Customer Reviews

The Battle of Hamburg: Allied Bomber Forces Against a German City in 1943

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In late July and early August 1943 Bomber Command, with the cooperation of the USAAF, launched a series of heavy raids against the German city of Hamburg. The objective was to paralyse the city and demoralize its inhabitatants so that its role in the war effort would be diminished, if not nullified. The Battle is best remembered for the Firestorm that engulfed much of the eastern section of the city (after the second RAF raid) and resulted in the death of approximately 40,000 people, mostly civilians. For hundreds of thousands of survivors, the raids made the true horror of modern war a reality, and the city's industries in many cases were temporarily disrupted. But in the end, the raid was only a partial success in that the will of the German people was not broken and the city did continue (although to a lesser degree) play its vital role in the German war-effort. The Firestorm has since become a controversial subject, but it must be understood that it had not been the intended outcome, as has been suggested. While many of the bombers did drop incindiaries on the city, the proportion in relation to high explosive bombs was not much different from previous raids.

The Battle of Hamburg is what one expects from Middlebrook; extensively researched and relatively objective, it is written in a manner that allows the reader to get a fair sense of what the Battle had been like for the various participants and witnesses. It is a fascinating read and a truly important study of a pivotal phase in the Allied bombing campaign against the Third Reich.

My father was born under the bombs in Hamburg, so this had a personal interest to me. It is a fantastic, balanced book. It captures very well every aspect of the operation, and Middlebrook debunks a lot of myths about it being a "firebombing" raid. It was, as he is at pains to emphasize, a typical raid that was just more successful than most.

As with his other books, Middlebrook uses and includes many personal accounts; in this case, they are sad and gripping for all concerned.

From the narrative and analysis perspectives, this is a very well done book. The first and last chapters alone are a great read, discussing how area bombing and "terror" bombing came about. Middlebrook is balanced, summarizing the opponents and supporters' points of view. He himself remains "above" the debate, claiming, correctly in my point of view, that the era was challenging for all concerned, and difficult decisions had to be made in a compressed period of time without the benefit of a crystal ball.

It may be the best of his bomber series of books, because of the treatment of the Hamburgers.

Martin Middlebrook's judicious method of recounting military history works nearly as well in "The Battle of Hamburg" as it did in his first book "First Day on the Somme."

The two most attractive things about the Middlebrook style are the somewhat clinical attitude -- there is no rodomontade or triumphalism in his books -- and the pithy selections from participants.

Middlebrook is also good about paying attention to logistics, the area usually most neglected in popular histories.

For the Battle of Hamburg, the big issues are Area Bombing and the famous firestorm that killed perhaps 40,000 civilians in one night. The image of living people stuck on melted asphalt as the flames approach is one not easy to read.

Everybody has to have an opinion about such events. In a thoughtful summary, however, Middlebrook says he has been unable to decide for himself how to judge.

He lets others present their judgments. It is easy enough, however, to judge the judgments of many (Middlebrook suggests, a majority) of Hamburgers. They remain aggrieved that the British resorted to such uncivilized warfare as terror bombing. We can rightfully judge this a one-way-street morality: Only Germans are entitled to practice uncivilized warfare and it is a crime only when they have to experience it.

As always, the worst thing you can do for a German is to encourage him to speak frankly.

I very much like Middlebrook's approach to military history, but there are a couple of points where "The Battle of Hamburg" is seriously lacking.

Hamburg was the main producer of submarines. The attacks may have cut U-boat deliveries by around two dozen. (The implication has to be that the Germans got more efficient after the raids, as the workforce at the main yards, Blohm & Voss, was still down 20% four months after the raid.) Middlebrook never puts this number (the range is 20 to 26, depending upon whether you accept the British or the American estimate) in context. The raids on Hamburg came in July 1943; May 1943 was the "black month" of the U-boat arm when it went from great success in April to a loss of more than 40 boats in May.

So two dozen boats was a minor victory at the time. At the beginning of the year, it would have been much more consequential.

In his discussion of the strategy of Area Bombing, again, Middlebrook ignores a big piece of context. During the first four years of the war, Britain and (for the latter part) the USA were unable to come to grips with the main might of Germany. From June 1941, most of the fighting was done by the USSR.

Although the USSR defeated Germany at least as early as October 1941 (see my review of Overy's "Russia's War" for a discussion), there was a possibility that Germany could have retrieved the situation, had Britain not kept up the pressure.

Britain's ability to engage Germany was limited. The Battle of the Atlantic was the main arena. There is much talk today about asymmetric warfare. The Battle of the Atlantic was extremely asymmetric: it required a huge effort by the Allies to counter a modest effort by the Germans. (In the whole war, the losses of Germans in U-boats were less than the losses of Hamburgers alone on the Eastern Front, much less.)

For lack of such things as landing craft, the Allies were unable to transport a large enough army to Europe to engage important elements of the Wehrmacht in 1943. The fighting in Africa and the Mediterranean was a sideshow.

That left the air offensive. We know now that the effort was, again, asymmetric. The damage done to Germany by bombing was less than the effort expended by the Allies to bomb.

It does not follow that the effort was a wrong use of resources. Under the circumstances, it was the only way to keep the war going until decisive force could be raised and employed.

Last, there is one amazing sentence in the book. In his discussion about the morality of Area Bombing, Middlebrook says, "If Area Bombing had toppled Germany before the invasion of France, there would have been a deal less controversy on the subject, just as there has been little argument over the two American atom bombs which knocked Japan out of the war in 1945." I am surprised Middlebrook has not withdrawn that sentence in later editions.

Martin Middlebrook's series of books is a must for anyone interested in the strategic bombing campaign over Germany in World War II. Although most of his books cover raids that did not go well for the Allies (Nuremberg, Schweinfurt-Regensburg, and the Battle of Berlin), this book covers one of RAF Bomber Commands biggest successes (the US Eigth Air Force also carried out daylight raids as part of the Battle of Hamburg but they were not so successful). Middlebrook explains how "everything came together" for the RAF, most especially the introduction of "Window" which rendered the German defenders' radar useless; and the weather which made the incendiary bombs particularly effective in starting massive fires which lead to the horrific firestorm that caused so many fatalities. Middlebrook not only describes the attacking force, but also the defensive measures taken on the ground by the Germans and the experiences of the civilian population caught up in this nightmarish experience.
The author points out that regarding the bomb-load mix in this raid, the ratio of incendiaries to high-explosive bombs was no different than usual and it was the combination of circumstances that lead to the massive destruction (incidentally-he also points out that the Germans used incendiaries in their bombing raids on London and Coventry in 1940 and 1941 so the RAF can not be blamed for starting this type of warfare)
This book, like his others, is highly recommended.