World War and the Growth of Global Power 255Russians were pouring through Eastern Europe now, clearing the Nazis from
Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and, most importantly for the post-
war era, leaving occupation troops and setting up Communist governments in
the areas they liberated. In addition to the land campaign, the Allies were also
conducting an intense air war. With American planes in the lead, they
dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Germany, 72 percent of them between
July 1944-May 1945. They also used incendiary bombs—weapons dropped
from planes with napalm, a gel consisting of gas that would explode and cause
massive firestorms on impact. In Hamburg in July 1943, the fire bombings
killed about 40,000 civilians, wiped out over 6000 acres, burned 300,000
homes, and left 750,000 homeless. In February 1945, American planes hit the
city of Dresden, with similarly huge death and destruction. With only a brief
pause in the allied offensive, the so-called Battle of the Bulge in late 1944-
early 1945 when the Nazis found a hole, a “bulge,” in the allied lines and
made a brief attack, the U.S., Britain, and Soviet Union were crushing
Germany. In the East, the Red Army had an 11:1 manpower advantage, 7
times more tanks, and 20 times more artillery and aircraft. Germany was on
FIGuRE 5-4 Members of the u.S. Coast Guard watch the explosion and
sinking of a Nazi u-Boat, April 17, 1943