Pope Slams ‘Great Powers’ Over Mass Deaths in 20th Century

[happyslug]

41. The Allies could have diverted a lot of those sorties....

In the post War analysis of the Allied bombing of Germany, made the point it benefited the German war effort more then it did harm to that effort. The Nazis had been trying all through the 1930s to get people to move out of their old inner city neighborhoods to the new suburbs where the new factories were. Unlike Americans, the Germans tends to stay in the neighborhood they were born in (This was more true of males then females, women tended to move in with their husbands, who tended to stay in the neighborhood they grew up in).

Nazis tried everything to get those males to move to new housing closer to the new factories, but they just refused to go TILL THE ALLIES STARTED TO BOMB THOSE INNER CITIES, then they started to move to the suburbs, and cut the cost of transporting such workers from their homes to the new factories. Over and over again you read about cities being bombed, but the factories NOT being hit, for their were dispersed in the suburbs and the bombers aim was the city centers. Thus the allied bombing helped the German war effort.

Now, the bombing in support of ground forces was extremely effective, the failure was the strategic bombing of Germany itself. during 1942 till the beginning of 1945 German war manufacturing kept increasing as the bombing increased, it only dropped as shortages developed as the Allied forces took over France, Poland and Romania then you saw a steep drop as Allied Armies entered Germany itself.

Just a comment that diverting some of those bombers may have done some good, the prisoners may have escaped and the Germans would have had a hard time rounding them back up.