The Battle of Berlin

Bomber Command Over the Third Reich, 1943–1945

Martin W. Bowman

• Publisher: Air World
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781526786388
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526786395
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

"A fascinating look into the aircrews used and the effect on those who had to live through this constant bombing" by the RAF during World War II ( UK Historian).
Berlin was bombed by four Allied air forces between 1940 and 1945. British bombers alone dropped 45,517 tons of bombs, while the Americans a further 23,000 tons. By 1944, some 1.2 million people, 790,000 of them women and children, about a quarter of Berlin's population, had been evacuated to rural areas. An effort was made to evacuate all children from Berlin, but this was defeated by parents and many evacuees who soon made their way back to the city. However, by May 1945, 1.7 million people—40% of the population—had fled the city.
This fitting tribute to those who died in the relentless struggle to knock Berlin, and hopefully Germany, out of the war resonates with eyewitness accounts and background information which the author has painstakingly investigated and researched. The result is a hugely fascinating and highly readable narrative containing very real and unique observations by British and Commonwealth aircrew and, equally importantly, the long-suffering citizens of Berlin, and well as the capital's defenders.
Though not a defeat in absolute terms, in the operational sense The Battle of Berlin was an offensive that Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and his aircrews could not win. "Berlin won" concluded Sir Ralph Cochrane, the Air Officer Commanding 5 Group RAF Bomber Command. "It was just too tough a nut."
"An impressively informative, deftly written, exceptionally well documented, and expertly organized history . . . a seminal work of original scholarship." —Midwest Book Review

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Berlin Season
• Chapter 2 Ordeal by Fire
• Chapter 3 While Berlin Burned
• Chapter 4 ‘No Enemy Plane Will Fly Over the Reich Territory!’
• Chapter 5 ‘An Orchestrated Hell’
• Chapter 6 One Night in December
• Chapter 7 A Hymn for the Haunted
• Chapter 8 ‘We won’t be home for Christmas; we know that very well’
• Chapter 9 ‘After Every December Comes Always a May’
• Chapter 10 Unhappy Hogmanay
• Chapter 11 Berlin Back to Back
• Chapter 12 ‘Chop City’
• Chapter 13 Wild Colonial Boys
• Chapter 14 A ‘Yank’ in Bomber Command
• Chapter 15 Once the Most Beautiful City in the World
• Chapter 16 The Winds of Change
• Chapter 17 Berlin or Bust
• Chapter 18 A Night on the Spree
• Chapter 19 The ‘Milk Run’
• Chapter 20 The Cost of Victory
• Notes