Allied Terror bombing of Germany

Agreed the most critical target was oil, but they call it the fog of war for a reason.

 

Does this guy actually read anything, or is he too busy accusing every man and his dog of war crimes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Campaign_of_World_War_II

 

I agree with you, but if so - why do we try to regulate what happened in war. The Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Genevea Convention of 1949, especially Artikel 51 of the additional protocol - is this all completely nonsense? utter uselessness? These regulations describes war actions, which are "allowed" although these actions were killing someone - sometimes also innocent people. These actions and their results are accepted. Some kind of strategies might be not completely clear if allowed or not (the moral bombing - "dehousing"?)... but I still believe that the "moral bombing" (and I am only discussing this here) is not compatible with the Hague rules. I doubt if the moral bombing is allowed under consideration of Art.1, 21, 23, 25 of the Hague war rules. I guess that the way the British treated "Bomber Harris" and how
Now you may answer again that the Germans massively violated these rules, so they can not expected that the others respected it. OK. But if we judge (after the war) that the German military strategie, especially on the Eastern Front ( and on other places too) includes war-crimes and we call them "war-crimes" - and we call the one who executed these actions "murderer". The NAZI-war of annihilation and extermination of the Jews are monstrous crimes without historical comparison. The question who started a special kind of fighting/strategie isn´t interesting at this point as well ...

 

Yes, we also have hindsight So terrible. But we can learn from it, and try to be better in the future. However Vietnam eg. proved not much was learned, how much Vietnamese civilians died. 1 Million?


@ Nordwind: But the Allies won, you can not except that they punish their own men. However they did in a few cases I believe. However glorifing people like Harris is a bit over the top imo.

 

I stated already that they DID target oil, please read. And what´s wrong with bringing up and clearing up crimes. You are not in favor of it - it seems ?? If you want to explain why, maybe I understand your attitude better than ?

 

Can "we" indeed?



We were discussing Allied bombing of Germany, not Vietnam.

 

From all that I've read and absorbed, I'm not an expert on Dresden or any of the carpet bombing tactics of Curtis LeMay or Bomber Harris, but judging from the literature of the time -- from Churchills' memoirs to others -- Willaim Shirer's and Albert Speer's among them -- it's quite obvious that we just can't judge the public -- ANY public-- 's mood at the time.

If you want to call it mass insanity, then do so, because that is kind of what it was.

By its end, WWII was a collective kind of meltdown of the human race.

Atrocity after atrocity -- can you imagine what it was like to open the newspaper on a daily basis? No "Whitney Houston's Daughter's Breathing Tube Removed" but "Japanese Forces in Malaya Surge Into Singapore; Great Loss of Life Feared" . . .

I mean, this was the bread and butter of the day.

I just finished a book by one of England's great codebreakers . . . the time was a time of just kill, kill, kill on all sides no matter how it was done, and the thing is that some people were just more systematic about it than others.

When we're talking about such large-scale slaughter as this, the 21st Century mind just can't wrap their minds around it, but for the peopl of the era this was daily life!

The erasure of Dresden no doubt was heartily applauded by millions . . . I mean, who can imagine that today? Clapping because a tenth of a million people were just burned to a crisp?

But we just can't imagine it, and that is our worst fault. I'm over a half a century old, and it doesn't matter -- I STILL can't imagine it.

So what these people -- all these people -- did, or had to do, or were forced to do, or were pressured to do -- doctors, lawyers. policemen, dog-walkers -- they did this in an unimaginable world.

Even as old as I am, having seen and heard the things that I have -- I just can't imagine this stuff. I read it; I watch it; it's right in front of me, my father is sleeping in his grave -- yet I just go "No, no, this didn't really happen. Someone is making all this stuff up." I swear, I really think that! Because to accept the truth is to accept Hell on Earth . . . and that is not a place I want to spend a lot of time in.

Whichever way you look at it, from whatever aspect you approach it, WWII was a catastrophe from EVERYONE'S viewpoint; I can say that there was not a single redeeming quality for WWII, except, if you're absolutely determined to put a positive spin on it, maybe we advanced in a technologically in a few areas.

But in general, for humanity, it was a GIANT LEAP BACKWARDS. There is just no other way to look at it, to me.

 

Well my view differs, I believe the term "learning from history" has merrit. And we are talking about bombing here right? Maybe we should talk about how to wage war in the future, too. And who is it in your pic?

 

Sorry, my huge mistake for just skimming instead of actually reading. I will try to pay attention more in the future.

 

I don't think he meant anything bad. But the war is something so huge, you can't just summarize even tiny sections of it -- it was just too vast. The scale was so enormous that singling out any particular section or slice in time, is fraught with a million pitfalls. Better just to rely on the testimonials of those who were there. But I think his intent was honest. Anything to do with this war, and the one before it, cannot be described in anything except cold, hard facts. Everything else is just harmless speculation . . .

 

Because you come along and state something that couldn't actually be known at the time.

It is in the Original USAF report on strategic bombing, referred to earlier. The US realised, it had no data whatsoever on the economical bottlenecks of the the Third reich. For all they knew, it could've been Iron Ore, Ball bearings, aluminium, rubber, transportation, dams, factories or a myriad of other things they should've been focusing on. They were literally shooting in the dark.

So they focused on what they thought was right. And along the way people had various ideas. And they tried them out. And tried to see if there was any greater or lesser effect.

Once again, you can't call the bombing war crimes, because the deaths of civilians wasn't intentional. Had the third Reich removed all civilians from Germany to, say, the Ukraine, and continued the production, the bombings would still have occurred.

And that is the crux of the matter.

Nazi Germany killed civilians (including their own) methodically, deliberately, purposefully. With the sole purpose, of killing those civilians. That, is a war crime.

Allied bombers killed civilians incidentally. As a side effect. A known side effect, true. But nonetheless, incidentally.

 

Good one! I myself enjoy facts!
+)

 

My friends, I know this might be out of line but perhaps we could identify what viwpoint we are coming from? I think it might be important to know if it's a Russian person speaking, or a French person . . . just to give things some kind of context -=) I myself am an American, born in India and being schooled in England, now a Canadian citizen living in Canada, having a half - Japanese son and married to an Israeii woman ^=^ with an American father who fought from Norfolkshire for the Mighty Eighth!!!

FYI to my knowledge, he bombed no civilians.

 

Just a friendly guy. Barely responsible for the murder of some 2-3 million.

Learning from history does have merit. But "we" ought not to confuse the issue with further side tracks; start a thread on that topic if that is what you wish to discuss.

Vietnam was a different war. With different attitudes.

 

Oh, I read it all right, and you did your best to give the impression the Allies only thought about oil targets as an afterthought.
Patently not so.
You seem obsessed with painting Allied bombing as a "crime", while ignoring the Luftwaffe's efforts.

 

Aerial tactics of the Vietnam conflict have little bearing on the topic at hand. Let's keep our focus folks.

 

a) Right, but I don´t think we need to discuss this - because no one in here would deny that (who is in his right mind). Also it´s not the topic - the topic is allied bombing as the mod rightfully commented above. So my Vietnam post was also OT, sorry.
b ) False, read the doctrine again, many people have posted about it here.

 

That is exactly my point: everyone was involved either directly in combat or supporting the Wehrmacht by producing goods needed to wage the war. There were no civilians and hence no civilian casaulties.

Regarding partisans: the Wehrmacht fought partisan movement by reprisals: massive executions of lined-up civilians: children, elderly and women. That is cowardish act of terror against civilian population. We should first deal with real crimes and then perhaps someone could point his finger towards Sir Harris.

 

Thanks for that quote.

He doesn't want to reply but I will answer this. That quote is from notorious Göbbels's Sportpallast Speech on 18 February 1943 calling for a total war. Since then, there were no civilians.

 

Lol. No worries. I was quoting a comment made in response to Gordon Huffs article on his anti-semitic website. People were claiming outrageous revisionist garbage.