Press Releases

How many Frenchmen did you kill?

Release Date : 16 March 2009

Fascinating research from the University of Reading has uncovered the true nature of the British policy debates around the Allied bombing of France during World War 2 and the French reaction to it.

The research illustrates a willingness by the British to ignore previously agreed principles about not targeting civilians in circumstances when military necessity appeared to require it. Between them, RAF Bomber Command and the US air forces killed some 50-60,000 French civilians, a figure comparable to British losses to German attacks in the Blitz and through V-weapons. During RAF Bomber Command's raids on the French Port of Le Havre between 5-11 September 1944, a staggering 85%of the city's buildings were destroyed.

While British policymakers at the time were sensitive to the delicate political implications of attacking France, perceived military necessities tended to trump political misgivings. In fact, Churchill proposed a maximum of 10,000 French civilians in the run-up to D-Day as being acceptable. He followed developments closely, sending one-line memoranda with questions such as 'How does your score stand now?' Answers from the air chiefs included an estimated body count, followed by a 'credit balance' – their expression for the civilian deaths that could still be inflicted while remaining within Churchill's ceiling.

How did the French react? In some ways, the story revealed by Reading researchers will be familiar to anyone who has studied the Blitz: sirens and shelters, the black-out and child evacuees. But all these precautions were taken against attacks by countries that many of the French looked to for their own liberation; and all of them had to be negotiated in collaboration with the German occupiers of France. One organisation set up to help bombed-out families was even financed with funds from the confiscation of Jewish goods. In that context, it could be hard to see the war simply as a struggle between the good and the bad.

Were the Allies, then, seen as friends or foes by the French who faced the bombs? Professor Andrew Knapp from the University's Department of French Studies said: "The Vichy government's attempts to turn the bombing to pro-Nazi propaganda use were, more or less, failures, but the patience of the French, despite their general view of the Allies as liberators, wore thin when the Allies took insufficient care with targeting and caused excessive civilian casualties.

"'How many Frenchmen did you kill?' was the question Winston Churchill asked Air Chief Marshall Tedder on 10 July 1944, referring to the Allied bombing campaign that backed up the Normandy landings. Churchill was right to be worried: bombing military targets always kills innocent civilians - even the people you are trying to liberate. This was as true during World War 2 as it has been more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Notes to editors

For more information please contact James Barr, Press Officer, University of Reading, on 0118 378 7115 or by email on j.w.barr@reading.ac.uk..

This research is part of a larger AHRC grant, 'Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-1945'. The aim of this project is to study how states and civilians in France, Germany, Italy and the UK responded to the threat and the reality of bombing during WW2. Led from the University of Exeter by Professor Richard Overy of the History Department, the team includes, at Exeter, two postdoctoral research assistants (Dr Stephan Glienke and Dr Vanessa Chambers), and a graduate student (Mr Marc Wiggam). The Italian side of the programme is covered by Dr Claudia Baldoli at the University of Newcastle, and Professor Andrew Knapp, with his doctoral student Ms Lindsey Dodd, covers the French experience from the Department of French Studies. As Lindsey Dodd's co-supervisor, Dr Martin Parsons at the University Reading's Institute of Education has brought the expertise of Reading's Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies to bear on the project. The total value of the AHRC grant, awarded in June 2007, is just under £500,000, of which Reading's share is £128,000.

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