Pforzheim in the Black Forest
Pforzheim was an extremely pretty little town in the Black Forest. It dated back to Roman times and was known as the "Gold Town" because of its precision jewellery and watch making industries. Cuckoo clocks, after all, hail from this part of Germany (not Switzerland as many think). It was awarded market rights some time before 1080. Its centre was made up of typically German "ginger bread" half-timbered houses.
The town had about 50,000 inhabitants: that makes it the size of Havant in Hampshire (ever heard of it?) or less than half the size of Bath. In 1938 the Pforzheimers had watched on as the Nazis burned down the handsome Moorish style synagogue that had been built in 1890. In 1940 a large proportion of the town's Jewish population was deported to a concentration camp in France. 55 of the 195 Jews deported survived the holocaust.
By the end of February 1945 Nazi Germany was on its knees. The Soviets were advancing rapidly towards Berlin. Millions of German civilians, my Mother and her family amongst them, were fleeing the troops. Auschwitz had been liberated a month before. The Germans' Ardennes offensive in the West had entirely failed. France and Belgium had long since been freed. US forces would shortly be crossing the Rhine. Many German cities were entirely unprotected by this stage from aerial attack. German historian Jörg Friedrich, who made his reputation by reporting on the Majdanek trial, described the situation in Germany simply as follows: "By March 1945 there was no longer any morale, oil or transportation". The bombing raids which the Allies were conducting with ever greater ferocity were "almost totally devoid of military purpose and free from all tactical risk."
Pforzheim was small. It was regarded as irrelevant by the Allies as regards armament production. It was also highly flammable because of its historic buildings and narrow, winding streets. On the evening of 23 February 1945 the Royal Air Force flew over. They dropped 330 high explosive and thousands of phosphorus incendiary bombs. 1551 tonnes of them. The incendiaries were designed to rain through the old tiled roofs of people's homes, destroying everything you owned. Your bed, your clothes, your furniture would catch ablaze. Flying wood, splinters, debris and glass would be hurled through the air. The noise would be deafening.
Hundreds of small fires would merge into a major blaze. The superheated air would shoot upward like a giant chimney. The heat would climb to 800C and suck in wind like a typhoon at speeds of up to 170mph. It would suck everything into its centre, uprooting people and trees and drawing away the oxygen. There would be precious little chance of escape for you, your children, or your dog or cat. If you sought refuge from the inferno in a fountain you would be boiled to death. If you were in a cellar seeking protection with your family you would either be suffocated, or it would quite literally serve as a crematorium. Metal with a melting point of 1700C would become molten as the fire storm progressed.
Survivor Hermine Lautenschlager:
"On the floor of the cellar, there were piles of ashes here and there. Part of a human torso that looked like a charred tree stump was in the middle. Near a pile of ashes in the corner lay a key chain. They were the keys of my sister. That's where she always sat during the air-raids, that's what my brother-in-law told me. Later they even found a small piece of fabric from her dress."The smoke rose over Pforzheim to a height of 3 kilometres. The glare of the fire could be seen 160 kilometres away. The carpet bombing of the town lasted from 7.50pm to 8.12pm: precisely 22 minutes. There were 20,277 deaths in the hellish inferno. More than one in three people in the town died. In Nagasaki, one in seven died. Over 85% of the city was destroyed. Not even the pattern of the streets was visible the following morning. Lead bomber Major Edwin Swales, whose plane crashed in Belgium on the way home, was posthumously awarded a VC for this work that night.
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| Pforzheim after the Firestorm |
You quite possibly hadn't heard of Pforzheim. That's one of the points of this blog post. Dresden is remembered every 14 February, the night that the RAF delivered its Valentine's Day gift to the city. Between 25,000 and 35,000 died. We are nearing the 70th anniversary of "Operation Gomorrah" in July 1943 when 1 million people were made homeless in Hamburg and 42,600 were killed. I'm sure that will be the subject of a couple of articles and then it will be soon forgotten.
Every time I visit Germany I'm aware of the effect on the Allied aerial bombing on the country. Literally a handful of towns survived untouched: centuries of culture, architecture, beauty and history was wiped out with the repeated destruction of 160 towns, most of them with medieval hearts. That's not even to mention the human cost: a staggering five hundred and fifty thousand Germans were killed by the British and Americans. 550,000. 76,000 were children or babies.
Whenever Dresden is mentioned, Coventry is thrown in, as if the scale of destruction and loss of life were equivalent. Goebbels fully exploited the horror of the bombing of Dresden and totally overstated the losses. Here are some simple comparisons of actual statistics:
- Deaths in Coventry: 568
- Deaths in Dresden: 25,000-35,000
- Total deaths in German raids on the UK: 60,000
- Total deaths in Allied raids on Germany: 550,000
- German bombs dropped on the UK: 75,000 tonnes
- Allied bombs dropped on Germany: 2,800,000 tonnes
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| Charred bodies in the ruins of Dresden, one of Europe's finest cities |
From a human perspective, to me, every death is a tragedy. In that respect this is far from a "competition". It doesn't matter to the individual who was killed (or to their family) how many others died at the same time, but it does matter when assessing the historical record and behaviour of a country. Germany was responsible for the deaths of many, many more people in the war than Britain, but I am concerned in this piece with Britain's behaviour, not Germany's. I'm at pains to stress that below.
For the avoidance of doubt the above figures say little about intention. I've seen nothing to suggest that Germany would not have wreaked the same level of destruction on British cities had they had the ability to do so. The fact is that they did not, thank god. Intent is one important aspect of moral (and legal) culpability; execution is the second. The Allies had both.
"We shall.... kill 900,000"
A widespread bombing of civilian targets in carpet bombing raids (as opposed to tactical bombing of strategic targets) was feared when war broke out. The Germans had demonstrated their lack of concern for civilian human life in Guernica (400 dead), Warsaw, and Rotterdam (900 dead, rather than 30,000 as claimed in the Western press). The first bomb of the London Blitz fell on the City on 24 August 1940 - and is now believed to have been a mistake. The RAF retaliated with an attack on Berlin and the tit for tat began.
For the first part of the war, the aim was still predominantly to destroy German means of production, despite the revenge attacks. The accuracy of these raids was sketchy at best. The RAF even managed to hit the wrong country when it bombed Geneva, Basel and Zurich in neutral Switzerland in 1940. Later in the war, the USAF killed 40 in Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Their target was Ludwigshafen, 235km north in Germany. The US ambassador held a reception in Zurich to apologise and was forced to take cover when yet another USAF bomb raid hit the city, killing five. The target this time was Aschaffenburg, 280km north.
By October 1942 the policy of aiming mainly for strategic targets changed. Air Marshall Sir Charles Portal framed Bomber Command's new policy: "I suppose it is clear that the new aiming points are to be the built-up areas, not for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories." Air Vice Marshall Harris explained his superior's policy:
"We shall destroy Germany's will to fight. Now that we have the planes and crews, in 1943 and 1944 we shall drop one and a quarter million tons of bombs, render 25 million Germans homeless, kill 900,000 and seriously injure one million."Think about these words. This was a deliberately framed, express British policy to render tens of million homeless, to kill almost a million civilians, and to maim a million more. The strong belief of Bomber Command was that the war could be shortened in this way and British lives saved. Targets of cultural value were deliberately included, as their destruction would allegedly damage German morale and break the will to fight, as were "flammable" cities, which would burn better. Centuries of human heritage, art and achievement (what today would be called "World Heritage" assets) were irrelevant in this fight against the then German government.
Britain issued a warning to German citizens. They dropped leaflets to say that all German cities were now considered valid military targets. Quite how 30 million people were supposed to leave their work and homes as a result of this, during wartime, is a good question. The USA was at first quite reticent to join in the British plans to carpet bomb German cities. By 1944 attitudes had hardened and the US too joined in the revenge attacks - which were labelled "terror raids" by the Germans.
Two Points to Remember: a Just War and Morale
A couple of things need to be remembered here. This was a just, brave war. The Nazi machine was one of the murderous the world has ever known. We hardly need reminding of the grisly images of the most barbaric treatment of human beings that is possible in the form of the German death camps. Seen in retrospect, there is an argument that anything that would harm Nazi Germany was a good thing. Britain held out alone with dogged determination through the years of 1940 and 1941. Our country has an enormous amount to be proud of in this respect, and more generally for seeing the fight against the Nazis through until the bitter end.
However, caution also needs to be exercised. It is too easy to simplify matters and to see things with the benefit (or hindrance!) of hindsight. Britain did not go to war in 1939 to save the Jews. The world was not aware of what would happen to the Jews in 1939, or even in 1942 when Bomber Command decided to fire-bomb German cities. The "Final Solution" to murder Europe's Jewry was decided upon in January 1942. 90% of the holocaust's eventual victims were still alive at this point and the policy of mass-murdering them was to be kept a closely guarded secret. The reality of the death camps only became fully clear in 1945 with their eventual liberation. Britain went to war because of alarming, threatening German territorial expansion. When the enemy was finally crushed, Britain and the USA handed Poland on a plate to Stalin's Soviet Union. A war started for the protection of a country ended with over 40 years of communist rule being inflicted on it.
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| Morale: a key part of WW2. But at what cost? |
The second is that the area bombing of German cities was considered important to British morale. After the defeat and flight from Dunkirk, followed by the significant victory of the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, there was for years very little opportunity to actually fight the war. Other than the fight in North Africa, and a failed attempt to invade France in 1943, Britain had little chance to engage properly until June 1944 and D-Day. By highlighting the fact German cities were being destroyed, morale could be kept up. Revenge is a powerful motivator in war time. Whether that justified deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of people and wiping out centuries of culture for every future generation is another matter.
The Cost to British Lives
An aspect in this ghastly story that absolutely must not be forgotten is the cost to British life that the policy of bombing Germany involved. Bomber Command crews suffered horrendously high casualty rates. 55,573 mainly young men were killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew. That is a death rate of 44.4% and is a testament to the extraordinary courage of these men. Only one in six was expected to survive their first tour of duty (30 sorties) and they knew this. The death rate was far higher than infantry officer rates in the trenches of WW1. Bomber Command losses represent a staggering one in five of all British losses in the six years of world war. Considerably more Britons died flying raids over Germany than the Luftwaffe managed to kill here during the long months of the Blitz (40,000).
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| Bravery doesn't even do it justice: the stats are terrifying |
Those who survived (I knew one) were sometimes scarred for life with their experiences and conflicted about what they had done and the effect it had had. I too am deeply conflicted when I see the memorials to Bomber Crews which dot my part of the country, Suffolk. It is, I believe, possible to honour and respect the bravery and sacrifice of individuals, whilst disagreeing with the policy that was initiated by those far higher up the chain of command.
Opposition in Britain
Not all Britons of the time welcomed the reports of German cities turned in giant infernos and "1000 bomber raids". George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, was perhaps the most outspoken. He was an active supporter of the German resistance, and a great humanitarian.
He wrote to the Times in 1941 and described the bombing of unarmed women and children as "barbarian". He said it would destroy the just cause of the war, thereby openly criticising Churchill's support of a bombing strategy. Two years (to the day) ahead of the destruction of Dresden he urged the House of Lords to resist the War Cabinet's decision to engage in area bombing. He said it called into question all the humane and democratic values for which Britain had gone to war. In 1944 he called the bombing of cities such as Hamburg and Berlin an illegal "policy of annihilation" and a "crime against humanity". Other senior Church figures did not support him.
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| A (very) few spoke out |
The existence of these three men, all strong opponents of the Nazis, who in war time could rise above the general clamour for undirected revenge gives me tremendous comfort. I believe it is to their eternal credit that they did so.
The Rights and Wrongs of the Bombing
It is beyond my abilities to weigh up in a shortish article like this all aspects of the bombing and their rights and wrongs. I do have a few points though, before passing over to someone (Professor Grayling) who has assessed this far better than I could.
The first is the lack of natural justice that is involved in area bombing. Germany was the perpetrator nation in WW2. It doesn't however follow that all Germans should be punished, by death, for the actions of their government. If an individual commits a crime, s/he should be held responsible. "Justice from the skies" does not fulfill this. 50 of the surviving 150 surviving Jews of Dresden were killed in the firestorm. Socialists, opponents of the Nazis, resistance members, babies and children (remember, 76,000 were killed by the British and US) were as likely to be killed in the infernos as committed Nazis or perpetrators of war crimes. The very top of the pile were entirely safe in their bunkers: the evil judge Freisler is the only prominent Nazi I can think of who was killed in this way.
The next is the question of destroying morale. Time and again it has been shown that by bombing, people are united in terror and hatred of the people doing the bombing. That is exactly what happened when the Luftwaffe bombed London during the Blitz. The Allied destruction of German cities in no way led to a shortening of the war because the people turned against the government. This simply did not happen as a matter of fact.
We also have the issue of reciprocity. The basic idea here is that they did it, so it was okay for us to do it back. Leaving aside the fact that the Allied bombing of Germany was SO much more extreme than the German bombing of Britain, let's just think about this for a moment. There is zero question that the Nazi regime was evil. It was so evil, it still almost makes me physically vomit when I discover new aspects of it. We are not concerned with Nazi actions, however. What we are concerned with is a democratic nation that takes a premeditated decision "to kill 900,000", which is then accepted in the Mother of Parliaments with the smallest of opposition.
It is perfectly possible to have fought a just war, but in this (actually quite important) aspect to have fallen far short of how we should have behaved. Area bombing was not, in my view, justified on a tit-for-tat basis: it lowered us to a level where we aimed to murder civilians. It is a tragic stain on the brave conduct of a nation at war.
The question of whether area bombing was a war crime is one which will never be tested in the courts. Perhaps surprisingly, a raft of academics from across the political spectrum seem to be agreed on this point. They usually focus on Dresden, but the logic presumably applies to other cities. Dr Stanton, the president of Genocide Watch said: "The Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil genocides in history. But the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes... We are all capable of evil and must be restrained by law from committing it." Historian Professor Bloxham, editor of the Journal of Holocaust Education is unequivocal that Dresden was "a war crime". Frederick Taylor in his outstanding work Dresden is however less clear: he finds the city was in many ways a typical wartime target and bounces back any moral judgement to the reader.
Finally we have the issue of whether area bombing shortened the war by damaging German war production. Historians take different stances on this, but the consensus seems to be "somewhat". The major problem was that German production was spread out across the country, not centered in a single place. Despite the 2.8 million tonnes of bombs dropped, production continued to rise right through until 1945. Questions include: whether simply targeting specific factory targets or purely industrial towns would have been yet more effective; and whether the massive cost of 550,000 civilian lives justified the benefit received.
Professor Grayling's Conclusion
Professor AC Grayling wrote a 350 page book in 2006 that considered in great depth the moral, international law and strategic (did it help end the war sooner, were these valid military targets etc) aspects of Allied area bombing. Here is his conclusion:
On the basis of the foregoing chapters the answer I give to the following questions are these: Was area bombing necessary? No. Was it proportionate? No. Was it against the humanitarian principles that people have been striving to enunciate as a way of controlling and limiting war? Yes. Was it against the general moral standards of the kind recognised and agreed in Western civilisation in the last five centuries, or even 2,000 years? Yes. Was it against what mature national laws provide in the way of outlawing murder, bodily harm, and destruction of property? Yes.
In short and in sum: was area bombing wrong? Yes. Very wrong? Yes.
What can I add to that? It is as clear as it could possibly be, and having read the whole of his work very carefully I cannot fault his logic or analysis. I really recommend the book if you are interested in finding out more on the subject.
Some Final Thoughts
This subject evokes very strong emotions. In some ways this is good. Killing 550,000 civilians and wiping out the historic fabric of 160 towns and cities should be discussed. These were acts implemented and carried out by the British government. Consider the shock and contemplation in peacetime when there is an accident or an act of terrorism and 20 or 50 people die. How little is actually spoken about this subject in this country?
Each and every loss of life was horrendous and tragic. The aim of this piece is not belittle British deaths or claim German ones are more important: far, far from it. It is to remember from a simple human perspective the astonishing suffering that happened on all sides. How wrong it would be to claim that the life of a German child who died in Pforzheim, a British child killed in the Blitz, and a Jewish child murdered in Auschwitz are somehow of different values. To see them as members of groups to be accorded different rights to life is to go down the path of the philosophy of evil. My aim is also not to somehow claim that by remembering and critically assessing the sufferings of Germans under area bombing, the culpability of Nazism is diminished. That is what neo-Nazis try to do and it is illegitimate, offensive and wrong.
My father was bombed out of his childhood home in Portsmouth by the Luftwaffe. He remembered the raids and hiding in the shelter in the garden. We, as one of the nations on the winning side, are able to remember this type of suffering. Most Germans do not feel able to highlight what happened to their suffering for obvious reasons. A member of a perpetrator nation cannot ever be a victim, so the narrative goes. I disagree, but understand why a different perspective should ideally come from our side of the fence, rather than theirs.
My favourite writer, WG Sebald wrote an incredibly elegant essay on this - On The Natural History of Destruction - in which he considered why there is an almost absolute absence of post-War German literature on this massive series of events. Almost every German city is scarred by ugly 50s and 60s centres, yet no one speaks or writes about it.
Almost 70 years after the end of the war, I would hope this topic can be spoken about with some objective distance and without people taking simplistic, entrenched views as if we are supporting soccer teams. It is not, I believe, an insult to the people who lived through or fought during the war in Britain, for me to come to the conclusion that in the course of a just and courageous struggle, our government made mistakes. Area bombing was a huge and deadly one.
