ABSTRACT
In response to the threatening German ground offensive, command of all Allied tactical forces in France was unified in April under the French Marshal Foch. When Britain announced its intention of withholding the Independent Bombing Force from Foch's command, to pursue some major strategic accomplishment by bombing the interior of Germany, the French response was decidedly negative. A closer coordination between tactical ground and strategic air forces thus being inevitable, the Inter-Allied Bombing Force was constituted, in the last weeks of the war, under the command of Trenchard, subordinate to Foch. The most "terroristic" pain-inflicting operations on the Allied side were thus only forestalled by the collapse of German ground forces. The advent of the Allied offensive sustained the German reluctance to inflict a maximum of destruction, and, moreover, engendered a new willingness to negotiate substantially more stringent restraints, including the banning of all city bombing.
