For a large part of the Second World War, the RAF sought to break the morale of the German civilian population through area bombing. They failed, of course – it took an invasion and a lack of fuel to beat the Germans. But why didn’t the population crack? Why did German production continue to increase until extremely late in the war, and why was there no widespread uprising against the Nazis? A related question: why do well drilled, disciplined troops sometimes fall apart under pressure, while the civilian populations of large cities subjected to intense bombardment did not?
Of course, Arthur Harris thought that the problem was not enough bombing – the RAF lacked capacity much before 1944, and thereafter got diverted into bombing oil and communications targets – what Harris called ‘panacea targets’. He later conceded that morale bombing didn’t work, but that heavy area bombing would have done the job anyway, regardless of the effect on civilian morale:
the policy of destroying industrial cities, and the factories in them, was not merely the only possible one for Bomber Command at that time; it was also the best way of destroying Germany’s capacity to produce war material. The morale of the enemy under bombing could be taken as an imponderable factor. Just possibly a break in morale might lead to the collapse of the enemy, and more probably bad morale would add to the loss of production resulting directly from air raid damage, but it was not necessary to take these possibilities into account.
That’s post-hoc justification for you. At the time, Bomber Command was going after enemy morale, alright. It was directed in 1941 to prioritize ‘destroying the morale of the civil population as a whole and of the industrial workers in particular’. Then, in 1942, another directive reiterated that ‘The primary object of your preparations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population, and in particular on the industrial workers.’ And in 1945, a memo from the PM arrived, somewhat late in the day: ‘It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed’. All those, incidentally, are drawn from AC Grayling’s fascinating book, Among the Dead Cities.
Solly Zuckerman, in his British Bombing Survey Unit report, and later in his autobiography makes a convincing case that morale attacks didn’t work. This from the BBSU:
That the German civilian had to endure increasingly severe hardships during the last two years of the war is […] plain. On the other hand, there is no indication that his morale reached breaking-point as a result of air attacks. The hardships to which the German population were put were borne stoically in the face of what must have been a growing realisation, from the beginning of 1944 onwards that short of a miracle, Germany was bound to lose the war.
Why so stoical? As ever, I see plenty of scope for psychology to shed some light on the complex reasons for group and individual behaviour. The British army places considerable emphasis on ‘shock action’. Shocking enemy troops can be much more effective than killing them – ask a Frenchman about the German breakthrough at Sedan in 1940. In fact, ask Marc Bloch:
Men are made so that they will face expected dangers in expected places a good deal more easily than the sudden appearance of deadly peril from behind a turn in the road which they have been led to suppose is perfectly safe. Years ago, shortly after the battle of the Marne, I saw men who the day before had gone into the line under murderous fire without turning a hair run like rabbits just because three shells fell quite harmlessly on a road where they had piled arms in order to furnish a water fatigue.
If you shock troops, perhaps through surprise and manoeuvre, and then give them space to flee, they might just oblige. But flight isn’t inevitable under acute stress. Fighting is an option too, of course, though shock inhibits that, as, when it comes to civilians, does capability. The other option is to soak up the punishment in a condition of stressed apathy. Martin Seligman showed in a famous series of experiments in the 1960s that you could induce apathy in dogs – and, in some respects, that’s what the RAF’s campaign seems to have done. Robert Pape, in his classic analysis, writes:
punishment does not work. Modern nation states have extremely high pain thresholds when important interests are at stake, which conventional munitions cannot overcome. Low to moderate levels of punishment inspire more anger than fear, heavy bombardment produces apathy, not rebellion.
The other factor here is social – many ‘truths’ are social valid – we tend, a few iconoclasts aside, to adopt the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of whatever referent groups are salient at the time. Although many Germans were not fanatical Nazis, and although their options for resistance were limited by an oppressive surveillance society, their inclination to resist might not have been great either – resistance wasn’t socially acceptable (a very few independently minded folk aside). As a comparator, Britain wasn’t an oppressive totalitarian society, and yet here too people didn’t collectively panic under aerial bombardment in the manner predicted by Guilio Douhet. Coercion is an important factor in shaping behaviour, in other words – but I think it can be over-emphasised in this case.
On the other hand, the social cues we take from our peers can be extremely influential in determining behaviour – and can lend themselves neatly to business as usual. The various studies are the stuff of my dinner party patter: there’s the Kitty Genevese murder, the classic Sherif autokinetic experiments, or the equally classic Asch line judgment experiment. Normally, at that point, the other guests tell me to lighten up. In short though, people carefully observe how others around them are behaving, and do their darnedest to fit in: on average, it’s a good survival technique. If everyone affects a studied nonchalance, in other words, there’s a chance of collectively enduring heavy bombing.
Of course, some Germans did panic under bombing. They fled the cities and the stupefying death and destruction. But they returned to work and live as best they could, time and again. German society continued to function, soldiers were clothed, fighter jets manufactured, food distribution continued. Until, in the end, invading armies and a lack of fuel brought the regime crashing down.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you need to take into account the matter of time. Troops and civilians may be panicked, but if given time to recover, the ultimate result will be very different.
This is something I don’t think we understood in our long distance strike ideas of “shock and awe.” Shock and awe were probably achieved, but by the time we had troops in postion to take advantage of the distressed state of the enemy, the panic had passed. These are fundamentals of the relationship of fire and maneuver.
I think the advocates of terror bombing made a fundamental miscalulation of population reaction by confusing population panic, which could be a very brief phenomenon, with a population’s ability to adapt and cope with continued bombing over time.
I would agree with that, at least the last part. The first area I can’t comment on. If we were to suffer terrorist attacks that claim perhaps a few dozen lives every week for the next two years I think we would gradually find ways to cope and endure it. If anything this tendency would only be encouraged with aerial bombings by the fact that people would be unable to stop them.
Looking at it from an American perspective, the Tokyo fire bombing had little influence on the populace, and judging from the minutes of the Japanese leadership even the atomic bombs appear to have had a limited impact on decision-making.
You could even take that premise and look at civilians who live in high risk areas v. civilians who live in low risk areas. I imagine the ones who live in lands prone to earthquakes or flooding several times a decade are more mentally capable of handling them than people who might only experience one in a decade.
Sadly, it appears that it took the U.S some twenty more years to appreciate this fact.
Hi Phil – yes, I agree entirely. Which is why depth is often critical, to buy some time.
FG – Thinking of that 20 year learning period – it’s interesting that in Europe the USAAF for the most part stayed away from area bombing, in favour of ‘precision’. Perhaps the experience with Japan led them up the garden path subsequently. I’m undecided on Japan though – yes, there’s limited evidence that the a-bombs themselves feature in Japanese discussions (though it was abundantly clear anyway by that stage that they were defeated), but the escalation of bombing was much more dramatic in the Pacific campaign than in Europe, and the effects on those wooden cities much more destructive. If not Hiroshima, I’d be surprised if Tokyo had no effect.