I know the US focused on military targets when bombing in Europe, so is their evidence that the US's bombing campaigns were more successful than Britain's, for example?
It depends on what (and who) you mean by resolve. For example, the bombing campaign against Japan, and I include the atomic bombs here, certainly broke the emperor's resolve - he surrendered over the opposition of many in the IJN and IJA, some of whom attempted a coup to prevent his announcement to the public. It's harder to assess how the populace was affected in the absence of survey data, but look at the population of Tokyo, for example: it was about 6.8 million at the start of the war and had fallen to around 2.8 million at the war's end. Clearly, many people fled (or were forced out), and there was a marked drop in military production (see Harrison, ed., The Economics of World War 2). However, it's also possible to attribute some of that lost production to other factors, especially the US submarine and air-dropped mining campaing against Japanese merchant shipping.
In Germany, much of the so-called precision bombing done by the US was ineffective. The Germans just moved or buried factories. There were a couple of critical successes, though, especially attacks on synthetic oil production late in the war. (see the US Strategic Bombing Survey for more on this - http://www.usaaf.net/surveys/eto/ebs11.htm).
I wish had better data to answer the first part of your question, especially re: Europe. There's little indication, that I've seen at least, that "area" bombing of cities was particularly effective in breaking civilian resolve. Certainly it did not overcome the combination of German loyalty or obedience to Hitler and the carrot-and-stick of the Nazi Party apparatus, which controlled both the security forces of the SD and Gestapo and welfare and aid organizations like the NSV - see Weinberg, A World at Arms, p.479 and 580.
edited- typos
The bombing was very innacurate, and Albert Speer did some astonishing work on mitigating its effects - moving factories underground, putting up temporary housing very fast etc (with a lot of help from slave labour)
That said, it did have an important effect on the war, in that it forced Germany to reallocate resources that could have been used on the Eastern front - remember that before the Invasion of Italy in 1943, there were only Soviet forces fighting against the Nazis in Europe. Every artillery piece or Luftwaffe plane attacking American or British planes was not being used at Stalingrad, or Kursk or the Vistula etc. Wikipedia cites 15,000 aircraft detroyed fighting the bombers
I believe a similar effect happened in Japan after the Doolittle raid
Empirically speaking, Germany reached it's peak output (GDP) during the height of the bombing campaign in 1944. Now the Reich did not not mobilize the full war economy till Speer, and maybe only after Goebbels Feb 43 speech in Sportzplatz Berlin did they mobilise their economy fully so their peak production in 44 was a result of total mobilisation.
The bombing did have it's effect, but it did not cripple the German economy.
I am literally returning home from an undergraduate class on this topic. Our discussion focused on a price by Galving (I'll edit at home with more details). He discusses justifications for area bombing, and his ideas basically acknowledge that the US precision bombing achieved much greater results in '44 and '45 than British area bombing had done at any time previously in Europe. Area bombing failed to meet any of its justifications in ways that precision bombing did not meet to a greater extent and with less collateral damage. Area bombing did not have to be used to damage German infrastructure, nor pull equipment and men away from the front, nor demoralise their forces, nor absorb civilian manpower that could be used elsewhere (citation from Galving to come when I get home).
It is the thesis of Richard Overy's excellent book that recently came out, The Bombing War that area bombing or bombing of cities did little to the war. The British appear to have come to that conclusion shortly after the war, after reviewing their operations and interviewing German officers:
A British intelligence assessment, ‘Factors in Germany's Defeat', produced by 17 May, included an interrogation with Adolf Galland, who ranked the offensive against transport, then oil, then the air force as the most decisive. In mid-June a full report of interrogation extracts was produced by the director of American Air Force Intelligence at SHAEF, George MacDonald. They also showed that the three critical targets were considered to be oil facilities (‘The general opinion of the German leaders is that the attack on synthetic oil was the decisive factor'), communications (‘brought about the final disruption of the German war effort'), and the German Air Force - achieved through attacks on aircraft production, airfields and combat attrition. Goring thought the collapse of oil supply to be the single most critical factor - ‘without fuel, nobody can conduct a war' - while Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister for Armaments and War Production, ranked communications at the top of the list of critical targets. Erhard Milch, Goring's deputy at the Air Ministry, ranked ‘synthetic oil plants and railway communications' together. On area bombing the German judgement was largely negative. It did not ‘cause the collapse of the German people' and was regarded, according to MacDonald, as ‘the least important of the major target complexes'. When Goring was asked in one of his first interrogations on 10 May whether precision or area bombing was more effective in Germany's defeat, he replied: ‘The precision bombing, because it was decisive. Destroyed cities could be evacuated but destroyed industry was difficult to replace.'
Ok, framing done, here's a guide to help you answer your question. I would like to begin by adressing some of the problems raised by the idea that raids were not sufficiently targeted and that this allowed German GDP to peak despite the bombing. I would also like to address the idea that it had a positive, uniting effect on Germans late in the war.
First, by 1944, British and Americans raids were complimentary, hence why it was called the combined bomber offensive
Second, as I've mentioned elsewhere, although German production peaked in July 1944, the bombing of Germany peaked afterwards[1]. Arguments about production increasing despite bombing do not take into account the late mobilisation of German industry and the gradual increase in bombing intensity. The combined offensive, which began in 1943, took some time to come together in a co-ordinated way. Take, for example, this 1943 USAAF Report which makes very specific conclusions about tactics, objectives, and the way ahead, compared to this one from 1944, where the USAAF noted that German production of steel had increased significantly due to the occupation of Western Europe in 1940, but that extensive bombing of the Ruhr had cripped in by late 1944. Of note is the mention that air-raid alarms caused more damage to the industry that the actual bombing, at least for early 1944, meaning that the Germans certainly did take it seriously and were willing to incur significant costs to avoid the bombing.
An aside - As for British vice American tactics, although it was a combined offensive, the USAAF did come out with a striking piece of intellectual honesty when it admitted that "Most of the damage inflicted on these metal works came from area bombing by the RAF rather than from precision attacks." (p.204).
[1] Ian Kershaw, The End, 79.
First post of a series, more to follow.
Thomas Searle argues that the US specifically targeted Japanese civilians in order to eliminate a population of skilled workers. It definitely makes for a quick and interesting read which you can find here.
Can someone please speak about the bombing of Dresden and its aftermath as it relates to this topic?
Here are some thoughts to frame the discussion, more orecise answers to follow.
Well, let's begin by acknowledging that the scholarship is divided on this one. So when we say "it is said," let's go ahead and source that.
Second, let's look at development of bombing throughout the war - neither the British nor the Americans kept to strictly-held doctrine throughout the campaigns.
Third, let's frame our criteria properly. When we start talking about whether it was was an "efficient" use of resources, let's frame that in the time period and place. Where, exactly, would those resources have otherwise gone?
Last, can someone here please start actually referencing actual histories?