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Baedeker Blitz (England) Map ofEngland with the main cities targeted in the Baedeker Blitz | |||||||
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TheBaedeker Blitz orBaedeker raids was a series ofbombing raids by theLuftwaffe on theUnited Kingdom duringWorld War II in April and May 1942. Towns and cities inEngland were targeted for their cultural value as part of ademoralisation campaign.
TheLuftwaffe planned the raids in response to theRoyal Air Force's (RAF)area bombing offensive againstNazi Germany as a result of thearea bombing directive, starting with thebombing of Lübeck in March 1942. Bombers ofLuftflotte 3 under the command ofHugo Sperrle attacked sites suchcathedrals,health resorts, andtown halls. The aim was to begin a "tit-for-tat" exchange with the hope of demoralising the British public and forcing the RAF to reduce their attacks on Germany. The name derives fromBaedeker, a series of German touristguide books used to select targets for bombing.
The Baedeker Blitz was a strategic failure – German damage to British cities was minimal compared toThe Blitz or the RAF bombing raids against Germany, and theLuftwaffe suffered from unsustainable losses. Over 1,600 civilians were killed and tens of thousands of homes were damaged in the main raids. Towns and cities in England continued to be targeted by theLuftwaffe for their cultural value and killing thousands more civilians over the following two years.
By the winter of 1941, both the British and Germanstrategic bombing campaigns had reached a low ebb. The Germanoffensive against the British, a nine-month period ofnight bombing known asThe Blitz, had leftLondon and many other British cities heavily damaged. The Blitz came to an end in May 1941 when theLuftwaffe had prioritised its resources towards theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union. Thereafter, it had confined itself tohit-and-run raids on British coastal towns. Meanwhile, the RAF's night bombing offensive against Germany had been shown to be largely ineffective, as revealed by theButt Report in August 1941, and byChristmas such attacks had largely petered out.[1][2]
When the RAF offensive resumed in March 1942 with thebombing of Lübeck, there was a marked change in effectiveness. New heavy bombers were introduced such as theShort Stirling andHandley Page Halifax, followed by the unreliableAvro Manchester from which was developed the excellentLancaster. Improved navigation systems such asGee andOboe allowed the RAF to strike better at their targets. The appointment ofAir Vice-MarshalArthur Harris as chief ofRAF Bomber Command saw greater enthusiasm for area bombing attacks of German cities, with new tactics such as thebomber stream, the use ofincendiary bombs, and particularlyarea bombardment. Prior to this the RAF had attempted to conductprecision bombing, aiming at individual factories,power stations, evenpost offices, in multiple strikes across Germany, which had been costly and ineffective. Following the example of theLuftwaffe'sbombing of Coventry in November 1940, the RAF began concentrating a single blow against an area where several worthwhile targets existed, including the homes and morale of the civilian population living there.[citation needed]
The leadership and population inNazi Germany were shocked by the destruction ofLübeck, and ofRostock the following month.[3][4] Up to this point they had been mostly unaffected by the RAF's bombing campaign. Now,Joseph Goebbels reported, "the damage was really enormous" and "it is horrible ... the English air raids have increased in scope and importance; if they can be continued for weeks on these lines, they might conceivably have a demoralising effect on the population."[5] After the bombing of Rostock he reported "the air raid ... was more devastating than those before. Community life there is practically at an end ... the situation is in some sections catastrophic ... seven-tenths of the city have been destroyed ... more than 100,000 people had to be evacuated ... there was, in fact, panic".[6]
Adolf Hitler was enraged, and demanded that theLuftwaffe retaliate accordingly. On 14 April 1942, he ordered "that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks of a retaliatory nature [Vergeltungsangriffe] are to be carried out on towns other than London".[7]
After theraid on Bath, Goebbels reported that Hitler intended to "repeat these raids night after night until the English are sick and tired of terror attacks" and that he "shared [Goebbels'] opinion absolutely that cultural centres, health resorts and civilian centres must be attacked ... there is no other way of bringing the English to their senses. They belong to a class of human beings with whom you can only talk after you have first knocked out their teeth."[8]
The raids were referred to on both sides asBaedeker raids, derived from a comment by aGerman propagandist.[7] Gustaf Braun von Stumm, a spokesman for theGerman Foreign Office, is reported to have said on 24 April 1942, "We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide",[9] a reference to the popular German travel guides,Baedeker Guides. Goebbels was furious and keen to brand British attacks as "terror bombing", he was equally keen to designate German efforts as "retaliatory measures".[10] Stumm'soff-the-cuff remark "effectively admitted the Germans were targetting cultural and historic targets, just what the German leadership did not want to do, and Goebbels took steps to make sure it did not happen again".[11]
The BritishMinistry of Economic Warfare issued theBomber's Baedeker in 1943,[12] a methodical analysis of bombing targets in Germany, in reference to Stumm's comment. A second edition followed in 1944.[13]
The task of carrying out the attacks was given to theLuftflotte 3 bomber groupsKG 2 andKG 6, formed from the earlierKüstenfliegergruppe 106 maritime aviation group,[14] to be led by the pathfinders ofI./KG 100. Each raid involved 30 to 40 aircraft, and to increase their effectiveness it was planned each would fly twosorties per night. Each raid involved two periods of 60 to 90 minutes, separated by two or three hours.[7]
TheExeter Blitz, the first raid of the Baedeker Blitz, was directed againstExeter, the ancient county town ofDevon with its immense heritage of historic buildings, on the night ofSaint George's Day, 23/24 April 1942. While this raid caused little damage, a second raid the following night was more severe, with over 80 fatalities. On the nights of 25/26 and 26/27 April, the bomber force conducted theBath Blitz, causing widespread damage toBath and some 400 casualties. These raids came a month after the Lübeck raid and coincided with the RAF's four-night offensive against Rostock. On 27/28 April, theLuftwaffe attackedNorwich, dropping more than 90 tonnes (200,000 lb) of bombs and causing 67 deaths. On 28/29 April, they attackedYork, causing limited damage but 79 deaths.[15]
On the night of 3/4 May, theLuftwaffe returned to Exeter, causing heavy damage to the city centre, considerable damage to the south side ofExeter Cathedral, and 164 deaths. The following night they attackedCowes on theIsle of Wight, a target of both cultural and military value, being the home of theJ. Samuel White shipyard. On 8/9 May, Norwich was attacked again, though the raid was ineffective despite more than 70 aircraft taking part. During May, theLuftwaffe also bombedHull (a major port, and thus a military target)Poole,Grimsby and, at the end of May,Canterbury. This raid, which coincided with the RAF's firstthousand-bomber raid onCologne, involved 77 bombers, dropping 40 tonnes (88,000 lb) of bombs, which resulted in 43 deaths.[15]
Across all the raids in this period, a total of 1,637 civilians were killed and 1,760 injured, and over 50,000 houses were destroyed.[16] Some notable buildings were destroyed or damaged, including York'sGuildhall and theBath Assembly Rooms, but on the whole most escaped – Norwich Cathedral,Canterbury Cathedral, andYork Minster included. Exeter Cathedral was hit in the early hours of 4 May with the complete destruction of St James Chapel on the south side and considerable damage to the South Quire Aisle.
On 27 April,Winston Churchill told the War Cabinet that the government should do all it could to "ensure that disproportionate publicity was not given to these raids" and "avoid giving the impression that the Germans were making full reprisal" for British raids.[17]
The Baedeker Blitz was a strategic failure for the Germans as theLuftwaffe suffered heavy losses for minimal damage inflicted and demoralisation of the British public. TheAxis's need for reinforcements in theNorth African campaign and on theEastern Front meant further operations could only continue at a reduced scale, with mostly intermittent hit-and-run raids on coastal towns byFocke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter-bombers.[citation needed] Whilst the termBaedeker Blitz is sometimes limited to the raids on those five cities (Exeter, Bath, Canterbury, Norwich and York) in April and May 1942,[16] theLuftwaffe continued to target cities for their cultural value for the next two years.[18]
In June 1942, they attackedIpswich, Poole and Canterbury again,Southampton (a port target), Norwich again, andWeston-super-Mare. In July, there were three raids onBirmingham, another three onMiddlesbrough, and one on Hull, all industrial cities of military and strategic value. In August, the Germans returned to "Baedeker" targets: Norwich,Swansea,Colchester and Ipswich.[citation needed]
In September, they attackedSunderland, a port and industrial centre, andKing's Lynn, a market town of no military value. All these raids were less intense than those of April and May, involving some 20 aircraft apiece. This reflected the steady and increasing losses suffered by the Germans as the RAF's night-fighter defences improved and German casualties mounted. By the autumn, KG 2 had lost 65 of its 88 crews and the offensive had come to a halt.[citation needed] To find new ways to continue the pressure, theLuftwaffe experimented with both low-level and very high-level attacks. In August 1942, two modifiedJunkers Ju 86P bombers were employed making high-altitude runs over southern England. These operated with impunity for several weeks, and one raid onBristol on 28 August resulted in 48 fatalities. These flights were halted when the RAF fielded a similarly modified flight ofSupermarine Spitfires and caught one of these bombers in the highest air battle of the war.[19]
On 31 October 1942, thirty Germanfighter-bombers escorted by sixty fighters made a low-level attack on Canterbury, dropping 28 bombs on the city and causing 30 deaths. Three of the attacking aircraft were shot down.[20]
By the end of 1942, 3,236 people had been killed and 4,148 injured in these raids. However, the strength of theLuftwaffe in theWestern Front had drained away while the RAF had gone from strength to strength, regularly mounting raids of 200 or more aircraft on Germany.[21][22][23]
In 1943, theLuftwaffe in the west was revitalised andLuftflotte 3 brought back up to strength. In January, KG 2 had 60Dornier Do 217 bombers and KG 6 the same number ofJunkers Ju 88s. These were reinforced with a fast bomber wing,SKG 10 ofFw 190 fighter-bombers. These renewed the offensive. On 17/18 January 1943 they raided London, followed by a low-level attack on the city on 20 January. After a lull in February, they returned in March leading to theBethnal Green Tube disaster, where 178 people died.[24] Throughout the year, raids were made on a variety of targets; some of strategic value (Southampton, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Hull, Sunderland,Newcastle) and others with little or none (Eastbourne,Hastings,Maidstone,Cheltenham,Chelmsford,Bournemouth,Lincoln). Again, new tactics were tried. In June 1943, a raid on Grimsby saw the use of delayed-actionanti-personnel "butterfly bombs", which resulted in 163 civilian casualties, most of them from these devices as people returned to their homes after theall clear was sounded.[25]
In November 1943, following the RAF andUnited States Army Air Forces'bombing of Hamburg and the first use of the "Window"radarcountermeasure, theLuftwaffe were able to respond with a raid on Norwich using Duppel, their equivalent. While British radar was negated, the raid caused little damage. With the continuing losses of experienced personnel, the German crews were increasingly made up of inexperienced replacements, with a corresponding drop in effectiveness. By the end of 1943, theLuftwaffe had mounted some 20 raids, in which more than 10 tonnes (22,000 lb) of bombs had been dropped, a total of 2,360 tonnes (5.2 million pounds) for the whole year.[26] These caused 2,372 deaths and 3,450 injuries, according to a report byLord Cherwell. The report contrasted this with the RAF's achievement of a total of 138,000 tonnes (300 million pounds) dropped during the year, and pointed out that a single raid on Berlin made in the same week that the report was published had dropped 2,520 tonnes (5.6 million pounds), more than the entire German effort. The report pointed out that these raids were confined to towns on or near the coast, and that fires caused by bombing only accounted for one-thirtieth of all the incidents dealt with by theNational Fire Service.[26]
The Baedeker-type raids ended in 1944, as the Germans realised they were ineffective; unsustainable losses were being suffered for no material gain. A switch to London as the principal target for retaliation was made in January 1944. TheLuftwaffe mountedOperation Steinbock, an all-out attack on London employing all of its available bomber force in the west, on 21 January. This too was largely a failure, with heavy losses for little gain. Henceforth, efforts were re-directed toward the ports that the Germans suspected were going to be used for theallied invasion of France, while the assault on London became the domain of Germany'sV-weapons.[citation needed]
