No such warnings were issued to the Japanese and German populations that we were going to firebomb their cities.
"the United Stated showered the Japanese cities of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and 33 other potential targets with over 5 million leaflets warning civilians of the impending attack.":
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Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend":
http://www.damninteresting.com/ww2-america-warned-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-citizenshttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/6086189/World-War-2-Text-of-note-to-German-people.htmlhttp://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWstrategic.htmPlease scroll to (7) on the link above.
"We in Britain know quite enough about air raids. For ten months your Luftwaffe bombed us. First you bombed us by day. When we made this impossible, they came by night. Then you had a big fleet of bombers. Your airmen fought well. They bombed London for ninety-two nights running. They made heavy raids on Coventry, Plymouth, Liverpool, and other British cities. They did a lot of damage. Forty-three thousand British men, women and children lost their lives; Many of our most cherished historical buildings were destroyed.
You thought, and Goering promised you, that you would be safe from bombs. And indeed, during all that time we could only send over a small number of aircraft in return. But now it is just the other way. Now you send only a few aircraft against us. And we are bombing Germany heavily.
Why are we doing so? It is not revenge-though we do not forget Warsaw, Belgrade, Rotterdam, London, Plymouth and Coventry. We are bombing Germany, city by city, and even more terribly, in order to make it impossible for you to go on with the war. That is our object. We shall pursue it remorselessly.
City by city; Liibeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen; Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and the list will grow longer and longer. Let the Nazis drag you down to disaster with them if you will. That is for you to decide.
In fine weather we bomb you by night. Already 1000 bombers go to one town, like Cologne, and destroy a third of it in an hour's bombing. We know; we have the photographs. In cloudy weather we bomb your factories and shipyards by day. We have done that as far away as Danzig. We are coming by day and by night. No part of the Reich is safe.
I will speak frankly about whether we bomb single military targets or whole cities. Obviously we prefer to hit factories, shipyards, and railways. It damages Hitler's war machine most. But those people who work in these plants live close to them. Therefore,
we hit your houses and you. We regret the necessity for this. The workers of the Humboldt-Deutz, the Diesel-engine plant in Cologne, for instance-some of whom were killed on the night of May 30 last-must inevitably take the risk of war. Just as our merchant seamen who man ships which the U-boats (equipped with Humboldt-Deutz engines) would have tried to torpedo. Were not the aircraft workers, their wives and children, at Coventry just as much 'civilians' as the aircraft workers at Rostock and their families? But Hitler wanted it that way.
It is true that your defences inflict losses on our bombers. Your leaders try to comfort you by 'telling you that our losses are so heavy that we shall not be able to go on bombing you very much longer. Whoever believes that will be bitterly disappointed. I, who command the British bombers, will tell you what our losses are. Less than 5 per cent of the bombers which we send over Germany are lost. Such a percentage does very little even to check the constant increase ensured by the ever-increasing output of our own and the American factories.
America has only just entered the fight in Europe. The squadrons, forerunners of a whole air fleet, have arrived in England from the United States of America. Do you realize what it will mean to you when they bomb Germany also? In one American factory alone, the new Ford plant at Willow Run, Detroit, they are already turning out one four-engined bomber able to carry four tons of bombs to any part of the Reich every two hours. There are scores of other such factories in the United States of America. You cannot bomb those factories. Your submarines cannot even try to prevent those Atlantic bombers from getting here; for they fly across the Atlantic.
Soon we shall be coming every night and every day, rain, blow or snow-we and the Americans. I have just spent eight months in America, so I know exactly what is coming.
We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end, if you make it necessary for us to do so.
You cannot stop it, and you know it.
You have no chance. You could not defeat us in 1940, when we were almost unarmed and stood alone. Your leaders were crazy to attack Russia as well as America (but then your leaders are crazy; the whole world thinks so except Italy).
How can you hope to win now that we are getting even stronger, having both Russia and America as allies, while you are getting more and more exhausted ?
Remember this: no matter how far your armies march they can never get to England. They could not get here when we were unarmed. Whatever their victories, you will still have to settle the air war with us and America. You can never win that. But we are doing so already now.
One final thing: it is up to you to end the war and the bombing. You can overthrow the Nazis and make peace. It is not true that we plan a peace of revenge. That is a German propaganda lie. But we shall certainly make it impossible for any German Government to start a total war again. And is not that as necessary in your own interests as in ours?"
1942:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhmRrTsv55Y
