Moral Bombing

On November 27, 69 years ago, Freiburg was bombed. The air raid lasted from 7:58 to 8:18 p.m. Within twenty minutes, 14,525 bombs were dropped, 2800 citizens were killed, and nearly 90% of all buildings in Freiburg were destroyed or damaged. Air Vice-Marshall Robert Saundby named the air raid on Freiburg Operation Tigerfish.

Last Wednesday, the day of the remembrance, the Badische Zeitung devoted one page to the cataclysm that nearly annihilated Freiburg. The most famous aerial photo taken in the early spring of 1945 is the one below, showing the "intact"- looking Münster church amid the ruins of the surrounding houses.

©Stadtarchiv Freiburg

As early as 1942, the poet Reinhold Schneider had written a sonnet: Du wirst nicht fallen, mein geliebter Turm ... (You will not fall, my beloved steeple ...). Indeed, those Freiburgers who had survived the November 1944 air raid regarded their Münster standing up among the ruins as a miracle. The fact is that the Münster was not directly hit, but the blasts from nearby detonated bombs untiled the roof. However, they were not strong enough to topple the building. 

In the Middle Ages, no calculations were possible to determine the necessary support for arches and roofs. All cathedrals were built based on previous experience.

Modern Computer-Aided Design (CAD) techniques have shown that medieval church constructions are built with substantial safety margins, making them highly stable. Red Baron once learned that in the case of Freiburg's Minster church, the "stability factor" is about seven.

In the BZ article, I read the English term "moral bombing" for the first time. Up to now, I was familiar with strategic, carpet, and area bombings, and I had even heard the phrase: "We should bomb them back to the Stone Age," but I had never encountered the cynical combination of moral and bombing.

... pourvu que ça fasse des victimes boches

During the First World War, the press wrote about anonymous killing, referring to the imprecise bombing of cities like Freiburg. A captured French pilot said he had no precise target pourvu que ça fasse des victimes boches (except there were German victims). 

In the Second World War, in addition to bombing military and industrial installations, residential areas were targets to undermine the morale of the German populace by bombing German cities and their civilian inhabitants. Nowadays, military people boast about their surgical strikes by simply sweeping aside the death of innocent people who happen to be there at the wrong time as collateral damage. 

Is this a new form of moral bombing?

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