The Second World War was the last world war to
be fought with conventional weapons and the first
to end with the use of the nuclear bomb, which
raised the threat that any third world war could end
in the destruction of the majority of the human
population. The Second World War also became a
new kind of total warfare with the deliberate killing
of many millions of civilian non-combatants.
The major technical advance was aerial warfare.
That cities could be reduced to rubble from the
air was first demonstrated by the Germans in
Spain in 1937 with the destruction of Guernica.
In 1939 it was the turn of Warsaw, and in 1940
of Rotterdam and Coventry. Britain and the US
from 1942 to 1945 retaliated with mass bombing
of the majority of Germany’s cities, with heavy
casualties to civilian populations and widespread
destruction. The Allied bombing of Dresden,
crammed with refugees from the east, just before
the war ended has been singled out for particular
condemnation. By February 1945 the devastation
of German cities no longer affected the outcome
of the war. The Germans fought on in despera-
tion. There seemed to be no alternative. Fear,
especially of Russian revenge, maintained the
resistance. Nor did the devastation prevent the
rapid expansion of war production in Germany.
Was the great loss of human life justified by the
military results? Post-war official Germany
estimates that 593,000 civilians were killed.
Vengeance on the Allied side was a subsidiary
motive for the bombing offensive. The lives ofmore than 50,000 aircrew and an enormous
industrial war effort would not have been
expended for mere vengeance. Photographic
reconnaissance of the destruction of the industrial
Ruhr region and other cities seemed at the time
to justify these raids as crippling blows against
Germany’s capacity to wage war. There can be
no doubt that German resources were destroyed
and wasted in reconstruction and that this weak-
ened Germany’s war effort. But more specific
strategic bombing of, for instance, synthetic fuel
plants and communications was more effective
and did severely impede the German war effort
from 1944 to 1945. The brilliant German arma-
ments minister, Albert Speer, could no longer
make good the losses within the shrinking Reich.
Furthermore, before the invasion of France in
1944 the land war waged by the Allies was minor
relative to the struggle on the eastern front. The
bombing offensive was the only major weapon
available to wage a war whose impact would be
felt by the Germans until the Allied military build-
up was sufficient to defeat the German armies in
the west.
During the Second World War the distinction
between combatants and non-combatants was not
so much blurred as deliberately ignored. The
factory worker was seen as a combatant. In most
contemporary eyes, as the war progressed, this
justified their destruction and the destruction of
their home from the air. Children, women, the
old and the sick were killed and maimed in this(^1) Chapter 24
THE ORDEAL OF THE SECOND
WORLD WAR