Strategic bombing campaign - Essay Example

One major allegation that arose against the Western forces in the post World War II era was that the air raids that were carried out by them, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were unnecessary evils that they imposed on the innocent people of Germany and Japan. This argument emerged from the observation that Japan and Germany were on the verge of defeat when these massive bombings even started. While discussing this position, Murray and Millet have summarized them by saying that “strategic bombing played a relatively unimportant part in winning World War II”.

1 In spite of this criticism, war analysts like Murray and Millet have pointed out certain impacts of strategic bombing campaign on the ability of Japan and Germany to wage war. One aspect was that the strategic bombing campaign “did hut morale [of the Nazi leadership] severely, and the leadership, drawing on its belief that Germany had lost the war because of a collapse of civilian morale, cast its response in accordance with a popular mood that demanded retaliation.”2 Martel has described the air campaign by the Allied forces in the World War II as “remorseless” which points to the intensity of those air attacks and causalities that were caused.

3 The air attacks were so exhaustive that by October 1945, only a few rail tracks and similar, less sensitive targets, were remaining to be bombed.4 The “most damaging single raid” in the war prior to the use of atom bombs was the bombing carried out in Tokyo which killed around 80,000 people and also destroyed about 300000 buildings.5 It was a fact that, “within areas devastated by attacks, substantial slow downs in production occurred.”6 Murray and Millet have also revealed that, the production of war-related materials in Germany was retarded by the air strikes.

7 The air raids from the side of Japanese forces were also having their impact on the resistance power of Britain as well. It was reported that, in Britain, as early as in “1940 air raid shelters in big cities were becoming distressingly full of poor, chronically sick, homeless old people who had no where else to go.”8 Hence, it can be seen that the impact has been mutual. Yet, Japan and Germany were greatly paralyzed by the bombings. Germany’s military traffic was greatly affected.9 The attack on trains and bridges made the situation worse.

10 The German petroleum industry and other strategic industries as well were targets of attack of the air bombing.11 All these considerably diminished the economic and military powers of Germany. Aircraft fuel production in Germany was almost totally stopped by these attacks so that Germany and Japan began to fall behind in their air attack plans.12 Germany almost “lacked the fuel required for mobile warfare.”13 The aircraft production centre in Japan and Germany were also destroyed by allied bombing.

14 In Japan, the bombing was so intense that many generals did not feel it necessary to use the atom bomb when it was ready.15 From all these facts, one can conclude that the air bombings had a great limiting role on the warring capacity of Japan and Germany. But all the same, the answer to the question whether the use of atom bombs was justified continues to be, a big ‘no’. ReferencesHarris, Jose. “War and Social History: Britain and the Home Front During the Second World War”, In Gordon.

The World War Two reader, ed. Gordon Martel, London: Routledge, 2004. Martel, Gordon. The World War Two reader. London: Routledge, 2004.Murray, Williamson and Allan R.Millet. A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Harvard: Harvard University Press. 2001.