Tag: bombing

The Natural History of Destruction

Last Saturday, I discussed publishing my newest book, Eye of the Eagle. The venue was the Discovery Room at Swansea’s Central Library, which has become a focus of contemporary local studies and research for Swansea’s residents.

My research on World War Two goes back decades and is primarily concerned with the bombing of Welsh towns and cities and, of course, the maps and images used. All in answer to the questions of how and why.

There is still a massive interest in Swansea’s war years. Many of us lost family members, and many who experienced it are still eager to listen and share their memories. The continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza ensure images of destruction and suffering are still with us and not confined to history books. In setting the scene for the talk on my research, I mentioned a book that I feel strongly highlights the horrors of modern war and its direct impact on civilians (and particularly children). The book is ‘The Tree of Gernika’, written in 1938 by a journalist witnessing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War as they affected people in Spanish towns and cities. It’s as powerful a book today as it was then (Steer 1938). The author describes the reality of terror bombing and mass slaughter and destruction to a European audience looking on with horror and assuming it was something too horrible to be replicated across the Continent. Of course, we all know that what happened in Spain would be eclipsed hugely by mass attacks on civilians in the following years. The parallels with the Ukraine war are incredible. Despite the media hype about precision weapons, both the Russian and Israeli governments have concluded that terror attacks on vulnerable civilians are more effective and satisfying…particularly when their armies are finding it hard to get a decisive battlefield result . The same happened in 1918 in Germany,  Iraq in 1923,  Spain in 1936, and South Wales in 1941-43 (Saundby 1961; Alban 1994). You can’t blame Russians or Israelis for today…they took their lessons from the RAF, the United States air forces,  and the Luftwaffe.

The title of this post is challenging. Nowadays, Natural History is associated with an Attenborough TV programme. The expression was coined in 1944 by Solly Zuckerman, a renowned war scientist who, upon seeing the blasted remains of buildings and people in Aachen, planned to write an article on the nature of the destruction. On seeing the enormous damage to Cologne in 1945, Zuckerman decided he could never write a sufficiently eloquent piece covering the loss of life in the most awful of circumstances, and he quickly forgot about the idea (Zuckerman 1978: 322).

The phrase was resurrected in the controversial lectures of W G Sebald (One of the finest writers of the post-war years) in his famous book (Sebald 2004). The ethics and issues of mass murder of civilians resurfaced and have never gone away since, particularly after the release of ‘The Fire’, a haunting review of civilian deaths in wartime Germany (Friedrich 2006), and Derek Gregory’s review of Sebald’s work on the true nature of the air war against British and German civilians (Gregory 2011).

I concluded my talk on the bombing of Swansea with this…

“In twenty-five years of research on the bombing of Swansea and the other South Wales ports, I never saw a single piece of evidence that the deaths on the ground (or in the air), and destruction of the towns, resulted in military or strategic benefit for the Nazi government.”

Alban, J.R. 1994. The Three Nights’ Blitz: Select Contemporary Reports Relating to Swansea’s Air Raids of February 1941, Studies in Swansea’s History, 3 (Swansea: City of Swansea)

Friedrich, Jörg. 2006. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press)

Gregory, Derek. 2011. ‘“Doors into Nowhere”: Dead Cities and the Natural History of Destruction’, in Cultural Memories: The Geographical Point of View (New York: Springer), pp. 249–83

Saundby, Robert. 1961. Air Bombardment: The Story of Its Development (London: Chatto & Windus)

Sebald, W.G. 2004. On the Natural History of Destruction (Penguin Books)

Steer, G.L. 1938. The Tree of Gernika: A Field Study of Modern War (London: Hodder and Stoughton)

Zuckerman, Solly. 1978. From Apes to Warlords 1904-46 (London: Hamish Hamilton)

Reinterpreting the Swansea Blitz

My latest book will cover a bit about the history of the Luftwaffe intelligence of South Wales in the early years of World War Two. It’s been an interesting journey. The records have been mainly in German and it’s been great fun to work with old maps again as opposed to modern GIS systems which have taken up so much of my time looking at Cilfái.

Regardless of how much of a stupid idea it was, the German armed forces were ordered to prepare for an invasion of Britain in 1940. This they duly did in a thorough and orderly way. Some of the documents from that time have survived, although most were destroyed at the end of the War in 1945. I was able to get my hands on a series of Luftwaffe intelligence files and the portfolio of invasion plans of South Wales, which cover in detail why Swansea and Cardiff were bombed. They also show up the gaps in knowledge that often made bombing a waste of lives, money, and time. I can now explain the reasons behind the air attacks on Swansea and Cardiff, and what they were aiming for.

I’ll be doing a series of talks next month to launch the book. I’ll announce them here, but if you want to know more, you can always contact me.

Below: A German military information pack covering South Wales from 1941.

Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941

My new book on the history of the Blitz bombing of Swansea and the other South Wales ports is now available from me.

This is the second edition of Eye of the Eagle, the first edition was published in 1993!

I’ve completely rewritten the history based on years of research in German Air Force sources and I’ve looked at the other ports the Luftwaffe attacked in 1940 and 1941. Over the years I’ve collected a large range of intelligence materials which are rarely seen because they were often destroyed at the end of the war.

In this history I have concentrated on Luftwaffe intelligence maps, photographs and other sources to give the real reasons why Swansea and the other ports were attacked and dispell some of the rumours from the past. I’ve also looked at the U-boat campaign against Swansea and Cardiff and included translations of key German war diaries and Luftwaffe intelligence records. I’ve described in detail the U-boat mining of the Scarweather lightship and the U-boat attack on Swansea.

Intelligence records are often difficult to understand so I’ve added a detailed examination of how photographs were taken in the preparation for invasion and the Blitz attacks on the ports.

I’ve made this book a big A4 size to take full advantage of the many maps and images that show Swansea and the ports as seen from the German point of view. Over 130 illustrations, many in colour.

Chapters: 1. Understanding Intelligence and Reconnaissance (The Munich Crisis, The decision to bomb Swansea, the bombs and the aftermath as seen by the Luftwaffe cameramen), 2. The history of the South Wales ports between 1933 and 1941 (The ports as targets, how they were selected, and how they fought their war). 3. Reconnaissance over Wales (the Units and aircraft), Detailed illustrated chapters on 4. Newport, 5. Cardiff, 6. Penarth, 7. Barry, 8. Port Talbot, 9. Llandarcy Oil Refineries, 10. Briton Ferry, and 11. Swansea, With Annexes on the U-boat mining of the Scarweather Lightship, Descriptions of the Luftwaffe intelligence records, and other information on the bombs that were dropped on the ports.

Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941, Nigel A. Robins, Size: A4, Paperback, 170 pages. Price £16.99.

Available from Nyddfwch Publishing, Swansea, or contact the author on nrcontact30@gmail.com. Or you can contact me here.

Available online in mid May.

#SwanseaHistory, #CardiffHistory, #Luftwaffe, #SwanseaBlitz, #CardiffBlitz, #U-boats, #PortTalbotHistory, #Barry, #Great WesternRailway, #MilitaryIntelligence, #LandscapeHistory