The Morganthau Plan envisaged Germany being completely de-industrialised and reduced to an agricultural and pastoral country. This was not to become policy, at any rate in its purest version, but it was quite widely publicised during the war, not least because Goebbels grasped it’s implications much quicker than the Allied leaders did - several million Germans would have to starve, because they couldn’t all sit down and support themselves growing potatoes. The fact that Morganthau was a Jew only bolstered the Party’s propaganda line, that Germans could expect no better from the Jewish-controlled Western Allies than the Bolshevik Russians
As late as 1947 parts of the British Zone were still having viable factories blown up or dismantled, despite critical shortages of consumer goods and means of making a living for German civilians.
Indeed. Nagasaki was actually the secondary target on Aug. 9, 1945, but Kokura had too much cloud cover at the time: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia
I remember it from * The Second World War* but more as officers than officials.
Missed this before but Eisenhower was adamantly opposed to racing for Berlin.
Throughout the European campaign, Eisenhower had always turned down any general who argued for a single penetrating advance into enemy territory. Eisenhower recognized that while such an advance might win the war, it would also be a risk - a single advance would allow the Germans to concentrate their forces against it and would leave the advancing force with exposed flanks.
Instead, Eisenhower stuck with the broad front strategy. He wanted to advance along the entire front. This meant the Germans had to spread out and defend everywhere. And if the Germans wanted to attack they’d have to do so by penetrating the Allied front line and exposing themselves to the kind of counterattack Eisenhower wanted to avoid for the Allies.
In addition, Eisenhower didn’t see Berlin as the target of the Allied advance. He knew that the smartest thing the Germans could do was fall back towards the south as the Allies advanced. That would bring the Germans into the mountainous regions of Austria and Bavaria. This was the best defensive terrain in Germany and Eisenhower was worried the Germans could hold out for another year or two if they were able to get large forces into the mountains. So Eisenhower made the main direction of his advance through central Germany, cutting off the Germans fighting in the north from any possible retreat to the south.
I read that Stimson wanted it spared because he had spent his honeymoon there.
If you mean aim = they tried to hit it and missed, then no.
If you mean aim = they used it for navigation, then yes, that is the reason.
That it was an important historical and cultural object didn’t matter to the Allies, just that it was a convenient navigational aid.
What larger cities do you mean? The cities in the Ruhr region - the most heavily industrialized and densely populated part of Germany - had light damage of 70%, severe damage of 90% and above. Have you ever looked at pictures of the rubble heaps after the war? One house in a whole street might have been standing at this level of devastation.
Bigger cities outside the Ruhr region were heavily bombed, too - the firestorm of Hamburg was terrible for the citizens.
The smaller cities and villages only escaped because they were not worth it for the Allies to make a detour and waste bombs on a 1 000 inhabitant town somewhere, when bigger cities or industries were still better targets.
True to a degree: while immediately after the war, it was not good for German industry trying to rebuild that whole factories were dismantled and shipped of to Russia or Britain, in the long run it was an advantage to invest the money directly into modern factories and modern machines.
The destruction of Dresden is often cited as proof that the allied were already running out of targets.