* * *

It is important to remember that it was not only Germany that suffered as a result of the raids. The cost to the Allies was huge. In an extraordinary document produced a few months after the bombings, the US government calculated the financial cost of attacking Hamburg. By giving a monetary value to the number of aircraft destroyed, bombs dropped and even lives lost, the conservative figure they came up with was $46,412,700 (see Appendix K). ¹⁹While this pales into insignificance next to the cost of rebuilding Hamburg (some 23,050 million Reich Marks, or $9,220 million), it was nevertheless a huge amount of money, equivalent to more than half a billion dollars today. ²⁰

When one considers that this level of activity was carried out night after night it is little wonder that Britain ended the war virtually bankrupt. According to some estimates, the pursuit of the bomber war consumed as much as a third of the entire British economy. ²¹When looking at figures like this the question naturally arises, was it worth it? With hindsight it seems inconceivable that this level of expenditure could ever have been considered good value for money. Even at the time there were serious doubts over the efficacy of bombing, and earlier in the war there had been many who had pushed for an end to it purely for financial reasons. ²²But we must remember that at the time the politicians and planners had not yet seen the final result of the bombing war. They could only measure the cost against their predictions – or, more importantly, their expectations, which were great indeed.

In the summer of 1943, Sir Arthur Harris confidently believed that he could win the war by bombing alone. In destroying whole cities, so the theory went, the Allies were undermining the morale of the German people to such a degree that their ‘capacity for armed resistance’ would be ‘fatally weakened’. What they had achieved against Hamburg seemed only to prove that the theory was working. In September the Joint Intelligence Committee produced a report that compared the atmosphere in Germany then to that in 1918, when mutiny and revolution had swept the country. ‘A study of the picture as a whole,’ it said, ‘leads us inevitably to the conclusion that Germany is if anything in a worse position today than she was at the same period in 1918.’ The collapse of Germany might come ‘even this year’. ²³

If bombing had lived up to those expectations then the cost, in financial terms and in terms of human life, would have seemed a small price to pay. Had Harris been able to devastate a handful of other German cities in quick succession his predictions of an early end to the war might indeed have been proven right. If Berlin had suffered the same fate within a few weeks, it is conceivable that that alone might have tipped the balance. But neither the RAF nor the USAAF had the ability to do such a thing, let alone do it quickly, and the small window of opportunity created by their new, radar-jamming techniques soon began to close. By the time the Allies attacked Berlin in force that autumn the tactical advantage had already swung back towards the Luftwaffe.

The Allies did not achieve such air supremacy again for another eighteen months. It was not until February 1945, when they bombed Dresden, that they finally demonstrated the ability to replicate what had happened at Hamburg, seemingly at will. However, by this time few believed in bombing as the ultimate weapon. With the Allies poised to enter Germany from both sides, the emphasis had long since changed to land operations. It is perhaps ironic that air bombardment only ever reached its full, war-winning potential after it was no longer required to deliver the decisive blow.

This, then, is the final tragedy of what happened at Hamburg. It did not herald an end to the war, as so many people in the RAF hoped and believed that it would: instead, it was merely the opening page of the most destructive chapter in the history of air warfare. While it was the forerunner of the catastrophes at Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Allied air supremacy did not come soon enough to make Hamburg truly count. Instead Germany was subjected to a death by a thousand cuts. The countless lesser destructions that took place in the following two years would spell the devastation not only of individual cities, but of an entire nation. By the time Germany capitulated in May 1945, the country was a virtual wasteland.

24. Redemption

This only is denied even to God, The power to make what has been done undone

Agathon ¹

I am aware that this book might have made uncomfortable reading for some. There is still a great deal of bitterness towards Germany, despite the decades that have passed, and many people simply do not care if the Germans suffered or not. During the course of my research I have spoken to scores of people – Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Danes, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, the list goes on – who have listened to my descriptions of the Hamburg firestorm and merely shrugged their shoulders. ‘It was their own fault,’ is the standard reply. ‘They started it.’ I would be surprised if even the most intransigent of these people could remain unmoved by some of the eyewitness accounts of the firestorm and its horrific effects; however, I do not imagine this will produce a change of heart, especially among those who suffered directly as a result of the way the Germans conducted the war. Indeed, some may resent being manipulated into feeling an empathy they had never intended. I make no apology for their unease. War is a horrific thing, and it would be unnatural to feel comfortable in its presence.

For readers from Germany, America or the British Commonwealth there may be an added dimension to their discomfort. The legacy of guilt that surrounds the European bombings of the Second World War is huge, and both sides are still struggling to come to terms with it, even today. In Germany it remains virtually impossible to mention the bombs without the immediate acknowledgement that it was they who opened Pandora’s box in the first place. A modern generation still feels duty-bound to apologize for war crimes that were committed not by their parents, or even their grandparents, but by their great-grandparents. In the English-speaking world, feelings about the bomber war are even more complicated. While on the one hand there is a certain pride that they stood up to Hitler and rid the world of his particular brand of evil, on the other there is an unspoken sense of shame at the methods they were forced to use. There seems to be an underlying suspicion in the popular imagination that the RAF and the USAAF were only able to defeat the Nazis by descending, at least some of the way, to their level.

Two events encapsulate this discomfort. The first took place in central London, in May 1992, when hundreds of RAF veterans and their families attended a ceremony in honour of their old commander-in-chief, Sir Arthur Harris. The highlight of the day was to be the unveiling of a statue outside the church of St Clement Danes in the Strand, followed by a reception at the High Court. However, among the crowd a group of protesters had turned out to voice their disgust that the butcher of Hamburg, Dresden and countless other German cities should be so honoured. They hurled abuse at the RAF veterans, and even at the Queen Mother, who was performing the unveiling ceremony. That night the statue of Harris was daubed with red paint. This was cleaned off, but it was soon attacked again, and it has been defaced several times since.

The second event took place a year later, in Hamburg. The Lutheran Church marked the fiftieth anniversary of the firestorm by organizing a series of meetings and memorial services to commemorate the victims. On the whole these were gentle, sombre affairs, but during one service at the Michaeliskirche a group of students burst into the church and heckled the mourners. What had angered them was the all-inclusive nature of the commemoration. According to the students, the Church should have made a clear distinction between civilians and everyone else: the deaths of civilians should be mourned; the deaths of soldiers, or members of the Nazi Party, should not. After unfurling a banner with the slogan ‘Operation Gomorrah – there’s nothing to mourn’, the demonstration finally became violent, and they had to be forcibly ejected from the church. ²