The Ardennes and Its Aftermath

On 16 December 1944, the Germans demonstrated in convinc­ing fashion that they still possessed both the capability and will to continue the war. The Ardennes offensive stunned Allied lead­ers, most of whom had assumed that Germany was on the brink of collapse. Spaatz shifted usstaf’s focus from oil to transporta­tion centers west of the Rhine, and Eighth Air Force flew only one mission against oil targets between 16 December and 8 January.86 By 28 January the “Battle of the Bulge” claimed eighty-one thou­sand American casualties—making it the bloodiest engagement in American military history.87 Soon after it began Eisenhower con­sidered asking for ten additional divisions. Although he decided against the extra manpower, he ordered the first American execu­tion of a deserter in eighty years to stiffen the resolve of his troops against the German onslaught.88 Intelligence appraisals now esti­mated that the war might last until 1946, while the Selective Ser­vice upped draft quotas for January and February 1945 from sixty thousand to eighty thousand.89 In early January, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall stated: “We now face a situation requiring major decisions to prevent this war from dragging on for some time.” He asked for Eisenhower’s “broad personal esti­mate of the resources required and the steps to be taken to bring this war in Europe to a quick conclusion.”90

As Allied losses mounted the progressive rationale originally presented for Thunderclap became more and more appealing: an aerial Armageddon might actually wreck Germany’s will to fight, end the war, and save Allied lives. Arnold had expressed similar sentiments in waxing about how America would approach fu­ture conflicts to scientist Theodore von Karman a month before the Bulge attack. “It is a fundamental principle of democracy that personnel casualties are distasteful,” Arnold opined. “We will continue to fight mechanical rather than manpower wars.”91 The European struggle now threatened to become an extended battle of attrition on the ground, and the bomber seemingly offered the mechanical means to stop the slaughter in one fell swoop. More­over, the goal of unconditional surrender dictated the destruction of the Nazi government and its administrative apparatus, and that government appeared more than capable of continuing the con­flict. The planned air assault would wreck key Nazi offices in Ber­lin. Their location near the city’s main residential area guaranteed that the civilians supporting that government would feel the full fury of a raid that illustrated the bankrupt nature of the Nazi re­gime. Marshall agreed, and also recommended that a similar at­tack on Munich “would probably be of great benefit because it would show the people that are being evacuated to Munich that there is no hope.”92

In the meantime, the Red Army’s advance in the East had reached the point where it would benefit directly from the destruction of transportation hubs like Berlin—and Arnold wanted to demon­strate the impact of American air power to the Soviets.93 He was dismayed over bombing’s failure to defeat Germany on its own, writing to Spaatz that despite a five-to-one superiority in the air, and “in spite of all our hopes, anticipations, dreams and plans, we have as yet not been able to capitalize to the extent which we should. We may not be able to force capitulation of the Germans by air attacks, but on the other hand, with this tremendous strik­ing power, it would seem to me that we should get much better and decisive results than we are getting now.”94 Arnold further de­spaired over the paltry results achieved thus far by the в-29 offen­sive against Japan—stress that would help trigger his fourth heart attack on 17 January. The proposed attack on Berlin promised independent success that could overshadow the meager perfor­mance in the Pacific. A bombing-induced German collapse would not only save a multitude of Allied lives, it would cause political and military leaders around the world to acknowledge air power as the source of salvation. Thunderclap thus offered the chance to satisfy numerous concerns. A 31 January 1945 directive made selected cities in eastern Germany, “where heavy attack will cause great confusion in civilian evacuation from the east and hamper reinforcements,” the Combined Bomber Offensive’s highest pri­ority targets after oil.9S

Those factors, together with the abundance of bombers avail­able, led Spaatz to attack Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden in February 1945. Yet the magnitude of the 3 February Berlin assault did not approach Thunderclap proportions.96 The expectation of clouds over the city precluded precision attacks on oil targets and made transportation facilities and an array of government buildings— both of which had larger “footprints” than individual synthetic oil plants—the primary objectives for radar attacks. Once over Ber­lin, however, crews found the skies predominantly clear, and most bombed visually. Almost one thousand B-17S dropped 2,279 tons of bombs on the city, causing heavy damage to the Reichschancel – lery, Air Ministry, Foreign Office, Ministry of Propaganda, and Gestapo headquarters, as well as to many railroad marshalling yards.97 The raid may have killed as many as twenty-five thou­sand people.98 Against Leipzig and Dresden, the Eighth Air Force again attacked rail yards. In the 14-15 February raids on Dres­den, clouds obscured the target, and crews mistakenly dumped their bombs on Dresden’s main residential district, which had been heavily bombed the night before by the raf. Refugees fleeing the Russians clogged the city, and between twenty-five thousand and thirty-five thousand civilians perished in the multiple assaults.99

Technically, the attacks on Berlin and Dresden were aimed at military objectives. Two days after the Berlin mission, Spaatz re­vealed that he had little faith in the notion that a single, mas­sive bombing raid could compel German surrender, telling Ar­nold: “Your comment on the decisiveness of results achieved by air power leads me to believe that you might be following the chimera of the one air operation which will end the war. I have concluded that it does not exist. I also feel that in many cases the success of our efforts is unmeasurable, due to our inability to ex­ploit the decisive results achieved.”100 Nevertheless, Spaatz showed that he had viewed the Berlin assault as more than simply an at­tempt to destroy German war-making capacity. When asked by Doolittle before the raid if he wanted “definitely military tar­gets” on the outskirts of Berlin hit if clouds obscured oil installa­tions, Spaatz replied: “Hit oil if visual assured; otherwise, Berlin— center of City.”101 Dresden’s marshalling yard bordered the city’s major residential district, virtually guaranteeing that bomb misses would kill civilians.

Moral qualms and the conviction that attacks aimed at war­making capability were more productive than those aimed at the enemy populace combined to prevent American air leaders from launching a wholesale campaign to kill German civilians. Air com­manders maintained that the essence of German morale was pub­lic support for the war, and that such support was fragile, but they agonized over how best to attack it. While Eaker, with ra­dar bombing in late 7943, and Spaatz, with the 3 February raid on Berlin, attacked civilian morale directly, it was not their pref­erence to do so. They, as well as their counterparts, believed that attacking civilians indirectly—by terrorizing people rather than killing them, or by depriving them of needed goods and services— was the answer to breaking their will.

Yet the difference between attacks intended to terrorize and those intended to kill was a fine one, and the distinction blurred as the war progressed. The impetus to end the war quickly led to the selection of targets—like Dresden’s rail yards—that would also have a maximum impact on civilian morale. When Secretary of War Henry Stimson learned of Dresden’s devastation, he re­quested information on the attacks and asked that “the City be thoroughly photographed to establish that our objectives were, as usual, military in character.” Arnold received the request while recuperating in Coral Gables and scribbled across it: “We must not get soft—War must be destructive and to a certain extent in­human and ruthless.”102 By 1945, German civilians had no argu­ment with Arnold’s assessment. For them, no distinction existed between the raf Bomber Command’s area attacks and American raids against specific targets in or near cities.

For Eighth Air Force, the 3 February raid on Berlin was the tenth against the German capital. More than 600 bombers had attacked it on several occasions; on zi June 1944 935 heavies had pummeled the city; and on 26 February 1,100 more would strike it.103 Spaatz understood that whether his crews bombed ur­ban targets using the Norden bombsight or radar, they would kill many civilians, and “dehouse” many more. To him, though, in­tent mattered. Why counted more than how in evaluating success, and the purpose of the raid provided criteria by which to judge re­sults. With photographic reconnaissance and Ultra intercepts, he could calculate the damage rendered to Germany’s oil producing capability caused by bombing a specific synthetic oil plant. What he could not do, however, was translate those figures into an ac­curate estimate of when Germany’s oil supply would cause it to quit fighting—and the time factor was the ultimate judge of suc­cess. He had faced a similar dilemma the previous spring in trying to determine when his bombers and fighters might gain daylight air superiority, and resorted to aerial attrition to achieve his goal in the time allotted. Now, in the aftermath of Hitler’s Ardennes offensive, the impetus for quick success—in this case, quick vic­tory—helped to mold the intent of his actions.

The desire for a rapid end to the war courtesy of American air power was nothing new to Spaatz—or Arnold—or any Army Air Forces commander. They entered the war with that goal in mind, but they also sought to dictate when the war ended, and the de­mands of the ground war had upset their calculations. Ideally, they had wanted to build an enormous bomber force and then pound the key nodes of German industry with it for six months, after which they thought Germany would surrender. The diversion of bombers to support ground advances in the Mediterranean, fol­lowed by requirements to support the Normandy invasion, not only prevented air commanders from testing their theory, but also from estimating when bombing would end the war. While rapid victory remained the airmen’s goal, they wanted an air power – induced success, and the opportunities for that result diminished the closer Allied troops came to Berlin.

In early 1945, whh the Anglo-American armies poised to ad­vance into Germany, Spaatz was uncertain that his oil campaign could stymie Germany’s capability to fight before those forces ad­vanced deep into the Reich. His 3 February Berlin raid may have mirrored his other attacks against the city in terms of conduct, but his intent paralleled Eaker’s desire in late 1943 to win the war by shattering German morale through radar bombing.104 As for the attacks on Dresden ten days later that achieved much more noto­riety, statements made afterward by Spaatz and other American air leaders were closer to the mark—those raids were little differ­ent in either conduct or intent from American bombing missions that began more than a year before.

Gradually, though, the mindsets of American air commanders morphed into a mentality that viewed radar bombing in the same vein as precision raids. Regardless of the equipment used, the em­phasis remained on the targets attacked rather than on the meth­ods used to attack them. American air leaders retained their con­victions regarding the importance of Germany’s industrial web and devoted considerable attention to pinpointing the key connections in it—even though they knew that they lacked the capacity to at­tack those strands with true precision bombing. What they did not lack were numbers. By fall 1944 Spaatz could regularly send one thousand bombers against a particular target, and did so.

The demand for rapid results—part of which stemmed from the airmen’s own desires to demonstrate that they could achieve “in­dependent” success—pushed them relentlessly onward, and the overriding war aim of unconditional surrender condoned the mas­sive destruction that followed.105 Arnold had told his command­ers in June 1943,“We are not in a position to ignore the costs and win by brute force.”106 A little more than a year later, Spaatz and usstaf could try to do exactly that. Throughout their portion of the Combined Bomber Offensive, American airmen failed to note that the emphasis on rapid results distorted the progressive ideals of efficiency and economy at the heart of their beliefs about the virtues of bombing. American bomber crews paid a heavy price for achieving dominance in the European skies, and radar bomb­ing wreaked a terrible toll on the German civilian populace. Still, the public statements of air leaders, as well as much of their pri­vate correspondence, often sounded as if their efforts were be­yond reproach.

In private, though, they also frequently agonized over the pros­pects of using brute force to secure victory—especially in terms of the legacy that it might foster. Eaker, who contributed the heavy bombers of Fifteenth Air Force to Spaatz’s campaign against Ger­many, commented at length on the dilemma. Spaatz had requested his views on “Clarion,” a plan designed not only to disrupt trans­portation links in small towns, but also to showcase the might of Allied air power to German citizens unfamiliar with its fury. Eaker did not mince his words on the proposal:

It [Clarion] will absolutely convince the Germans that we are the bar­barians they say we are, for it would be perfectly obvious to them that this is primarily a large-scale attack on civilians as, in fact, it of course will be. Of all the people killed in this attack over 95% of them can be expected to be civilians.

It is absolutely contrary to the conversations you and [Air Secre­tary] Bob Lovett had with respect to the necessity of sticking to mil­itary targets. . . .

If the time ever comes when we want to attack the civilian popu­lace with a view to breaking civil morale, such a plan as the one sug­gested is probably the way to do it. I personally, however, have be­come completely convinced that you and Bob Lovett are right and we should never allow the history of this war to convict us of throwing the strategic bomber at the man in the street. I think there is a better way we can do our share toward the defeat of the enemy, but if we are to attack the civil population I am certain we should wait until its morale is much nearer [the] breaking point and until the weather favors the operation more than it will at any time in the winter or early spring.107

Eaker—who had himself attempted to subdue German morale with bombs—did not completely dismiss the possibility that air power might break civilian will, but he thought that the current odds were low. Despite his concerns, Operation Clarion transpired in early 1945. On 22 February more than two thousand usstaf bombers, with heavy fighter escort, roamed over Germany bomb­ing and strafing railroad stations, marshalling yards, and bridges. The raf supported the effort with intense attacks on lines of com­munication in the Ruhr. The pattern was repeated the next day and produced a temporary halt to rail traffic throughout much of the Reich. Yet it did not significantly affect the morale of the pop­ulace. The bland statement appearing in the Army Air Forces’ of­ficial history, “Nothing in particular happened after the German people beheld Allied warplanes striking towns which usually es­caped bombings,” made a fitting epitaph for the operation.108

The remainder of America’s contribution to the Combined Bomber Offensive continued with the same intensity that Spaatz had displayed since taking command of usstaf a year before. Oil and transportation remained the two top targets. Winter weather made attacks on both difficult, but the magnitude of the air of­fensive ultimately made a difference. Every day between 19 Feb­ruary and 4 March Eighth Air Force attacked targets in Germany with more than one thousand bombers; Fifteenth Air Force heav­ies raided Germany on twenty days in February. Germany’s syn­thetic oil production fell from thirty-seven thousand tons a month in January to thirteen thousand in February, less than 4 percent of the production total for January 1944.109

usstaf actually dropped more bombs on transportation targets than it did on oil, with 54,000 tons out of the 74,400 dropped in February going to roads, bridges, rail lines, and marshalling yards.110 Marshalling yards in particular received an abundance of ordnance, most of which fell via radar bombing during peri­ods of poor weather.111 Those attacks produced telling results be­cause the sheer amount of bombs dropped disrupted rail traffic to such a degree that trains could not deliver loads of coal to Ger­man factories—and most industries, including synthetic oil pro­duction—operated by burning coal.

Coal delivery emerged as the truly vital strand of Germany’s industrial web, and the attacks against transportation lines and marshalling yards eliminated what remained of Germany’s indus­trial capability more by happenstance than design.112