Quote:
Originally Posted by Steffen
At least 1300 people died in the floods that ensued, most of them allied prisoners of war. Great stuff indeed… 
Cheers
Steffen. |
There appears to be a lot of bumpf written about the air war. Some years ago I read an evaluation of the air war in Europe written for the USAF in 1947 (well, I read the executive summary - the whole thing was huge). These serious researchers painted quite a different picture to what we are generally fed through the jingoistic media. The effect of the bombing campaign on German industry was not that great, though the damage to the civilian population was huge and this was the greatest concern to the German command. Germany had excess industrial capacity and had deliberately decentralised production so if one factory was damaged another elsewhere could pick up the slack. The real damage didn't start until 1944 when two things happened. The introduction of the long-range P-51 and a switch to seeking out German fighters basically shot the Luftwaffe out of the sky. The targeting of transport (eg trains, bridges) in preparation for D-day seriously disrupted the decentralised industry that was highly reliant on transport. Strangely enough the allies never targeted the electricity grid because they assumed Germany had an advanced grid with lots of redundancy. In fact it was quite fragile and the Germans were seriously worried by the prospect of it being damaged.
