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

by Richard Overy

For the unfortunate populations in the way of the bombing, in Italy or France or Romania, there was never much point in trying to work out whether they had been bombed strategically or not, for the destructive effects on the ground were to all intents and purposes the same: high levels of death and serious injury, the widespread destruction of the urban landscape, the reduction of essential services, and the arbitrary loss of cultural treasures. Being bombed as part of a ground campaign could, as in the case of the French port of Le Havre in September 1944 or the German city of Aachen in September and October the same year, produce an outcome considerably worse than an attack regarded as strategically independent.