The Berlin Raids: 2r.A.F. Bomber Command Winter 1943/44

by Martin Middlebrook

Book Overview

The Battle of Berlin was the longest and most sustained bombing offensive against one target in the Second World War. Bomber Command's Commander-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Harris, hoped to 'wreck Berlin... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670806978
• ISBN13: 9780670806973
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 407 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good overview with excellent eye witness level accounts

This book provides a good high level picture of its topics. It covers English and German strategy on both the strategic and operational levels, how technologies developed and the how the struggle unfolded in terms of both aviation losses and damage to Berlin's infrastructure. It has also been well researched, especially in terms of the research done on bomb damage to Berlin. Where the book is especially strong, however, is the wide variety of eye witness accounts included from the English and German aircrews as well as the the accounts from those on the ground that were on the receiving end. These accounts do an excellent job at presenting the picture from these perspectives. The author has a large number of these accounts and these were gathered through extensive interviews with the aircrews and those on the ground, both civilian and military. This research was maticulous and captures the experiences of being there in extraordinary fashion.

The destruction of another city or of Bomber Command...

Martin Middlebrook's The Berlin Raids tells the battle of Berlin in the fall and winter of 1943-1944. As usual, Mr. Middlebrook sets the stage by telling us of the combatants and the target city. However, rather than providing us a detailed look at the different forces used in the battle, Mr. Middlebrook provides only a summary the combatants. After having read his books on Nuremburg and Hamburg, I was a little disappointed. Since the campaign for Berlin took many months (August 1943 - March 1944), Mr. Middlebrook provides only a summary of each of the raids. These summaries tell us how many bombers participated, how many were lost (by type), support provided (other operations and diversions), along with a general description of how the raid went (participants memories of the struggle). In addition, Mr. Middlebrook provides a summary of the damage done. Mr. Middlebrook finishes the book off by describing the reckoning and summarizing what he believes the results were. Mr. Middlebrook set out to analyze the effects of the British raids on Berlin in August 1943 - March 1944. Mr. Middlebrook does succeed in doing this, however it's not as strong as his books on The Nuremburg Raid or The Hamburg Raid. Despite this weakness, I will say that this is one of the best analysis possible on a bombing campaign possible, therefore, I'll give it a solid 4 star rating.

RAF BOMBER COMMAND'S FINEST HOUR

On becoming Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command in 1942, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris stated that many people were claiming that strategic aerial bombing could not win the War but his reply was that it hadn't yet been tried. The raids of the Battle of Berlin described in this book were the peak of the "maximum effort" to bring Germany to defeat without the need for a potentially bloody land invasion of the Nazi-occupied continent by the British and Americans. The fact that, although, the Battle of Berlin caused serious damage to the German capital, it was not decisive, did not succeed in damaging the city as did the firestorm attack on Hamburg, and caused serious losses to Bomber Command does not mean that it should not have been tried. Much of the criticism of Harris is based on 20/20 hindsight. Firstly, it is important to look at the state of the war in late 1943 and early 1944 when the Battle of Berlin was taking place. The Battle of Kursk had been fought in July and as a result, the German ability to go on the offensive on the Eastern Front had been broken, but their defensive capabilites were still formidable. It was still not at all clear that the Soviets would be able to defeat the Germans and reach Berlin nor was the outcome of the impending Operation Overlord certain. Josef Stalin was a megalomaniacal totalitarian dictator and Churchill was well aware of this fact (Roosevelt didn't seem to understand this as well). There was always the fear in the back of the mind of the British that the two dictators might just get together again as they were in 1939-1941 and reach some sort of deal. Thus, the British had to prove to the Soviets that they were making damaging attacks on Germany even thought the Western Allies didn't yet have the strength to perform a landing in France. Secondly, all the senior officers in the British armed forces remembered the disaster of the Battle of the Somme in World War I. On the FIRST DAY alone, the British lost some 60,000 casualties including 20,000 dead and the attacks failed. No one wanted a repeat of that and if there was a chance that aerial bombing could make such an attack unnecessary, it was worth it. It is true that there were serious casualties in Bomber Command, but they were getting significant successes in return for the sacrifices such as the attacks on Cologne, Hamburg and the Ruhr. Thus, it was thought that if Berlin could be devastated in the same way, perhaps the German will to fight could be broken. Middlebrook points out that the longer distance to Berlin and the physical layout of the city made it more difficult to get the same sort of results. However, the Germans were forced to make a significant investment of resources in the air defense of their capital, resources that could have been used against the Soviets or later, against the British and American forces on D-Day. The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs did manage to end the war with Japan without

The Bomber Offensive Against Berlin

Having devasted Hamburg in a short night-time bombing campaign in the summer of 1943 (much of the damage being inflicted in one night when a combination of circumstances produced a devasting firestorm), the attention of "Bomber" Harris, the leader of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command, turned to the capital of Nazi Germany - Berlin. If the RAF could wreck Berlin by night-time area bombing, then the war could be over by the Spring of 1944! Or so Harris thought. Martin Middlebrook's masterly account charts the progress of the RAF's bombing campaign against Berlin during the long, cold winter nights of 1943-1944. It was a campaign that saw 19 major bombing raids against the Nazi capital, with the loss of over 600 RAF aircraft - mostly 4-engined bombers and their crews. Middlebrook's book is aimed squarely at examining the campaign at the tactical level. Numerous eye witness accounts place the reader in the cockpits of RAF bombers lumbering through the darkened skies of Occupied Europe, laden with their lethal cargoes of high explosive and incendary bombs. The German perspective is equally well covered - from the crews of the often deadly German nightfighters, to the civilians huddled in their shelters under the rain of bombs. The weapons, and in particular the tactics used, are also examined (although I suspect that the level of detail will disappoint serious aircraft buffs). Traditional, factual, and extensively researched military history is combined with a wealth of interview material to produce a coherent, well-balanced and extremely well written account of the battle. This book is a must for any serious student of aerial warfare, or for anyone who just wants to understand what the area bombing campaign of Nazi Germany was really like - from both sides.