file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/me/Desktop/Book%20shelf/Quigley,%20Carroll%20-%20Tragedy%20and%20Hope.txt
by daylight raids on military objectives resulted in such losses that the air offensive was shifted to night attacks. This entailed a shift from industrial targets to indiscriminate bombing of urban areas. This was justified with the wholly mistaken argument that civilian morale was a German weak point and that the destruction of workers' housing would break this morale. The evidence shows that the German war effort was not weakened in any way by lowering civilian morale in spite of the horrors heaped on it. Page 802 The most extraordinary example of this suffering occurred in the British fire raids on Hamburg in 1943 which was attacked for more than a week with a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary bombs so persistently that fire-storms appeared. The air in the city heated to over a thousand degrees began to rise rapidly with the result that winds of hurricane force rushed into the city. The water supply was destroyed and the flames were too hot for water to be effective. Final figures for the destruction were set at 40,000 dead, 250,000 houses destroyed with over a million made homeless. This as the greatest destruction by air attacks on a city until the fire raid on Tokyo on March 9 1945 which still stands today as the most devastating air attack in human history. Page 806 General Eisenhower ignored Berlin and drove directly eastward toward Dresden. Eisenhower's decisions permitted the Soviet forces to "liberate" all the capital cities of central Europe. As late as May 4th, when the American forces were sixty miles from Prague and the Soviet armies more than a hundred, an effort by the former to advance to the city was stopped at the request of the Soviet commander, despite a vain message from Churchill to Eisenhower to take the Czech capital for political bargaining purposes. Page 807 Soon the names Buchenwald, Dachau, and Belsen were repeated with horror throughout the world. At Belsen, 35,000 dead bodies and 30,000 still breathing were found. The world was surprised and shocked. There was no reason for the world's press to be surprised at Nazi bestiality in 1945 since the evidence had been fully available in 1938. CLOSING IN ON JAPAN, 1943-1945 When Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, Japan was already defeated but could not make itself accept unconditional surrender. Page 808 Even American strategic bombing was different in the Pacific using B-29s, unknown in Europe, for area bombing of civilians in cities, something we disapproved in Europe. Page 815 279 B-29s carrying 1,900 tons of fire bombs were sent on a lowlevel attack on Tokyo. The result was the most devastating air attack in all history. With the loss of only 3 planes, 16 square miles of central Tokyo were burned out; 250,000 houses were destroyed, over a million persons were made homeless and 84,793 were killed. This was more destructive than the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima five months later. Page 817 American leaders shuddered to think of the results if such Kamikaze attacks were hurled at troop transports and American estimates of casualties were over half a million. These considerations form the background to the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and the decision to use to atom bomb on Japan. The nature and decisions taken at the conference of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin held at Yalta in February 1945 has been so much distorted by partisan propaganda that it is difficult for any file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/me/Desk...ley,%20Carroll%20-%20Tragedy%20and%20Hope.txt (79 of 129) [14/06/2005 11:42:40]