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

by Richard Overy

The provisional conclusions among the cohort of German airmen, engineers, and ministerial staff subject to interrogation were almost unanimous. A British intelligence assessment, “Factors in Germany’s Defeat,” produced by May 17, included an interrogation with Adolf Galland, who ranked the offensive against transport, then oil, then the air force as the most decisive.152 In mid-June a full report of interrogation extracts was produced by the director of American air force intelligence at SHAEF, George C. McDonald. They also showed that the three critical targets were considered to be oil facilities (“The general opinion of the German leaders is that the attack on synthetic oil was the decisive factor”), communications (“brought about the final disruption of the German war effort”), and the German Air Force—achieved through attacks on aircraft production, airfields, and combat attrition.153 Göring thought the collapse of oil supply to be the single most critical factor—“without fuel, nobody can conduct a war”—while Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister for armaments and war production, ranked communications at the top of the list of critical targets. Erhard Milch, Göring’s deputy at the Air Ministry, ranked “synthetic oil plants and railway communications” together.154 On area bombing the German judgment was largely negative. It did not “cause the collapse of the German people” and was regarded, according to McDonald, as “the least important of the major target complexes.” When G...