Fire from the Sky
Lesson 2: Dresden & Tokyo
Introduction: Total War. By 1945, the rules of war had vanished. “Total War” meant that civilians were no longer innocent bystanders. They were the workers making the guns. The Allies decided that to stop the German and Japanese armies, they had to burn the cities that supported them. This lesson looks at the two most controversial nights of the air war.
Science of Fire
Operation Gomorrah
Before Dresden, the Allies practiced on Hamburg. They didn’t just drop bombs. They engineered a weather event.
- Mix: They used a specific mix of High Explosives to blow roofs off buildings and Incendiaries (phosphorus/napalm) to light the insides on fire.
- Chimney Effect: This created a “Firestorm.” The heat was so intense (1,500°F) that it sucked oxygen out of the surrounding air to feed the flames.
- Result: People didn’t just burn. They suffocated in bomb shelters because the fire sucked the air out of their lungs. Wind speeds reached 150 mph, pulling people into the fire.
German Florence
Dresden
In February 1945, the war in Europe was almost over. Germany was collapsing. Yet, the British (RAF) and Americans (USAAF) launched a massive raid on Dresden, a city famous for art and refugees.
- Official Justification: The Allies claimed Dresden was a major railway hub sending troops to fight the Russians. They argued that destroying it would shorten the war and save Allied lives.
- Skeptic View: Critics argue Dresden had no military value.
- Refugees: The city was packed with 200,000 refugees fleeing the Russians.
- Timing: The war was effectively won. Critics call this “Terror Bombing.” They say the goal was killing civilians to break their morale or to show the Russians how powerful the Allied air force was.
- Deep Dive (Slaughterhouse-Five):
- Witness: American author Kurt Vonnegut was there. He was a POW locked in a meat locker (“Schlachthof Fünf”) underground.
- Account: He described coming out the next day to a city that looked like “the surface of the moon.” His book is a primary source document of the aftermath.
Paper Cities
Tokyo
While Dresden is famous, the bombing of Tokyo was deadlier.
- Operation Meetinghouse (March 1945): The US Air Force switched tactics. Instead of high-altitude precision bombing (trying to hit a factory), they switched to low-altitude area bombing at night.
- Weapon: They used the M69 Incendiary Cluster Bomb (Napalm).
- Target: Tokyo was made of wood and paper. The target was not a specific factory, but the “Shitamachi” district. This was densely packed worker housing.
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Death Toll
In one night, 100,000 people died. This is more than the immediate death toll of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The rivers boiled.
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Winner’s Justice
Moral Debate
Was this a war crime?
- General Curtis LeMay: The American general who planned the Tokyo raid was brutally honest.
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Quote: “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”
- Defense: LeMay argued that in Japan, there were no “civilian” areas. He claimed every home had a drill press making bolt heads for Zero fighters. Therefore, burning the house was destroying a military factory.
- Geneva Convention: At the time (1945), aerial bombardment of civilians was not explicitly banned by international law in the same way shooting POWs was. This legal loophole allowed the raids to happen.
The Conclusion
Summary
The firebombing campaigns bring up the hardest question of the war. Do the ends justify the means? The Allies destroyed the Axis war machine. But in doing so, they used methods that killed hundreds of thousands of women and children. It forced the world to redefine “Military Target.”
Sources for Lesson 2
Primary Documents (Orders & Reports)
- United States Strategic Bombing Survey (1946): Pacific War Summary. (The official government report analyzing the effectiveness of the fire raids. It explicitly details the destruction of civilian housing).
- Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five (Delacorte). (While a novel, the introduction and specific descriptions of the “corpse mines” are based on his factual experience as a POW).
- General Curtis LeMay: Mission with LeMay (Doubleday). (His autobiography where he explains his philosophy: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”).
- RAF Bomber Command Directive (Feb 1945): Target Lists. (The orders listing Dresden as a priority target to “cause confusion in the evacuation from the East”).
- US Army Air Force Film (1945): Target Tokyo. (Official training film explaining the M69 bomb and why they targeted wood and paper districts).
- Victor Klemperer: I Will Bear Witness. (Diary of a Jewish professor hiding in Dresden who survived the firestorm. He describes the chaos on the ground).
Historical Analysis
- A.C. Grayling: Among the Dead Cities (Walker & Co). A philosopher examines whether the area bombing campaigns were moral or war crimes.
- Frederick Taylor: Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (Harper). A balanced look at the military justification vs. the humanitarian cost.
- Malcolm Gladwell: The Bomber Mafia (Little, Brown). Explains the shift from “Precision Bombing” (trying to be moral) to “Area Bombing” (LeMay’s brutal efficiency).
- Richard Rhodes: The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster). (Contains excellent chapters on the development of the M69 napalm bomb and the Tokyo raids).
- Jörg Friedrich: The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945. (A German historian’s account of the civilian experience of the firestorms).
- Donald L. Miller: Masters of the Air. (Focuses on the American bomber boys and the psychological toll of burning cities).
