(siren wailing)
(plane engines roaring)
This is the story
of a world crumbling beneath bombs.
A world where the sky became threatening.
Where terror descended upon cities.
(dramatic music)
On the ground, death struck randomly,
transforming men into timid animals.
(bombs clanking)
In the sky, a feeling of omnipotence.
World War II saw the birth of a hideous idea.
From the insane notion that by bombing civilian populations
one could gain victory more quickly.
Against a backdrop of total war, hatred, and excess
(bomb exploding)
came an extraordinary mobilization of wealth and brainpower
in the service of this new form of combat.
It was the time of the sorcerer's apprentice,
pointless massacres.
(bomb exploding)
Fury, blunders.
1.5 million tons of bombs.
Here 100,000 people died in one night.
The responsibility of Allied bombers
has long cast a shadow over this story.
Yet it raises an essential question.
What is the purpose of bombing civilians?
(slow dramatic music)
Everything began with a marvelous dream.
At the dawn of the 20th century enthusiastic crowds
gathered to admire the first exploits of aviation.
These birds were a good omen.
They were supposed to shrink distances
and bring people closer together.
Yet planes could just barely climb 100 meters
when already out of the public eye other adventurers
began transforming the dream into a nightmare.
(dramatic music)
In 1911 the Italian aviator, Giulio Gavotti
hand dropped history's first bombs on Libyan rebels.
(bombs exploding)
The colonial world became the playing field
for the pioneers of bombardment.
The aircraft were Italian, English, or French.
Each its own rebellion, each its own savages.
Libya, Syria, India, Iraq.
At the time a British commanding officer named Arthur Harris
was promoting this aerial police force,
one that made it possible to rule
over immense territories through terror.
In 45 minutes a village can be wiped out,
and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.
Word from the colonies
excited the general staffs.
Bombers would revolutionize war.
Thrilled strategists speculated
on the force of these weapons.
They spoke of aerial domination,
of swift and decisive victories.
Even as ever more imposing prototypes crisscrossed the sky,
Europeans continued to believe that the threat of bombing
was distant and theoretical.
But the danger was drawing near.
When he took power in 1933, Adolf Hitler
began the process of rearmament.
(slow music)
His thirst for domination knew no limits.
And he saw aerial weaponry
as the instrument of his future conquests.
Without any seeking to prevent him,
he has his air force, the Luftwaffe
make a technological leap forward.
Daimler-Benz, BMW, and other leaders in industry
were made to contribute.
The aviation factories of Heinkel, Messerschmitt,
and Junkers produced planes with aggressive contours.
Flight schools attracted ambitious military personnel.
But years of training were nothing
compared to just one day of war.
Aerial combat.
(guns firing)
Machine gunning troops.
Bombing communication networks.
(bombs exploding)
Strategic factories.
Since 1936, Nazi aviation had been
operating in Spain amid civil war.
Hitler was supporting Franco's Nationalists
against the Republicans.
But he also had another reason.
He took advantage of the indifference
of the major democracies to turn Spain
into a site for accelerated training.
17,000 men would serve there.
Alongside pilots and machine gunners were engineers,
meteorologists to determine the best moments for bombing,
as well as photographers who helped identify targets
and assess the results of attacks.
April 26, 1937.
Believing that they were out of the public eye,
Nazi officers authorized the worst kinds of experimentation.
At 5 p.m. 24 bombers took off for a new type of mission.
The objective, to test the effects of bombing
on the inhabitants of a small town
of no military importance whatsoever, Guernica.
40 tons of bombs came crashing down
on the town and its 7,000 inhabitants.
Two hours later the bombers had returned home.
The mission was considered a success.
The panicked population abandoned the town,
which was quickly occupied by Franco's troops.
Terror had paid off.
A British journalist was able
to visit the site immediately after.
George Steer tried to understand.
The whole of Guernica was soon in flames.
Monday was the customary market day.
The market was full.
Altogether the death may run into hundreds.
Many were forced to remain round the burning town,
lying on mattresses or looking
for lost relatives and children.
(slow music)
Astonishment, incomprehension.
Steer concluded.
The raid on Guernica
is unparalleled in military history.
This irritated Hitler.
Steer's article made its way around the world
and tarnished his army's image.
It was out of the question
to assume responsibility for such a massacre.
His propaganda reacted immediately and found a scapegoat.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
(slow music)
But the martyrdom of Guernica
gave the lie to Nazi propaganda thanks to one
of the most famous painters of the day.
Pablo Picasso gave his all
to the creation of a giant canvas.
He called it Guernica.
But it was a universal cry against the horror
of this modern war targeting civilians.
The astonishment of the victims, the unbearable combat,
the slaughter of innocent people.
But who realized at the time
that Picasso's painting was a prophecy.
(bomb exploding)
Shanghai, Nanking, Chongqing.
In that same year of 1937,
Japan's invasion of China began with bombing.
(plane engines roaring)
The crash of steel.
(bombs exploding)
The terrifying rush for shelter.
The cruelty of this weapon
that disfigured cities, striking at random.
(slow music)
This war may have been a distant one.
But this image of an orphan lost
in the Shanghai train station moved Western opinion deeply.
In European cities compassion gave way to concern.
A journalist from London recalled.
The vision we all had then
was a vision built up from Guernica and China.
But also from the film The Shape of Things to Come.
We all knew what war would be.
(short dramatic music)
(plane engines roaring)
This big budget film
played in every capital in 1938.
Get out.
Get of the square.
Get out.
Adapted from the novel by H.G. Wells
it was the apocalyptic account of a city crushed by bombs.
(bombs exploding)
Wells situated the bomb warfare in the near future.
The city's name was Everytown.
(slow music)
(whistle blowing)
In 1938, crisis after crisis
raised the spectre of world war.
Reality surpassed science fiction.
(dramatic music)
To ward off a fear of chemical attack
inherited from the great war,
millions of gas marks were distributed.
But the worst case scenario was also the least probable.
During the two years preceding the conflict
nations had prepared themselves for conventional bombing.
City after city acknowledged its vulnerability.
In New York, two squadrons of bombers alone
could paralyze the city.
In Tokyo, a city made of wood and paper,
fire was what everyone feared.
New fire resistant materials were tested.
Fire roads were planned to prevent blazes from spreading.
In major Europeans capitals, doctors warned
of the consequences of widespread panic.
Millions of cases of hysteria
or severe depression were anticipated.
In London, a huge city of eight million inhabitants,
the government launched
an emergency program to build shelters.
A cup of tea and a biscuit just before turning in,
and now to spend a comfortable night undisturbed.
What could the thin corrugated iron
of Anderson shelters do against a barrage of steel?
In Germany, Hitler announced a gigantic
bunker construction program.
(slow music)
In reality the mobilization was another opportunity
to tighten the regime's grip over the population.
Every country arrived at the same conclusion.
Protecting civilians would require spending
more than the entire military budget.
On the verge of war, countries realized that they simply
did not have the means to protect their people.
(dramatic music)
On September the 1st, 1939,
Hitler attacked Poland.
World War II had begun.
(bomb exploding)
Blackout.
In European capitals lights were turned off
so they wouldn't serve as markers for enemy aviation.
In Paris, London, and even in Berlin
no one believed they were safe.
(siren wailing)
The war so long dreaded had finally come.
The same day one man tried to change
the course of this awful scenario.
It's a little known episode.
This nation will remain a neutral nation.
Even as he announced the neutrality of the US,
President Roosevelt called out to the warring nations.
I am addressing this urgent appeal
to every government engaged in hostilities publicly
to affirm that its armed forces
shall not undertake the bombardment
of civilian populations or unfortified cities.
Great Britain, France,
every warring nation accepted, as did Germany.
World War II began with this moral pact,
to keep civilian lives safe from bombing.
For every government feared a chain of events
that would endanger its own population.
Five weeks later Poland surrendered to the Reich.
(slow music)
Despite the commitments that had been made,
Warsaw was heavily bombed.
(fire crackling)
Hitler asserted he was only aiming for military targets
in a city that was defending itself.
But all the same, he turned his bombers
into instruments of psychological warfare.
("Flight of the Valkyries" by Wilhelm Richard Wagner)
The UFA's prestigious studios
dramatized the exploits of aviation.
(bombs exploding)
The heroism of the pilots,
the implacable force of the bombers.
With Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries
they gave the Luftwaffe its terrible anthem.
(horses whinnying)
(bomb exploding)
"What we did to Poland we will do to France and England,"
proclaimed Air Marshal Herman Goering.
(horns honking)
In the face of the German threat, the confidence
of the French General Staff is perplexing.
(slow music)
They may have had the world's largest army
and the support of English troops,
but the war they were preparing was from another era.
(plane engines roaring)
(guns firing)
On May the 10th, 1940, it was Northern Europe's turn
to experience modern war.
The choice was a harsh one, give up or be bombed.
European cities fell one after another.
After resisting in vain, Brussels was declared an open city,
meaning it was given to the enemy without fighting.
The Netherlands also decided to surrender.
But the information came too late.
For Rotterdam the mishap was fatal.
(dramatic music)
(bombs exploding)
Oil and gas facilities were hit,
setting off a huge fire in the city.
Today we know that there were 800 deaths.
But at the time the press spoke of 30,000 casualties.
It was terror.
The Dutch, the Belgians, the French,
millions of civilians fled the unstoppable German advance.
(slow music)
The press of German bombers
bearing down upon the villages has squeezed out
a whole people down the highways like a black syrup.
On a reconnaissance mission
Captain Antoine de Saint-Exupery
realized the scope of the disaster.
Nobody admits that this war looks like
nothing at all, that no part of it makes sense.
(fire roaring)
To spare Paris the fate of Rotterdam,
the French government in exile in Bordeaux
declared the capital an open city.
On June the 11th the Wehrmacht entered
a deserted city, its avenues intact.
On the 22nd came the Armistice.
In two months, six countries had succumbed to the Nazi tide.
Hitler now looked toward Great Britain.
But German threats had no effect
on the new British prime minister.
Winston Churchill was determined to fight to the end.
(crowd cheering)
Churchill weighed the dangers
to which he was exposing his people.
The country was already in a maximum state of alert.
Children were evacuated from the cities.
Would Hitler dare bomb London?
(slow dramatic music)
When the Battle of Britain began
the Luftwaffe's targets were military ones.
Airfields and aviation factories.
From the French coast where his bombers had taken position,
Goering promised Hitler that he would eradicate
the Royal Air Force in two or maybe three weeks.
(plane engines roaring)
But soon an accident would dramatically
change the history of bombing.
On August the 24th, 1940 a few German bombs fell by mistake
on the working class neighborhood of the East End
in the heart of the English capital.
Would Churchill respond?
The decision was critical, for England
was not in a position of strength.
But the prime minister ordered the RAF
to try a raid on Berlin.
To reach the German capital they had to cross through
1,000 kilometers of enemy territory.
German defenses were formidable.
(guns firing)
The mission almost impossible.
Only one crew made it there.
The damage was insignificant.
But for Marshal Goering it was a humiliation.
Had he not sworn that if Germany
were bombed he would eat his hat?
(slow music)
In reality, the Fuhrer couldn't have dreamed for better.
He went from the aggressor to the one being attacked.
He could now loosen the reins on his bombers.
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd applauding)
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic music)
This bombing war took place at night.
It took the name of thunder.
It was called The Blitz.
London would suffer daily raids.
Hitler had major expectations
of this new strategy of bombing cities.
If eight million Londoners go mad
it might very well turn into a catastrophe.
Then even a small invasion might go a long way.
(bombs clanking)
(slow music)
Dear brother, there is not one building standing,
but a heap of earth, brick, and beams.
We took out 11 bodies,
but apparently there are others underneath.
(siren wailing)
The wailing of sirens, incessant alerts.
They're even worse than the bombing.
Sleeping has become impossible.
When he took office Churchill
had promised blood, toil, sweat, and tears.
What better way to describe the fate
of these bombed out people.
(plane engines roaring)
(guns firing)
After London, German bombing extended
to the country's major cities.
(bombs exploding)
An average raid now involved 400 tons of bombs,
10 times more than Guernica.
(bomb exploding)
But it was at Coventry that the bombers
reached the height of their destruction.
During the night of November the 15th, 1940,
the Germans dropped thousands of incendiary bombs.
A third of the small industrial city was reduced to ashes.
Over 500 people died.
In the early morning people
discovered the extent of the catastrophe.
Only a small part of the facade
of St. Michael's Cathedral remained.
(slow music)
Emergency services dealt with basic necessities.
Where to find a meal or drinking water.
How to find a family member lost in the night.
What to do with the 4,000 families
whose homes had been destroyed.
Government officials realized
that they were overwhelmed by the catastrophe.
How would the British react?
State officials watched for the least sign
of anger or dejection.
The people's morale was closely monitored.
But this bombed people had surprises in store.
Where madness and chaos were expected there was solidarity.
Where demobilization was feared
there was an incredible combative spirit.
People adjusted to the bombing schedule.
Each night 200,000 people lived together in the Underground
despite appalling conditions of hygiene.
Others commuted daily in order
to spend their nights outside the cities.
Factories continued to operate.
The crucial war effort was maintained.
Parliament ironically compared the drop in production levels
at the height of The Blitz to the one
usually seen during the Easter holidays.
News reports tried to have people forget the bloodshed.
They were careful not to film corpses.
Of the 45,000 deaths under the rain of German bombs
we have only a handful of images.
("Rule, Britannia!")
They presented a heroic people as a model to the nation.
The shops are open as usual.
In fact, many of them are more open then usual.
Britain can take it.
If the British were able to resist
it was because their prime minister
had promised them what was needed to hold on.
We will mete out to the Germans the measure
and more than the measure they have meted out to us.
(audience applauding)
In reality, British aviation was quite incapable
of standing up to Germany.
(crowd cheering)
But this rhetoric bore fruit.
Vengeance rose from the ruins.
The prime minister's approval rating rose
throughout The Blitz, reaching 93% in early 1941.
(crowd cheering)
(slow music)
Hitler had to face the facts.
The bombing strategy he believed would be swift and decisive
had just proven to be totally ineffective.
Indeed, even counterproductive.
Even worse, the Reich was sacrificing
its fleet to carry it out.
The Luftwaffe received the order to leave English skies.
It gave way to the Kriegsmarine
and an old strategy, naval blockade.
(slow music)
In Germany, the threat of English bombs
proved to be a weak one.
Bombing even became a subject of curiosity.
In a Hamburg park the remains of English bombers
that had dared to venture into German skies were exhibited.
Today at 5 p.m. demonstration of anti-aircraft effects.
How to finish off an incendiary bomb
filled with an aluminum based mixture.
But the demonstration was not very convincing.
No matter.
No one here could imagine that these bombs
would soon fall by the hundreds of thousands.
But for the moment the spiral
of bombing cities had come to a halt.
In the summer of 1941, Hitler attacked the USSR.
(dramatic music)
During this gigantic operation bombers once again
played the role they had before The Blitz,
to support the advance of the four million invading troops.
Soon Moscow was in sight.
At the same time, on December the 7th
Japan launched a surprise attack from its aircraft carriers
against the American base of Pearl Harbor
on the island of Hawaii.
Even though it was a military target
the shock was terrible in the US.
(bombs exploding)
The Americans immediately entered the war
against Japan and Germany.
The American people in their righteous might
will win through to absolute victory.
(audience applauding)
In late 1941, the Axis powers
were dominating on all fronts.
But England knew it could now count on two powerful Allies.
In Great Britain they were still
diffusing bombs from The Blitz.
(slow music)
This may seem absurd for a country that had just proven
to the world the total ineffectiveness of bombing cities.
But it was nevertheless here
that this strategy would resurface.
This exploit was the work
of an Oxford physicist, Frederick Lindemann.
This discrete scientist
was little known by the general public.
He was nevertheless the primary advisor of Churchill,
who gave him the friendly nickname of Prof.
From the very first bombings on London
he set his teams to work.
Lindemann wanted to scientifically demonstrate
that bombing could be the key to victory.
To do so he analyzed the vast amount of data collected
from the ruins of The Blitz.
In March 1942 he communicated
his conclusions in a one page memo.
Investigation seems to show that having
one's home demolished is most damaging to morale,
more than having their friends or even relatives killed.
The number of houses destroyed
for every ton of bombs, available number of bombers,
distribution of the German urban population.
According to his frightening projections,
Lindemann estimated he could force 22 million Germans
to take to the roads and topple the Reich.
In the prime minister's circle
these calculations were deemed total fantasy.
But the Prof was able to convince Churchill.
All that remained was to find the man
able to conduct this dirty war.
One name stood out as being obvious,
Air Marshal Arthur Harris,
soon to be nicknamed Bomber Harris.
(slow dramatic music)
The new head of bomber units was made for the mission.
A former pilot, he earned his stripes
bombing in the colonies.
That's where he gained his unshakeable faith
in aerial weaponry.
He took up the challenge that many thought impossible,
to win the war solely through bombers.
There are a lot of people who say
that bombing can never win a war.
Well my answer to that is that it has never
been tried yet, and we shall see.
(slow music)
(bombs exploding)
Lubeck, Rostock,
Harris garnered success right from his arrival.
The targets chosen were close and poorly defended.
Harris triumphed.
But he wanted to strike harder.
The goal, Cologne, and its 700,000 inhabitants.
Through persistence he managed to have all
of England's planes entrusted to him.
(dramatic music)
And all of the available pilots, including instructors.
The operation was widely reported in the media.
Code name, Millennium.
On the night of May the 30th, 1942,
over 1,000 bombers took off from English bases.
(plane engines roaring)
Never before had a raid involved so many planes.
Germany's lines of defense were overwhelmed by the tide.
(speaking foreign language)
After Cologne it was the turn of Essen and Bremen
to suffer massive bombing.
(bombs exploding)
At Bomber Command the enthusiastic reports
spoke of razed cities, massacres,
and masses of the homeless.
On the basis of partially blurry photographs
they believed that at that rate
Germany would be brought to its knees in one year.
But what did they know about
the true effectiveness of their bombing?
(bells tolling)
(slow music)
For the Reich, the raids of spring 1942
were in fact pinpricks.
In Cologne the 1,000 bombers destroyed only 5% of the city.
In Essen only 11 homes were hit.
Contrary to what English pilots believed,
most bombs drifted into the countryside.
(slow dramatic music)
Hitler wasn't worried.
On the contrary.
The bombs even had the advantage of reminding civilians
that his great war involved them as well.
He therefore entrusted his minister for propaganda,
Joseph Goebbels with the responsibility for this home front.
(speaking foreign language)
The Goebbels strategy
could be summed up in one word, vengeance.
(audience applauding)
He promised to immediately annihilate England
with retaliatory weapons defying belief,
V1 and V2 rockets.
Unable to have them at his disposal immediately,
Goebbels laid the blame on scapegoats,
always the same ones, the Jews,
whom the regime had been persecuting for 10 years.
Once again, they would be the ones to pay
for the damage from the bombing.
(slow music)
The apartments and property confiscated from German Jews
were given to those who had suffered damage.
This system extended to every country
under Reich domination.
The contents of 27,000 train carriages
were sent from Paris and Antwerp towards German cities.
(speaking foreign language)
After this first wave of bombing
the regime was able to indemnify the least damage.
In late 1942, party agents gathered 370,000 declarations
for which the very wealthy state
immediately paid out 126 million Marks.
It would not be easy for bombers
to bring an end to such a powerful empire.
But the fierce battle had begun.
In Great Britain, Bomber Command was now receiving
a third of the defense budget.
Factories began producing a new category of plane.
There was a change of scale.
The Avro Lancaster and the Halifax were now twice the size
of the Heinkels from The Blitz.
(plane engines roaring)
In early 1943 Harris' strategy took shape.
He decided to concentrate his bombers
on the cities of the Ruhr.
The Reich's leading industrial region
was also its most populated.
(slow music)
The objective, to destroy working class neighborhoods.
(bombs exploding)
To be certain of hitting them, he proposed extending
the target range to include the entire city.
This technique had a name, carpet bombing.
The engineers of Bomber Command
had become the sorcerer's apprentice.
They developed a dreadful protocol.
A first wave of explosive bombs
to blow off the roofs of buildings.
A barrage of incendiary bombs to start mass fires.
And explosive bombs once again
to prevent firemen from operating.
In the hopes that the fires would join together
to form a blaze of such intensity
that it would transform the city into a firestorm.
A climate phenomenon able to consume
an entire city in a few hours.
(slow dramatic music)
Marshal Harris, of course, had the consent of his hierarchy.
Churchill made a point to personally warn German civilians.
All they have to do is to leave the city,
abandon their work, and go out into the field
and watch their home fires burning from a distance.
(slow dramatic music)
The English inflicted heavy damage
on the cities of the Ruhr.
Each attack was now causing over 1,000 deaths.
(bombs exploding)
On July the 28th, 1943, crews returned
from Operation Gomorrah against the city of Hamburg.
(slow music)
They recounted how they had left behind an enormous inferno
whose glow they could see 300 kilometers away.
The bombing of Hamburg was like no other, that was certain.
40,000 deaths in just a few hours.
No doubts, no remorse.
After Hamburg the English intensified their campaigns.
But victory did not come.
American bombers in the theater of operations
would be a game changer.
The General Staff ensured that it was able
to spare civilian populations.
(bombs exploding)
But would they be able to maintain that course of action?
Would they really want to?
One after another the moral barriers would collapse,
proving the darkest prophecies true.
(bomb exploding)
The true reasons for this blaze are revealed
in part two of The World Under Bombs.
(dramatic music)