United States Strategic Bombing Survey Research Articles

Midcentury Suspension: Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War IIby Claire Seiler

<i>Midcentury Suspension: Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II</i>by Claire Seiler

Revisiting Morale under the Bombs: The Gender of Affect in Darmstadt, 1942–1945

A new feature of World War II was the physical proximity of a growing number of women to death and destruction. Britain and the United States bombed Germany with the hope that the bombs would demoralize the population and thus defeat the Third Reich from within. Yet, even during the heaviest bombings between 1943 and 1945, no widespread organized dissent formed against the Nazi regime. Taking into account affect concepts of morale, this article examines the gendered experience of bombing in Darmstadt, a small town near Frankfurt am Main. It is based on largely unexamined home-front narratives from 1945, namely, transcribed United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) interviews with Germans who had recently lived through a period of intense air warfare. The experience with deadly force, as well as the gendered and generational preparation with which individuals encountered and made sense of it, shaped morale and social reorganization in a hopeless war. The affective dialogue between the personal sphere of survival and the public sphere of warfare revealed increasingly fluid gender roles in a besieged Third Reich. The bombing set the stage for a period of female self-sufficiency from as early as 1942, which means that increasing opportunities for female agency—usually associated with the “hour of the woman” during the final days of the war and the Allied occupation in postwar Germany—had appeared much earlier.

“Good landscapes be but lies”

Many of W. H. Auden’s poems written between 1939 and 1944 explored the Second World War, but only at a distance. After his experience in the Morale Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, however, his poems started to more fully examine the effects of the War. Auden’s grief over the War’s destruction would find voice in poems that are haunted by ghostly figures he encountered. Ruined places contain experience and memory. Auden’s postwar placed-based poems develop his theory of haunted places. There, Auden lived with the dead, and those figures showed him that both sin and love reside in the same space, thus offering hope for the future.

Zur Bedeutung nationalsozialistischer Statistiken und Statistiker nach dem Krieg

Abstract After the war, NS-statistics were put to manifold uses. Indeed, the industrial census of 1936 served both as a benchmark for the restrictions on German production imposed by the allied powers and as an indispensable input for the introduction of the planned economy in East Germany. In addition the NS-statisticians involved were also considered indispensable for interpreting and implementing these statistics. In order to assess the economic effects of allied bombing during the war, John Kenneth Galbraith oversaw the Overall Economic Effects Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Wagenführ and other German statisticians were interrogated in order to elucidate the statistical files of Speer’s Planning Office (Planungsamt), the command centre of the German war economy. As the chief statistician in Speer’s Ministry for Armaments, Wagenführ had been in charge of the statistical information system for running the war economy. The article focuses on a recently detected file on the kidnapping of Rolf Wagenführ by US-officers from Berlin to Bad Homburg in the summer of 1945. At that time, Wagenführ was working for the central command of the Soviet military administration of Germany. I found the report on the kidnapping and the ensuing interrogation which Wagenführ wrote for his Soviet command officer. It is part of the archival files of the German Democratic Republic hosted by the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin-Lichterfelde. The article here concludes with both a brief presentation of those German production statistics (Statistische Schnellberichte) which had been compiled on a monthly basis for the inner political circle around Hitler during the war, and with some results from the USSBS.

Shaping the Past Battlefield, "For the Future": The United States Strategic Bombing Survey's Evaluation of the American Air War against Japan

Shaping the Past Battlefield, "For the Future": The United States Strategic Bombing Survey's Evaluation of the American Air War against Japan

Decline of Cement Industry in Japan during the Pacific War

Production of cement had declined steadily throughout the Pacific War. The decrease had been slow at first and had quickened its pace since 1942. This study aims to explain the reasons why the cement industry declined during wartime even though Japan had enough raw materials, like limestone and clay. From this angle of study, the records based on questionnaire and interrogation conducted by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey just after the war were used to explain the discrepancies between the required production and the actual production. There are many possible causes for such decline of production, e.g. lack of skilled labor, fuel, transportation to consumers, and bomb damages to plants, etc. Throughout discussion, it is concluded that one of the most important factors of rapid decline of cement production was the failure of machinery which were irreplaceable during the war. Because most cement plants used imported machinery, replacement parts could not be imported after the war had begun, hence many plants had to close down until the end of the war.

Advocacy or Assessment? The United States Strategic Bombing Survey of Germany and Japan

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. USSBS, Summary Report (Pacific War) (1946)

Ending the War with Japan: Paul Nitze's "Early Surrender" Counterfactual

The most important foundation for attacks on the decision of President Harry S. Truman to use atomic bombs againstJapan is the claim that conventional bombing and naval blockade had brought Japan to the point of by the summer of 1945, that Truman knew this, and that he dropped the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union, not to end the war. This early surrender counterfactual hypothesis comes from publications of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). The USSBS was headed in Japan, and its official reports edited and controlled, by Paul H. Nitze. This article examines the evidence on which Nitze claims to have based his early surrender hypothesis. The USSBS began as an effort by strategic bombing advocates to establish their craft as the ultimate arbiter of all future

Reviews

EVELINE CRUICKSHANKS, ed. Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1982. Pp. xi, 231. $31.50 (US). Reviewed by Roger L. Emerson JAMES PINCKNEY HARRISON. The Endless War: Fifty Years of Struggle in Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 1981. Pp. xii, 372. $17.95 (US). Reviewed by P.J. Honey J. ROBERT WRIGHT. The Church and the English Crown, 1305–1334: A Study based on the Register of Archbishop Walter Reynolds. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1980. Pp. xix, 472, $27.00 paper. Reviewed by Robert Brentano TORGIL, MAGNUSON. Rome in the Age of Bernini. Vol. I : From the election of Sixtus V to the death of Urban VIII, translated by Nancy Adler. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, and N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982. Pp. ix, 388, $45 (US). Reviewed by Paul F. Grendler BRUCE CUMINGS. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes 1945–1947. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Pp. 606. $40.00 (US); $14.50 (US) paper. Reviewed by Tae Jin Kahng STEFANOS SARAFIS. ELAS: Greek Resistance Army. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981. Pp. civ, 566. $26.25 (US); LAWRENCE S. WTTTNER. American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Pp. xiv, 445. $19.95 (US). Reviewed by Dimitri Kitsikis ANDREW ROSSOS. Russia and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy 1908–1919. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981. Pp. xiii. 313. $35.00. Reviewed by Hugh Seton-Watson JOHN MEYENDORFF. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian relations in the fourteenth century. Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xxi, 326. $69.50 (US). Reviewed by N. Oikonomides THOMAS C. OWEN. Capitalism and Politics in Russia. A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 295. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by John F. Hutchinson G. DANIELS (ed.). A Guide to the Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 12. London, 1981. Pp. xxvi, 115. £12.00. Reviewed by R.J. Overy LOUIS L. SNYDER. Global Mini-Nationalisms: Autonomy or Independence. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. Pp. xvii, 326. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Allan C. Smith PAUL HAGGIE. Britannia at Bay: The Defence of the British Empire Against Japan 1931–41. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Pp. xii, 264. $59.95. Reviewed by Raymond Callahan DAVID REYNOLDS. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation. London: Europa Publications Limited, 1981. Pp. xiv, 397. £20.00. Reviewed by Ernest Gilman DONALD S. BIRN. The League of Nations Union: 1918–1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Pp. vi, 269. £69.50. Reviewed by George Egerton

Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey

Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey

The End of the Blitzkrieg

G ermany, unlike the United Kingdom, has no official history of the Second World War. On the 'civil' side the original material for such a study, although scattered and fragmentary, is more generally open to inspection than that of the United Kingdom. On the economic history of the war the published material relating to Germany is still sketchy and incomplete when compared with that relating to Britain. The information in print is piecemeal; areas of Germany's war effort are covered comprehensively, others ignored just as comprehensively. The patchwork nature of this material is perhaps due to two great causes, first the diffusion and destruction in I945 of the evidence available for such a study; secondly the fact that historians approaching the problem have required certain particular information to answer specific questions. What were Hitler's intentions in starting the war? Did he even intend to start a war? How far had his economic preparation gone by I940? What effect did Allied intervention in the German economy have? How far was Allied bombing responsible for Germany's collapse? The answers to all these questions have been searched for and in part found. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 1 the fullest and best published source of material on the German war economy, was, for instance, undertaken to answer the last of these questions, and to decide on the relative merits of 'strategic bombing' and 'area bombing', a serious matter of dispute between the American and British Air Staffs during the war. It was the work of a team of economists flown out at the German collapse and given special privileges and facilities. It was the publication of some of their work which first corrected the erroneous impression held in wartime about the development of the German economy, and set out the argument that Germany's failure properly to develop her economy at the outset of the war was her undoing. In demonstrating the inefficiency of the organization before Albert Speer became Minister of Armaments and Munitions in February I942, the Bombing Survey weighed the balance down on the other side rather than corrected it. The Blitzkrieg was good strategy and highly successful. The Bombing Survey paid too little attention to the period immediately before Speer became Minister of Armaments and Munitions and thus presented a distorted picture of German economic development. This picture has not been altered either by Klein 2 or by Webster and Frank-

Anthropology, Political Behavior, and International Relations

HESE two books, published in the past year, are general statements of the contemporary anthropological credo. They reject the earlier conception of anthropology as the study of prehistoric and primitive culture, and assert strong claims to its relevance in the solution of crucial problems of modern politics. Clyde Kluckhohn is a psychoanalytically trained anthropologist. Alexander Leighton is an anthropologically trained psychiatrist. Both have had distinguished academic and governmental careers. Leighton was chief and Kluckhohn cochief of the Foreign Morale Analysis Division of the Office of War Information, an organization which pioneered in the application of psycho-anthropological insights and methods to problems of government policy. Leighton's general views are based on a detailed analysis of his experiences during the war in the Office of War Information and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan. Kluckhohn's book is a general statement of the nature and significance of modern anthropology directed at an informed lay audience. Special interest for students of international relations attaches to propositions advanced by these writers about the usefulness of the modern anthropological approach in the study of problems of foreign policy and international order. While there is some difference in the treatment of these themes in the two books, there is such substantial agreement between them that there is no need for our purposes for a separate statement of individual views. We review these propositions in brief form. 1. Cultural-psychological differences are largely unconscious in character. The peculiar sentiments, values, and attitudes of

The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy. United States Strategic Bombing Survey

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy. United States Strategic Bombing SurveyW. Allen WallisW. Allen Wallis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 55, Number 3Jun., 1947 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/256525 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1947 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.