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ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR - ALLIED BOMBING TERROR CAMPAIGN 1/26/2010 6:29:15 PM
By C'Rod Just how many tons of bombs were dropped on Germany during WWII?
A lot!
Mom and her Mother were returning to their apartment after an air raid. It was in the middle of the night. No lights were allowed. They carried a flashlight just in case. As they got closer to the apartment, Mom tripped over something and fell. When her Mother shined the flashlight on the area, a large metallic object barely reflected back. To their shock, it was an unexploded bomb that was half buried into the ground. They ran.
The bomb was immediately reported. Bales of straw were placed around it by a bomb squad. It was then detonated for everyone's safety.
This brings me to a letter sent to PBS that I discovered while doing some research for Mom's book. Apparently PBS did a one-sided documentary called "Blitz on Britain" with inaccurate stats and info, which was challenged by Dr. A. R. Wesserle.
Dr. Wesserle was a "survivor of the mass air raid executed against my native city of Prague, Bohemia, on the Christian Holy Day of Palm Sunday, 1945, by the Anglo-American strategic bomber force -- a raid that maimed or murdered thousands a few seconds before the conclusion of the Second World War."
Dr. Wesserle writes:
"1. There can be no comparison between the brutality of the Anglo-American bomber offensive, on one hand, and the minimality of the German-Italian efforts, on the other.
As the commander of the British strategic air offensive, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris shows in his Bomber Offensive (Macmillan, New York, 1947) 23 German cities had more than 60 percent of their built-up area destroyed; 46 had half of it destroyed. 31 communities had more than 500 acres obliterated: Berlin, 6427 acres: Hamburg, 6200 acres; Duesseldorf, 2003; Cologne (through air attack), 1994.
By contrast, the three favorite targets of the Luftwaffe: London, Plymouth and Coventry, had 600 acres, 400, and just over 100 acres destroyed.
2. Anglo-American strategic bombers, according to official sources of the West German government in 1962, dropped 2,690,000 metric tons of bombs on Continental Europe; 1,350,000 tons were dropped on Germany within its 1937 boundaries; 180,000 tons on Austria and the Balkans; 590,000 tons on France; 370,000 tons on Italy; and 200,000 tons on miscellaneous targets such as Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland.
By contrast, Germany dropped a total of 74,172 tons of bombs as well as V-1 and V-2 rockets and "buzz bombs" on Britain -- five percent of what the Anglo-Saxons rained down on Germany."
The rest of Dr. Wesserle's letter is just as interesting. I highly recommend you read it.
I know war tends to bend the scale of justice on all sides, but do you think the Allied response was justified?
