The Blitz tested a bold theory that bombing alone could win wars
Between the wars, strategists promised that bombers would always get through and that attacks on cities would shatter civilian morale. From September 1940 to May 1941, Germany put the idea to the test over Britain. Eight months of raids did enormous harm, yet British war production kept rising.
Airpower theorists such as Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell had argued in the 1920s and 1930s that air forces could make armies and navies almost unnecessary. Destroy factories, government and communications, the thinking went, and a nation loses the means to fight, while frightened civilians turn against their leaders. Democracies were thought especially fragile. Britain's own Bomber Command absorbed much of this thinking.
Germany's air force was more cautious. Its early chief of staff, Walther Wever, championed long-range strategic bombing and wanted officers schooled in war economics and intelligence, not just tactics. He died in an air crash in 1936, and his successors, including Albert Kesselring, favoured close support for ground troops. Hermann Göring dropped the heavy bomber programme in 1937. Hitler, meanwhile, never pressed for a planned strategic campaign and tended to see bombing as a political threat or terror weapon rather than a tool of economic war.
The Blitz began as an attempt to lure the Royal Air Force into a decisive battle at the end of the Battle of Britain. Hitler and Göring ordered the shift on 6 September 1940, and the next day London came under attack on 56 of the following 57 days and nights. A raid on 29 December caused a firestorm called the Second Great Fire of London. After October the campaign moved mostly to night raids to avoid fighters, and it spread to ports such as Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, Belfast and Glasgow, and industrial cities including Coventry and Birmingham. More than 40,000 civilians died from German bombing over the war, nearly half in London, where over a million homes were damaged or destroyed.
Strategically, it fell short. Germany spread its effort across many industries instead of hammering the most vital ones, partly through poor intelligence. British studies found most badly hit cities recovered within 10 to 15 days, though Birmingham took three months. The main effect was to push Britain to scatter aircraft production. The campaign ended on 16 May 1941, as Germany turned toward invading the Soviet Union.
Source: The Blitz
