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

by Richard Overy

Damage to buildings, the loss of artworks, deaths and injuries were caused not only by bombing but by artillery fire, rockets, fighter aircraft, and even by naval fire along the coastline, and from both sides, Allied and Axis. The 8,549 deaths in Sicily before the armistice, for example, were the result of all forms of military action, whereas the 7,000 in Rome were due almost entirely to bombing.171 The postwar statistical record drawn up to show the cause of deaths as a result of the war indicated a very precise total of 59,796, though other categories of “poorly specified” or “poorly defined” or “various acts of war” count a further 27,762, some of whom were almost certainly bombing victims.172 The total number of seriously injured has not been recorded. In cases where urban records provide a list of injured—for example in Bologna—the number is around the same as those killed, in this case 2,000. The number of those injured, whether severely or lightly, is not likely to be less than the figure of around 60,000 killed. Of the number of dead, about 32,000 were men, 27,000 women, a reflection of the extent of female evacuation and the compulsory requirement for men to carry on working in the cities on German orders or to help with post-raid rescue and clearance. That the level of casualty was not much higher, given that the weight of bombs dropped in Italy was almost six times the weight dropped on Britain during the Blitz, may owe something to the fact that many of the ob...