Strategic Bombing WW2 During WW2, the Allied and Axis powers each used strategic bombing to try and defeat their enemy economically. Both bombed factories where military weapons where being made to slow down their enemy. Also being bombed where military forces, railways, harbors, cities, civillians, and industrial areas. They did this to try and break down their enemys will to fight, to try and lower their morale and help shorten the war. My opinion on this argument is that there should be no civillians killed by bombs unless it was accidental.
Hitler decided to bomb the British airfields and then eventually cities. The British cities were bombed to bring out the RAF so the Luftwaffe could take them down. But Hitler underestimated the RAF, because the British had RADAR technology.
The Battle of Britain took place when the Luftwaffe attempted to win air superiority over southern England from the Royal Air Force as an essential prerequisite for the invasion of this country by German naval and land forces. For the British, it ran from 10 July - 31 October 1940. For the Germans it began on 13 August, Adlertag or "Eagle Day". The key to success for the Luftwaffe was the destruction of the RAF's fighter force. Conversely, for Fighter Command it was to hamper bombing and inflict losses, preferably before the target was reached.
September 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland, starting World War Two. The United States of America wanted to stay neutral during this war. It was the Allies (Britain, France, Russia, Australia, and Belgium) against the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, and Romania). The war reached its two year point and the United States stayed clear away from being involved, but then on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked American airfields and ship yards. The United States reaction to the bombing on Pearl Harbor leads to the fall of the Japan Empire, due to the United States involvement with the Doolittle Raid, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Atomic Bombs.
Hitler knew that the German Navy was too small to control the English Channel but he believed that with the Luftwaffe he could successfully defeat Britain. He believed that the Luftwaffe could easily destroy the RAF’s Headquarters and Britain’s aircraft industry since Germany had a much larger air force in the form of planes and personnel. The Battle of Britain began on 30th June 1940 when the German Air force which was called the ‘Luftwaffe’ attempted to gain power of the skies over Britain. But the German’s were not successful and instead of the battle not lasting very long as Hitler had predicted the Battle of Britain was a group of aerial battles which lasted it through the summer of 1940. In August 1940 Winston Churchill made his speech about ‘Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few’.
Stalin and the US created a brief alliance because they were both concerned with stopping Hitler. When the war ended, the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia each controlled a portion of Germany. Soviet Russia did not want to allow their portion to be unified into a post-War Germany for fear that the Germans would again be an aggressive and powerful invader. In 1948 the Soviets blockaded East Berlin and the Germans in the West side of the city were starved of food. The Allies (us) started a massive airlift to feed the trapped Germans so they would not starve.
WW1 was also the first case of total. Total warfare is where a whole country would be a target in a war. For example when all the men were fighting on the fronts but the major cities and factories were also a target for air attacks. The Germans did this so they could try and disrupt the war effort because if they destroyed the main factories then no weapons would be made to use on the fronts and we would lose the war. There are many reasons why the government decided to evacuate.
The battle plans of the Germans depended on quickly defeating France and then either defeating Russia, or drawing them into a stalemate. To this end, Wilhelm’s navy was authorized to use unrestricted submarine warfare and the army was authorized to attack civilians as they saw fit, when they met resistance by the French armies. Siege warfare, such as the battle of Verdun, is a clear example of when civilian casualties from artillery fire were, not only unimportant to the invaders, but encouraged to be high. The Austro-Hungarian armies were encouraged to do the same things and acted similarly to the Germans in the Balkans, as did the Ottomans. The second example is the damage
However, an electronic failure that processed to the fail systems told the bomber pilots to bomb Moscow. After numerous attempts by the Russians to gun down the bomber planes, one bomber was going to reach the capital and it was up to the President to convince the chairman of Russia that this was a mistake in order to not cause the nuclear war. He decided that if the bomber reached Moscow, then he would order a bomb in New York City to prove how honest and serious of a mistake was made. In this dilemma, the President bases his decision on utilitarianism. He decided that in order to protect the country as a whole, he would sacrifice one city due to the greatest happiness principles.
Later that year in Potsdam, many open disagreements took place because Germany had lost the war so Russia had promised to fulfil, Churchill had lost the 1945 election and Roosevelt died so Truman, who replaced him was angered by the large scale reparations imposed on Germany and the setting up of a communist government in Poland. He did not trust Russia, so kept him in the dark about him having the atomic bomb in 1945 before he dropped it on Japan to get them to surrender. By America using the atomic bomb, Stalin knew that it was possible for it to be used against them. Russia was therefore tricked by America preventing the Red Army from going to Japan. This threatened Russia and warned them that America was wary of them and could act on it.