Why did British and American forces bomb Germany day after day?
1 Answer
I would say to reduce her industrial production, eliminate her transportation/communication capability and undermine the fighting morale of the population.
Explanation:
The US air force, during the day, and British Royal air force, during the night , conducted a campaign of massive bombings on industrial plants, communication, transportation network and cities of Germany for most of the war.
The idea was to limit the capacity of Germany to produce weapons (tanks and aircrafts in particular) or goods needed for the army to keep on fighting. For this reason the main sites of industrial production (in the Ruhr area, for example) were bombed daily to disrupt their production capability. Also ports, railways and road networks, bridges and airports were targeted to paralyze production capability by limiting the distribution of goods or raw materials.
Also, the bombings were aimed at introducing a sense of despair and exasperation (against the Nazi regime) in the civilian population by systematically destroying the big and medium cities of Germany.
This last objective is quite controversial because some say it worked, other say that introduce a sense of "unity against the attackers" in the civilian population rallying them behind the Nazi government and so creating the opposite effect (as it happened among Londoners during the Blitz).
It is certain that the "civilian" bombings of cities of low strategically interest caused an enormous number of casualties and added a new component to the already vast catalogue of horrors of war (consider the "Fire Storms" during the bombing of Dresden).
The bombings, finally, were also directed towards “special” targets such as: synthetic fuel plants, secret weapons facilities and launching sites of rocket bombs V1 and V2. These seems to have fulfilled positively their aims reducing dramatically the offensive capabilities of the army (no fuel for tanks and aircrafts) and of deployment/development of new weapons.
