Flashback World War II: U.S. Bombing Flights Kill Hundreds of Thousands of European Civilians

Boulogne-Billancourt map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the European war, Allied air power was called upon to play many roles — partner with  the Navy over the sea lanes; partner with the Army in ground battle;  partner with both on  the invasion beaches;  reconnaissance photographer for all; mover of troops and critical  supplies; and attacker of the enemy’s vital strength far behind the battle line.

In the attack by Allied air power,  almost  2,700,000  tons of bombs were dropped, more  than 1,440,000 bomber sorties and 2,680,000  fighter sorties were flown. The number of  combat planes reached a peak of some 28,000 and at the maximum 1,300,000 men were  in combat commands. The number of men lost in air action was 79,265 Americans and 79,281 British.  [Note: All RAF statistics are preliminary or tentative.]  More than 18,000  American and 22,000 British planes were lost or damaged beyond repair.

In the wake of these attacks there are great paths of destruction. In Germany, 3,600,000  dwelling units, approximately 20% of the total, were destroyed or heavily damaged.  Survey estimates show some 300,000 civilians killed and 780,000 wounded. The number  made homeless aggregates 7,500,000. The principal German cities have been largely  reduced to hollow walls and piles of rubble. German industry is bruised and temporarily  paralyzed. These are the scars across the face of the enemy, the preface to the victory that  followed.

http://anesi.com/ussbs02.htm

The basic fact is that 1,570 French cities and towns were bombed by Anglo-American forces between June 1940 and May 1945. The total number of killed civilians given by Florentin is exactly  67,078 men, women and children. However, Florentin does not count the victims of the bombings of Royan, which killed 1,700 civilians.  

The total number of injured people was more than 100,000. The total number of houses completely destroyed by the bombings was of 432,000, the number of partly destroyed houses of 890,000. The bombings destroyed 100 % of the city of Saint-Nazaire, 96 % of Tilly-la-Campagne (Calvados), 88 % of Villers-Bocage (Calvados), 82 % of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), 77 % of Saint-Lô (Manche), 76 % of Falaise (Calvados), 75 % of Lisieux (Calvados), 75 % of Caen (Calvados), etc. The same numbers are given by Jean-Claude Valla, La France sous les bombes américaines 1942-1945, Librairie nationale, Paris 2001 (= «?France under American Bombs 1942-1945?»). He says that 70,000 dead is the minimal estimation. This same total amount was already given par Roger Céré and Charles Rousseau, in their «?Chronology of the World War?» published immediately after the War (Chronologie du conflit mondial, SEFI, Paris 1945, page 253).

The bombings in Normandy before and after the D-Day were especially terrible. The famous French historian Henri Amouroux (in La Grande histoire des Français sous l’Occupation, volume 8) says that 20,000 civilians were killed in Calvados department, 10,000 in Seine-Maritime, 14,800 in the Manche, 4,200 in the Orne, around 3,000 in the Eure. All together, that makes more than 50 000 killed people.  During the only year 1943, 7,458 French civilians died under allied bombs. The most terrible allied bombings under the German occupation were these: Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris (2-3 March 1942, more than 600 killed people), Saint-Nazaire (9, 14, 17 and 18 November 1942, 228 dead), Rennes (8 mars 1943, 299 morts), Boulogne-Billancourt again (4 April 1943, 403 dead), Le Portel (8 September 1943, 510 dead), Paris western suburbs (9 and 15 September 1943, 395 morts), Nantes (16 and 23 September 1943, 1,247 dead), Toulon (24 November 1943, 450 dead), Lille (9-10 April 1944, 450 dead), Rouen (18-19 April 1944, 900 dead), Noisy-le-Sec (18-19 April 1944, 464 dead), Paris-La Chapelle (20-21 April 1944, 670 dead), Sartrouville (27-28 May 1944, 400 dead), Orléans (19 and 23 May 1944, 300 dead), Saint-Etienne (26 May 1944, more than 1,000 morts), Lyon (26 May 1944, 717 dead), Marseille (27 May 1944, 1,752 dead), Avignon (27 May 1944, 525 dead), Lisieux (6-7 June 1944, 700 dead), Vire (6-7 June 1944, 400 dead), Caen (6-7 June 1944, more than 1,000 dead), Le Havre (5-11 September 1944, more than 5,000 dead), Royan (5 January 1945, 1,700 dead), etc. Only during the day of 27 mai 1944, 3,012 French civilians were killed by anglo-american bombings on Marseille, Avignon, Nîmes, Amiens, Sartrouville, Maisons-Laffittes and Eauplet. (That’s more than the number of victims killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001).

Such bombings can of course be seen as a heavy price to pay for being liberated. The problem is that, in the vast majority of cases, the military value of these bombings was highly debatable. French cities were destroyed, not military German installations or troops. The French people suffered from the bombings, not the Germans. Saying that is certainly not « anti-americanism?», nor trying to relativize what the French had suffered by the Germans during the Ocupation. It is just facts which throw some light on the «?other side?» of the things.

In 1944-45, 3,620 French girls and women were also raped by American soldiers (2 420 rapes in England, 11 040 in Germany). See the book by J. Robert Lilly, La face cachée des GI’s. Les viols commis par les soldats américains en France, en Angleterre et en Allemagne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Payot, Paris 2003). The author has worked on the official military files of the U.S. Army.

http://wais.stanford.edu/ztopics/week020105/france_050201_civilianskilledinwwII.htm

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