When Dresden was firebombed in February 1945, one of the major transportation and communications centers of Germany was totally demolished. Many Germans died; thousands of them were incinerated immediately. They might have been the lucky ones. Others, according to writer Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, “ran like burning torches through the streets, [or] stuck fast in the red-hot asphalt, [or] flung themselves into the waters of the Elbe. They screamed for coolness; they screamed for mercy. Death is mercy.”
Dresden was one of the last German cities to experience the l,000-plane bombing raid. Arthur Harris, who headed Britain’s Bomber Command through most of the war,was the man who introduced l,000-plane bombing in World War II. Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden were Harris’s major targets.Becoming a Fighter Pilot
“Bomber” Harris was born in 1892 in Cheltenham, England. He worked in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a young man. When World War I broke out, Harris joined a Rhodesian regiment and saw action in German southwest Africa. Back in England, he joined the budding flying corps and became a fighter pilot. After the war, the Royal Air Force was established, with Harris a squadron leader. Between the wars, he saw service in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.
By 1933, he had risen to group captain. His next major assignment was in the Air Ministry as deputy director of plans. By the time World War II started, he had become air vice marshal.
In the early years of the war, Great Britain was hard hit by German bombers. The Nazis hoped that England would sue for peace before a risky invasion of the island was necessary. But Britain held firm and the invasion never came; Britain grew in strength and prepared to retaliate in kind.
A Better Way to Bomb
Sending a few hundred bombers over a target was not effective; Harris wondered if it might not be a better idea to send a thousand planes at one time against one city. Though Great Britain did not have the technology for true precision bombing, perhaps huge fleets of planes and plenty of bombs would do the trick. That many bombs were bound to hit the intended target and do a lot of other damage as well.
There were several different names given to this kind of bombing: saturation bombing, area bombing, and carpet bombing. Andy Rooney, then a reporter for Stars and Stripes, would later call it “close-your-eyes-and-bombs-away bombing.”
The efficiency of this approach would ultimately be determined on the basis of losses. Would it prove too costly—in planes and lives—to sustain these super raids?
The trial run, the first l,000-plane bombing of a German city in a single raid, was called Operation Millennium. Cologne, then the third largest city in Germany, lay in the Rhineland and was a major producer of machinery and chemicals. It was Cologne’s bad luck to have good weather on the night of May 30–31, 1942. (Alternate target cities, which had bad weather that night, were bypassed.)
More than l,000 RAF bombers dropped nearly l,500 tons of explosives on the city. Of the 1,000 planes, about 900 targeted the city itself; the rest went after anti-aircraft installations and nearby German airfields.
Originally, the RAF had expected to lose as many as l00 aircraft; it lost fewer than 40. Equally important, the industrial damage to Germany was substantial.
The year of the Cologne raid, Harris was named commander in chief of the British Bomber Command.
The Firebombings Continue
Other massive raids followed Cologne. One of the fiercest was on Hamburg from July 24 through August 3, 1943. It included seven separate raids and involved nearly 2,400 British and American bombers dropping 9,000 tons of explosives. During that period of time, the fires in Hamburg never went out. A firestorm resulted, causing devastation beyond belief to the vital German port.
In the months just before and just after D-Day, Harris’s Bomber Command was put under Eisenhower’s (Number 7) direction. But once the Anglo-American forces were well established in France, Harris was put back in charge of the bomber group.
The massive raids continued, culminating in the firebombing of Dresden on the night of February 13–14, 1945. Before the war, the city had been known as “the Florence of Germany” for its architectural treasures and exquisite churches. These were gutted in the firebombing, along with rail lines and communications and industrial facilities.
A Questionable Approach?
The practice of saturation bombing has been criticized as excessive. But defenders of Harris’s methods have recalled Hitler’s (Number l) bombing targets: Warsaw, London, Coventry, and Rotterdam—not to mention V-l and V-2 rocket attacks against England. Nazi Germany, Harris’s defenders said, had sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
Arthur Harris died in 1984 at the age of 92.
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