The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

The works were bombed not only for the potential damage to German vehicle output in the plant, but also to test how French opinion might react to an escalation of the bombing war. Leaflets were dropped beforehand “To the populations of occupied France,” explaining that any factory working for the Germans would now be bombed and encouraging workers to get a job in the countryside or to go on strike for better protection; a BBC broadcast warned French people to stay away from collaborating businesses.32 The PWE wanted to find out as soon as possible after the raid how French workers had reacted, “because it is the workers who have been killed, the workers who ‘go slow’ and sabotage.”33 Although the French authorities orchestrated elaborate public funerary events, the British soon received indications that the reaction had not been as adverse as the public outcry might have suggested. A report from Roosevelt’s special emissary in the new French capital at Vichy, William Leahy, explained that the propaganda campaign fostered by the regime with German support had been ineffective and that there was little evidence of anti-British feeling either in Paris or in the rest of unoccupied France.