Nope, I’m just saying that fighting a war in which you stop attacking as soon as you might hurt anyone or do any damage is dumb. If you fight like that, you’ll lose and your enemy (in this case a particularly foul and nasty regime that is a blight upon human history) would win. Killing lots of people is bad, but the alternative was much worse.
Incidentally, you’re badly misled if you think an aircraft at 20,000 ft over a burning city can tell when the fires are out of control. That’s pretty much impossible even with modern sensors, let alone the Mk.1 eyeball.
I Quite the words of Flight Leieutenant V Wood. 12 Squadron. on the Hamburg raid of july 24/25 1943 quoted again out of WORLD WAR 2. “The sight approaching hamburg was fantastic. It was as if a black swathe had been cut through a sea of light and flashes.”
Yes, I must agree with you that it was a must for the Allies but it is still horribal what happend in Dresten, Hamburg, Berlin and all the other citys in Germany.
Henk
Imagine the state of British cities had the Luftwaffer had the capacity of the allied Airforces in 1940-42, Coventry is a good example of targeting of civillians or look back prior to WW2 and see what happened to Guernica in Spain. The V weapons were directed at the civillian population of London, nasty thing war of course all this unplesentness could have been avoided by Hitler not starting one.
History is something that bites you in the ass when you did something wrong to someone else. The Treaty of Versailles was not justified. It was totaly wrong and it was Brittan and France who said it was Germany who started the war witch was bull. They brought Germany to its knees witch was also wrong and them Hitler gave them a bit of pay back and in the prosses got a bit of his own payback at the end of the war. Just look at history at it pops up every time.
It was wrong what happend to the Jews and the slaves and Russians, but the French and UK got a bit of pay back. The UK are a country who can be blaimed for big time bull in the world in history but it is over and gone but what I am trying to say is that history repeat it self.
Henk
OK, so it was actually Austria-Hungary, a German ally. Germany enthusiastically joined the war by invading uninvolved countries like Belgium and acted as an Austro-Hungarian ally throughout. For the purposes of the peace treaty, it is not unreasonable to treat Germanly like it started the war.
Absolutely. Look what happened to Carthage after the third Punic war, and how it rose again afterwards. Or rather, it didn’t at all. Look at Austria-Hungary after WW1 - the remaining Austrian state was small, harmless, and hasn’t caused trouble since.
Once the mistake was made of declaring an armistice before the complete destruction of the German field armies in WW1 (which in turn meant that politicians and army commanders could make spurious claims they hadn’t lost when in reality the German Army was days away from total collapse), any treaty to end the war was in deep trouble. Personally, I think the only way for WW2 to have been avoided at Versailles would be for a much harsher version of the ToV. This would have to break up Germany into multiple states (and remember German unification was a VERY new concept at the start of WW1) and most importantly ensure that Prussia had next to no industry. I cannot think of a situation where the alternative (extremely lenient terms) has been tried successfully after a major war, and the lack of an obvious and crushing military victory rules out the middle options as practical (although the ToV was a middle option and failed catastrophically).
Well, if you’re totting up scores the UK will still come out better than most what with spreading little concepts like democracy about… IIRC 5 of the 7 countries to remain democratic throughout the 20th century were at one time British colonies, and all subsequent democracies can be traced to these. And that’s just for starters (not that I want to continue what will obviously become a circular arguament).
We just went over this ground in October. I’ll repeat what I did then:
I see no problem with the fact that the raid was simply meant to kill as many people- military and civilians as possible plus destroy as many structures as possible. Loss of human life is always regretable but it was unrestricted warfare.
Had the Luftwaffe enjoyed a long-range bomber force they would have gladly instigated the same raid on England earlier in the war.
It is lame to once again attempt to project today’s morality or social conscience into the past but unfortunately that’s what lots of folks do. They have no feel for what the mood was anywhere during the war and that it was seen as a “win at any cost to stop Hitler.”
By the same token when V-1s and larger V-2s rained down on the civilians of Holland, Belgium and England how “rude” was that? Apart from the reasonable treatment of each others POWs and not employing bio/chemical agents it was no holds barred with the Germans. Modern people keep attempting to read some rules and morality into a global war. It’s absurd.
Then we must consider the Tokyo napalm raids that killed many more civilians than were killed in Dresden. Is that too something “illegal?”
If someone desires to view events of the war through the distortion of the concept that civilians are somehow magically immune to injury in some fantasy rules of war that never existed save for some peoples’ minds, they have failed to immerse themselves in history.
The German war industry began dispersing early on when Allied air attacks began gutting normal factory complexes. It’s real easy to target a huge facility that builds Messerschmitts in ONE location. Break that manufacturing system into several parts and place them in clandestined locales that actually increased production after dispersion, and you might as well bomb hell out of everything just to make sure you got the intended target.
This may not apply to Dresden but you get the idea. As we bombed the easily targetable war materiel facilities the Germans dispersed them and production increased!
On March 9, 1945 Lemay began the concerted fire bombing of Japanese cities. Why? Because Jap civvies were makeing war products in their dispesed facilities in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. These raids were effective in that before the next round of napalm attacks leaflets wee dropped waring of the fact and 8.5 million fled to the country to escape frying. With them in out of the urban areas war production nose dived.
And even with that they didn’t surrender but prepared a hellatious defensive network of Kyushu and Hokkaido that was to be “last man” mentality.
The Dresden raid was done to please the Russians since they continually complained that they were suffering higher casualties relative to the Allies. Their revengful tactics had a name. It was called “terrorisation.” GB was pressured by the Russians to wreak havoc amongst the German civilians.
The initial concept plan for Dresden was not instigated by Harris himself at all. It came from higher up. Can’t you picture Churchill being lobbied by Stalin to step up to the plate and “go Russian” on those crazy Nazis?
General Antonov made three specific requests for Allied assistance to the Russians:
a. To speed up the advance of the Allied troops on the Western Front, for which the present situation is very favorable: (1) To defeat the Germans on the Eastern Front. (2) To defeat the German groupings which have advanced into the Ardennes. (3) The weakening of the German forces in the West in connection with the shifting of their reserves to the East (It is desirable to begin the advance during the first half of February).
b. By air action on communications hinder the enemy from carrying out the shifting of his troops to the East from the Western Front, from Norway, and from Italy (In particular, to paralyze the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig).
c. Not permit the enemy to remove his forces from Italy
The Viet Cong used our dislike for seeing innocent civilians injured in Vietnam. I saw daily how they exploited and used them as chattel to sucker us into fights. They had absolutely no conscience about ending their lives so they could get a response from us. This was not isolated but was done on an ongoing, daily basis.
Non-combatants have always been in harm’s way in warfare. They’ve been exploited by either side as they saw fit to gain advantages over their enemy. I say non-combatants and not innocents because many of the adults were engaged in war materiel production. They were contributing to the war effort.
This delusion that in January 1945 the war was all but over is hogwash. Hitler had just pulled off the Ardennes Offensive and we still hadn’t landed on Iwo Jima or Okinawa that produced the most horriffic blood letting yet. The kamikazes were doing their thing in the Pacific and more German jets were hammering Allied bombers.
We only know that the war was “almost” over in a relative sense because we’re sitting on our butts 60 here years later. No one knew how long the carnage would go on back then. This is why it is flawed to second guess “what they shoulda done was…”
We never knew then whether our enemies would use bio-chemical warfare as a last ditch effort. It’s so easy to look back 60 years and conclude that wasn’t a factor worth considering. Believe me it was considered by fighting men in early 1945.
I don’t see anyone justifying the Nazi depoyment of V-1 and V-2 rockets that were made ONLY to kill civilians. I don’t see anyone imagining that the Germans wouldn’t have unleashed vicious bombing attacks on civilians had they possessed a substantial force of heavy bombers either. So why does it makes sense in the turmoil of times and fog of war that this one event was more evil than any other? The Brits were in their 6TH YEAR of eating Nazi crap and they were damned tired of it! Does anyone really believe that some bleating voice of tempering military actions would have been listened to then?
Dresden was the 7th largest Geman city with primary importance as a communications center. It was, in February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone. Among these were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany’s most important optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.), gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler). Specific military installations in Dresden in February 1945 included barracks and hutted camps and at least one munitions storage depot.
The Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex was a major transportation crossroads logistically involved in the movement of German troops.
Here’s the cities by population with the total bomb tonnage expended for the entire war:
Berlin- 4,339,000 67,607.6 tons, Hamberg- 1,129,000 38,687.6 tons,
Munich- 841,000 27,110.9 tons, Cologne 772,000 44,923.2 tons, Leipzig- 707,000 11,616.4 tons, Essen- 667,000 37,938.0 tons, Dresden- 642,000 7,100.5 tons.
The Russians pressured the other Allies for this raid. It’s in the books. As a target of interest this came from ABOVE Harris. Harris and company only laid out the tactics.
There are no actual rules of war. Yes politicians may sit around and debate idealistic goals that combatants should strive for in the next war but when that conflict comes the rules mean nothing. All that exists is the collective moral code in practice by a given society at a given time.
This moral code may be something such as American and British airmen not strafing enemy pilots in their parachutes. And while this was not widespread in the Japanese Imperical Navy the Army practiced it often. Same goes for POW issues. While the Japs starved, beheaded, tortured and used them as slave labor, their prisoners, the western Allies treated theirs splendidly. The Japanese had no qualms about using biological and chemical weapons on a daily basis for 10 years in China. I dare say the British would not see that as cricket and follow suit.
I say this without malice or prejudice- please believe it from one who experienced it, there are no rules in war. There is only an accounting in the aftermath. If the city had been Liverpool and the Nazis were the victors would it be viewed the same? If the city was Manilla and the Japanese had won would they have wrung their hands? At any rate one can easily be clinical and dissect complex events in detached hindsight to rationalize any end they desire.
War crimes trials were in one sense to segregate torture, starvation, medical experimentation, perversion, mutilation, forced labor and such from an 88 mm artillery barrage that killed many civilians in a French village or bombing mission misses.
The fact that the aforementioned acts are commited at a very personal level often with a resulting euphoric satisfaction on the part of the perpetrator separates them from aerial bombing, artillery attacks or naval rifle bombardment.
There could be a case for the persecution of air-to-ground attack as a whole. What could be less fair? Why those new fangled aeroplanes come outta the heavens like wrathful angels killing poor soldiers on the ground without warning! The old fogies that dictate what the next conflict’s fighting will be like (and are always wrong) could have lobbied that aerial warfare is abominal given the amount of destruction that can be unleashed upon the earth sometimes killing non-combatants.
I see this silly-azzed attempt for people of today to 2nd guess earlier generations and project morals in hindsight and never understand why that whole scenario is totally flawed.
Twitch mate, have you been on the angry pills tonight? 
pdf27 I do not want to fight you. All that I am saying is (just think about this for a second) the whole reason WW2 broke out was because of ToV that was so harsh. If it was even harsher the Germans would have waited untill they could get there revenge. I say if the Allies just showed some goodness after WW1 and not being nasty towards Germany and blameing them for everything the sutuation would not have been so bad. The US presidant Wilson said that the UK and France should not hate Germany but try to help them out of the sittuation they were in. I am not saying that they should not have punnished Germany but they should just should have tryed to help Germany.
I am not saying that Germany was right, but the ToV just made the Hate towards the UK and France worse and coused Hitler to come to power. After WW2 the Allies (UK, France and US) helped Germany to become a great nation it is today. They did not do that after WW1 and thus coused WW2.
Dresden was terrable but thus needed from the side of the Allies.
What do you think? Right or wrong?
Henk
The problem with Versailles was that it was harsh enough to prevent the formation of a stable, democratic government, while being lenient enough to leave Germany intact and physically capable of fighting a major war. Furthermore, the occupation was brief and limited in area.
The point you’re missing is that while a more lenient treaty may well have prevented the conditions that caused a militant Germany to rise again, that wasn’t guaranteed. Germany could hardly be allowed to hang on to the territorial gains they made at Brest-Litovsk, so even a very lenient treaty would allow the revanchists like Hitler to claim that Germany had been robbed of territory at Versailles.
While the German armies had been comprehensively crushed in the battles of the last hundred days of WW1, Germany proper was never invaded so it didn’t feel all that much like a defeat. Couple these two factors and you have a major potential problem for any postwar government.
The point I’m trying to make is that the “harsh” option missed at Versailles was quite probably the best. That would be to split Germany into the several smaller states that it had been in prior to Bismarck - and remember that it had only been a unified state for something like 50 years prior to the outbreak of WW1.
This would remove the single biggest obstacle to peace in the inter-war years - the fact that the most industrially powerful nation in Europe felt wronged and was nursing a grudge. With Germany split another country (most likely the UK) would fill this role. Having the UK as hegemon in Europe has historically been rather a good thing as the UK has very clearly defined borders and few interests in Europe beyond ensuring no other power challenges it as hegemon (in modern terms no other collection of nations in europe becomes much more powerful) and it has reasonably free access to markets.
Incidentally, I’d suggest reading a bit about the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It explains a great deal about why Germany was treated so harshly at Versailles, because when they themselves were victorious over the Russians they forced the Russians to sign a very punitive treaty indeed - arguably much more so than Versailles. This may well have been decisive in limiting the success of the Wilsonian ideas at Versailles.
I would argue that the opposite was the case. Germany was utterly crushed in WW2, and the last vestiges of the previous political system exterminated. It was divided in two for 45 years, and all power was vested in the armies of the occupying powers for several years (IIRC the allied military occupation was to last until 1995 by treaty, although this may have been amended with the fall of the Berlin wall). Furthermore - and IMHO most critically of all - there was no question either that Germany had been defeated or of Germany having a chance at becoming the most powerful industrially in Europe. The Soviet Union and United States both massively exceeded the German capacity, and both were European powers. Finally, the industrial heartland of the Ruhr was seperated from the militant area (Prussia) by the Iron Curtain. I think there is a very good case to be made that the peace made after WW2 was in fact closer to my “harsh” option for the ToV than the actual ToV.
Ok, wait there for a second. What I am trying to say is that the ToV was right when it came to the Military part of Germany but economicaly and socialy no. So I am just saying that economicaly was the ToV wrong and by taking away areas wich was Germanys before the war. Taking away the areas that was ocupied was right.
Germany was mad because they did not have a economic and that their goverment after the war was worth nothing for them and the hate from the UK and Franch.
Henk
1000yardstare- not angry at all. It’s just silly to keep hearing people in the present continually apply modern-day logic to events of the past armed illegally with what we all know now. The stupid and, for many years, annual hand wringing and woulda/coulda/shoulda tripe from the cry babies about Hiroshima/Nagaaski is what I’ve heard all my life. Who cared in 1986, or 1979 or 2003 what anyone thought the Americans SHOULDA done about Japanese-Americans and Japanese perminent residents in the US.
It is just a sickening dirge to hear modern rhetoric spouting from people who must have evolved into perfection since they can accurately project back in time their values and COULDA fixed everything.
There’s a difference to discussing a “what if” scenario if the participants in a discussion agree on the modified perameters and carry out alternate possibilities and quite another to stand 20, 30 , 40 , 50, 60 years hence and sanctimoniously regurgitate some post modern dogma that happens to prevail at the time.
Decisions of those gone before us should be respected in the context they were made with the knowledge possessed at those times. To retro-interject today’s logic, values and knowledge after the fact is folly since we use prejudices known and subconscious to taint our hindsight projections.
“They shoulda flanked 'em and started the battle with about 50 more tanks,” is a good fictional example of the kind of rubbish people come up with. Well DUH!!! It’s real easy to sit on your ass 63 years later and make pot shot assessments of combat personnel in history.
It is exactly like a future retard in 2068 saying something like, “they shoulda done this or that in the 2013 incident.” Sorry but we’re not privvy to future facts now nor will be be in 2013 when our fictional “something” occurs so we’ll just have to carry on with our best deductive reasoning and rationale as did out ancestors.
I’ve been listening to the Monday morning quarterbacks since the 1960s on the subject of assorted incidents, events and battles of WW 2 and I am simply sick of these swaggering History Nazis who attempt to assert a perceived moral superiority by commenting on what they WOULDA done on Tarawa, COULDA done at Ploesti or SHOULDA done at Iwo Jima.
I defy anyone to prove that the previously listed war materiale production facilities and other targets of interest we NOT located in Dresden. Who dares six decades later to attempt to change or ignore Allied target value perameters that existed at the time? The burden is on the whiners this time.
It’s one thing to sit 62 years hence and say “yeah, Dresden was regretable. Wish they wouldn’t have done that,” and quite another to pretend to know the inner thoughts of all those involved in the decision-making process and conclude that they collectively sat in a sadistic “Muaaahahahaha! Let’s see how bad we can torture Jerry.”
I’m with Twitch on this one
Same here, Twitch. It was mainly an observation on several of your posts that were posted within a short space of time.
I am german, and i sometimes feel angry for what they did to our cities, but then again i think what we did to them, and finally i look at today and see the Queen visiting the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden, (its a church bombed),
AND GUESS WHAT: The golden Cross on top of it is made by someone whos Grandfather has bombed this town!
Then i see that there is forgiving between our countrys, both want to help filling the wounds the war riped up!
Any time i think of this i feel glad and proud to be allowed to live in a time of
Understanding and Friendship between our countries.
Lets just all avoid such to ever happen again.
Well then, my english and American friends, lets drink on the future!
I’ll drink to that, in fact I’ll drink to anything !
As an off-topic reply:
…The foregoing historical analysis establishes the following definitive answers to the recurring questions concerning the February 1945 bombings of Dresden by Allied strategic air forces:
a. Dresden was a legitimate military target.
b. Strategic objectives, of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians, underlay the bombings of Dresden.
c. The Russians requested that the Dresden area be bombed by Allied air forces.
d. The Supreme Allied Commander, his Deputy Supreme Commander, and the key British and American operational air authorities recommended and ordered the bombing of Dresden.
e. The Russians were officially informed by the Allies concerning the intended date of and the forces to be committed to the bombing of Dresden.
f. The RAF Bomber Command employed 772 heavy bombers, 1477.7 tons of high explosive and 1181.6 tons of incendiary bombs, and American Eighth Air Force employed a total of 527 heavy bombers, 953.3 tons of high explosive and 294.3 tons of incendiary bombs, in the 14-15 February bombings of Dresden.
g. The specific target objectives in the Dresden bombings were, for the RAF Bomber Command, the Dresden city area, including industrial plants, communications, military installations, and for the American Eighth Air Force, the Dresden Marshalling Yards and railway facilities.
h. The immediate and actual consequences of the Dresden bombings were destruction or severe damage to at least 23 per cent of the city’s industrial buildings; severe damage to at least 56 per cent of the city’s non-industrial buildings (exclusive of dwellings); destruction or severe damage to at least 50 percent of the residential units in the city’s non-industrial buildings (exclusive of dwellings); destruction or severe damage to at least 50 percent of the residential units in the city, and at least some damage to 80 per cent of the city’s dwellings; the total disruption of the city as a major communications center, in consequence of destruction and damage inflicted on its railway facilities; and death to probably 25,000 persons and serious injury to probably 30,000 others, virtually all of these casualties being the result of the RAF area raid.
i. The Dresden bombings were in no way a deviation from established bombing policies set forth in official bombing directives.
j. The specific forces and means employed in the Dresden bombings were in keeping with the forces and means employed by the Allies in other aerial attacks on comparable targets in Germany.
k. The Dresden bombings achieved the strategic objectives that underlay the attack and were of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians.
Source: https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
The bombing of Dresden was excessive or at the very least regrettable but I doubt that the bombing was a war crime.
Also:
In examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property, as the Conventions then in force dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war.
Source: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList200/42F64C9A4212EA07C1256B66005C0BF1
Unfortunately Dani, this is only “is one part of the truth”. 25 000 killed and 30 000 injured in Dresden - this is simple nonsense. The majorities of the sources (can itself find) assert that the number was not less than 135 000. Germans themselves call terrible number 250 000. Assume that this was exaggeration, but in any event of those be killeden it is in no way not less than 100 000. You simply use the American- British sources, where this question either is quieted, or seriously it is understated. In Europe there is an opinion that of 13-14 feb 1945 was the present Holocaust of inhabitants.
Here for example that writes Nikolai fon Kreytor in his book the "destruction of Dresden(http://libereya.ru/public/drezden.html)
…Harvest death assembled rich. The dimensions of the Dresden “Holocaust” - 250 thousand lives, taken away in limits of 14 it is hour. This more than triply exceeds in number of victims of Hiroshima.
Is extremely interesting, although misty, the book of the American of the German origin of Kurt Wonnegut(http://www.lib.ru/INOFANT/WONNEGUT/bojnya.txt). “Slaughter house is number five, or a crusade of children”.
There are many British and American “explanations of the destruction of Dresden”.
1.This was important strategic object.
Foolish explanation, because up to 1945 in Dresden fell not one bomb of allies. Someone can believe, that until 13 February 1945 union aviation not “noted important strategic object”.
2. This was the vengeance of Britons for Coventry and London. This is plausible, but taking into account that in Coventry by victims Fau-1,2 of steel 380 (!) men and in London for entire war perished it seems about 20 000. Very strange it is necessary to say in Englishmen a feeling of validity.
3. the most accurate reason. It consists in the fact that in the war with Germany allies employed any means. The central objective of the mass bombings of German and Japanese it was municipal maximally to demoralize and to destroy a much more citizen in order “to break the will to resist” as they they thought. However, me seems this the favorite method of Nazis.
I think, Dani that if the Nuremberg tribunal would be actually the law court above war criminals WW2, and not of pitiful by parody to the justice of necessary for the justification of the personal crimes of conquerors, then all guilties would not be placed in the court room.
Umm… the 250,000 figure comes from Goebbels’ wartime propaganda figures. He added a zero to inflate the numbers in an attempt to stiffen German resolve. The 135,000 figure is from David Irving, a historian so accurate he is currently residing in an Austrian jail as a result of something he wrote (and even he has recently retracted these numbers as an overestimate).
I suggest before coming on the interweb and spouting off rubbish you do a bit more reading in future. Frederick Taylor’s book ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060006765/002-7557037-8636828?v=glance&n=283155 ) for instance is excellent.
errmmmm. Not too fussed about how many people died. The number of deaths does not indicate a war crime in itself.
Dresden was a legitimate target of war and was hit with what was available AT THE TIME. Modern day smart bombs that destroys the house but not the squirrel sitting in the tree next to it are all well and good but they weren’t available at the time. Like wise the firestorm aftermath of the bombing raid is attributable as much to poor fire planning/fighting by the Germans as it is to the bombs dropped on the city.
It is also reported that the fire fighters achieved almost super human feats in rescueing so many people.
One of the things often said about Dresden is that it was a centre of various arts and history, unfortunatly so were are lot of places during ww2. Just because Dresden suffered more doesn’t make it anymore significant for these artifacts. Likewise the refugees that were present do not justify the hand wringing. Refugees were omnipresent during WW2.
And whilst it does not in any way really alter the view point of war crime/not war crime, does anyone here know where Coventry is? Sorry, but I can’t feel that sorry for a country and people who voted for/allowed/supported/carried out such terrible crimes against so many other countries and peoples.