Blitz!

This is coolbert:

 

"We had to destroy the village to save it!" - - from the Vietnam War.

Also the French from the era of World War Two [WW2] large portions of the landscape and infrastructure laid waste by ALLIED FORCES, casualties among the civilian population astronomical, and all in the effort to liberate the country from Nazi rule and occupation!!

Thanks to the article from the BBC:

1. "D-Day anniversary: France's forgotten Blitz"

The French rail system in that month prior to the Normandy invasion [6 June] subjected to intense and sustained bombardment by the allied air forces. Marshaling yards, train depots, bridges, the track system itself subjected to attack by the massed heavy and medium bomber forces of the RAF and USAAF.

"It has been a taboo subject in France for 70 years but in his D-Day commemoration speech on 6 June, President Francois Hollande will pay tribute to the terrible civilian casualties suffered by the French due to Allied bombing up to and during the liberation of France."

Allied military planners fully aware the bombardment would kill, wound or maim as many as 160,00 French civilians in the process.

"Historians believe Allied bombardments killed almost as many French people as German bombs killed Britons during the Blitz [that German aerial bombardment of English cities during WW2]."

2. "The War on the Rails Rommel could not be allowed to mass his forces at Normandy."

"Eisenhower took a gamble—and won. US and British bomber attacks on German strategic targets. ... Divert these airplanes to strike railways and bridges in occupied but allied France. ... Accept in the process up to 160,000 French casualties. ... That, in the spring of 1944, was what Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, chose to do."

German forces not able to deploy or move their units in an expeditious manner in response to the Normandy invasion, the rail system of France destroyed to such an extent to be more or less inoperable.

3. That bombardment the idea of Baron Zuckerman. A English operational research analyst from that era of WW2.

"Sir Solly Zuckerman, Baron Zuckerman . . . was a British public servant, zoologist and operational research pioneer."

"Zuckerman's suggestion, made when he was Scientific Director of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU), and accepted by Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder and Supreme Allied Commander U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the lead-up to the Normandy landings, that the Allies concentrate on disrupting the German-controlled French transportation system through heavy aerial bombing of rail lines and marshaling yards, was officially called the Transportation Plan"

The "Transportation Plan" with hindsight can be seen as COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE! So badly damaged was the French rail system that the allied forces after the break-out from Normandy became too reliant on inefficient truck transport for the massive logistical effort that confronted them.

French trains and railroads were not longer use-able, at a time when most needed. Train transport nine to ten times more efficient in moving cargo [logistics] than truck traffic.

coolbert.