How innocent are civilians in wartime?

[MontyB]

Matthias Neutzner and others (2010). "Abschlussbericht der Historikerkommission zu den Luftangriffen auf Dresden zwischen dem 13. und 15. Februar 1945" - Landeshauptstadt Dresden

Page 67



When looking at war crimes it is not enough to just look at the crime itself but also why it happend.

This is very true however I would suggest that most of those who believe Dresden was a war crime have looked at why it happened and come to the conclusion that it was an unnecessary action carried out more for the sake of revenge than any military imperative.

You don't hear people talk about the bombing of Cologne, Essen or Hamburg the same way as they talk of Dresden because people understand that while bad they were a necessity to bring Germany to its knees but Dresden was at least one city too many.

Compare it with a boxing game and they prepare you to fight in the ring. You are very well trained and know the rules. You have the best boxing gloves and shoes. But once you step into that ring you see that your opponent has no boxing gloves but knuckle-dusters and he spits, bites and kicks. How long will it take you to throw away your gloves and give him the same treatment?

Your example fails horribly because the second boxer would not even get to the first bell without the proper gear.

However I will give you a boxing example I think a better example in this case, boxer 1 and 2 go 14 rounds where boxer 2 lands some big blows and a couple of below the belt ones, in the 15th round boxer 1 knocks boxer 2 out but continues to beat him to death on the ground then stands up and says well he hit me first besides he is a delinquent father so he deserves it.

Allies’ crimes in WWII:

1- UK and America's brutal air attack on civilian areas in Dresden, Germany
2- Nukes bombing of Japan by America
3- Katyn horrible massacre by Russians
4- Widespread rape of women and girls by soldiers of the Allied especially Russian soldiers.
5- Betraying to Poland’s fighter by UK and America’s for Stalin satisfaction.
6- Inhuman and brutal treatment of POWs.
7- Deportations and ethnic cleansing of German people after the war

Germans carried out many crimes in the East of Europe and Russia. Japans did many crimes in Korea, China and Southeast of Asia.

The war crimes in west of Europe were much less than other places and in the US approximately there wasn’t any notably crime. And also the US was the real winner of the war II. In fact other countries, Axis and Allies, fought for the US.

1. Nuking Japan was not a crime as Japan was actively pursuing the war even at that stage and had an invasion been necessary it would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives both Allied and Japanese.

2. I am not sure I understand point 5, if you are talking about the lack of support for Poland at the start of the war then I don't see a crime it was just a case of Britain and France not being ready for war. If you are talking about Stalin not helping the Polish uprising I would point out that the British wanted to supply the Poles but were unable to do so effectively given Stalins lack of help.

3. Point 7 is an interesting one that has generally been overlooked in history, we go on about Dresden, Hamburg and the Atomic bombs yet more people were killed in those deportations than in all the major bombings of the war combined.

 

[hamidreza]

1. Nuking Japan was not a crime as Japan was actively pursuing the war even at that stage and had an invasion been necessary it would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives both Allied and Japanese.

2. I am not sure I understand point 5, if you are talking about the lack of support for Poland at the start of the war then I don't see a crime it was just a case of Britain and France not being ready for war. If you are talking about Stalin not helping the Polish uprising I would point out that the British wanted to supply the Poles but were unable to do so effectively given Stalins lack of help.

3. Point 7 is an interesting one that has generally been overlooked in history, we go on about Dresden, Hamburg and the Atomic bombs yet more people were killed in those deportations than in all the major bombings of the war combined.

What about Dresden if allied attacked it by nukes instead of conventional bombs? Couldn’t we consider it a crime? or maybe it depended on to the German leader’s decisions. If they were surrendered it wouldn’t be a crime because many people would have saved in east and west fronts and if they weren't it would be a crime.
But I think both of Dresden bombing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes bombing had the same aim. They wanted to force Axis to be surrendered by making a brutal attack. Just the kind of bomb was different.
Genghis Khan used the same tactic when he attacked to a new country. At first he attacked to a city and killed all people and animals and any other living thing and did many crimes. He just left a few people alive to tell the story to other people in other cities so the rest of country was surrendered without war. So is Genghis Khan a criminal?
About Poland it was a stupid plan designed by UK and US to get the control of Warsaw by Polish nationalists before Stalin and the communists of Poland occupied it when they were behind Warsaw doors. Allied had promised to help them while they known very well they couldn’t. They did a silly risk and 200000 people were killed by Germans.

 

[LeEnfield]

For a large number of years it was the only way the Britain could carry the war to Germany. By bombing Germany it tied up around a million German soldiers and countless thousands of guns to defend Germany.

It should be remembered that before attacking Stalingrad the Germans fire bombed and killed more than 60.000 Russian people some thing that they seem to forget when talking about Dresden.

Germany like Britain had small factories making all sorts war materials and every city was a target.

As a child I was came under fire from passing German planes and one of the schools I went to was attacked one lunch time and dozens of children's were killed or wounded.
Now for the Germans to complain that they were hard done by is nothing more than a joke.

It should be remembered that the Germans at the time of the bombing of Dresden where shovelling people into the gas chambers as fast as they could and anything that shortened the war saved lives.

 

[MontyB]

All very true but emulating something wrong doesn't make you right.

As for shortening the war, I would argue that by xmas 1944 the German position was almost completely hopeless so blasting the crap out of civilians, losing aircraft and airmen achieved very little militarily, in fact it is entirely possible that the destruction of infrastructure slowed up the allied advance lengthening the war.

What about Dresden if allied attacked it by nukes instead of conventional bombs? Couldn’t we consider it a crime? or maybe it depended on to the German leader’s decisions. If they were surrendered it wouldn’t be a crime because many people would have saved in east and west fronts and if they weren't it would be a crime.
But I think both of Dresden bombing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes bombing had the same aim. They wanted to force Axis to be surrendered by making a brutal attack.

Dresden should have been a crime not because they attacked it nor the ferocity of the attack but because it was a meaningless attack simply designed to kill civilians, it was meaningless because the war was won at that stage whether they blew it off the map or left it standing was irrelevant to the outcome of the war therefore it was nothing short of revenge.

The argument that we blew it up because it was the only thing we hadn't blown up to date is not a valid defence.

 

[LeEnfield]

Monty......Yes we all agree the German position was hopeless but they had not stopped fighting. Dresden was bombed on request of the Russians as it was a major rail network shipping supplies and men to the eastern front. The Germans were not fussed by such things when they bombed undefended cities killing thousands of people so as Bomber Harris said they had sown the wind now they would reap the whirlwind.
The Germans had not stopped feeding the Jew's into the ovens or working to death Russian prisoners and the SS was just as ruthless as it had ever been.

It should be remembered that Dresden was chosen as a target by IKE not Churchill and it was approved by the whole of the War Council and we bombed it by night and the Americans stoked the fires all day, so why does every one blame the RAF for this.
I never see a single American taking any blame for this incident, yet just as many American bombers took part as British.

The Germans still thought they had a chance of winning the war even at that stage and they did not give up until Hitler killed him self.

 

[George]

Linky Wow, time flys, was thinking this article on Dresden was recent, not Oct. '04.

 

[42RM]

Ironically Bomber Harris, who gets an awful lot of the blame, did not want to go to Dresden - nothing to do with Dresden's cultural buildings.
He did not want to go because it was a very long way to go and he thought there were more lucrative targets.

But the order came down from then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US Allied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower. That's why Dresden got bombed. The Germans thought it was a long way away and it was not defended. If something is not defended, it is going to get a lot of damage.

I know the war finished three months later, but the raid was in February and in February the Allies had not crossed the Rhine. V2s were being dropped on London, the British Army lost 10,000 between then and the end of the war. Bomber Command and the Bomber Force lost about 1,200 between then and the end of the war. It is easy to look back in hindsight and say the war was nearly over.

 

[MontyB]

Monty......Yes we all agree the German position was hopeless but they had not stopped fighting. Dresden was bombed on request of the Russians as it was a major rail network shipping supplies and men to the eastern front. The Germans were not fussed by such things when they bombed undefended cities killing thousands of people so as Bomber Harris said they had sown the wind now they would reap the whirlwind.
The Germans had not stopped feeding the Jew's into the ovens or working to death Russian prisoners and the SS was just as ruthless as it had ever been.

It should be remembered that Dresden was chosen as a target by IKE not Churchill and it was approved by the whole of the War Council and we bombed it by night and the Americans stoked the fires all day, so why does every one blame the RAF for this.
I never see a single American taking any blame for this incident, yet just as many American bombers took part as British.

The Germans still thought they had a chance of winning the war even at that stage and they did not give up until Hitler killed him self.

So tell me out of interest how many Jews were saved in the last months of the war because of the Dresden raid and by comparison to the tonnage of bombs that were dropped on German cities how many tons were allocated to putting the death camps out of business by say destroying the marshaling yards that feed these camps?

I will give you a clue, the answer is bugger all the fate of the minorities and Jews of Europe rated lower than identifying a gray hair in Adolf's mustache to the Allies so I am not sure why all of a sudden it is justification for incinerating a couple hundreds thousand civilians.

I keep reading about how the attack was asked for by the Russians yet not one document has ever been found to validate this, I also hear it was to stop traffic through the city to the eastern front yet the day after the raid Major-General Erich Hampe arrived in the city with the express task of getting transport running again only to find that most of the rail network had not been hit and he was even more surprised to note that the Marienbruke rail bridge was completely untouched and as he noted had the allies wanted to halt all rail traffic through the city they only needed to concentrate on that bridge.

Further to this I find it interesting to read that the log book of a bomb aimer from number 3 group has the briefing notation:
"We are going to Chemnitz tonight some 30 miles west of Dresden to finish off any refugees who may have escaped last nights raid. Will be carrying the same bomb load as last night and if successful we will not be returning to the Russian front."
- Page 196 The Destruction of Dresden.

 

[LeEnfield]

Monty......If this raid shortened the war by one day then it saved lives. A lot of people were diverted in opening the streets and trying to get things running again that could have been on war production. Also I have never seen the Russians deny that they asked for Dresden to be bombed even if you have not seen the paper work

 

[VDKMS]

World War II: Bombing of Dresden

During talks in Yalta, the Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, General Aleksei Antonov, inquired about the possibility of using bombing to hinder German troop movements through hubs in eastern Germany. Among the list of targets discussed by Portal and Antonov were Berlin and Dresden

An inquiry conducted by US Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall found that the raid was justified based on the intelligence available.

PS : the Russian intelligence later proved to be wrong.

The bombing of Dresden

 

[LeEnfield]

Now the American fire raids on Japan made Dresden look like a boy scouts bonfire. On a raid on Tokyo more than 100.000 Japanese were killed in one night, yet is this raid ever discussed and if not why not. Why is it that the finger is always pointed at the RAF for this sort of thing even by the Americans.

 

[MontyB]

Now the American fire raids on Japan made Dresden look like a boy scouts bonfire. On a raid on Tokyo more than 100.000 Japanese were killed in one night, yet is this raid ever discussed and if not why not. Why is it that the finger is always pointed at the RAF for this sort of thing even by the Americans.

Oddly enough they do not talk about the raids on Japanese cities for the same reason they do not talk about the raids on most German cities because even after the atomic bombs Japan was still a "creditable" enemy, another words it still had the capability to defend itself and affect huge losses on an invading force as did Germany until probably late 1944.

I would also argue that there was always an opposition to area bombing in the UK lead by the likes of Bishop Bell of Chichester and James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury who wrote to Sinclair expressing fears that, by area bombing the Allies were "losing moral superiority to the Germans" However the moral issue did not cause Sinclair any difficulty, for he believed that the German people must suffer for a war which was their own responsibility, a harsh view which most people accepted in the heat of the conflict. Fulfilling his role as the R.A.F.'s political representative,

Sinclair thought it wise not to explain the nature of the bombing offensive too frankly in public, in case [it] was stirred up on grounds of moral conscience and the morale of the bomber crews affected. An illustration of this is a Commons reply by Sinclair to an opponent of area bombing: "The targets of Bomber Command are always military, but night bombing of military objectives necessarily involves bombing the area in which they are situated". An earlier speech by Sinclair produced reaction from Dr. Geobbels, who wrote in his diary on 3rd March 1943: "The English Minister for Air delivered a speech that puts into the shade anything ever said. He proclaimed the British intention of causing a German migration.... from the big cities. The cynicism underlying such a statement simply cannot be beaten". Sir Archibald stated "I am in full agreement (of terror bombing). I am all for the bombing of working class areas in German cities. I am a Cromwellian - I believe in 'slaying in the name of the Lord!" .

Most of the opposition to area bombing was kept muted until Dresden because until then it was seen as a necessity in the winning the war however by the time of Dresden the war was won and that is why Dresden is continually raised as an allied crime of war.

 

[LeEnfield]

With WW2 it was a case of winning the war, as defeat would have have brought about untold misery and death. The German forces would have done credit to Genghis Khan the way the dealt with the civilian populations. Taking the morale high ground is all well and good when it is not you that is dieing for that privilege. Now did any any one hear the German people complain about the way the German Airforce bombed other cities and killed people by the thousands, no they just stood and cheered Hitler and Gobbles when he told them what they were doing.
Also I grew up in Britain at this time and I never met any one who thought it was wrong to knock seven bells out of the Germans in this manner as nearly every one knew some one who had been killed in the blitz or on the Battlefield.
One of the other big concerns was that the Allied Governments did not know what was going to arrive in the next V2 and they had to try and end the war as soon as possible. It is all well and good saying to wrongs don't make a right, but even at this late stage no one was sure what would be the next German Terror weapon. After the war the Allies found some thing that they sealed in lead put it in a hold of ship then filled the ship with concrete and took the ship out to deepest part of the Atlantic and sunk it. One can only guess just what this was.

 

[MontyB]

After the war the Allies found some thing that they sealed in lead put it in a hold of ship then filled the ship with concrete and took the ship out to deepest part of the Atlantic and sunk it. One can only guess just what this was.

My guess is that it was the truth as it seems they rounded up a healthy dose of myth to substitute it with.

Fortunately I missed WW2 by a lot of years but I was also fortunate enough to have a large family who did fight WW2 from start to finish (From Greece to Trieste) and when I look at their views and compare them to your's, Del Boys and Der Altes I find it interesting that it is Der Altes that come the closest to matching and I have to be honest I find that rather ironic and I am somewhat at a loss to explain it.

Earlier today as I made my last post I realised that this was a futile argument because neither of us are looking mediate or moderate our views it is just a battle of "they started it" vs "two wrongs do not make a right" and in those two stances there is no attainable middle ground.

Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (Book Review)

Interestingly enough in an interview Taylor said with regard to whether the bombing of Dresden was justifiable:

Personally, though I can trace the logic of it, I have serious doubts. It is a ghastly example of how war depletes the moral reserves even of democratic nations. Goetz Bergander, who survived the bombing of his native city as an 18-year-old and has written widely about its destruction, has described the bombing in his characteristically forgiving way as "outsize." It was certainly all of that.

Seems to me that in almost every case those who have studied the bombing find it of questionable justification.

 

[LeEnfield]

Hi Monty you said
Earlier today as I made my last post I realised that this was a futile argument because neither of us are looking mediate or moderate our views it is just a battle of "they started it" vs "two wrongs do not make a right" and in those two stances there is no attainable middle ground.



Well as long as we can talk with out getting down to insulting each other, we can argue away the pros and cons for ever.

 

[MontyB]

I agree but I am opposed to continually repeating the same posts, it serves little purpose and generally kills threads by dragging them off topic over a period of time.

 

[LeEnfield]

Basically I think we are divided into two camps here, those who went through the war and went through the bombing and those that were born afterwards. I have seen German people that went through this bombing saying how they hated and they thought it was wrong , yet turn around and say it was understandable as the Germans had done it to every one else

 

[MontyB]

Basically I think we are divided into two camps here, those who went through the war and went through the bombing and those that were born afterwards. I have seen German people that went through this bombing saying how they hated and they thought it was wrong , yet turn around and say it was understandable as the Germans had done it to every one else

I disagree, I doubt there are many people that did not see the bombing of German cities as a logical "front" in the war especially since the Luftwaffe had done the same throughout Europe and I don't think that view would change by birth date.

However Dresden was something different it was a massive over kill for the sake of killing civilians and it is extremely difficult these days to believe that the assault on Dresden was for any military gain given that none of military infrastructure in the city was targeted in the biggest raids they were assigned secondary.

Where I think the variation in opinion lies is that those who grew up through the war and its immediate aftermath were raised on the allied version of the war which was about as accurate as a Japanese WW2 text book and because of the holocaust it was impossible to put a more balanced view into press without being labelled a Nazi sympathiser, fortunately the cold war killed that view in the 1960s and now we can look at both sides of the story and see that the allies were just as ruthless and underhanded as the Germans.

So while I believe Bomber Command deserves its memorial and that the Allied cause was justified I do not believe the Allies were all that different to the Axis in their prosecution of the war and were in fact just as guilty of some heinous acts.

 

[George]

As far as the Japanese Cities, I've read that in many cities the manufacturing was very dissipated. The employees had production machinery in thier homes making parts that would be collectedfor assymbly @ the factory. Reportedly after the War ended you could see that most houses in many areas had drill presses, lathes or other machinery in them. If true that would make the residences ligit targets.

 

[LeEnfield]

George just look at the area devastated by American Fire bombing it was many square miles. Also just how many Americans have these sort of tools in their garage and would that make them targets for bombing. Also most of the Japanese house where of a light wood constructions in case of earthquakes and would not have been able to hold any heavy equipment.