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Cassell Military Classics: The Berlin Raids: RAF Bomber Command Winter 1943-44

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Having devasted Hamburg in a short night-time bombing campaign in the summer of 1943 (much of the damage being inflicted in one night when a combination of circumstances produced a devasting firestorm), the attention of "Bomber" Harris, the leader of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command, turned to the capital of Nazi Germany - Berlin. If the RAF could wreck Berlin by night-time area bombing, then the war could be over by the Spring of 1944! Or so Harris thought.

Martin Middlebrook's masterly account charts the progress of the RAF's bombing campaign against Berlin during the long, cold winter nights of 1943-1944. It was a campaign that saw 19 major bombing raids against the Nazi capital, with the loss of over 600 RAF aircraft - mostly 4-engined bombers and their crews.

Middlebrook's book is aimed squarely at examining the campaign at the tactical level. Numerous eye witness accounts place the reader in the cockpits of RAF bombers lumbering through the darkened skies of Occupied Europe, laden with their lethal cargoes of high explosive and incendary bombs. The German perspective is equally well covered - from the crews of the often deadly German nightfighters, to the civilians huddled in their shelters under the rain of bombs. The weapons, and in particular the tactics used, are also examined (although I suspect that the level of detail will disappoint serious aircraft buffs).

Traditional, factual, and extensively researched military history is combined with a wealth of interview material to produce a coherent, well-balanced and extremely well written account of the battle. This book is a must for any serious student of aerial warfare, or for anyone who just wants to understand what the area bombing campaign of Nazi Germany was really like - from both sides.

In this book, covering the nineteen Royal Air Force (RAF) raids over Berlin between August 1943 and March 1944, Martin Middlebrook deviates from his standard formula for chronicling military history. Normally, Middlebrook takes a crucial day or at most a few days of a major battle and uses this to showcase the battle as a whole. Middlebrook typically interlaces expert historical analysis with hard-hitting eyewitness accounts. Unfortunately, this well-proven formula is lacking in The Berlin Raids. The time period covers seven months of an attritional battle that had few highpoints and there are many less eyewitness accounts than in other Middlebrook accounts. As storytelling, this one is much less dynamic than either the Schweinfurt-Regensburg Raids or the Battle of Hamburg.

As history, this book also leaves much to be desired. Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris' decision to "wreck Berlin from end to end" and thus end the war was a controversial claim in 1943 as well as from hindsight. Harris, being a true bomber fanatic who believed that airpower alone could smash German will to resist, was allowed to fight his own personal war for seven months (Churchill ran interference for Harris, while the Americans were demanding that the RAF hit more militarily significant targets). Attritional battles are controversial by their very nature because they accept heavy friendly casualties as the cost of doing business. Yet while Harris' actions should provide ample fodder for controversy, there is little in this account. Another historical omission of this account is that the American bomber units in the 8th Air Force are barely mentioned here, despite the fact that they were undertaking missions that had impact on German and British decision-making.

Each raid is covered in 6-10 pages with a sketch map showing the route in and out, but not the aim points or areas bombed. It quickly becomes apparent in Middlebrook's account that RAF bomber command had a hard time finding Berlin, never mind hitting aim points in the city. Most of the raids missed the aim points by five miles or more and many of the bombs fell in open countryside. A number of the raids were disrupted by bad weather and the German night fighter defenses were just recovering from the British introduction of "Window". Instead of destroying Berlin, RAF Bomber Command came closer to destroying itself. In the course of these nineteen raids, a total of 643 bombers were lost and 3,686 aircrew men killed. German losses were about 10,300 civilian deaths and fewer than 100 night fighters.

Although Middlebrook is a devotee of British night bombing tactics and never fails to criticize American daylight bombing methods, I found myself sickened by the blind stupidity of British tactics in the Battle of Berlin. To begin with, the British Lancaster bomber was a virtual death-trap if hit; Middlebrook notes the average was only 1 out of 7 crewmen successfully bailing out of stricken aircraft. And the Germans shot them down with great ease. One expert night fighter pilot shot down six Lancasters in one sortie and another pilot shot down three. By 1944 the night no longer provided adequate cover to the British bomber streams. Air Marshal Harris pushed Bomber Command to keep mounting raids: experienced crews were kept in the fight too long and losses mounted due to fatigue while inexperienced crews were thrown into the fight without adequate training. While British bombs were mostly killing elderly Germans and women and children - all people who were making little if any contribution to Hitler's war effort - Harris was sacrificing the cream of Bomber Command. The elite Pathfinder Force lost 784 men in the Berlin campaign and lost much of its proficiency; without qualified Pathfinders Bomber Command couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. It is even more sickening when one realizes how little the British were accomplishing: three of the raids killed less than 100 Germans each and most of the raids were inflicting little real damage on the city. Furthermore, the RAF failed to realize that the Luftwaffe had developed new tactics (Tame Boar) and equipment (SN-2 radar, upward-firing 20mm cannons) that made the German night defenses more effective than ever before. By the end of the battle, RAF morale was affected and many crews were aborting or dropping their bombs short of the target.

The book does have a few poignant items. The pity of war is reflected in the plight of bombed-out civilians. After one raid, an eyewitness describes, "an old blind man who sat in the middle of the street, on a chair among the belongings they had saved, while his home burned down." The randomness of war is reflected in another incident. Although few German flak gunners were killed, one unlucky gunner was killed when, "an incendiary bomb fell right on top of his steel helmet that scattered his brains."

In the end, Harris stopped the bombing campaign once the Normandy invasion was drawing near and he was ordered to switch to more tactical targets. In one last political act before he had to switch missions, Harris decided to bomb Nurnberg - the political hotbed of Nazism - on 30 March 1944. Despite adverse weather conditions and tough Luftwaffe defenses, Harris ordered the raid and the result was disaster. RAF bomber command suffered its heaviest loss in a single raid, 95 bombers were lost and few bombs hit the city. To this idiotic finale of RAF anti-city raids, Middlebrook only makes the lame observation that Harris ignored these disasters in his memoirs. The truth is that Harris was wrong and he should have been relieved. The truth is that Harris' campaign to smash Berlin virtually destroyed his own Bomber Command but he was either too stupid or arrogant to acknowledge his errors. The truth is that British night-bombing tactics were a failure and a waste of human lives on both sides. If Britain had only used Bomber Command in support of more realistic objectives, like attacking German war industries in daylight or tactical targets, then the sacrifices might have been justified. Instead, RAF Bomber Command was defeated in the skies over Berlin attempting to prove the unfounded theory that airpower could win wars by slaughtering helpless civilians. It did not work for the Luftwaffe over London in 1940-1 and it did not work for the RAF over Berlin in 1943-4.

Martin Middlebrook's The Berlin Raids tells the battle of Berlin in the fall and winter of 1943-1944. As usual, Mr. Middlebrook sets the stage by telling us of the combatants and the target city. However, rather than providing us a detailed look at the different forces used in the battle, Mr. Middlebrook provides only a summary the combatants. After having read his books on Nuremburg and Hamburg, I was a little disappointed.

Since the campaign for Berlin took many months (August 1943 - March 1944), Mr. Middlebrook provides only a summary of each of the raids. These summaries tell us how many bombers participated, how many were lost (by type), support provided (other operations and diversions), along with a general description of how the raid went (participants memories of the struggle). In addition, Mr. Middlebrook provides a summary of the damage done. Mr. Middlebrook finishes the book off by describing the reckoning and summarizing what he believes the results were.

Mr. Middlebrook set out to analyze the effects of the British raids on Berlin in August 1943 - March 1944. Mr. Middlebrook does succeed in doing this, however it's not as strong as his books on The Nuremburg Raid or The Hamburg Raid. Despite this weakness, I will say that this is one of the best analysis possible on a bombing campaign possible, therefore, I'll give it a solid 4 star rating.

On becoming Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command in 1942, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris stated that many people were claiming that strategic aerial bombing could not win the War but his reply was that it hadn't yet been tried. The raids of the Battle of Berlin described in this book were the peak of the "maximum effort" to bring Germany to defeat without the need for a potentially bloody land invasion of the Nazi-occupied continent by the British and Americans. The fact that, although, the Battle of Berlin caused serious damage to the German capital, it was not decisive, did not succeed in damaging the city as did the firestorm attack on Hamburg, and caused serious losses to Bomber Command does not mean that it should not have been tried. Much of the criticism of Harris is based on 20/20 hindsight. Firstly, it is important to look at the state of the war in late 1943 and early 1944 when the Battle of Berlin was taking place. The Battle of Kursk had been fought in July and as a result, the German ability to go on the offensive on the Eastern Front had been broken, but their defensive capabilites were still formidable. It was still not at all clear that the Soviets would be able to defeat the Germans and reach Berlin nor was the outcome of the impending Operation Overlord certain. Josef Stalin was a megalomaniacal totalitarian dictator and Churchill was well aware of this fact (Roosevelt didn't seem to understand this as well). There was always the fear in the back of the mind of the British that the two dictators might just get together again as they were in 1939-1941 and reach some sort of deal. Thus, the British had to prove to the Soviets that they were making damaging attacks on Germany even thought the Western Allies didn't yet have the strength to perform a landing in France. Secondly, all the senior officers in the British armed forces remembered the disaster of the Battle of the Somme in World War I. On the FIRST DAY alone, the British lost some 60,000 casualties including 20,000 dead and the attacks failed. No one wanted a repeat of that and if there was a chance that aerial bombing could make such an attack unnecessary, it was worth it. It is true that there were serious casualties in Bomber Command, but they were getting significant successes in return for the sacrifices such as the attacks on Cologne, Hamburg and the Ruhr. Thus, it was thought that if Berlin could be devastated in the same way, perhaps the German will to fight could be broken. Middlebrook points out that the longer distance to Berlin and the physical layout of the city made it more difficult to get the same sort of results. However, the Germans were forced to make a significant investment of resources in the air defense of their capital, resources that could have been used against the Soviets or later, against the British and American forces on D-Day. The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs did manage to end the war with Japan without the need for a costly ground invasion of the Home Islands and many American and (possibly millions of) Japanese lives were saved as a result. Harris was hoping for the same result. The fact that he didn't have enough firepower to win the war on his own does not detract from his greatness as a commander. He worked diligently to get the necessary resources for his men and motivated them to keep flying in spite of the fact that a crewman only had about a 30% chance of surviving a tour of 30 missions. Middlebrook quotes many air crewman as pointing out that morale was high in spite of the losses because they realized they were delivering a mighty blow against one of the most evil regimes in human history. Finally, it must be pointed out that the work of Bomber Command was an investment in the future peace of the world. Both Germany and Japan were among the most militaristic societies in the world before World War II, whereas today they are among the most peaceful. This is because the people of these two nations learned the hard way that aggression does not pay. At the end of World War I there was an armistice, but there had been no fighing on German territory, so the Germans were willing to have another go at it just 20 years later. The valiant sacrifices of Bomber Command taught them that war is not the way, and the peace has held in Europe for more than 50 years.

Martin Middlebooks account of the Berlin Raids are by far the best ever produced on these operations I Know this to be true. I was there, I did 6 of these operations Thank you Amazon. Widge HW E

Those familiar with Martin Middlebrook's works would have an expectation of careful research, balanced interviews and sources from both sides of the conflict. They would not be dissapointed as the research techniques are the same as previous books, and as such provides a detailed account of the horror experienced by both sides. The nature of the extended battle over Berlin means that Martin has to resort to descriptions of each individual raid, which afer a few becomes a little tedious for the casual reader, but rich in detail for the dedicated researcher. I have all Middelebrook's books, this one I would rate as one of my least favorites, for this very reason.

This book provides a good high level picture of its topics. It covers English and German strategy on both the strategic and operational levels, how technologies developed and the how the struggle unfolded in terms of both aviation losses and damage to Berlin's infrastructure. It has also been well researched, especially in terms of the research done on bomb damage to Berlin.

Where the book is especially strong, however, is the wide variety of eye witness accounts included from the English and German aircrews as well as the the accounts from those on the ground that were on the receiving end. These accounts do an excellent job at presenting the picture from these perspectives. The author has a large number of these accounts and these were gathered through extensive interviews with the aircrews and those on the ground, both civilian and military. This research was maticulous and captures the experiences of being there in extraordinary fashion.