According to the British Political Warfare Executive, set up in 1941, bombing of occupied areas promoted both “morale breaking” and “morale making.” Collaborators and Germans would be demoralized by the experience; those who did not collaborate would be encouraged at the prospect of liberation.3 To be bombed in order to be free now seems paradoxical, but the policy governed much of the bombing that spread out across the entire European continent between 1940 and 1945.
