Bombing of Dresden--and for what?

Most of the civilians who died didn't support the nazi regime actively. This is another prejudice. Only a relatively small percentage was member of the NSDAP.

Because of the above mentioned explanation it was a war crime.

Because the Allies themselves had devasteted german cities with their bombers and so it would have been too obvious. I think the Allies wanted to prevent international protests (I know there were international protests e.g. after the bombing of Cologne).

How can I deny this?

Maybe, we will never know. This is an interesting topic for an extra thread. But I think Hitler had other goals with London/England than to destroy it. One day there was a documentation on TV examining scenarios what could have happened if Germany had won the Battle for Britain. These scenarios were no pure fiction but based on some rules which have been fixed by Hitler before the war. For every country there was such a plan...

I never told that. Please quote, but you will not find it.

Ah, you admit the war crimes, what a progress.
If you compare the US and British airforces with the German Luftwaffe, I would say there was no difference. Compare the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS with the Red Army there was no difference in brutality either. Some SS-Forces who were resonsible for the Holocaust make the difference.
And I agree with you that the war objectives make a big difference too.

We will never forget it and thanks for that. Of course it was not completely without own interests. A weak Germany is bad for the european economy. And armed forces were needed for the NATO.

Good to know.

If he was no Nazi, then why he was a "Nazi German". You cannot equalize "German" and "Nazi". Many soldiers were forced to fight and had no chance to refuse as in other countries.

This sentence is impertinent, the worst of all of your comments. As you know these two bombs were weapons of mass destruction and no war justifies the use of such weapons. OK, the war in the pacific was shortened by these bombs and saved maybe thousands of american lives but killed thousands of japanese lifes after the bombing and thousands many years later (cancer...).

 

Although I cannot recall the source, I seem to remember that one such plan for the United Kingdom included deportation of all males of military age to act as forced labour, and other plans to deal with a large Jewish population also.....

 

Membership of the NSDAP does not equate to supporting a government/regime. Most people who vote are not members of a political party. To support a regime you do not have to be a member of its party. Perhaps your own prejudice is showing in this comment.

And what about the countless Japanese civilians that would have died in an invasion of the Japanese homelands? Conservative estimates for casualties likely to be sustained in Operation Olympic are 150,000 for the US alone. Going by the events of Okinawa then the casualty toll would have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. More civilians would have died from that than the Atomic bombs. I dislike the atom bomb as a concept but given the alternative, its use was justified. Would it have been better to invade and suffer more casualties? Again Japan was the aggresor...

My worry is that you fail to miss the key point. No-one is denying the horror and suffering caused. No-one is denying that Allied war crimes did happen. The point is that Germany/Japan was the aggresor states and in order to defeat them, the view at the time was that these things were neccesary. Same as the Germans felt it was neccesary to bomb Rotterdam, London etc. It was an act of war, not a systematic attempt to wipe out a civilian population.

With regards to Dresden, I suppose I should point out my personal views. I do not consider it a war crime. Same as I do not consider the German bombing of London a war crime. Attacks upon the infrastructure and civilian targets has long been an unfortunate aspect of most wars. Whether or not I personally agree witht the tactic is irrelevant. If I had been in Bomber Harris' shoes then I guess I would have employed the same tactic of bombing areas by night to conserve my aircrews, destroy/disrupt infrastructure and try to break civilian morale.

With hindsight it is easy to question past events. What is more difficult is to think of them without bias and try to understand the reason for them.

 

I'll note that Germany began dropping incendiaries on London in 1915, as far as I know. In the early part of WWII they prefered thermite incendiaries, but eventually developed phosphorous versions as well.

</font>[/QUOTE]Good reply, but I would just like to add something.
RAF Bomber Command never used phosphorous or napalm in its bombing campaign against Germany. The RAF's incendiary bombs were either a jellied oil mix or magnesium.

 

Most people believed in Adolf Hitler and, as Germans, they supported Germany's war efforts, for good or for bad. The common people who worked in railroads, communications or industries were a very important part of the war effort. Destroying their infraestructure, killing them or leaving them without services cracked their morale.

The bombings (specially those of the RAF Bomber Command) made the Germans in the Home Front to lose the little faith they had in the Nazi Party and the little enthusiasm about the war. They increased the material privations of the population, killed them, made them homeless, made them hungry, made them angry at the corrupt Nazi big fishes, made them disthrust their beloved Führer, made them colaborate less with the State machinery…

This was a valid concept in the 1940s when there were no Tomahawks and lasser-guided bombs. And again, the Germans developed and implemented this concept, though to a lesser extent (thanks to their lack of strategic view and limited industrial capability).

Maybe in the autumn of 1940, but what about summer 1944? Don't tell me the 'V' weapons were intended to destroy rail stations or electricity plants… Hitler insisted in using these 'wonder' weapons against London to destroy it, kill Londoners and make the British seek for peace.

For Great Britain it at least was not physical extermination (except for British Jews, Gypsies, intellectuals, politcians…), only slavery. Destruction of the British life style, economy, culture, institutions…

Yes, I do. I have not denied them either, but I've openly said that
even if they were indeed crimes for the perfect and uthopic world standards, they are not slightly comparable in scale or ultimate objective to the German's.

The Allies did commit war crimes, so what? They were the exception, not the rule (again I say it) and they were part of the price paid for the destruction of nazism and the freedom of many millions of people.

Indeed. Except that the Luftwaffe didn't have the destructive power of the former two. But they operated on the same moral basis and for the same objectives, completely accepted at the time,

Yes, there was. The SS was a criminal organisation whose moral 'values' were founded on racial pseudo-science and prejudice. The Red Army was the Army of another totalitarian State which defended the very existance of its nation in a war of complete annihilation against a genocidal totalitarian enemy who started the war.

But this is another matter, two Orwellian totalitarian States, ruled by the two greatest butchers in Human History fighting each other to death can't produce anything good…

Some SS? What about the entire SS AND the Army?

Germany in WWII was not just Germany, it was NAZI Germany. A country voluntarily and completely nazified. Do you know what a totalitarian State was?

The concept is awful, indeed. But it prevented the greatest amphibious operation in History, it prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American and Brirish soldiers, millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians who would have fought to death, millions of innocent people killed by urban fighting, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers… These two bombs prevented a Tokio Wall and having WWII extended until 1948…

 

well it looks like we will never get anywhere as per usual of this or other Dresden threads. In February 45 the city was defenceless, a military objective it was not as industry had blown away or was moved elsewhere; it was however a haven for cross town traffic exploiting safety from the east to the west. RAF jamming radar sytems both ground and air was complete and on the fateful night German NF's were left wandering around the wrong beacons or left sitting in camo-trees waiting and watching, seking prtection from prowling US P-51's

 

You are right that the german people elected him and believed in him at least til the beginning of the war. But why? Did you think about it? You have to take the overall german situation in the 20s and early 30's into account. The Versaille Agreement made a deep impact on the morale of the german people (many people lost their home, because of the lost territories). The unemployment rate was high. Hitler promised to reduce the unemployment.
This and other promises + huge "election campaingns" made him actually to win the election. Furthermore he was successful in the realization of his promises (the people didn't realize how he made it). The propaganda between 1933-1939 was immense (especially concerning the jews). Of course not all people, especially the more educated, were blinded by Hitler.
You can see it in every dictatorship and even in democracies, how politicians manipulate the people.

Why do you think an invasion of Japan would be the only way. What about a sea-blockade around Japan's main island after the US had gained the air dominance.
And again: Weapons of mass distruction shouldn't be an alternative in a war like in today's wars.

What if Irak had A/B or C weapons and would have answered the coalition-invasion with an attack on US or british cities?

Please prove it. I have other sources that claim the opposite (Hamburg, Dresden):

<a href="http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm" target="_blank">
http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm[/url]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWfirestorm.htm

If you mean the number of war crimes was not high, OK. But the "few" war crimes Holocaust, bombing of civilians, bombing with atomic-bombs took the lifes of millions of innocent people. Killing POW's or treating them bad (torture)was no exception neither in the german armies nor in the red army (I'm not sure about US and British forces).

Yes that's right. But the Waffen-SS was actually less political than intended by the Führer. Their primary goal was to fight against the Bolschewism. I recently read a book by a Veteran from the Waffen-SS and he quotes that there were the Verfügungstruppen (e.g. guarding concentration camps), Sicherheitsdienst, and Totenkopf-Standarte (chief Himmler) who were mainly responsible for the Holocaust and war crimes. So the most Divisions of the Waffen-SS had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
The Waffen-SS developed in another way than originally planned.

I think now the discussion is moving away from the topic "Dresden".

 

Please prove it. I have other sources that claim the opposite (Hamburg, Dresden):

<a href="http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm" target="_blank">
http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm[/url]
</font>[/QUOTE]The official RAF Bomber Command site (http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand) has a nice Diary of wartime operations. Napalm is mentioned in exactly two places:

18/19 April 1945

57 Mosquitos to Berlin and 36 to Schleissheim airfield near Munich, 35 RCM sorties, 33 Mosquito patrols. 1 Mosquito of No 141 Squadron was lost while carrying out a napalm attack on an airfield in Northern Germany; this was a new form of weapon being used by the Mosquito squadrons of No 100 Group.

and secondly

2/3 May 1945
16 Mosquito bombers of No 8 Group and 37 Mosquitos of No 100 Group were first dispatched to attack airfields in the Kiel area. A Mosquito of No 169 Squadron, No 100 Group, was lost while carrying out a low-level napalm attack on Jagel airfield; its crew - Flying Officer R Catterall, DFC, and Flight Sergeant DJ Beadle - were killed.


Notice that both uses are against airfields, and the first passage describes it as a "new weapon", so I seriously doubt its use against Hamburg (1943!) or Dresden (February). I'm also aware of USAAF uses against fuel dumps and similar targets, which would only seem logical.

On the other hand, phospherous seems to be an entirely different matter. Here is a tidbit from Air Commodore John Searby regarding BC incendiaries and phosphorous:

The chief incendiary weapon used by Bomber Command was the little 4 lb magnesium bomb. Others were tried but nothing matched this tiny fire-raiser which never failed on any single occasion. However, it could not be aimed and fell as a shower from the aluminum boxes into which it was loaded. This was a severe drawback and prompted the efforts of the 'back room boys' to devise something better. They never succeeded. 30 and 40 lb were produced in quantity and more or less forced upon the Command against the protests of the Commander in Chief in an attempt to economise on the use of magnesium, but in the event they proved failures. These bigger weapons were made up in clusters so that the aiming problem was partially solved, but they were no match for the tiny 4lb fire raisers falling in hundreds from individual aircraft to scatter in the blast of the High Capacity over a wide area. I should add that the 30 lb phosphorous bomb was a terrible weapon and Sir Arthur Harris states in his own account of the bomber offensive that in addition to its fire raising quality after aiming 'it also had a marked effect on the morale of the enemy.'
This is a reference to the dire effect of being splashed with the contents. I was never happy about this but we the men who flew the bombers had no say in the design of the weapons. In fact, it was long afterward that I learned of the appalling burns sustained by the citizens of Hamburg. This bomb only had a short life."

And another one...

"Various Marks of the 30-lb. Incendiary Bomb, varying only in detail, were used, and although perhaps not ideal as fire raisers, they were at least aimable. The phosphorus filling had a great morale effect, as had also the flash and bang of the bomb when it functioned. These bombs are regarded as satisfactory for the work for which they were used."
-- Arthur T. Harris

 

Heartland thanks for your quotations. In fact I refered to phosphorus-bombs. So your sources approve that phosphorus-bombs were used by the RAF against Germany.

I want to emphasize, that I don't blame the bomber pilots for bombing the cities with this inhuman weapon (if there is any). They got their orders and couldn't refuse. But "Bomber" Harris is responsible.

 

Firstly Stauffenber, you may be familiar with a concept very common in Britain during the war, that of 'doing your bit.' That is to say doing your part for the war effort. There was a similar mentality in Germany, people 'did their bit' to support the war effort and so kept Germany in the war. Your statement that 'Most of the civilians who died didn't support the nazi regime actively. This is another prejudice. Only a relatively small percentage was member of the NSDAP.' whilst true is hardly relevant, just because you do not support the government through party alegiance any actions that keep that government in power, from driving trains to working in industry support the war effort and so make you a legitimate target.

I should also like to point out that German incendiary bombs also contained Phosphorus (for example the C50 A) which rather nullifies your point that the allies were a) the first and b) the only side to use them.

A crime is an incident that breaks a law, sorry, however much you may disagree with the incident in question it broke no laws, it was not a war crime.

Difference between the Red Army and German forces? Simple, the Red Army took revenge for crimes that had been committed against them. Incidentally, the Red Army were the first to attempt to bring medical aid to German cities, something I do not remember the Germans doing in occupied Russia.

Martin's reference to the plan for Britain is backed up by the German occupation plans and directives issued to the Gestapo, freely available to purchase from Amazon if you are interested.

Please also note, no one on this board has denied that the allies committed war crimes, summary executions of prisoners occurred (for example), amongst other things, we are aware of that. However, we are simply arguing that Dresden was not a war crime. It was an industrial centre (industry had been moved there because it was seen as a safe city, after all it hadn't been bombed) it was a major communications centre and was seen as an obstruction to the Russian advance. It's bombing did not contravine any conventions on the conduct of war, it was not a war crime.

 

Off topic but...

From Werner Haupt...

"Formation of SS-Totenkopfdivision and the SS-Polizeidivision began in October 1939... The officers and men for those new divisions came in part from the SS-Totenkopfstandarten (Concentration Camp Guards) as well as from numerous police units and volunteers."

The first commander of 3rd SS Totenkopf, Eicke, previusly served as commandant at Dachau concentration camp. He implemented a number of camp policies - The unwritten code of conduct for SS guards and the code of disciplinary and punishment regulations for use against camp inmates. This later established the 'legal' basis for handling prisoners.

Whether books by SS veterans want to admit it or not (and I own many of these books) there was a clear link between the camps and the Waffen-SS in regards to personnel turn-over. While this may have decreased as the war continued it remained throughout the war. I have a photo of two guards at Dachau who have Das Reich cuff titles for example. Howver the Waffen-SS divisions are also clearly implicated in the collection and rounding up of Germany's racial enemies. The actions of 7th SS Gebirgsjagerdivision Prinz Eugen in Yugoslavia border on ethnic cleansing at times under the guise of anti-partisan duties.

There is a clear link between all the SS departments, and in the actions of genocide. While I will agree that these links are not across the board and some units had little to do with it the implication is clear. Having spent 20 years researching the Waffen-SS and its combat efficiency I take nothing away from their performance in combat, camaraderie and heroism. But it will always be tainted by its links with genocide.

 

It is also a little known fact that there was constant rotation between Waffen SS and concentration camp guarding duties. Apparently it helped the soldiers to become more effective at their jobs!

 

Actually, the people started losing their faith on Hitler only after Stalingrad, when the disasters of the war made its course evident and when the Allied air offensive started affecting the civilians' material goods. (See Sir Ian Kershaw's The Hitler Myth).

I'm perfectly aware of that (my speciality is III Reich History) and I understand it.

Whilst this is true, all these aspects are deeper than just that. We're talking about a totalitarian State built based on a consented repression system. I'm opened to discussion, but it'd involve another topic.

You are talking about 1945 Japanese, who jumped from clifts rather than surrendering, who, in some cases, didn't stop fighting until 1946 (or even the 1970s!), who were eager to kill themselves for their Emperor (remember not just the Kamikazes, but the whole bunch of suicide tactics).

Japan was blockaded. By mid-1945 her Navy practically had ceased to exist and her merchant fleet was not even such. But still, there were 2 million regular soldiers, 15 million militia, 9.000 Kamikaze planes and 40 million civilians eager to fight, waiting for the US to come in.

The Japanese understood that invasion meant complete destruction to Japan as a nation (territory, population and culture), but they were going down fighting, specially if there was a high posibility of bleeding the Americans so much, up to an unbearable level which would make them sue for peace.

That strategy, however, was not going to work against the Red Army.

The bombs prevented all that.

And the enslavement of conquered peoples shouldn't be allowed as in to-day's wars. Of course it shouldn't! But the Greeks, Persians and Romans did it… why? Because it was a valid thing THEN. It's the same in WWII, there was nothing wrong in bombing enemy civilians.

As Stefan pointed out: a war crime is something against the stablished laws for war of the time. In 1945 Dresden or Hiroshima didn't break any accepted law.

It would be a war crime if we apply 2005's morals. But we can't do that. Cicero well said it once: O tempora! O mores!. Each time has its own morals. And we can't judge other times with our current time's morals.

We are talking precisely about the Western Allies. As I previously said, the USSR doesn't fit this discussion's scheme because she was another totalitarian nation involved in the most brutal war of annihilation.

Please, let's not start trying to clean the name of some 'brave combat units'… The Allgemeine SS: bad. The Waffen SS: good. The Army: even better!

The Hitler Youth, the Air Force and even the Navy were involved in the Holocaust! Please, let's not discuss the Army, with its anti-partisan units, police and auxiliar battalions… and even less the Waffen SS with its Oradour, Malmédy, Caën, and its 'Totenkopf' and 'Handschaar'…

If you read the previous posts in this thread you'll find substantial evidence of Harris opposing the bombardment. He's the villain, and the scape-goat. But he helped shortening the war, and he's a hero for that.

 

Who the hell worries about Germans being killed in Dresden? They used the V1 V2 indiscriminate people killers. No way could any one claim they were "Military targets"

I remember Goebels screaming "You want total war? We will give you total war",and all the audience sprang to their feet in a frenzy YA! YA!

Typical German, strut about, the Victors, Hitlers adoring public screaming adoration at their leader.

Squealing Unfair! Unfair! when the tide turned against them. Tough lads, Tough.

The German war cost 60 million dead..who worries about a few thousand Germans in Dresden. The Killings, the murders, the tortures. Lidice,

Orador sur glan! where they killed every single person, locked innocent women and children in the church, then set it alight, Then burned the little town to the ground. NO? Go and have a look!

While you are there take a look at the French town of Tulle. Where they hung 99 Frenchmen from the town lamp posts, You can, if you like, look at the pretty flowers and admire them hanging from the lamp posts in June, Where Germans Murdered them.

All those inside the church at Orador were burned alive... Now I wonder if those that died in Dresden will have heard those dreadful screams of little children being burned alive?

Or perhaps the screams of the little children would have been drowned by the screams of the innocents, in the Concentration camps, spread around Germany and Poland. The camps that no one knew anything about...They could not smell the burning flesh, they did not see the train loads that went in and never came out.

None of the guards knew anything and never talked to their families about what went on in those camps...

The German nation sowed the wind, they reaped the whirlwind.

And yet, considering what they done from the gates of Moscow, across the European continent, where they created a dark medieval age, They got off comparitively lightly.

If the killing was visited on the German Nation equal to those they killed, There would be very few left.
Now about Dresden?
Sapper

 

AMEN! Thank you, dear Sapper, because you and your mates contributed to this.

 

What was in the 1970's?

I will never accept the atomic-bombs as the only solution for ending the war with Japan. If you want to believe this, OK, but I personally will never.

For me a war crime is not restricted to the existence of laws. The non-existence of laws doesn't prove that something is moraly against all rules. Would you rape a woman, if it was legal? I don't think that morals have changed so much since 1939.

Can you prove it?

I could also say America was involved in the Holocaust in not accepting some ships full of jewish refugees. And I could go even further and say the Rest of the World, espescially England and France were involved in the Holocaust, because they didn't interfer early enough...

For me he was a butcher.

@sapper
I'm sorry that you had to fight against the Nazis. And I see you're still full of hatred on the Germans. 60 years have past and I think it's time to forgive,not to forget, nobody in Germany forgets, including me. Many other vets US, British, Russian and Germans have already forgiven.
But my aim was to emphasize, that there were also people in Germany suffering from the total war.

"The total War" - different meanings:
The speach of Goebbels (18.02.1943) was a propaganda to give the german people an illusion of the soon Endsieg. In fact nobody believed in a victory at this time. The "total war" was explained to the people as the shortest war, not as the most brutal war. The term "total war" was no invention of Goebbels but the French used this expression (,la guerre totale') already in 1917 meaning to mobilize all resources available.
In the Casablanca-Conference (14.-25. january 1943) Roosevelt, Churchill decided the "unconditional surrender" for Germany. From this time on diplomacy was impossible. So the "total war" was decided even before Goebbels propaganda.

 

A crime by definition is something that breaks laws, something can be morally wrong and not a crime but if it breaks no laws it is not a crime.

Luftwaffe troops guarded trains on their way to camps as did navy troops in coastal regions.

Care to suggest what the rest of the world could have done sooner? I also think you will find that the Western Allies were fighting to defeat Nazi Germany BEFORE they were ready for war. We went to war to defeat Nazi Germany, that is on no level on a par with carrying out the holocaust and I am AMAZED that you can compare the two.

 

An interesting argument. By the same token, a murderer could say, hey - it was the witnesses' fault ; they should have stopped me......

 

Yes in Germany you would say: "unterlassene Hilfeleistung" (failure to render assistance)which is a crime. Don't take this too serious, I wrote it in subjunctive form.

 

About a dozen or so of cases of Japanese soldiers who had remained isolated in the jungles or mountains of the Pacific Isles and never knew of the end of the war. Therefore, they kept their arms and remained 'in active service'.

OK. That's up to you. Fortunately, it was for Truman.

However, I'd like to see some options of how the war in Japan could have been brought to an end withot breaking any moral laws. Not A-bombs and even less conventional incendiary bombings (even more devastating than the A-bombs)…

They have changed at the same rate than technology. Can you compare 2005 weaponry with 1945 weaponry? Same thing.

Then call it a 'sin', an 'immoral act', whatever. But not a 'crime', because it is a legal term.

Yes, I can. For the moment I can tell you of a first-hand account (right now I'm moving and all my books are already in boxes, but I can provide detailed arguments in a couple of days) by Yehuda Lerner, a Polish Jew, veteran of the Sobibor Death Camp revolt.

He said that he once was working building some barracks in a Luftwaffe airfield in Poland, near Sobibor, when a pilot who had just come back from a mission (still in flying suit and with a Knight's Cross in his neck) picked up a rifle and started shooting the Jews who were working building the barracks. 12 men were killed whilst the man in question, the mechanics and other pilots laughed and drank beer.

Besides, it comes to my mind right now that in the closing days of the war, at the time of the death marches and when the fighting had reached Germany, heterogenous improvised units (made out of Hitler Youth, Volkssturm, Army, SS, Navy reserve, FLAK crews, etcetera) shot 'traitors' and helped in the evacuation of the camps.

And, of course, there were the Luftwaffe field divisions, fighting anti-partisan warfare in the eastern front (which we know meant the assassination of civilians, partisans, Jews, Gypsies and almost everyone).

These countries are to be blamed indeed. Not accepting Jewish refugees was indirect collaboration, because in many cases, it condemned many people. Even worse for France, which, even at a low rate, contributed actively in the deportation of her own Jews.

Here we are not talking about propaganda. Total war was dedicating all available national resources for the war effort, specially when the very existence of your people, way of life and culture are at stake.

It was not Goebbels who started total war in 1943 with a speech. It was Germany as a whole who started total war when she invaded Poland with the obective of its absolute destruction: politically, economically, geographically, demographically, culturally.

Are these two to blame because they brought total war upon Germany? Was it a bad thing not to negotiate with Nazi Germany?

Was the USSR was going to negotiate with the country that had brought a war of total annihilation upon her from day one? Would Germany have negotiated with an almost defeated USSR or Great Britain?

Again: the Allies were not fighting for imperialist aims (even the Soviet Union). They were fighting to destroy the greatest evil in the long and bloody Human History: Nazi Germany.