The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany [Hardcover]

Robin Neillands (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 2001

The Bomber War is the book about the brutal war in the skies during World War II and the dedication and heroism of the airmen who paid the ultimate price for victory. The bomber campaign against Germany is one of the most contentious of World War II. Was anything achieved by the deaths of thousands of German civilians – many of them women and children? Or were all means justified against Nazi Germany?

Acclaimed historian Robin Neillands examines every detail of the Allied campaign led by British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris: the strengths and fundamental flaws, the technical difficulties and developments and, above all, the day-by-day, night-by-night endurance of the crews flying to the limit in discomfort and danger, facing flak and enemy fire. Personal experiences of British, American, Canadian, Australian & other Allied fliers are a key part in this account, along with those of German airmen & civilians.

Though The Bomber War discusses Guernica and the destruction of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it concentrates on the European theater, on Germany’s air war against the Allies – over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry – which led to the fierce Allied raids carried out against Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and the Ruhr and – most notorious of all – the tremendous firestorm unleashed on Dresden in the final months of the war. Robin Neillands also examines the complex moral issues involved in the air war, and of the case made against "Bomber" Harris. This is an important and timely addition to the history of armed conflict; the age of free-fall bombs may have passed, but many veterans – on both sides – are still alive to state their case, and to tell a new generation what their war like.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"We must make war as we must, not as we would like," observed the great British general Lord Kitchener after witnessing the carnage of World War I. Former Royal Marines commando Robin Neillands concurs in this often grim account of a bombing campaign that devastated much of continental Europe in the cause of destroying Nazism.

In this history of the Allied air war over Europe, Neillands maintains that the use of bombers as strategic weapons aimed at the enemy's ability to wage war--as opposed to purely tactical weapons aimed at enemy troops--necessarily involved the loss of civilian life and the destruction of nonmilitary targets, however unintentional. One such target was Dresden, a once-beautiful city that, some historians have protested, had no strategic importance and merely served as an example of what would happen to the rest of Germany should the fighting continue. Those historians are off the mark, Neillands counters: Dresden produced essential war materiel, such as military aircraft engines, shell fuses, and cigarettes ("a vital product for maintaining wartime morale"), and thus it was a legitimate target. So, he continues, were cities such as Berlin, Ludwigshafen, and Hamburg, the last the site of a firestorm that killed some 46,000 civilians. Their deaths were unfortunate, Neillands suggests, but necessary in ending Hitler's regime and in inaugurating an era in which total war is unthinkable.

Neillands rightly observes that most histories of the Allied air war in Europe present either the English or the American side, and he does a good job of weaving both accounts, drawing on official histories and the memories of veterans (including some German fliers) alike. More detailed and technically inclined than recent work by Stephen Ambrose and other popular writers on World War II, his book makes a useful addition to the historical literature. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

"A critique of strategic bombing as a whole, from its creation during the Great War until the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945," The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany nevertheless focuses on the RAF and USAAF missions over German cities missions that have recently been branded as often little more than organized murder, given the number of civilian casualties. The author, Former Royal Marines Commando Robin Neillands (The Conquest of the Reich: D-Day to V-E Day), is a member of the British Commission for Military History.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; First Edition Stated edition (August 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585671622
• ISBN-13: 978-1585671625
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,962,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Bomber War bombs., October 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany (Hardcover)

Robin Neillands' "The Bomber War" is a book of limited value that plows old ground. The author sets out to rehabilitate the memory of Arthur "Bomber" Harris, address the morality of the bombing campaigns waged in the Second World War and dispell myths. In the end, he makes much ado about nothing new.

Respecting Harris, Neillands early on establishes that he did not initiate the "area bombing" campaign he is so well identified with and then commences what can only be called a whitewash campaign. Neillands blithely ignores many indicators of the truth,--even those evident in his prized oral history --that paint a less improved picture of Harris. In the final reflection, Neillands reveals nothing new about Harris and ignores the real implications of a barely acknowledged ruthlessness and obstinacy.

Denis Richards' 1994 book ("The Hardest Victory") did as much to dispell any evidence of Harris initiating the area bombing campaign and contains a much more realistic summation of Arthur "Butch" (short for "Butcher") Harris' connection to area bombing: "...he became not only its chief executant but also--though always within the official channels--its most ardent, eloquent and obdurate champion." Neillands's faint observation that Harris continued to hold on to "the bomber dream" does not describe Harris so well. As for Harris's good qualities as a commander, those too were addressed by Richards seven years before.

Thus one is left to wonder if Harris' reputation needed, or deserved, rehabilitation.

Concerning the morality of the bombing campaigns, Neillands spills a tremendous amount of ink only to retrace the path of a multitude before him and conclude "there was a war on." While this is thoroughly true, it is hardly new or revealing. Along the way, he disgraces his arguments by attempting to bolster the rationale for area bombing by essentially pointing a finger at the USAAF on behalf of the RAF and declaring "you did it too" largely as a result of systemic flaws that rendered the basic USAAF doctrine unworkable.

While his arguments are technically and militarily correct, they fall short morally (in the ETO). Certainly both bomber forces (and the high commands that directed them) suffered an erosion of the ideals they initially entered the war with, but the RAF went much farther than the USAAF as a matter of policy in Europe. The fact that imperfect practice on the part of the USAAF often amounted to the same thing as what was policy in the RAF fails to disguise the fact that the RAF was blatantly attacking cities with the intent of killing large sectors of their populations with relative indiscriminacy.

Neillands would have been more wise to mark the parallel decline in ideals between the two services that is evident if the bombing campaign against Japan is also taken into account on the USAAF side. Instead, Neillands, like so many before, is at least partially blinded by the racial issue. When one includes the USAAF experience in the PTO in the overall continuum, the decline in moral compunctions of the RAF and the USAAF is remarkably similar.

Neillands' conclusions that the bomber was available in insufficient numbers, hampered by weather and technically immature are quite correct. So too is his conclusion that there "was a war on." These points simply required much less proof to make and did not require finger-pointing to do it.

This brings up Neillands's third purpose: dispelling myths. As nearly as I can tell, after studying this subject for a quarter of a century I'm at a loss to discern just where some of the myths he purports to identify hold sway. In 25 years I have encountered no credible work that does not conclude the following:
1) That the RAF deliberately targeted civilians as a de facto matter of policy that was not beyond the standards of the war being fought and arguably had a significant impact on German production, but not on morale;
2) That the USAAF attempted to make the precision bombing doctrine work but was largely unable due to the weather, the initial lack of fighter escorts and the immaturity of the weapons system, with the result that its attacks wrought similar and often indiscriminate damage akin to RAF raids;
3) That the USAAF fire bombing in Japan was every bit as ruthless and morally disappointing as what the RAF did to Hamburg and Dresden;
4) That the RAF developed a small cadre of highly capable precision bombing units;
5) That the bombing commands suffered a drain of resources to other fronts.
6) That the fire bombing of Japanese cities was actually worse than the atomic bombings.
None of this is new, or revealing, and given that it represents mainstream thought it hardly constitutes truth hidden behind the veil of myth.

Neillands also falls prey to a few myths and errors himself. Henry Arnold was never actually taught to fly by either of the Wright brothers and the conclusion of the Pacific War had more to do with internal Japanese politics than the use of the atomic bombs. (had a very few things gone differently, Japan would not have surrendered on 15 August 1945). So when it comes to myth-busting, Neillands is seven years late and $14.55 short (just comparing to Richards).

Even Neillands' avowed purpose of using oral history to ensure the veterans are heard before they pass is nothing new or unique. Richards's book contains 33 pages of nothing but air crew quotes. Richards's book also contains extensive appendices completely absent from Neillands's work.

Neillands's book comes off as old news. It is RAF/Euro-centric and seeks to both absolve the RAF and damn the USAAF by association on the issue of area bombing. It was not necessary to spend 406 pages reaching the same conclusions as those who have gone before. Richards's 363 pages are much more informative.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story, poorly edited., September 20, 2006

By 

J. Canestrino (Lodi, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany (Hardcover)

The story was very good and engrossing. It is well written. The author starts out with a thesis and sets out to support it. It is shocking how many men went to their deaths daily in the bomber war over Europe. Given the very close accounting kept of current skirmishes, I think it would have been truely appalling, though informative, if everyone knew exactly how many people were being killed every day during World War II.
However, I do find the book to be very repetitive and I have never seen a professionally published book with more typographical errors than this one. Editing and proofreading were lacking.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Failed Mission, August 27, 2003

By 

JR Dunn (New Brunswick,, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany (Hardcover)

A lot of errors here, ranging from the minor--a claim that the Me-262 was not used as a night fighter (it was) and that the Ar-234 never saw combat (it did), to the major--no mention whatsoever of the 8th Air Force's Operation Argument (February-May 1944), possibly (I nearly wrote "aguably") the turning point of the entire Allied air campaign, to the imbecilic--August 6, 1945 is somehow transformed to "mid-August" (P. 380). And I could go on. The book badly needed both careful editing and close reading by experts well-versed in the subject.

The fact that it received neither renders it useless in its stated aim, as an argument calling for a reappraisal of RAF Bomber Command chief Arthur Harris. Such an argument could be made, but not with the level of error here.

A detailed discussion of the morality of area bombing (one reaching the exact opposite of Neilland's conclusion) can be found in Michael Walzer's "Just and Unjust Wars". For a good history of the RAF bombing campaign I would suggest Max Hasting's "Bomber Command", both available nowhere else but on Amazon.