30 mayo 1942 año - British ‘thousand bomber raid’ was launched against the German city of Cologne.

Descripción:

This was the first raid and it was very intense.

The effects of all of the bombings at this time period were:

Loss of life and civilian casualties
—> 400,000 to 600,000 people were killed in allied bombing of Germany
--> 7.5 million were made homeless and had to suffer hardships in destroyed cities which were already overcrowded with war refugees
- in many cities 50-60% of houses were destroyed

Losses also affected morale
- two million men also had to be redirected to anti-aircraft defence
-bombing failed to produce resistance in the Nazi regime (Goebbels cleverly exploited the bombing of Dresden in January 1945, claims twice the number of victims and presented the bombing as a sign of barbarism, saying the city had not military value (true), and had many civilians (true) —> propaganda effort inspires the Nazi’s

Bombing also disorganised military production
- Germany hit a peak of their war production in 1944 —> can show this wasn’t that effective (to reach the peak they had to rely on forced labour and prisoners)
- factories had to relocate underground the total was still 1/3 below the target
- new types of weapons weren’t produced such as new submarines
- by 1944 absenteeism increased to 255 and 75% of the Germans beleived that the war was already lost

Añadido al timeline:

fecha: