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[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is from that book review by Freeman Dyson in the NYRB that I was discussing yesterday. Dyson worked in the RAF's Bomber Command HQ during the war.

• There is overwhelming evidence that the bombing of cities strengthened rather than weakened the determination of the Germans to fight the war to the bitter end. The notion that bombing would cause a breakdown of civilian morale turned out to be a fantasy. After a devastating attack on a factory, the Germans were able to repair the machinery and resume full production in an average time of six weeks. We could not hope to attack the important factories frequently enough to keep them out of action. We learned after the war that, in spite of the bombing, German weapons production increased steadily up to September 1944. In the last few months of the war, bombing of oil refineries [and the Russian advance into Rumania? -- t.s.] caused the German armies to run out of oil, but they never ran out of weapons. Putting together what I saw at Bomber Command with the testimony of Hastings's witnesses, I conclude that the contribution of the bombing of cities to military victory was too small to provide any moral justification for the bombing.
  
  Unfortunately, the offical statements of the British government always claimed that bombing was militarily effective and therefore morally justified. As a result of their ideological commitment to bombing as a war-winning strategy, the leaders of the government were deluding themselves and also deluding the British public. Hastings says that in the last phase of the war "the moral cost of killing German civilians in unprecedented numbers outweighed any possible strategic advantage." I would make a stronger statement. I would say that quite apart from moral considerations, the military cost of killing German civilians outweighed any possible strategic advantage.

Factories being down for 6 weeks provided no value? And the Germans were bombing cities- they came up with the theory. Do you think the British would have stopped bombing factories because they might be near cities given the Blitz? What world do you live in?