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I want to convey

to the people of both
Afghanistan and Pakistan

that we will work very hard

to avoid the loss of
innocent civilian life.

MAN:
The better the strategic air
effort that's carried out,

the shorter will be the war and
the fewer of our boys will die.

MAN:
Once we crossed
the moral divide in Berlin,

it made everything else,
including the atomic bomb,

a little bit easier.

That moral threshold is,

"We will not deliberately
bomb civilians."

BARACK OBAMA:
On this day,

we gather because we have chosen
hope over fear.

(gunfire)

MAN:
Bullets were just kicking up
all over the place.

The devastation down there
already is just unbelievable.

CROWD:
Equal rights!

When do we want it? Now!

THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS:
♪ Time has come today ♪

♪ Time ♪

(song's tempo slows gradually)

♪ Time ♪

(beat slows considerably)

♪ Time! ♪

(fighter plane engines roaring)

(bombs whistling)

NARRATOR:
On September 1, 1939, the first
day of the war in Europe,

President Franklin Roosevelt
issued an urgent appeal.

He called on all combatants to:

By the time Hitler was finally
defeated, six years later,

Allied bombs had killed
thousands of civilians,

and both enemy cities
and America's lofty ideals

were in ruins.

The United States Eighth
Air Force arrived in England

with confidence high.

The Americans believed
that airpower

had revolutionized
modern warfare

and that their new
heavy bomber fleet,

flown by well-trained American
pilots and crews,

would prove decisive against
the thus-far unstoppable Nazis.

On August 17, 1942, in their
first action of the war,

a small fleet of American
bombers set out to bomb

a railroad yard 200 miles away
in occupied France.

(engines roaring)

It would be the first
combat test

of the American bombing
strategy:

precisely targeting military
and industrial objectives

and avoiding civilian
populations.

The specially-designed bombers--
B-17 flying fortresses--

bristled with machine guns,

fending off German fighters
along the way.

The Americans flew in daylight,
despite the risks,

to enable the bombardiers,

with state-of-the-art
bombsights,

to aim with unprecedented
precision.

(explosions)

The rail yard was
severely damaged.

All of the B-17s returned
safely,

and the Americans deemed
their first mission

an unqualified success.

MAN:
Today is the first time

American heavy bombers have been
in action in this theater

manned by American crews
and American squadrons.

NARRATOR:
General Carl Spaatz,
a flier since World War I,

was commander of all American
Air Forces in Britain.

Between the wars he had helped
develop the theory

of precision bombing.

SPAATZ:
General Eaker,

commanding the bomber
command, led this flight.

NARRATOR:
General Ira Eaker was charged

with putting the theory
into practice,

convinced that his bombing
campaign

would bring a belligerent
Germany to its knees.

WOMAN:
The Americans had developed
a theory in the 1930s

that was all about finding
specific cogs,

specific nodes in the enemy
war economy

and taking those out,
eliminating those,

and thereby dismantling
the entire enemy war economy.

Precision bombing doctrine was
fervently believed

by most leaders and most airmen.

They really thought what they
were doing was the...

was the best way to go about
fighting a war.

NARRATOR:
After the first U.S. mission,

American reporters attending
General Eaker's briefing

trumpeted a great success.

But their British allies
did not think much

of the American bombers
or the American strategy.

The British are looking at this
with a rather jaded eye

because they're thinking,

"First of all,
this is a tiny effort.

"Second of all, you're doing
things that we tried

"and couldn't do.

You're going to make a lot
of the same mistakes we made."

NARRATOR:
Like Roosevelt,

England's Prime Minister Winston
Churchill had once regarded

civilian targets off limits and
advocated precision bombing.

MAN:
Churchill was on record
repeatedly

between the wars as saying
that he believed

that the air force which
concentrated strictly

on attacking military objectives

and did not attack civilians
would be the side

that not only deserved
to prevail

but would prevail when war came.

NARRATOR:
On the very first day of war,

the Germans bombed civilians
in Warsaw...

(explosions)

and later in Rotterdam...

then, in 1940, they hit England.

BIDDLE:
When some German bombers
fly off course at night

in late August of 1940

and attack a portion of London,

Churchill takes this as an
opportunity to respond in kind

against Berlin.

Hitler is so upset by that

that he then responds
by attacking London.

(explosions)

It moves the war
into a new phase.

It moves the war into bombing
of cities, attacks on cities,

attacks on civilians.

(yelling)

MAN:
The strategic intention
of the attack on London

was to destroy military
installations and their harbor,

but if you read the commentaries
which Joseph Goebbels wrote

into his diary, he didn't write,

"(bleep), the bombs went astray
into the civilians! No!"

No. He's rejoicing.

Hitler says, "Take the harbors,
then the bomb takes the city."

And Goebbels says...

"Fine. We make a hell
out of it!"

So, the bomb teaches
the bomber what to do.

NARRATOR:
Commander Arthur Harris,

who took over as head of the
Royal Air Force's Bomber Command

in 1942, had learned
the bomb's lessons well.

He had studied the Nazi attacks
on England,

meticulously analyzing
the damage inflicted

by explosive bombs
and incendiaries.

The deadly work, he concluded,
could be done better still.

MAN:
The Nazis entered this war

under the rather childish
delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and
nobody was going to bomb them.

At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw
and half a hundred other places,

they put that rather naïve
theory into operation.

They sowed the wind and now they
are going to reap the whirlwind.

NARRATOR:
The RAF had initially
tried bombing

German military targets by day,

until unsustainable losses
and poor results

compelled them to change.

The way to inflict maximum harm
on the enemy,

Harris now insisted, was to bomb
hard-to-miss German cities

under cover of darkness.

The Americans emphatically
disagreed.

CRANE:
There was a fervent sense among
most Air Force leaders

that this was not the way to go.

It was... bombing cities
was inefficient.

It was the wrong use
of your air assets.

We felt we had better weapons
than the Brits.

We felt our--
the B-17, the B-24--

they were better bombers
than the British had;

we had better bombsights;
we had better training.

We could do this-- even though
they couldn't, we could.

NARRATOR:
Allied leaders,
meeting in January 1943,

opted to combine the American
and British strategies.

Harris and Eaker were ordered
to coordinate

a "round-the-clock"
bomber offensive.

To undermine "the morale of
the German people to a point

where their capacity for armed
resistance is fatally weakened,"

the British would focus on
bombing cities at night.

The Americans would do
their best to achieve

"the progressive destruction
of the German military,

industrial and economic system,"
bombing by day.

Both air forces took aim
at Hamburg,

a ship-building center
on the Elbe River.

BIDDLE:
The Americans were
interested in it

because they wanted to attack
the elements

of the German war economy
that were located in Hamburg.

The British were interested
in it because they wanted

to take it down as a city.

MAN:
There was another reason
why they chose Hamburg.

It was because it was close.

It was just a short hop across
the North Sea.

So, not only was it a very
important target,

it was also a very
convenient one.

(man singing in German)

NARRATOR:
Hamburg was the largest port
in Germany

and the country's
second largest city

with over one-and-a-half million
people.

Among them, ten-year-old
Ralph Giordano.

(man speaking German)

(translated):
Hamburg was my nest, my home.

I had a wonderful and carefree
childhood

and a deep feeling of belonging
to the city

until I was ten
and Hitler came to power.

Hitler was very successful
in winning over the masses,

including the working people.

I remember our neighbors who
hung the hammer-and-sickle flag

and were Communists.

Then, suddenly after 1933,

a swastika was hanging out
in front of their house.

(applause)

I remember Hitler coming
to Hamburg

for the launching
of a battleship

in the Blohm & Voss shipyards.

I wasn't standing
in the front row,

but I clearly remember
the cheering people.

(crowd singing in German)

NARRATOR:
The same shipyard was turning
out the submarines

that were wreaking havoc on
Allied shipping in the Atlantic.

And close by were important
manufacturing centers

for the German aircraft
industry.

Hamburg was exceptionally
well defended.

Air raid shelters,
some in massively armored

concrete towers,

provided protection for nearly
a quarter million people.

With heavy flak guns on top,

they could fire shells
four miles into the air.

Outside the city,

interceptor bases were scattered
along the North Sea,

with 1,500 Messerschmitt 109s
on constant alert.

The challenge for the Allies

was to evade those
formidable defenses,

controlled by a string of early
warning radar stations.

On Saturday, July 24,

792 RAF bombers readied
for a night attack on Hamburg,

each loaded with tons of high
explosives and incendiary bombs.

It was the first of a series
of attacks

that would continue
for an entire week,

code-named Operation Gomorrah.

LOWE:
It was a hugely complicated
operation

getting all these 700 or 800
bombers into the sky

without causing any collisions.

(engine roaring)

They would take off one by one
from each of the airfields

which lined the coast
of Britain.

Gradually they would assemble
over the North Sea

into a very long bomber stream.

Tonight, for the first time,

they were using a brand
new secret weapon.

The flight engineer would shovel
out these silver foil strips.

Each would show up on the German
radar as a single blip.

And the German defenses were
completely negated.

NARRATOR:
Between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m.,

more than 2,000 tons
of high explosive bombs

and over 350,000 incendiaries

were dropped on the west side
of the city.

(explosions)

Ralph Giordano and his mother
were in a shelter below.

GIORDANO (translated):
The people seemed paralyzed.

Nothing moved.

Everyone thought it was
lights out for him or her

in a matter of seconds.

The bombs howled down, and there
was a gruesome noise.

If you heard the noise,

that meant the bomb was hitting
someone else;

the bombs that hit you were
the ones you didn't hear

ahead of time.

NARRATOR:
Then, that afternoon,
came the Americans.

123 B-17s,
flying in broad daylight.

Once airborne,

the fleet assembled into box
formations to defend themselves

against enemy fighters.

Harry Crosby,
just out of college in Iowa,

was a lead navigator.

CROSBY:
The hardest part was

to get them all in order,

because we... when we flew,
we all followed the lead crew,

which would be me.

And if I didn't find
that target,

the work of a million Americans
was wasted.

The Americans had a much more
difficult job to do

than the British did.

Firstly they weren't bombing
under cover of darkness

and they didn't have
the benefits

of this new radar-jamming
device.

So as soon as they approached
German air space...

(gunfire)

the German fighters were
on them in a trice.

(gunfire)

NARRATOR:
The Nazi fighters did
their share of damage,

then peeled off as the bombers
approached the city.

Now the Americans faced an even
more fearsome obstacle:

the giant flak guns firing
at them from below.

CROSBY:
When people were shooting
at you,

you should be able to dodge,
but you couldn't do it.

You just had to go right
straight on in.

(gunfire)

LOWE:
When they arrived over Hamburg,

the entire city was completely
smothered in smoke.

They couldn't see anything,
let alone their targets.

Then, almost by a miracle,
a gap appeared

and there they could see
the Blohm & Voss shipyards.

(bombs whistling downward)

GIORDANO (translated):
Midday on the 25th of July,
the Americans came

and pelted the harbor.

NARRATOR:
Hamburg's key shipyard was
badly damaged,

along with an airplane engine
factory and a power station--

military targe
rendered all but useless

by American precision bombing.

On the fourth night, the RAF
returned with more incendiaries.

One of the pilots was
22-year-old Bill McCrea.

McCREA:
This was the big raid,
the firestorm raid.

We could see the fires an hour's
flying from Hamburg,

but when we got nearer
we could see this tower,

this pillar of smoke which was
rising over 20,000 feet.

It was just like
an active volcano.

The bombers went across dropping
their bombs in there,

which kept erupting and shooting
up these sparks and flame.

GIORDANO (translated):
Everything was crackling--
the fire crackled.

Within a short time the smell
of burning was so strong

that one had to leave
the basement.

It was burning all around,

an inferno like no human
imagination could picture.

Everything was ablaze, and
constantly the bombs came down.

I saw countless dead,
burned people...

people who had been burned
and baked together

like a piece of bread.

NARRATOR:
When Operation Gomorrah
finally ended,

there had been four British
attacks on the city

and two American raids
on the port.

The toll was 45,000 people
killed,

60% of the city
utterly destroyed.

I wasn't thinking about
the people on the ground.

I was just thinking about myself
and my crew.

I'd been ordered to do a job.

I'd been ordered to put these
bombs in the air

and drop them on Hamburg

and get back home so you could
go again tomorrow night

or the night after.

There would be a bridge to hit

or there would be
a factory to hit,

or there would be a gun
emplacement to hit.

And you never thought about
any human beings there.

LOWE:
In the aftermath
of the firestorm,

almost a million refugees
fled Hamburg

and took with them stories
of the most terrible horror

that they had witnessed.

This caused a panic across
Germany, which was unlike

anything that they'd ever
experienced before.

NARRATOR:
The panic extended
to the highest reaches

of the Third Reich.

Hitler refused even to visit
the devastated city,

sending Luftwaffe head
Herman Goering in his stead.

His minister in charge
of armaments warned

that a series of similar
Allied attacks

would bring German war
production to a complete halt.

And there were many who truly
believed that the Germans

would be forced to capitulate.

The British establishment
certainly thought

that this might be the case,

and there was a flurry
of memos suggesting

that perhaps the war might even
be over by Christmas.

NARRATOR:
The war would not be over by
Christmas; far from it.

Allied airmen would still be
sent on missions

from which many would not
return.

They would still confront
a determined enemy

that fought on despite
relentless punishment.

And the Americans
would still insist

pinpoint daylight bombing
would win the war.

In the aftermath
of the Hamburg attacks,

the American and British
commanders remained committed

to their sharply divergent
strategies.

Eaker continued to press
precision attacks

on industrial targets.

Harris championed the bombing
of cities.

And the city he was focused on

was the center and the symbol
of Nazi power...

(cheering)

Berlin.

(singing)

HASTINGS:
Berlin was almost
Harris's nemesis.

He allowed himself to become
obsessed with it.

He convinced himself
that if he got

4,000 Lancaster sorties
to Berlin,

he could bring Germany
to defeat, to surrender,

by April the 1st, 1944.

He gave an explicit date.

He said in another memorandum
that attacking Berlin

might cost bomber command
400 or 500 aircraft,

but it would cost Germany
the war.

NARRATOR:
Over six months,
the head of bomber command

sent his planes on 19 mass
attacks on the Nazi capital.

As many as 800 bombers
on a single mission--

nearly 11,000 bombing sorties.

In the city below, over
10,000 civilians were killed,

nearly half a million
made homeless;

all this pain inflicted
on Berlin in the hope

that the Germans would rise up
against Hitler.

That's the method of terror.

You cannot torture
80 million Germans,

but if you torture successfully
seven millions in Berlin,

the rest of Germany would come
to their senses.

So, you need the theater
of pains.

All German cities should witness
the Hamburgization of Berlin,

the great Sodom of modern ages.

And then, afterwards, all
the sinners would say,

"Not me," and overthrow Hitler.

DON MILLER:
But, in a police state,

withdrawing support from
the government means death.

You're not going to have
a mass uprising.

So, yes, morale was lowered,
but it didn't matter.

People still showed up for work,

and they went about
their lives--

crushed, not believing in
victory, but persisting.

Civilian populations have
a special war aim,

which is completely different
from their leaders' war aims.

It is a very simple one.

The war aim of the civilian
population is to survive.

NARRATOR:
Despite the incessant bombing,

the Nazis' hold on Berlin
remained firm.

But the RAF took tremendous
punishment--

more than 600 planes downed...

nearly 2,700 fliers killed,

all with no discernible impact
on German morale

or productivity.

(clamoring)

In the midst of Harris's
city bombing campaign,

the American airmen had been
preparing for an important test

of their own strategy.

On the morning
of August 17, 1943,

General Eaker's fliers were
briefed on their mission.

Their primary target:
ball bearing factories

in the southern German city
of Schweinfurt.

Schweinfurt kind of crystallizes
the entire American theory.

Here are ball bearings,
which are essential

in virtually all industries,

in the working of a modern
industrial economy.

MILLER:
You need ball bearings
for everything.

This is one of these
choke point targets,

that if you knock that out,
without ball bearings,

industry starts to break down.

BIDDLE:
They were flying deep into
Germany without fighter escort.

And because they were having
to fly across enemy territory

for a very long time, they could
be tracked and intercepted.

NARRATOR:
Hundreds of Luftwaffe fighters
took dead aim

at the unescorted B-17s.

MILLER:
These air battles are
absolutely ferocious.

They're going in there naked,
as it were.

The plane is not pressurized,

so the mask is on
and its freezing,

as low as 60 degrees below zero
because the rear windows

are actually gun portals
and they're open to the air.

So, you're fighting the weather,
you're fighting the Luftwaffe.

And the Germans, you see,
flying over their homeland,

can land, re-arm, re-fuel,
and up again.

(gunfire)

They're just pulverizing them
all the way in.

NARRATOR:
The crews that made it through
the fighters

were still at great risk.

To bomb with precision,
they had to approach the target

flying straight and level
through dense flak.

They could not take
evasive action

until their payload was dropped.

(bombs whistling through air)

Even after the bombs were away,

the American crews returning
from Schweinfurt

found themselves under withering
fire from enemy fighters.

(gunfire, engines roaring)

(explosion)

MILLER:
And it's a catastrophe.

One of the guys in the planes

said that he looked down
on the ground, and he said,

"My God, there's haystacks
burning all along the ground."

Well, they were B-17s.

They lose 60 bombers.

That's 600 men.

It's the largest number
of Americans lost

on a single mission up
to this point in the war.

Staggering blow
for the Eighth Air Force.

NARRATOR:
Despite the losses,

Eaker sent his men on the same
dangerous mission

two months later.

BIDDLE:
They went back to Schweinfurt

in October of 1943.

And in that raid the losses
were truly devastating.

Another 60 bombers shot down,
138 damaged.

You can't sustain that kind
of loss levels

over any period of time and
continue to have an offensive.

MILLER:
77% of the guys who flew
in the first months

are casualties.

You have a one-in-four chance
of surviving.

You'd go out and come back,

and part of your crew
would be missing,

part of your plane
would be missing.

It was pretty hard
on the young kids.

MAN:
I was afraid, you know.
(laughs)

But I just had to do it.

And, of course, the worst part
was getting up the next day

and doing it again.

BIDDLE:
Crews were coming home
and looking at empty bunks

where their friends and their
buddies were the night before.

They're no longer there.

Maybe they're alive in
a prison camp somewhere,

or maybe they're dead, but
they're not there any longer.

MILLER:
The guys start to feel
they're guinea pigs

in an experiment
that's not working.

No air force can survive
20% casualties

in every mission.

There's a growing sense
of gloom and doom

that they're not going to be
able to win the war

with this air weapon;

that it's just becoming too
costly and too dangerous.

NARRATOR:
Eaker remained undeterred,
his strategy unchanged.

Precision bombing, he insisted,
conducted by unescorted B-17s,

could do the job.

MILLER:
He's terrifically stubborn.

And he never, ever gets it
out of his mind--

out of his belief system,
I should say--

that this thing won't work;

that unescorted bombers can go
into the heart of the Reich,

do heavy damage, and not take
unsustainable losses.

And he kept that belief
stubbornly,

to the point where he was
relieved of his command.

(marching band plays)

NARRATOR:
In December 1943,
Spaatz replaced Eaker

with a legendary airman,
General Jimmy Doolittle.

(applause)

General Spaatz,
distinguished guests,

the strategic effort
must go on

and the better the strategic air
effort is carried out,

the shorter will be the war

and the fewer of our boys
will die.

CRANE:
Jimmy Doolittle is the
charismatic combat leader,

the first guy to bomb Tokyo,
the first guy...

he bombs Rome, he bombs Berlin.

I mean, he has his own fighter
plane he flies around

in the skies over
the Eighth Air Force.

He's a larger-than-life figure.

NARRATOR:
Doolittle's arsenal included an
agile, new, long-range fighter,

the P-51 Mustang.

Now, for the first time,

the bombers could be protected
deep into Germany and back.

The Mustangs would prove crucial

as Doolittle's forces
prepared the skies

for the anticipated Allied land
invasion, scheduled for spring:

D-Day.

The foremost concern
of the Allied commanders

in advance of D-Day was to
ensure that they possessed

absolute air superiority over
northwest France.

And in order to achieve that,

they set out to attack Germany's
aircraft factories,

for the first time escorted by
the Mustang long-range fighter.

The Eighth fighter command will
give fighter cover to targets

and back from the targets.

It's desirable that we peel off
as many fighters as possible

to come down and strafe
ground targets.

The strategy now is draw up
the Luftwaffe

by hitting things like
aircraft factories

that Hitler has to defend.

He sends his force up and
the Mustangs massacre them.

(explosions)

In addition, when you return
from missions,

you can drop off and fly low
and strafe German airfields,

destroying German aircraft
on the ground.

NARRATOR:
For the Americans,

the result was a dramatic change
from the disasters

at Schweinfurt.

The Eighth Air Force destroyed
twice as many enemy planes

in March 1944

than had been downed
in the previous two years.

Three months later,
on the shores of Normandy,

the Air Force's achievements
paid off.

The D-Day landing proceeded
without interference

from the air.

The Luftwaffe was
nowhere to be seen.

MILLER:
It's the first great
accomplishment

of strategic bombing.

We were destroying air frame
factories, yes.

We destroyed some ball bearing
factories.

But when you think of this, this
is a world-turning event, D-Day.

This is what turned the tide
of the entire northern...

war in northern Europe.

And it isn't possible...
wasn't possible

without what the Eighth Air
Force had done.

NARRATOR:
For Allied commanders,
it was a crucial time.

With the right strategy,

the end of the war in Europe
could be within reach.

There was a lot of excitement
about the fact

that Germany might be
at the precipice;

Germany might be on the brink
of collapse.

And so ideas were developed
for a major attack

on the city of Berlin to shock
the Germans into surrender.

NARRATOR:
In the late summer of 1944,

the British proposed
"Operation Thunderclap"--

the total devastation
of the center of Berlin.

Thunderclap looks distasteful

to a number of the American
air commanders

because it looks
like terror bombing.

It looks like bombing
for shock effect.

NARRATOR:
In a letter to the Allied
Supreme Commander,

General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Spaatz expressed his objections.

"The U.S. bombing policy,
as you know,

"has been directed against
precision military objectives,

"and not morale.

I am opposed to this
operation... as now planned."

That fall, the plan was tabled,

the disagreement between
the Allies rendered moot.

But Eisenhower made it clear
that the American Air Force

should still be "prepared
to take part in anything

that gives real promise
of ending the war quickly."

In the fall of 1944, American
planners sought to hasten

Germany's collapse by bombing
targets identified

by Allied intelligence
as most critical

at this stage of the war.

To deprive the Nazi war machine
of its lifeblood,

American bombers zeroed in on
the synthetic oil facilities

spread across the countryside.

(explosions)

To disrupt the struggling
Nazi economy,

they targeted key railroad
marshalling yards.

MILLER:
The Germans have to assemble
these gigantic trains

with thousands of cars at places
called marshalling yards.

So, there you have this
tremendous massing

of economic power in these
marshalling yards,

these central marshalling yards.

Hit them.

But they're inside
or close to cities.

NARRATOR:
The marshalling yards were often
located near workers' housing.

When visibility was poor

and the Americans had to rely
on their primitive radar,

known as H2X, civilian
casualties were unavoidable.

BIDDLE:
H2X could not allow

for precision targeting.

It could allow for finding
an area and bombing an area,

but that's about it.

You only have a hunch
as to where the target is.

And you bomb or you don't bomb.

Well, they bombed.

There was never a question
about stopping the bombing.

It becomes a moral issue

because if you continue to bomb
like that,

you are hitting an awful lot
of civilian targets-- homes--

and there's a lot
of collateral damage.

So you're nudging closer to the
British concept of area bombing.

NARRATOR:
Even as Allied bombing took
its relentless toll,

the Germans refused to give up.

By the winter of 1944,
hopes for a quick end to the war

had been replaced by smoldering
frustration.

Nazi resistance had kept
Allied troops

from crossing into Germany.

The Russians remained mired
in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Even a badly depleted German
Army remained a formidable foe.

(artillery fire)

FRIEDRICH:
The Deutsche Wehrmacht was

the most terrible,
most ruthless,

most spirited fighting force

which was ever seen
on any battleground.

I don't say it with any pride.

It was a terrible,
aggressive machine,

but with military capacity
beyond any comparison.

NARRATOR:
The Wehrmacht had launched
a massive

and unexpected
counter-offensive:

the Battle of the Bulge...

which cost the Americans
more lives

than any other battle
of the war.

They had launched their own
aerial terror weapons,

the V-1 and V-2 rockets, raining
destruction down on London.

They had shocked the Allied
air forces

with the sudden appearance of
the world's first jet fighter,

the Messerschmitt 262.

Now there were fears that Hitler
might have one more surprise,

perhaps big enough to turn
the tide of the war.

BIDDLE:
There's a great deal
of pessimism

that starts to enter in
to Allied high command.

And they start to think that
the war may drag on

well into the summer and
into the autumn of 1945.

And this is a very frightening
scenario.

The focus has to be Japan.

We've got to finish off
the Germans.

There's this idea of an enemy
they can't understand,

an enemy that is beaten
but won't surrender.

NARRATOR:
There was intense pressure
coming from the highest levels

of command to bring the war
in Europe to an end.

Even Roosevelt,
who had long decried

the bombing of civilians,

was now prepared to accept
massive aerial bombardment.

And so what Allied planners do
at this moment in time,

this crucial moment in December
and January 1944, 1945,

is to look around and say,
"What instruments do we have

to end this thing,
to get this over with?"

And they recognized that
if the war's going to end,

the Soviet winter offensive
has got to make progress.

NARRATOR:
That January, with the backing
of Eisenhower,

Spaatz revived Operation
Thunderclap,

the all-out assault
on German morale

he had once vehemently opposed.

This time it would include
attacks on transportation hubs

in Leipzig and Dresden

to put pressure on German
defenses on the Russian front.

But the centerpiece
of the operation,

reversing years of American
strategic policy,

would be a massive air assault
on Berlin.

BIDDLE:
Doolittle is told that he will
bomb the city of Berlin.

This is different language.

He's very uncomfortable with it.

He's not comfortable with
designating an entire city

as a target.

He protests to Spaatz and he
says, "This is not what we do.

"We attack specific locations
within cities.

"We may attack cities, but we're
looking for marshalling yards,

"we're looking for factories,

we're looking for specific sites
within those."

And Spaatz says,

"No, for this raid,
we have to bomb the...

"we're bombing the center
of the city.

This is an attack
on the center of Berlin."

NARRATOR:
Doolittle sent a hard-edged memo
to his commanding officer.

The Berlin attack,
he wrote Spaatz,

would "violate the basic
American principle

"of precision bombing of targets

of strictly military
significance..."

Spaatz was unmoved.

Operation Thunderclap,
the all-out attack on Berlin,

would proceed as planned.

CRANE:
The Thunderclap raid
is important

in that it can clearly identify
where the American Air Force

says, "Yeah, we're going
to destroy a city."

And that's one of the things
that made Doolittle

so disturbed about it,
because he says,

"We're really moving completely
away from everything

"that makes us different,
makes us unique,

makes us more humane."

But he did it.

He followed his orders
and he did it.

And you can argue
that once the...

once you've done that once,
it makes it easier to do again.

NARRATOR:
On February 3, 1945,
1,003 bomber crews were briefed

for the largest American
air mission of the war:

an attack on Berlin, a city
of nearly four million people.

Sam Halpert was a navigator
with the 91st bomber group.

HALPERT:
We were briefed to go to Berlin.

The map of northern Europe
was up there,

and there was a ribbon going
across, which was our route.

NARRATOR:
Although the target
designated by Spaatz

was the city of Berlin,

Doolittle did his best to give
the crews aiming points

with clear military value: train
stations, marshalling yards

and Goering's Air Ministry,

just 500 meters from Hitler's
fortified bunker.

The bombers and their escorts
headed east.

HALPERT:
By then, the Luftwaffe had been
pretty well beat up,

but they still had quite a bit
of planes in force.

As a matter of fact,
they started sending up

jet planes against us.

NARRATOR:
After four hours flying time,

the squadrons approached
their target.

(sirens blaring)

NARRATOR:
Horst Sinske,

a 15-year-old apprentice
in an aircraft parts factory,

studied the skies above.

(man speaking German)

(translated):
We saw the first lines of attack
and thought,

"This will have no end."

(sirens wailing)

You could look over the roofs
and see the flak tower

of Friedrichshain.

When the guns were pointed up,

you knew that an attack was
only 30 or 40 minutes away.

(flak fire)

HALPERT:
When we approached the target,

we'd start seeing the flak
bursts come out.

The closer you got,
the more flak there was.

And the pilots just had
to ignore that

and head right into it,

when everything in their body
was telling them,

"Turn that plane around and
get the heck out of there."

I don't know what the geese
feel like

when the hunters are shooting
at geese, you know,

as they're flying over a pond.

What I kept in mind, one thing,

was that a lot of geese get shot

but most of the geese
get through.

SINSKE (translated):
I heard the flak guns
and decided to run.

I knew that once a direct attack
really got going,

the doors to the air raid
shelter would no longer be open.

I knew that.

And when I reached it, indeed,
the doors were shut.

I ran to a house nearby
and they let me in.

HALPERT:
When we got over Berlin,
sure enough,

the lead ship was hit right
in the middle

maybe about five to ten yards
beyond our wing.

I could see bodies coming out.

That's what I remember.

I didn't see any parachutes.

I was pretty well shook up
by that.

NARRATOR:
That day, 21 B-17s were shot
down over Berlin,

but it was only a small fraction
of the massive American fleet

raining down devastation
from above.

SINSKE (translated):
A high explosive bomb hit
directly outside.

The room was buried under
a meter of rubble.

(voice breaking)

On top was a child's
change purse

and a little piece of cloth.

And we thought that someone must
have been buried.

But we found no one.

It was very still in the city
after these attacks.

The concentration camp inmates
took the dead way.

These people brought the corpses
out quickly

and they threw them
on the ruins.

And the mountain got
higher and higher.

In the end it was
two meters high.

They were just thrown onto it.

NARRATOR:
The February 3 raid killed
approximately 3,000 civilians.

120,000 Germans lost
their homes.

But this attack on Berlin
would have significance

far beyond casualty numbers.

MILLER:
With this raid, the Eighth Air
Force crosses a moral threshold.

And that moral threshold is

we will not deliberately
bomb civilians.

Usually the moral divide for
historians is the Tokyo raid,

which took place the next month,

where we incinerate the city
and kill almost 100,000 people.

And... but I think

once we crossed the moral divide
in Berlin,

it made everything else,
including the atomic bomb,

a little bit easier.

(explosions, gunfire)

NARRATOR:
The war in Germany raged
for three more brutal months,

months that saw the city
of Dresden destroyed

in a firestorm just weeks before
American bombers burned Tokyo...

(explosion)

months that saw 200,000
Russian soldiers killed

in the final assault on Berlin,

an assault made possible, in no
small part, by Allied bombing.

In the end, the Nazi surrender
that had seemed so close

for months finally came in May.

The American air strategists
could now devote

their full attention

to the urgent task of defeating
Imperial Japan.

The war had brought utter
destruction to Germany,

the nation that began it,

and death to more than
a hundred thousand

British and American airmen.

Half a million German civilians
were killed by Allied bombing,

adding to the more than
20 million civilian deaths

in Europe as a result
of this war.

BIDDLE:
When democracies go to war

and they find themselves
in total wars,

they have to work through a set
of moral choices

that are sometimes extremely
difficult and extremely painful.

Fighting Nazi Germany, in the
end, meant fighting all out,

meant utilizing every resource
that we had.

But in order to defeat
this enemy,

we had to make some choices that
were in some ways regrettable.

MILLER:
Wars are uncontrollable.

And no one knows how and why
they get out of control,

but they do.

Witness Roosevelt's first
statement about fighting

a clean war and not wanting
anybody to bomb children

or innocents or
anything like that.

Wars just fly out of control.

CRANE:
I see this idea of just
killing civilians

and targeting civilians
as being unethical.

Though the most unethical act
in World War II for the Allies

would have been allowing
themselves to lose.

There'
♪ Time has come today... ♪

♪ Time has come today... ♪

♪ Time... ♪

♪ Time... ♪

♪ Time... ♪

♪ Time! ♪