped due to extremely high casualty rates, sometimes reaching almost 50%. And all this happened at a time when bombers were especially needed to prevent the landing of troops in Europe, which the Allies were preparing. It was impossible to get even one photo to assess the damage caused to London, since daytime flights over England were no longer possible. The Luftwaffe adopted the tactics of the British Air Force and switched to night raids.

The "Small Lightning" strike was short and intense. Casualties in southern England reached 2,673. In addition, it was noticeable that residents reacted to the raids more painfully than in 1940–1941.

For Americans, winter 1943-1944. It turned out to be calm, they carried out raids only on nearby targets. In December, losses were only 3.4% versus 9.1% in October. On January 1, 1944, changes in the leadership of the 8th American Air Force came into force. Lieutenant General Iker, who commanded it for more than a year, was transferred to Italy. His successor was Lieutenant General James Doolittle.

In the first months of 1944, the influx of Mustangs increased sharply. The main goal was to achieve complete air supremacy, so the Mustangs inflicted increasing losses on the German fighters, attacking at the first opportunity. By March, the Germans were increasingly reluctant to engage the Mustangs, whose active actions not only allowed American bombers to carry out daylight raids with ever fewer losses, but also cleared the way for Operation Overlord.

On January 11, 663 bombers from the US Eighth Air Force, accompanied by numerous P-51 Mustang fighters, raided aircraft factories in Halberstadt, Braunschweig, Magdeburg and Oschersleben. German fighters managed to shoot down (partly with the help of missiles) 60 bombers and 5 Mustangs. The German side lost 40 fighters.

On the night of January 21, 1944, 697 British bombers attacked Berlin and Kiel. 2300 tons of bombs were dropped. 35 cars were hit. The next night it was the turn of Magdeburg, which suffered its first heavy raid. 585 aircraft dropped 2025 tons of bombs on it. The 55 bombers that took part in the raid did not return to their bases.

On the night of February 20, 1944, despite various camouflage and radar jamming measures, the Royal Air Force suffered a heavy defeat. Of the 730 British aircraft that dropped 2,290 tons of bombs on Leipzig, night fighters and anti-aircraft guns shot down 78 aircraft. The Germans lost 17 fighters

Between 20 and 25 February 1944, the US Air Forces in Europe and the British Bomber Command conducted joint Operation Argument. The purpose of the operation was to destroy German production facilities for the production of fighter aircraft. During the so-called "Big Week", the Allies carried out raids on Germany's main aircraft factories, with their own fighter escorts destroying German fighter interceptors that scrambled to repel the attack.

During the "Big Week" as part of Operation Argument, American aircraft carried out massive raids with large escorts against aircraft factories that produced fighter airframes, as well as against other targets in many German cities, including Leipzig, Brunswick, Gotha, Regensburg, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart and Steyr.

The operation cost the Americans the loss of 226 bombers and 28 fighters (losses reached 20%!), British Bomber Command lost 157 aircraft. Nevertheless, success was evident, because the pace of fighter production pushed the Germans back two months.

Operation Argument forced the Germans to begin further disaggregation of key industries, especially aircraft and ball bearing plants, despite the costs and inevitable disruptions in the production process. Although this allowed the production of fighter aircraft to continue and even increase, another threat loomed over German industry: the systematic bombing of the transport network, on which scattered installations especially depended.

On March 6, 1944, the first American daylight air raid was carried out on Berlin. 730 B-17 and B-24 bombers, covered by 796 fighters, dropped 1,500 tons of bombs on the southern part of the city and the radio station in Königswusterhausen in beautiful sunny weather. 68 bombers and 11 fighters were shot down, the German side lost 18 aircraft. This raid is also associated with the largest losses of the 8th American Air Force in the skies over Berlin.

On April 13, approximately 2,000 American aircraft raided Augsburg and other targets in southern Germany. The American 8th Air Force bombed Schweinfurt again, but this time the ball bearing factories located there were not destroyed.

Reich Minister of Armaments Speer recalled: “From mid-April 1944, raids on ball bearing factories suddenly stopped. But because of their inconsistency, the allies lost their luck. If they had continued with the same intensity, the end would have come much sooner.”

By the way, a small touch to the portrait of the American “winners”. On April 24, American pilots set a kind of record: within 115 minutes, 13 B-17s and 1 B-24 landed in Switzerland, most of them at the Dubendorf airfield in Zurich. And since not a week passed without the Americans landing in Switzerland, the concerned US Air Force command convened a commission to investigate the reasons for this phenomenon. The commission's conclusion was stunning: the crews preferred to be interned in neutral Switzerland rather than fly on combat missions, risking their lives.

Many similar cases have been recorded in Sweden. The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published the following message on April 10, 1944: “Yesterday, on the way back from Northern Germany and Poland, 11 Liberator aircraft and 7 Flying Fortresses made an emergency landing in Southern Sweden.” In most cases, these planes were forced to land due to the attacking actions of Swedish fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, which caused real air battles. With few exceptions, the American aircraft remained undamaged. One fell into the sea. The crews are interned."

And on June 21, 1944, the headquarters of the Swedish army reported: “Currently, there are 137 Allied aircraft landed here in Sweden, taking into account the four-engine bombers (21 aircraft) that made an emergency landing in southern Sweden yesterday. Of these, 24 aircraft crashed or were shot down.” It is unlikely that Swedish fighters attacked aircraft in distress. True, at least one case was recorded when a German fighter pursued a bomber all the way to Sweden.

On May 12, the 8th Air Force from England began raids on German oil refineries. The Germans threw 400 fighters against 935 American bombers, but the American escort fighters managed to inflict significant damage on the enemy (the Germans had 65 aircraft destroyed, the Americans lost 46 bombers). On this and subsequent days, 60% of the enterprises in Merseburg were destroyed, 50% in Bölau, and the factories in Tröglitz and Brücks near Prague were completely destroyed.

In his memoirs, Speer commented on this moment as follows: “In these days, the fate of the technical component of the war was decided. Before this, despite the growing losses, it was still possible to produce as many weapons as the Wehrmacht required. After the raid of 935 bombers of the American 8th Air Force on fuel plants in the center and in the east of Germany, a new era in air warfare began, which meant the end of German weapons.

In June, the British Air Force headquarters ordered raids on oil refineries. The raid on Gilsenkirchen on the night of July 9 was quite successful, although costly. Other raids were less effective: of the 832 bombers that took part in the raids, German night fighters and anti-aircraft artillery shot down 93 aircraft over three nights.

It is worth noting another episode that took place in June and almost brought Europe to the brink of disaster. On June 16, 1944, the German agency DNB reported that “... last night a secret weapon was used against England, which means the beginning of an action of retaliation. The British and Americans, who [...] never believed in the possibility of such retribution, will now feel for themselves that their crimes against the German civilian population and our cultural monuments will not go unpunished. Last night London and the south-east of England were attacked with new weapons."

This message was about the bombing of England with the latest V-2 missiles. If the Royal Air Force learned to successfully fight V-1 missiles, the British had no antidote against the real V-2 ballistic missile, which has supersonic speed. The only saving grace was that the design of the rocket was far from perfect, which is why the accuracy of hitting targets was low. However, this was little consolation for the Allies. One of the rockets fell on Wellington Barracks a few hundred meters from Buckingham Palace and killed 121 people, including 63 officers. General Eisenhower said on this occasion: “If the Germans had had new weapons 6 months earlier, the landing would have been extremely difficult or completely impossible.”

New bombings of Peenemünde were the Allies' reaction to the appearance of the V-2. After the British raid on the center at Peenemünde in August 1943, the Germans deliberately tried to spread information about supposedly great destruction in the bombed areas, trying to mislead the Allies by instilling in them the belief that the objects had actually been destroyed and further work on them was pointless . They created many artificial craters in the sand, blew up several damaged, but not particularly significant and minor buildings, and painted the roofs of buildings, making them look like burnt skeletons of floors. Despite this, in July-August 1944, the 8th Air Army organized three raids on Peenemünde.

And at the end of the 1980s, the German historian G. Gellerman managed to find a previously unknown, very interesting document - memorandum D 217/4 dated 07/06/1944, signed by W. Churchill and sent by him to the leadership of the Air Force. The four-page document, written shortly after the first German V-2 rockets fell on London in 1944, showed that Churchill had given clear instructions to the Air Force to prepare for a chemical strike on Germany: “I want you to seriously consider possibility of using combat gases. It is stupid to morally condemn the method that during the last war all its participants used without any protests from moralists and the church. In addition, during the last war, bombing undefended cities was prohibited, but today it is common practice. It's just a matter of fashion, which changes just as the length of a woman's dress changes. If the bombing of London becomes heavy and if the missiles cause serious damage to government and industrial centers, we must be prepared to do everything to deal the enemy a painful blow... Of course, it may be weeks or even months before I ask you to drown Germany in poisonous gases But when I ask you for it, I want it to be 100% effective.”

According to Churchill, such a possibility should be thought out “with absolute composure by prudent people, and not by these psalm-singing bunglers in military uniform who still cross our path here and there.”

Already on July 26, cold-blooded, prudent people presented Churchill with two plans for chemical weapons strikes. According to the first, the 20 largest cities in Germany were to be bombed with phosgene. The second plan provided for the treatment of 60 German cities with mustard gas. In addition, Churchill's scientific adviser Lindemann strongly advised that German cities be treated with at least 50 thousand bombs (this is the amount of biological munitions that were available) filled with anthrax spores.

Oh, these irreconcilable English fighters against Nazism! That's where the scale is! Where is Hitler with his pathetic imagination! Fortunately for the whole world, these crazy plans were not implemented, because (according to one version) they met fierce resistance from the British generals. The British military, who reasonably feared a retaliatory strike, had enough prudence not to get involved in the chemical adventure proposed by Churchill.

Meanwhile, the air battle continued as usual. The Luftwaffe pilots, while still masters of the sky at night, ceded air supremacy to the Americans during the day. But American aviation continuously increased its strikes. On June 16, the raid was carried out by more than 1,000 bombers, accompanied by almost 800 fighters, and on June 20, 1,361 Flying Fortresses took part in the raid. At the same time, another group of American planes bombed oil refineries and then landed on Russian territory in the Poltava region.

American losses mounted, but more and more oil refineries failed, which had a detrimental effect on the Luftwaffe's fuel supply. By September they received only 10 thousand tons of gasoline, while the minimum monthly requirement was 160 thousand tons. By July, all major oil refineries in Germany were destroyed or seriously damaged. Speer's efforts went down the drain, as the new aircraft produced by the industry became practically useless due to a lack of fuel.

In August 1944, Allied bomber aircraft cleared the way for the advancing troops. Thus, during the advance of American troops through Trier to Mannheim and further to Darmstadt, American bombing of cities in Southern Germany that lay on the path of the troops’ advance became more frequent. At the same time, the Americans did not stand on ceremony. During the attack on Aachen and beyond, they barbarously destroyed the cities of Jülich and Düren, which were in the path of the attackers. The Americans bombed 97% of Jülich, and Düren was completely wiped off the face of the earth: 5 thousand people were killed, only six buildings remained in the city.

From this time the Royal Air Force also began to carry out some of its raids during the day. Now they could afford it without putting the bomber crews at risk, since German fighters were practically swept out of the sky. Ground-based German air defense systems had even less ability to repel air strikes than before.

Back in July 1944, 12 of Germany's largest synthetic fuel production plants were each subjected to powerful air strikes at least once. As a result, production volumes, which usually amounted to 316 thousand tons per month, fell to 107 thousand tons. Synthetic fuel production continued to decline until this figure was only 17 thousand tons in September 1944. Production of high-octane gasoline fell from 175 thousand tons in April to 30 thousand tons in July and up to 5 thousand tons in September.

Attacks on oil refining facilities in Germany also significantly reduced the production of explosives and synthetic rubber, and due to a shortage of aviation gasoline, training flights almost completely ceased and combat sorties were sharply reduced. At the end of 1944, the Germans could no longer use more than fifty night fighters at a time. Fuel shortages largely negated the potential value of the new jet fighters entering service with the Luftwaffe. I wonder what prevented the Allies from doing this a year earlier?

There is another oddity here. As stated in the report of the US Strategic Bombing Office, in Germany there was only one dibromoethane plant, which produced ethyl liquid, “that essential component of high-quality aviation gasoline [...] so necessary that no one flies without it.” modern aircraft", yet this single plant was never bombed, although it was "highly vulnerable from the air". Consequently, more damage could be done to German aviation by bombing this single target than by all the devastating raids on aircraft factories combined.

The Allies almost did not bomb industrial facilities for a long time, and the minor damage that was almost accidentally caused to some factories was very quickly eliminated, the workers, if necessary, were replaced by prisoners of war, thus the military industry functioned surprisingly successfully. According to the recollections of one of the witnesses, “we were furious when, after the bombing, we came out of the basements into the streets turned into ruins and saw that the factories where tanks and guns were produced remained untouched. They remained in this state until the capitulation.”

So why did Allied aviation for a long time refuse to strike at the oil industry, which supplies fuel to the armada of German tanks and aircraft? Until May 1944, only 1.1% of all attacks fell on these targets!

One way or another, while the number of active German aircraft was steadily decreasing, Allied aviation became more and more numerous. The number of Bomber Command first line aircraft increased from 1,023 in April to 1,513 in December 1944 (and to 1,609 in April 1945). The number of American bombers increased from 1,049 in April to 1,826 in December 1944 (and to 2,085 in April 1945).

Given such overwhelming superiority, is it morally and operationally possible to justify the actions of Bomber Command, whose aircraft during this period dropped 53% of the bombs on urban areas, and only 14% on oil refineries and 15% on transport facilities?

The ratio of American bombing targets is completely different. The Americans’ idea of ​​striking at identified vulnerable targets in Germany was more sensible and humane than the English concept of outright genocide of the people of Germany, covered with the fig leaf of “the fight against Nazism.” The actions of American aviation did not cause such sharp moral condemnation, to which the activities of Harris were increasingly exposed (although very soon capable Americans surpassed their English teachers in cruelty, successfully applying the accumulated experience of the mass extermination of unarmed people during the bombing of Japanese cities).

However, this is not surprising. Back in 1943, the United States welcomed the architect Erich Mendelsohn, who emigrated from Germany, who built an exact replica of the Berlin barracks in the desert on the territory of a secret testing zone in Utah, including such details as furniture and curtains to test their flammability. When Harris learned about the results of American developments, he could not have jumped with delight: “We can incinerate all of Berlin from one end to the other. This will cost us 400-500 aircraft. And it will cost the Germans the war.” Looking ahead, it should be said that Harris and his allies (or accomplices?) had a complete embarrassment with Berlin. More details about the bombing of Berlin and the actions of the Berlin air defense in World War II will be discussed in a separate chapter.

By the end of the war, both the Americans and the British, in addition to air support for their troops, purposefully bombed cities that did not have the slightest military significance. During this period, the Allies, through the actions of their aviation, tried to cause the greatest possible horror among the townspeople and cause maximum devastation of the territories.

The tactics of American and British aircraft, which were initially different, became almost identical. The population of German cities was the first to understand and experience this. By the end of 1944, approximately four-fifths of German cities with a population of 100 thousand people or more were destroyed. In total, 70 major cities were bombed, in a quarter of which the destruction was 60%, and in the rest - 50%.

Of the major raids of the Royal Air Force in the summer of 1944, two brutal raids on Königsberg, which took place on the nights of 27 and 30 August, are particularly noteworthy. Until August 1944, Königsberg was considered one of the quietest cities in Germany. The Germans called such cities “refuges”; in them, as well as in areas of the province, there were a large number of residents from other parts of the country fleeing the bombing.

In the material dedicated to the 60th anniversary of bomber aviation, this raid is said: “August 26-27, 1944 174 Lancasters of Group No. 5 - [...] to Konigsberg, a port important for supplying the German Eastern Front. The distance from Group 5 airbase to the target was 950 miles. Photos from a photo reconnaissance plane showed that the bombing took place in the eastern part of the city, but there is no way to get a message about the target of the raid, now Kaliningrad in Lithuania...”

Another lie from the self-righteous “victors of Nazism”: “...there is no way to receive a message about the purpose of the raid”... Well, what a secret! Especially for the English idiots who believe that Kaliningrad is located in Lithuania, I inform you: the main goal of this bombing is the destruction of residential areas along with people, as required by the criminal directives and orders of Bomber Command. In addition, the Royal Air Force tested the effects of napalm bombs on the residents of Königsberg for the first time. British losses in the first raid amounted to 4 aircraft. By the way, according to the German command, British bombers flew to Königsberg through Swedish airspace.

The English newspaper Manchester Guardian, in its issue of August 28, 1944, in an article entitled “Lancaster flight 1000 miles to Königsberg - a destructive attack with new bombs,” choking with delight, reported: “Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force ( Royal Air Force flew 2,000 miles to carry out the first raid on Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia, now a vital supply port for the Germans, who were fighting the Red Army 100 miles to the east. The bombers were in flight for 10 hours. Their cargo included new flame-throwing incendiary bombs. The raid was limited to 9 and a half minutes. After that, there appeared what one of the pilots described as the largest fire he had ever seen - streams of flame that were visible for 250 miles. The port was protected by numerous anti-aircraft batteries, but after the raid ended, these defensive measures were irregular and ineffective. Only five bombers did not return."

The British Ministry of Air Force news service also announced about the raid on August 27-28: “It was a remarkable success to carry a large bomb load close to the Russian front without refueling. The Lancasters attacked well below their normal operating altitude. The raid passed so quickly that resistance was quickly broken. The weather was clear, and all crew members agreed that it was a very powerful bombing. Königsberg, a large port and industrial city with 370 thousand inhabitants, remained unaffected by air raids compared to other cities. With its excellent railway connections and large docks, in the current developments in Eastern Europe, no city is more significant for the Germans than Königsberg. And in times of peace, Koenigsberg was as important to the enemy as Bristol was to us. The docks are connected to the Baltic Sea by a twenty-mile canal, which was recently mined by the British Air Force. In addition, there is a railway connection with Berlin, Poland and to the northeast to the Russian front.”

It is clear that the press service of the English Ministry cannot lie by definition! But a certain Major Dickert, in his book “The Battle for East Prussia,” spoke about these events less enthusiastically: “New rocket-propelled incendiary bombs were tested here with terrifying success, and many who tried to escape fell victims to the fiery elements. The fire service and air defense were powerless. This time, only residential areas with shops and administrative buildings scattered here and there were bombed, which gives the right to talk about a terrorist act. Almost all culturally significant buildings with their unique contents were destroyed by fire, among them: the cathedral, the castle church, the university, and the old warehouse quarter.”

The second raid took place on the night of August 30, 1944. 173 bombers flew to the target out of 189 aircraft. The city was covered by low clouds at that time. In this regard, the British shifted the bombing schedule by 20 minutes. During this time, reconnaissance aircraft looked for breaks in the clouds. When the gap was discovered, marking aircraft began the operation. They worked at an altitude of 900-2000 meters in groups of 5-9 vehicles. Their task was to identify and mark with signal bombs specific objects to be destroyed. The operation was carried out in several stages. First, to clarify the target, a 1000-liter red flare bomb was dropped by parachute away from the object, then a flare bomb burning with yellow fire was sent directly to the target. After this, the main forces began bombing and in a matter of seconds dropped their deadly load. Squadron after squadron approached, and strikes were carried out on several targets at once. In total, during the second raid on Königsberg, British planes dropped 165 tons of high-explosive bombs and 345 tons of incendiary bombs. During the second raid, a “fire storm” began in the city, as a result of which from 4.2 to 5 thousand people died, 200 thousand were left homeless. The entire historical city center burned down, including parts of it: Alstadt, Löbenicht, Kneiphof and the Speicherviertel warehouse district. According to the testimony of M. Vic, who survived the bombing, “...the entire city center from the Northern Station to the Main Station was systematically littered with canisters of napalm by the bombers [...]. As a result, the entire center burst into flames almost simultaneously. The sharp rise in temperature and the instant outbreak of a huge fire left the civilian population living in the narrow streets no chance of salvation. People were burning near houses and in basements... For about three days it was impossible to enter the city. And after the fires stopped, the earth and stone remained hot and cooled slowly. Black ruins with empty window openings looked like skulls. Funeral teams collected the charred bodies of those who died on the street, and the twisted bodies of those who suffocated from smoke in the basement...”

And one more piece of evidence comes from former “ostarbeiter” Yu. Khorzhempa: “The first bombing was still tolerable. Lasted about ten minutes. But the second one was already a living hell, which seemed to never end. The British were the first to use napalm charges. Firefighters tried to extinguish this sea of ​​fire, but nothing came of it. I can still see it before my eyes: half-naked people rushing among the flames, and more and more bombs are falling from the sky howling...

In the morning the ground shone with countless strips of foil, with the help of which the British confused the radars. The center of Königsberg burned for several days. It was impossible to get there due to the unbearable heat. When he was sleeping, I and other “Ostarbeiters” were ordered to collect the corpses. There was a terrible stench. And what condition were the bodies in... We put the remains on carts and took them out of town, where they buried them in mass graves...”

During the second raid, British aviation lost 15 aircraft. The losses were due to the fact that this time the bombers went on a raid without fighter cover.

As a result of the bombing, more than 40% of residential buildings were destroyed. The historical center of the city was completely wiped off the face of the earth. I wonder why this happened? Is it because, according to the decision of the Tehran Conference, Koenigsberg, together with the surrounding territories, was supposed to go to the USSR? And, of course, completely by accident (it couldn’t have been otherwise!) none of the powerful Königsberg forts were damaged! And in April of the following year, the assault groups of the Red Army had to literally chew through the German defenses and uproot the enemy from these forts at the cost of great blood.

Churchill was especially pleased with the results of the bombing of Königsberg. He wrote about this: “Never before has so much destruction been caused by so few aircraft at such a huge distance and in such a short time.” There were six months left before the destruction of Dresden...

And the Luftwaffe’s forces were increasingly melting away, not so much due to a lack of equipment, but because of exorbitant losses in trained flight personnel, as well as due to a lack of aviation gasoline. In 1944, the average number of Luftwaffe officer and enlisted casualties per month was 1,472. Of the approximately 700 fighters that could be used against American aircraft, only about 30 aircraft could enter the battle. The anti-aircraft artillery batteries were gradually knocked out. Germany did not have the opportunity to replace outdated and worn-out guns, the firing range of which was insufficient to hit targets at an altitude of 7 to 9 km. By the beginning of September 1944, anti-aircraft batteries were armed with only 424 large-caliber guns that had the required height reach. According to official data from the German side, in order to shoot down one heavy bomber, small-caliber anti-aircraft batteries had to spend an average of 4,940 shells costing 7.5 marks each and 3,343 shells of 88-mm anti-aircraft guns costing 80 marks per shell (that is, a total of 267,440 marks ). In 1944, the monthly consumption of 88-mm shells reached 1,829,400 pieces. The available supplies were in warehouses throughout almost all of Europe, which had turned into one theater of military operations. Due to the destruction of communications due to enemy air raids, as well as due to losses during the retreat of troops in a number of threatened air defense points, difficulties constantly arose with the supply of ammunition.

The shortage of anti-aircraft shells led to the issuance of strict orders to conserve ammunition. Thus, fire was allowed to be opened only after the exact location of the enemy aircraft was determined. Barrage fire had to be partially abandoned. Anti-aircraft artillery was forbidden to fire at approaching fighters, as well as to fire at enemy air units passing by the object.

In the summer of 1944, the Luftwaffe command made a last desperate attempt to turn the tide and gain air supremacy. For this purpose, a large air operation involving 3 thousand fighters was carefully developed. But the reserves, collected with such difficulty to carry out this operation, were prematurely torn apart and destroyed piece by piece. The first part of the fighters was thrown into battle during the landing of the Western Allies in Normandy, the second was transferred to France at the end of August 1944 and died without any benefit, since by this time the dominance of the Western Allies in the air was so complete that German aircraft suffered even more losses on takeoff. The third part of the reserve, specially trained and equipped to conduct combat operations in the German air defense system, was used for other purposes during the Ardennes offensive in December 1944.

Speaking about the carpet bombings of 1944, we cannot ignore the following episode. In August, Churchill briefed Roosevelt on his plan for Operation Thunderclap. The goal of the operation was to destroy about two hundred thousand Berliners through a massive bombing of the city with two thousand bombers. Particular emphasis in the operation was placed on the fact that it should be carried out exclusively for residential buildings. “The main purpose of such bombings is primarily directed against the morality of the ordinary population and serves psychological purposes,” said the rationale for the operation. “It is very important that the entire operation starts with precisely this purpose, and does not expand to the suburbs, to such purposes as tank factories or, say, aircraft manufacturing enterprises, etc.”

Roosevelt readily agreed to this plan, noting with satisfaction: “We must be cruel to the Germans, I mean the Germans as a nation, and not just the Nazis. Either we must castrate the German people, or treat them in such a way that they do not produce offspring capable of continuing to behave as in the past.”

The fight against Nazism, you say? Well, well... No, if you wish, you can, of course, pass off Churchill’s cold-blooded murder of two hundred thousand civilians as an act of mercy, forever saving these people from the horrors of the Hitler regime, and interpret Roosevelt’s fiery call to “castrate the German people” as subtle presidential humor . But, if you call a spade a spade, both Roosevelt and Churchill in their thoughts and actions differed from Hitler only in that they had greater opportunities to kill with impunity, and they fully used these opportunities.

In the fall of 1944, the Allies were faced with an unexpected problem: there were so many heavy bombers and cover fighters that there were not enough industrial targets for them! From that moment on, not only the British, but also the Americans began to methodically destroy German cities. Berlin, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Freiburg, and Heilbronn were subjected to the strongest raids.

The air battle has entered its final stage. Arthur Harris's finest hour was coming.