[Hop]

I wont go in to Poland, becaue I know little about the air war there.

Originally Posted by Marius

I don`t agree. It is very important to show where such an German attack was intended against a purely civilian target (no ground fighting in the city or nearby, frontline far away and so on... (see for example Dresden 1945)).

This doesn't define a civilian target.

The first Luftwaffe raid on England was on the night of 10 May 940, when they bombed open ground near Cantebury. I've no idea what the target they were aiming for was.

The first RAF raid on the German mainland was on the 11 May, when the RAF conducted attacks on transport targets west of the Rhine.

The Luftwaffe conducted raids on targets in French, Belgian and Dutch cities from 10 May, often very far behind the lines.

The British began bombing military and industrial targets in Germany from 14 May.

All these raids were aimed at defined military and industrial targets. Most did not hit them, but neither side seemed to realise just how innacurate they were.

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

It should be possible to clearly define when the first RAF raid was conducted with German morale (residential areas etc) was the prime target, certainly at a strategic level.

Can you do so?

The problem is that bombing targets were chosen to maximize damage, and something like "morale" was never the only target. Why just bomb "morale" when you can also bomb an industrial city and burn out factories, destory power stations, gas works, canals, train stations etc?

The same is true of the Luftwaffe. In the bombings of London, morale was one factor, along with food depots, docks etc.

And how do you define a food depot? As a civilian target? And if civilian food isn't a civilian target, then how is civilian housing?

Originally Posted by Juha

Dutch resistance had been more intensive than the Germans had predicted and the other purpose of the bombing was to terrorize the Dutch to surrender. IIRC Germans made treats to bomb also some other Dutch towns if Dutch would not surrender.

Exactly. One raid, multiple objectives.

At the same time as the raid on Rotterdam, the Luftwaffe dropped leaflets over Utrecht threatening that the same fate would befall Utrecht as had befallen Warsaw, if the Dutch did not surrender. See the thread on the Axis History Forum which discusses this subject, and has a link to the leaflet:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtop...r=asc&start=15

I believe that even Trenchard, the arch proponent of morale bombing, said the bombing should concentrat on military targets within cities for the maximum effect.

When the Luftwaffe bombed Coventry, briefing notes said that "wiping out the most densley populated workers settlements" would hinder the resumption of manufacturing.

Is attacking civilian housing to hinder manufacturing a civilian target?

as in mission so and so on date so and so had civilian morale as its primary target, based on strategy, operational planning, bomb load etc.

If you are going to base it on method, rather than declared policy, then the Luftwaffe gradually switched to attacking civilian targets in Britain in September and October 1940.

To quote Richard Overy, The Battle:

"Though the German Air Force never formally adopted terror bombing, the tactic of widely scattered attacks, the use of a special incendiary squadron to start fires for other bombers to follow, the relaxation of rules of engagement over London on moonless nights, the deliberate decision to target the enemy psychologically by attacking intermittently round the clock (and for as long as possible at night), the use of aerial mines and the targetting of administrative areas of the capital, all reeal the gradual abandonment of any pretence that civilians and civilian morale would not become targets."

I think the use of parachute mines, and to a lesser extent the incendiary cannisters, over city centres means attacking civilians, as there is no hope of attacking a precise target with such weapons.

If you want to argue London is a military target, then so were all the German cities bombed.

For the RAF, the dates are clear. The first area attack was on th 16/17 December 1940, with the atack on Mannheim, which was lunched as a response to Coventry. Prior to that all RAF atacks had been aimed at precise military or industrial targets, even if, like the Luftwaffe up to September 1940, they didn't often hit them at night.

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

The RAF bomber campaign is a good example.

At one point there came a strategic shift in thinking where maximizing civilians casualties and the destruction of housing became a primary military objective

Can you offer any evidence for civilian casualties becoming the objective?

Housing certainly ws, as the British experience of he Blitz was that damage to housing had a major effect on production.

Here's part of a letter from Herschel Johnson to the US Secretary of State, January 1941:

"
At numerous industrial plants, in this part of England, where
hundreds of workmen are employed, only a neglible percent of
uch workpeople is not in one way or another adversely affected
i %n consequence of air raids. Loss of sleep is a factor even in
cases where the workmen remain at home and do not repair to shelters.
But, generally speaking, a more potent factor is worry induced
by the disintegration of family life. It requires little imagination
to comprehend what must be the state of mind of a workman who
begins his task in the morning knowing that his wife and children
are standing at some windswept bus stop both hungry and cold,
or what must be the state of mind of a workman who knows that
his wife and family must remain in a house which has been rendered
unfit for human habitation and which it is beyond his means to
repair.




The bombing of working-class residential districts in this
area has come to be accepted as an ingenious and effective move
on the part of Germany. Moreover, such bombing has come to be
viewed as even a greater menace than the damage actually done
to industrial plant. What happened at Coventry well illustrates
the devilish effectiveness of the bombing of districts inhabited
by working-class people. It seems to be pretty well established
that as many as 70,000 houses in the comparatively small city
of Coventry were affected by bombing and that of these 30,000
were made unfit for human habitation, and 7,000 demolished entirely.




The big raid on Coventry took place during the night of November
14-15, 1940. Since that time some weeks have elapsed and great
strides have been made in the direction of make-shift repairs
to damaged working-class residences. But there is not a sizeable
industrial enterprise in the whole of Coventry whose production
is not still being adversely affected by raiding has wrought
in the lives of Coventry working people. There hovers over that
city an apprehensiveness which has lingered since the raid took
place. This apprehensiveness is born of a realization that the
Germans can at will again do to Coventry what they did to it
during that one horrible night in November.




Intricate, costly, and heavy machine tools can be extricated
from the cellars of demolished manufacturing plants. Many of
them can be repaired and installed in new plant. But the workers
who man these machines, so long as they live as they do today,
can never attain the efficiency which, before the events in question
took place, they maintained as a mere matter of course."

Note that damage to housing, not civilian casualties, is cited as the main effect
of the raids.

Logic would suggest the same. If you look at Hamburg, the most destructive area raid
of all, about 3% of the population was killed, 50% or more made homeless, and
industrial production fell by about 50% in the month following the raid.

And Lord Cherwell certainly argued that was the policy:
"Investigation seems to show that having one's house demolished is most damaging
to morale. People seem to mind it more than having their friends or even relatives
killed"

Does anyone have any solid information on German boming in Norway?

JM Spaight wrote a book during the war. It's often misquoted to claim Britain started bombing civilians first. But Spaight says:

"
Even if Warsaw is left out of account on the ground - vide German
propaganda - that the city was invested and had refused to surrender,
it is still undeniable that the Germans bombed undefended towns in
Norway before we ever dropped a bomb in Germany.

'Kristiansund, an open and absolutely defenceless town where there have
never been any military establishments whatever, was bombed for three
days; only one house remained. . 15,000 inhabitants were left without
shelter. In the same way Molde was bombed, and
Reknes, the great sanatorium for tuberculosis, was bombed and set on
fire.' 'Where Elverum had been but a few hours before, only the church
and the Red Cross hospital were left standing. . . . Hardly a house but
had been razed to within four feet of the ground.'