THE TARGETS OF THE AIR WAR

During all imperialist wars, each ruling class presents itself as honest, merciful and thoroughly principled and the enemy as a ruthless, cunning murderer intent on pointless mass destruction.

This was certainly the case in World War II, particularly where air raids were concerned.

The mass bombing of London, Liverpool, Hull and Coventry by the Nazis aroused justifiable hatred and - anger among British workers.

But their own. and the American ruling classes were doing the very same thing and on a larger scale-against the workers of Germany and Japan.

The largest single air-raid of the war was launched against Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945., An official history describes this raid as follows:

"The area attacked was a rectangle measuring approximately four by three miles. It was densely-populated, with an average of 102,000 inhabitants to the square mile . . zone bordered the mos important industrial sectic Tokyo and included a few individually designated targets.

'Police records show that 267,171 buildings were destroyed—about one-fourth of the total in Tokyo-and that 1,008,005 persons were rendered homeless. The official role of casualties listed 83,793 dead and 40,918 wounded. It was 25 days before all the dead were removed from the ruins ... no other air attack of the war, either in Japan or Europe, was so destructive of life and property' (W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate: "The Army Air Forces in World War II', Vols 4-5. 1950.)

The Tokyo raid was followed by similar attacks on Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama and Kawasaki, the most important industrial cities. By August 14, 1945, 58 Japanese cities had been firebombed.

In Europe, too, mass destruction was the order of the day in the 'fight for freedom'. So effective was the bombing. of cities in terms of the destruction and casualties caused that it became rationalized as a policy by both sides.

The attitude of the British ruling class was simple:

'Lord Cherwell... produced a cabinet paper on the strategic bombing of Germany ... It described in quantitative terms the effect on Germany of a British bombing offensive in the next 18 months (approximately March 1942-September 1943). The paper laid down a strategic policy.

"The bombing must be directed essentially against working-class houses, middle-class houses have too much space around them, and so are bound to waste bombs; factories and "military objectives" had long since been forgotten, except in official bulletins, since they were much too difficult to find and hit.' (My emphasis-J. G.) (C. P. Snow 'Science and Government, 1962', p. 47.)

Altogether the British bombed over 100 cities. In 43 more than 50 per cent of the built -up area was destroyed.

The German ruling class, of course, had also launched terror-raids working- class centres of this country.

Some of the biggest raids London October 15-16, 1940: 70 tons of incendiaries and 386 tons of high explosive dropped.

Coventry November 14-15, 1940: 30 tons incendiaries and 500 tons of high explosives.

London May 10-11, 194]: 98 tons incendiaries and 400 tons of high explosives.

In an unbroken series of raids on London between September 6 and 19, 1941, 690 tons of incendiary bombs and 5,817 tons of high explosives were dropped.

In the German raids on Britain 60,595 persons lost their lives and 86,182 were wounded.

In the British and American raids on Germany, estimates of the number of deaths range from 300,000 to 800,000. Despite this destruction, the raids achieved little of military value-their purpose was to demoralize the civil population.

The British Bombing Survey Unit itself admitted:

'Area attacks against German cities could not have been responsible for more than a very small part of the fall which had actually cred in the spring of 1945 . . . and in terms of bombing effort, they were also a very costly way of achieving the results which they did achieve.' (BBSU "The Strategic Air War', p. 97.)

No more conclusive proof can be given that the air raids on both sides were designed to kill and terrorize the working class rather than to attain military ends than the atombombing of Hiroshima.

The US Strategic Bombing Survey report, 'Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki', declares:

"The bulk of the city's output came from large plants located on the outskirts of the city; one half of the industrial production came from only five firms. Of these larger companies, only one suffered more than superficial damage.

'Since electric power was available, and materials and working force were not destroyed, plants ordinarily responsible for three-fourths of Hiroshima's industrial production could have resumed normal operation within 30 days of the attack had the war continued.'