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

by Richard Overy

For the German war effort the costs of all forms of air defense by 1943–44 were substantial in terms of both manpower and equipment. The antiaircraft service absorbed 255,000 people in 1940, but 889,000 at its peak in 1944; the 14,400 heavy and 42,000 light guns by 1944 required production of 4,000 new guns a month, and antiaircraft units consumed one-fifth of all ammunition, half the production of the electronics industry, and one-third of all optical equipment.177 The passive civil defense personnel numbered around 900,000 (supported by 15 million members of the Air Defense League); the numbers involved in post-raid clearance fluctuated over time, but they totaled by 1944 in the hundreds of thousands. Civil defense and medical equipment had to be maintained in the face of wide losses, hospitals had to be built and repaired, and fire services expanded. Few of those involved would have been potential soldiers, but many would have been potential war workers, if they were not already combining civil defense activities with paid work. This does not mean that civilians were ipso facto legitimate targets, but as in the British case, it shows that bombing compelled German resources to be allocated in ways that directly affected German military potential at the fighting front and the pattern of strategic choices. Without bombing, Germany would have been as free to optimize the use of resources and to conduct the military war effort as was the United States. The military consequen...