Under the Bombs: The German Home Front, 1942-1945

5. A Joyless Victory: September-December 1943

September-December 1943 5. A Joyless Victory The fall and early winter of 1943 were marked by unusually cold weather. The cold of the weather was matched by the chill affecting German morale in this period. Before the year was out, the chill of the weather forced a cutback in the most vital part of German food rations-potatoes. This brought a further decline of the morale, which had already fallen with the desertion of Germany by its closest ally, Fascist Italy, and the continuance of the heavy bombing of its cities, accompanied by an increasing appearance of U.S. Flying Fortresses traversing the German skies in broad daylight. It was an ironic aspect of this period that for the first time since the beginning of the bombing of the German homeland, its Luftwaffe defenders were wreaking enough havoc on the invading planes to threaten their continued effectiveness. The British date the "Battle of Berlin," the intensive attack on that city by the Royal Air Force, as having taken place from November 18, 1943, to March 24, 1944. But the heavy British attacks on that city began early in September, with raids on September 1 and 4, which dropped well over 2,200 tons of bombs. In the period thereafter, prior to the beginning of the intensive raids on Berlin, the British bombed Munich, Dusseldorf, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Hannover, Bochum, Hagen, Kassel, Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart. Some of these cities were attacked a second time after the 84 Under the Bombs beginning of the raids on Berlin, and Frankfurt was added to the list of targets late in the year. In spite of the cooperation of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in the bombing of Germany, the British made no real changes in their strategy or operational objectives. Sir Arthur Harris still believed firmly that the Germans could be defeated from the air by the area bombing that his forces were carrying out. In a memorandum to Winston Churchill on November 3, 1943, Harris listed nineteen German cities which he regarded as "virtually destroyed," nineteen more which he labeled "seriously damaged," and nine which were "damaged." He anticipated that before the completion of his program of destruction, "more than half completed already," Germany would collapse.1 Harris's assumptions were faulty. Within the "virtually destroyed " cities that he listed, life went on. Damages to factories were repaired more quickly than the Allies had expected. Streetcar service was restored. Utility services were reestablished. People who had fled returned. Additional air-raid shelters were built. Additional antiaircraft defenses were provided. The Allied air forces were made painfully aware of their misjudgments during this period as they encountered not less fighter opposition but more. New intelligence estimates provided early in November of 1943 warned the British and Americans that during the following month they would confront 800 single-engine and 760 twin-engine fighters on the western front and an even larger combination of these planes by the following April.2 Obviously, the previous heavy bombing had not succeeded in reducing the German productive capacity. The American Air Force tactics in this period proved particularly vulnerable to German fighter attacks. The assumption that the "Flying Fortresses" (and later the "Liberators") could defend themselves agaiIl:st enemy fighter attacks was one of the most serious errors of the Second World War. It was based on the belief that these impressive four-engine bombers, which carried ten to thirteen machine guns each, could fly in formations of staggered groups of eight so that each group had over a hundred machine gunners to ward off enemy attack. But German fighters, much faster than the lumbering bombers, were often armed with cannons or rockets, which made it possible for them to attack out of range of the machine guns, and the disruption of formations because of engine failure or damage from German antiaircraft fire provided an opportunity for fighters to destroy the bombers piecemeal. The most serious losses suffered by the U.S. Eighth Air Force came on October 14, 1943, when 291 A Joyless VictDry 85 bombers attacked the German city of Schweinfurt for the second time. The earlier raid on August 17, it will be recalled, had cost the Americans sixty planes. This repeat raid added another 60 planes shot down in Germany, 17 lost on the way, and 121 damaged.3 But British bombing also suffered increasing losses in this period. The...