What do you think about this topic? IMO according to todays standards, intentional bombing of civilian targets in order to kill enemy civilians to disrupt morale of the enemy is called terrorism.

These air raids killed more than 500,000 (real number is higher) people in German cities, with no effect on enemy morale.

In your opinion - was that justifiable?

EDIT: The same bombing took place also in Japan, including two nuclear attacks. The rough numbers are about 100,000 japanese civilians dead after conventional air raid on Tokyo, 275,000 dead after atomic bombing. I don't know the overall number of Japanese civilian casaulties caused by American air strikes.

From a neutral, objective (whatever that means) point of view, probably yes.

What do you think about this topic? IMO according to todays standards, intentional bombing of civilian targets in order to kill enemy civilians to disrupt morale of the enemy is called terrorism.
For once we totally agree! :)

These air raids killed more than 500,000 (real number is higher) people in German cities, with no effect on enemy morale.

In your opinion - was that justifiable?
No. I can't see such killings of civilians justified in any case. It's just war crimes.

EDIT: The same bombing took place also in Japan, including two nuclear attacks. The rough numbers are about 100,000 japanese civilians dead after conventional air raid on Tokyo, 275,000 dead after atomic bmbing. I don't know the overall number of Japanese civilian casaulties caused by American air strikes.
I haven't seen any exact numbers myself, but they surely must be high. And again we are talking about war crimes.The nuclear bombs clearly comes in a cathegory of its own.

Probably yes. On the other hand WWII was not a typical war, it was an all out struggle for the soul and the future direction of western civilization so to the people making the decisions at the time they probably didn't seem like warcrimes.

Uh, the fire-bombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of the atomic bombs did.

And yes, the attacks on civilians were war crimes. 'Civilian targets' implies things like bridges and factories and crap. Infrastructure used to move or supply troops is a legitimate target, John Q. Public is not.

This should be in world history, and back there we have already had this discussion.

Remember the concept of TOTAL WAR
In that specific enviroment: yes

When you talk of war crimes Its also Noted that during the First world war. Unrestricted submerine warfare was also considered illegal and a war crime.

Another aspect of Allied bombing raids was a complete lack of any effort to spare civilian lives during attacks on industrial or military targets.

And not only German cities were damaged - in occupied Czechoslovakia, I know about three cases of air strikes, that were completely useless, but destroyed great parts of attacked cities or towns, namely Kralupy nad Vltavou (half of the town was leveled because of destruction of ONE fuel tank), Ústí nad Labem (one fifth of city destroyed for no clear reason - the railway traffic was stopped for only about 24 hours) and Plzeň (Pilsen - more than 700 dead civilians. The Skoda arms factories were destroyed, as well as some residental areas, with incendiary bombs. The reason for this air strike is unknown: the factories were destroyed on 25th April 1945, so the effect on Wehrmacht was insignificant. Some people speculate, that Allies just wanted to destroy modern arms plant before it falls into Soviet hands - ironically, Plzen was liberated by Americans).

In my city, Brno, entire streets were razed by the bombings, but only few factories were hit.

War is a crime. Those who believe civilians don't die in War are deluding themselves.

You reap what you sow.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=1584401&highlight=bombing#post1584401

The difference between German and allied bombings is German bombings had as target (mostly, some exceptions like Rotterdam which was a tragical accident) industry.

I really didn't want to wade into this again, but this is a blatant falsehood. Sticking with Western Europe for a moment, as both Joe and Stapel pointed out it was the Germans who first introduced aerial bombing in World War I, and their targets were overwhelmingly civilian. The first use of an aerial bomb in war in fact was the German zeppelin attack on the Doplhin Tavern on Red Lion Street in London in 1915, killing 3 patrons and destroying the pub. (You can still see the original clock at the re-built pub today, stopped at 10.40.)

The Germans once again initiated aerial bombing in World War II, bombing targets all across Britain. In fact, a critical flaw in Hitler's strategy was exactly that he did concentrate on bombing civilian targets in Britain, leaving many military targets - especially the critical radar sites - unmolested.

In fact, before World War II the Germans also showed a willingness to target civilians; One word: Guernica.

Now let's move to my part of Europe. At 4.30 a.m. (15 minutes ahead of schedule, actually) on 01.September 1939, the Luftwaffe launched raids across Poland. From the very first hours of the German bombing campaign, civilian targets were included and after only a few days the Luftwaffe switched its focus from military to almost excuslively civilian targets. Poland brims with reports of German Stuka divebombers and various other aircraft bombing or strafing civilian buildings and structures, and most infamously long columns of very obviously civilian refugees in rural areas with their oxcarts. I already gave you the littany of how the Germans managed to kill almost a quarter of the Polish civilian population, but this was re-created all over Europe, especially (but not exclusively) Eastern Europe. Immediately after the coup in Yugoslavia that nullified the pact with Berlin, German Stuka bombers attacked residential areas of Belgrade (on Easter night, 1941) killing 17,000 civilians. The Luftwaffe committed similar attrocities in the German drive across the Soviet Union, restrained only by increasing pilot and aircraft shortages.

Perhaps as time goes on we can look back and wonder about some of the acts committed with more objectivity, and mourn the losses - but that is not to say they are regretted. I think there is wisdom is what Joe wrote:

I'm sorry to say this, but the Germans needed to be given a wake up call. They visited all these horrors onto other peoples, all the while sitting safely in their towns and cities untouched by the war they started.

Much like the Japanese, they finaly got a taste of the death and destruction they were dishing out and decided they didn't like it.

To the peoples of Eastern Europe, terrorized and slaughtered by the Germans in two World Wars, the only moral question about the Dresden bombing was "Why aren't there more like this?" Modern Germans pacifism was born of the horrors they experienced in the World War, so perhaps at least something good came of this.

I'm sorry to say this, but the Germans needed to be given a wake up call. They visited all these horrors onto other peoples, all the while sitting safely in their towns and cities untouched by the war they started.

The difference is, that "they" weren't German people, but Nazis - totalitarian regieme.

To the peoples of Eastern Europe, terrorized and slaughtered by the Germans in two World Wars, the only moral question about the Dresden bombing was "Why aren't there more like this?" Modern Germans pacifism was born of the horrors they experienced in the World War, so perhaps at least something good came of this.

This is absolutely disgusting! I see no diference between author of this post and some neo-nazi fools who are denying holocaust or other atrocities. Although we were invaded by both Germans and Russians, I would NEVER advocate killing of their civilians in order to take revenge on them. It's like if some murderer killed your brother and your revenge would be killing of his family.

Moved to History.

This is absolutely disgusting! I see no diference between author of this post and some neo-nazi fools who are denying holocaust or other atrocities. Although we were invaded by both Germans and Russians, I would NEVER advocate killing of their civilians in order to take revenge on them. It's like if some murderer killed your brother and your revenge would be killing of his family.Who cares what you think? :p I'll take Vry and Joe's words over yours any day of the week.

It's all so easy for you, in the comfort and safety of the present day, to holler and howl about the injustice of it all, but to those who lived thru the war, Germany and Japan were the very incarnations of Hell.

And about the allied bombing's of ww2 i think like i did before, that the German bombings and Allied bombings in both world wars were and still are war crimes.

Who cares what you think? :p I'll take Vry and Joe's words over yours any day of the week.

Oh how intelligent :rolleyes: Should I regret it?

It's all so easy for you, in the comfort and safety of the present day, to holler and howl about the injustice of it all, but to those who lived thru the war, Germany and Japan were the very incarnations of Hell.

Is it easy to condemn mass murder? Yeah, it is. I don't care about primitive revengefulness of some people. Not even mentioning the heroism of taking this revenge on innocent civilians :rolleyes:

What do you think about this topic? IMO according to todays standards, intentional bombing of civilian targets in order to kill enemy civilians to disrupt morale of the enemy is called terrorism.

These air raids killed more than 500,000 (real number is higher) people in German cities, with no effect on enemy morale.

In your opinion - was that justifiable?

EDIT: The same bombing took place also in Japan, including two nuclear attacks. The rough numbers are about 100,000 japanese civilians dead after conventional air raid on Tokyo, 275,000 dead after atomic bombing. I don't know the overall number of Japanese civilian casaulties caused by American air strikes.

Initially: no. It was thought that bombing would affect the moral of the civilian population.

When that was found to be ineffective: yes.

OTOH, 'back then' things were different - if repeated today the bombing would clearly be war crimes, but in WWII general opinion differed. And there was a very positive effect ot the bombing: at times when much more labor was done manually, ruining a city including the public transports etc. reduced its manufacuring capacity to almost zero. So there WAS a military aspect to the bombings, too.

You have no idea how effective those 1000 omber raids were do you ?

It was Gorbbels who said it best. If only the allies had repeated these raid several times more Germany would have been finnished. It puzzeled him why the Allies stopped there deverstating an effective raids.

To me it seems

1) Legitimate form of war in a total war enviroment
2) Germany no doubt would have done the same had she been capable.
3) there is respect in those words.

I've done this a couple of times, but I again highly recomend anybody ineterested in the legal and moral problems of bombing to read Sven Lindqvist's "A History of Bombing".

From both a military, legal and moral point of view 'Bomber' Harris' and the doctrine of strategic bombing is in deep trouble.

The fact that the Nazi regime was brutal and culpable beyond belief isn't a sufficient excuse.
We should be able to discern shades of gray — not just assume that the blackness of one side makes the other white. Two wrongs don't make one right.

Etc. etc...:sad:

From both a military, legal and moral point of view 'Bomber' Harris' and the doctrine of strategic bombing is in deep trouble.


note that even the British military high command DISTANCED itself from Bomber Harris - but NOT from many other cases were civilians got hurt. It is the INTENT of Bomber Harris that made it so wrong. And which is to me pretty indistinguishable from the nazis: 'Kill as many as possible, totally indiscriminate'.

While criminal by todays standards in the 40's I don't think it was a crime as the German civilians directly or indirectly supported the war effort. Also by the time the Allied bombing campaign got into full swing numerous European cities had been bombed by the Germans 1st.

The Nazis got what they deserved.
The Germans got what they deserved.

In some ways it was a good thing as such tactics have never been repeated on that scale and German militarism has been a non issue for the last 60 odd years.

This is absolutely disgusting! I see no diference between author of this post and some neo-nazi fools who are denying holocaust or other atrocities. Although we were invaded by both Germans and Russians, I would NEVER advocate killing of their civilians in order to take revenge on them. It's like if some murderer killed your brother and your revenge would be killing of his family.

That might be disgusting but its the truth, the Germans unleashed the horrors on the world so they should of expected retaliation.
And yes if my sibling was killed i would want the murderers family to suffer, its human nature.

While criminal by todays standards in the 40's I don't think it was a crime as the German civilians directly or indirectly supported the war effort. Also by the time the Allied bombing campaign got into full swing numerous European cities had been bombed by the Germans 1st.

The Nazis got what they deserved.
The Germans got what they deserved.

In some ways it was a good thing as such tactics have never been repeated on that scale and German militarism has been a non issue for the last 60 odd years.

Completely agree.

And yes if my sibling was killed i would want the murderers family to suffer, its human nature.


an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth...... I thought we had developed beyond that :rolleyes: Isn't that what people always brag about? Having left he OT behind?

The logic seems to be:
'They got bombed, which proves it was necessary. They wouldn't have been bombed if it wasn't necessary in the first place, right?'

The question isn't if it was necessary to defeat Nazism, but what means were justified to use in the process.

That might be disgusting but its the truth, the Germans unleashed the horrors on the world so they should of expected retaliation.
And yes if my sibling was killed i would want the murderers family to suffer, its human nature.

So you would kill people who have nothing to do with the murder of your sibling.

That's completely beyond my understanding :rolleyes:

I don't think it is right to judge these events using the standards and liberalism of today. There has never been a war of the same magnitude since 1945. None of the Allies have ever been threatened in the same way since. After France fell the UK stood alone for a long time as Europe was conquered and the US was attacked and under threat from a huge expansionist Japanese Empire. The governments of Britain and America knew that if this war was not won then freedom, democracy and basic human morality was over. It is worth remembering that, with so many troops and resources involved, had the D-Day operation failed then Great Britain would have been totally unprotected and open to attack from Nazi Germany and the USA would exist in a world of Nazi German-Domination. The stakes were high and at the time it was viewed that anything that made the Allies stronger and their enemies weaker was acceptable. Now the war has been won it is very easy to question the methods employed and criticise the ferocity of the fighting.

I don't think it is right to judge these events using the standards and liberalism of today. There has never been a war of the same magnitude since 1945. None of the Allies have ever been threatened in the same way since. After France fell the UK stood alone for a long time as Europe was conquered and the US was attacked and under threat from a huge expansionist Japanese Empire. The governments of Britain and America knew that if this war was not won then freedom, democracy and basic human morality was over. It is worth remembering that, with so many troops and resources involved, had the D-Day operation failed then Great Britain would have been totally unprotected and open to attack from Nazi Germany and the USA would exist in a world of Nazi German-Domination. The stakes were high and at the time it was viewed that anything that made the Allies stronger and their enemies weaker was acceptable. Now the war has been won it is very easy to question the methods employed and criticise the ferocity of the fighting.

So the allies decided not to wait so long and buried the basic morality themselves.

WW2 ended 60 years ago, so now is the right time to face its legacy. We must admit, that the "good guys" also did pretty terrible things.

So the allies decided not to wait so long and buried the basic morality themselves.

WW2 ended 60 years ago, so now is the right time to face its legacy. We must admit, that the "good guys" also did pretty terrible things.

They most definitely did but as I said they were under immense pressure to win and the alternative was unthinkable. Very easy for us to sit around in peacetime and judge those fighting for what we take for granted. This particular conflict showed the horrors of war and IMO is a major factor in why there has been realtive peace among the major powers of the world since.

I don't think it is right to judge these events using the standards and liberalism of today.
There have been plenty of treaties since the 19th c. regulating warfare. If anything we are more tolerant of the destructiveness of warfare today than they were back then. (Two world wars.)

The bombing campaigns that resulted in Dresden etc. were problematic according to the treatises and standards of the day. They can be judged according to these. (I'm no friend of anacronistically meeting out blame under ordinary circumstances.)

It still boils down to a question if Nazism was an ill that had to be cured by any means avilable, no matter how radical.

What do you think about this topic? IMO according to todays standards, intentional bombing of civilian targets in order to kill enemy civilians to disrupt morale of the enemy is called terrorism.

These air raids killed more than 500,000 (real number is higher) people in German cities, with no effect on enemy morale.

In your opinion - was that justifiable?

EDIT: The same bombing took place also in Japan, including two nuclear attacks. The rough numbers are about 100,000 japanese civilians dead after conventional air raid on Tokyo, 275,000 dead after atomic bombing. I don't know the overall number of Japanese civilian casaulties caused by American air strikes.

As far as I'm concerned, war is war. You can't fight a war half-assed and expect results. In fact, going out of one's way to avoid civilian targets only threatens the lives of your own soldiers. I believe it's a waste of time and resources to bombard civilian targets (it's the military ones that can wage war, after all), but sometimes desperate times call for desperate actions. I only consider civilian death during war a war crime when it's done for the expressed purpose of killing them, rather than for the war effort itself.

As far as the air raids of WW2 go, how do you know that they had no effect on German morale? Did you ask the people of Dresden how they felt before and after those bombings? Truthfully, I can't imagine that it did have much effect, because by the time they happened, German morale was already pretty low (they were losing). Your own statements betray that point. Obviously, the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshim and Nagasaki DID have an effect on morale. The Japanese were still ready to fight on, although they had almost no military force left, but the destruction of two of their cities convinced them to stop.

As far as I'm concerned, war is war. You can't fight a war half-assed and expect results. In fact, going out of one's way to avoid civilian targets only threatens the lives of your own soldiers. I believe it's a waste of time and resources to bombard civilian targets (it's the military ones that can wage war, after all), but sometimes desperate times call for desperate actions. I only consider civilian death during war a war crime when it's done for the expressed purpose of killing them, rather than for the war effort itself.

So do I, in this context.

As far as the air raids of WW2 go, how do you know that they had
no effect on German morale?

Well, actually they had - Germans were than much more willing to fight. They wanted "revenge" for this killing.

Did you ask the people of Dresden how they felt before and after those bombings?

That is pretty irrelevant, because in the times of Dresden raid, was was almost over. There was no need to break their morale.

Truthfully, I can't imagine that it did have much effect, because by the time they happened, German morale was already pretty low (they were losing).

I wouldn't say that. Germans kept fighting to the bitter end, even in encircled Berlin, without any chance, they fought (but I admit that was because they feared Russians much more than Allies).

Your own statements betray that point. Obviously, the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshim and Nagasaki DID have an effect on morale. The Japanese were still ready to fight on, although they had almost no military force left, but the destruction of two of their cities convinced them to stop.

This thread is supposed to be rather about the conventional raids. Nuclear bomb was a weapon nobody was prepared for, so it's obvious it caused a great shock. My question regarding nuclear bomb is - was it really necessary to drop a-bombs on densely populated cities, causing so much suffering and death?

That is pretty irrelevant, because in the times of Dresden raid, was was almost over. There was no need to break their morale.

Classic. How did the Allies know the war was nearly over????

They didn't, sure they had experienced some victorious battles but no-one could know it was almost over. This is what I meant by judging these events years after in peacetime.

That is pretty irrelevant, because in the times of Dresden raid, was was almost over. There was no need to break their morale.

Classic. How did the Allies know the war was nearly over????

Maybe because the frontlines collapsed and the Allied/Soviet troops were advancing into Germany almost unopposed? ;)

had the D-Day operation failed then Great Britain would have been totally unprotected and open to attack from Nazi Germany and the USA would exist in a world of Nazi German-Domination.
Uh, wasn't the Nazis being driven back in the east at the time of D-Day?


As for the topic, my opinion is that all killing of civilians is a war crime, no matter if the "civilians are aiding the war effort". If you look at a civilians role during war from several different perspectives, there's always a perspective where the civilian can be said to aid the war effort, no matter how indirectly.

Also, the commiting of a war crime must be percieved as a single event. If you burn 600,000 men, women, and children to death, it's a war crime, no matter what their government has done previous to the bombing. It must be seen as a separate event, because if you don't, you can always twist events into looking like they weren't war crimes, and then the concept no longer has any meaning, except as a tool for propagendists.

Also, the commiting of a war crime must be percieved as a single event. If you burn 600,000 men, women, and children to death, it's a war crime, no matter what their government has done previous to the bombing. It must be seen as a separate event, because if you don't, you can always twist events into looking like they weren't war crimes, and then the concept no longer has any meaning, except as a tool for propagendists.

That's exactly what I mean.

Maybe because the frontlines collapsed and the Allied/Soviet troops were advancing into Germany almost unopposed? ;)

You're joking surely, the advance by the Soviets into Nazi Germany can hardly be called unopposed.

And yes i would actually, they bred the one that would of killed my sibling, socialised him, so yeah they have everythign to do with it.

This is quite old! Even the arguments are the same.

I would simply dig up Hiroshima and Dresden Bombing threads.
A lot of persons posted their opinions, and I still think lowly of many posters.

They really need to experience some atomic bombs or level bombing, as a lot of these arseholes are again posting in this thread.

This is quite old! Even the arguments are the same.

I would simply dig up Hiroshima and Dresden Bombing threads.
A lot of persons posted their opinions, and I still think lowly of many posters.

They really need to experience some atomic bombs or level bombing, as a lot of these arseholes are again posting in this thread.

I'm not an arsehole though right? The bombing sucked and I hope it never happens again (espicially with nukes) and I can understand how Addler and Longasc are angry at the way some posters respond- including me probably. A good arguement could be made the war could have been won without the bombing. However it I think it is beyond a doubt that:

1. The bombing shortened the war. Although German production rose they had massive shortages of fuel and other materials as they couldn't transport the reliably. How many lives were saved if the war had lasted another 6 months? The Holocaust could have been completed. In effect the German civilians died so that allied soldiers and occupied Europeans could live.

2. If Hitler had the capacity to carpet bomb Allied cities would he? The evidence suggests so- the Blitz 1940, Stalingrad 42, Warsaw 39 etc etc. These cities were also bombed before the allied bombing campaign was in full swing.

3. While an eye for an eye tooth for a tooth is a primitive idea how would any wartime leader be able to face his nation and say "They bombed us but we won't bomb them back because we're the nice guys". What was a realistic alternative?
While its easy to blame Hitler in 43 it was clear that Germany was either going to lose the war or pay a huge price- Stalingrad, Kursk, 1000 bomber raids. If they had surrendered then they would have avoided most of the bombing. Also the German population and Army for the most part supported Hitler up until the end. It may not be fair to blame the Germans as we don't know how hard(impossable?) it would have been to remove the Nazis from power and in war the population tends to rally around the flag no matter who is in charge. However its not really fair we judge the Allied bombing campaign by 2005 standards and technology. The didn't have the precision bombing technology to target railroads or refinerys etc and in alot of cases hitting the correct city was a challenge.

Even at the time I think they knew it was wrong- Bomber Harris for example had numerous falling outs with the higher ups. I don't think they had any realistic alternative- why not bomb back if they bomb you 1st? In war however the 1st casualty is truth the 2nd is probably morality.

If any posters can contradict my 3 ponts in a signifigant way I may reconsider. The Allies weren't angels by any stretch of the imagination but alot of the anti bombing arguements are also the same ones people like David Irving and other holocaust deniers/neo nazi groups use as well- Germany suffered, Churchill was evil etc.

If you think you are an *******, you probably are.

And as you are an *******, you again start covering everything with **** and call this a discussion.

Feel free to look into the mirror if you want to talk with an arse.

Of course you were among the arseholes I mentioned, what did you think?

Longasc. 3 days for flaming. Eyrei.

1. The bombing shortened the war. [...] How many lives were saved if the war had lasted another 6 months? The Holocaust could have been completed. In effect the German civilians died so that allied soldiers and occupied Europeans could live.

2. If Hitler had the capacity to carpet bomb Allied cities would he? The evidence suggests so- the Blitz 1940, Stalingrad 42, Warsaw 39 etc etc. These cities were also bombed before the allied bombing campaign was in full swing.

3. While an eye for an eye tooth for a tooth is a primitive idea how would any wartime leader be able to face his nation and say "They bombed us but we won't bomb them back because we're the nice guys". What was a realistic alternative?
1. There were plenty of military targets to bomb in Germany. Harris 1000 bomb raids could have been used for other things than deep-frying civilians and for all we know, that might have shortened the war even more. He certainly had to fight other commanders who wanted the RAF to chuck high explosives at other stuff. And considering that his concept of breaking German civilian moral by bombing wasn't successful, well maybe his tactics even prolonged the war?

2. So Hitler wasn't worse than the Allies where bomb warfare is concerned? That's overwhelmingly likely, but hardly of an argument in defense of things like Dresden. No one would have disputed that it was a war crime if a Luftwaffe fleet of heavy bombers had incinerated Newcastle.

3. The realistic alternative was to use the bombers to hit other kinds of targets of course — military, industrial etc. As for the propaganda value of the raids, government controlled what the public was told. Not using the 1000 bombers at all might be hard to explain to them in the long run, but using them for other things than against civilians would hardly have needed an explanation in the first place.

Nothing forced the Allies to adopt the doctrine of carpet bombing urban population centres. They chose to do so. Which is partly why this is so problematic. There never was sufficient reason for it. Harris' ideas could perhaps have been justified if they had led to spectacular success, but they were failures.

Were the Allied bombings of civilian targets during WW2 a war crime?

Yes they were, as I see it. Even through my 2005-eyes in a 2005-world I can still judge 1940 - 1945 events, because there can never exist an excuse to kill civilians in a war. And there should never be attempts to excuse it. Especially if the killers (in this case bomber-crews) don't know personally who they've killed.

I have less dificulty with a soldier on the ground killing a civilian who attacks them. I do have huge problems with soldiers killing civilians through carpet bombing, "kill everything that moves"-tactics and "clear that area"-tactics. I also have huge problems with soldiers using civilian and/or civilian locations for military purposes. That is forcing the opponents to commit warcrimes and is a warcrime in itself. At least in my book.

You reap what you sow. It was the British who bombed Germany's civilian targets before the Germans bombed Britain's. During the "battle of Britain" Gemany exclusively bombed radar-station, airfields and other Military targets. Britain bombed Berlin and some days after that Germany bombed London.

So the "You reap what you sow" is not historically correct.

On 4 September Hitler lifted his restriction on bombing London, following RAF raids on Berlin on the night of 25 August/26 August, itself a reprisal for an accidental bombing of the British capital. The Berlin raid had hurt Göring's pride, as he had previously claimed the British would never be allowed to bomb the city. Kesselring seized his chance and proposed a strategy change. In the face of Sperrle's arguments that attacks on the airfields should continue, Kesselring persuaded the Reichsmarschall to attack London. The raids would either panic the British population into submission, or it would force the "last fifty Spitfires" into the sky where they could be annihilated. This attack was no longer seen as a prerequisite for Seelöwe, but was meant to be decisive in itself.

Germany bombed other civilian cities before Britain bomber berlin. That raid was with Blenheim bombers and done no damage.

Interesting to say the Allies could have bombed other targets though- did they have the technology to do so ie the accuracy required, the range required etc. I read somewhere a bomb landing withen 5 miles of a target was considered a hit and there were several cities bombed by both side by mistake including Rotterdam and several Swiss cities.

What realistic options did the Allies have in 43. In 44 they bombed Ploesti as they finally had the range and airbases required and what other specific targets do the anti bombing crowd advocate bombing instead. Like any city most industrial targets are in built up areas and carpet bombing a city was usually required to hit the target- and often even this missed. The refineries were a good target but how do you hit rail road junctions, factories, research centres etc accurately with 40's technology without using low level daylight raids- AKA suicide for the bomber pilots..

Some info from an article on WW II bomb acuracey:

The U.S. airforce only had an accuracey of 7%

Example: It took 108 B-17 bombers dropping 648 bombs to get an 96% chance of 2 hits.

This was with the Norben precesion site which was 5 X's more acurate than the British MkXIV

It was impossable to do 1000 bomber raids and NOT destroy everything within several miles of the target.

And no I don't think killing women and children is a good thing

Sure, a bomb going out of course, missing the target and then kill civilians cannot be counted as a war crime (in most cases, anyway), but those were just accidents.

Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo (and possibly others - I do not know the full extent of this practice). Those were not "accidents". Those were intentional terror bombings, and thus war crimes.

You could make the arguement that Dresden wasn't a terror bombing. Also some things to consider.

Germany started WW2 which resulted in 50-60 million dead. 6 million were murdered in the Holocaust, on third of Polands population died and the Russians lost around 20 million dead. The extinction or enslavement was the goal of the Nazi government and by extension the German people which supported that government. Millions of Germans served in the armed forces and enslaved millions to work in the factories.

In February 45 when Dresden happened it was clear that Germany was going to lose. However 2 months ago the Germans counter attacked in the Battle of the Bulge, and were fighting the USSR fiercely on the eastern front. V weapons were hittng England and Europe and a very real fear was of a last stand in the Alps while a projected 1 million casualties were anticipated for an invasion of Japan. The allies were also faced with 12 year olds with sub machine guns and the Mayor of Aachen had been killed in a werewolf operation. The German lines collapsing didn't happen until April 45. The official German policy was no surrender.

The Alies were faced with the prospect of 2 defeated enemies who wouldn't surrender and were willing to kill themselves and their own children. During this war with victory in sight those enemies had bombed, brutalised, subjugated and plain old murdered millions of civilians. They were faced with the prospect of having to kill every male in the country between the ages of 12-60.

While I don't agree with aspects of the bombing campaign I can understand the reasons for it and at the time it was believed it would win the war. We are judging them with todays morality and hindsight. The bombing campaign was a failure but only with hindsight. Comventional wisdom at the time would dictate an enemy would surrender rather than be bombed into oblivion and spare the lives of the soldiers at the front and the civilians in the frontline.

If I was in charge knowing whatn I know now theres a few raids I would have done and the bombing campaign would have been different but with the limitations of the technology you are still looking at hundreds of thousands dead. With the knowldge, technology and the context of the 40's I would have done the same thing. We're damned if we do damned if we don't really because heres the options the allies had.

1. Don't bomb. Germany may have won the war or at least held out for alot longer.

2.Bombs away- this is exactly what they done.

3. Different bombing strategy. Not really a viable option and even if it was the limitations of the technology involved probably would have been similar to option 2.

The alternative options aern't really very nice now are they. What would you have done? Remember sparing the enemys civilian population wasn't a high priority as they didn't spare yours. The Allies were damned if they do damned if they don't.

Some info from an article on WW II bomb acuracey:

The U.S. airforce only had an accuracey of 7%

Example: It took 108 B-17 bombers dropping 648 bombs to get an 96% chance of 2 hits.

This was with the Norden precesion site which was 5 X's more acurate than the British MkXIV
The Brits had to do it in the nighttime, too. No wonder the Allies had such low accuracy...

For those who think that killing large scale killing of civilians started in WW2, I would remind you of a few facts:
During the 30 Years War (1618-1648), approximately 1/3 of the population of modern Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia died.
In 1398, when Tamerlane invaded India, the entire population of Delhi, estimated at 40,000, were killed by the Mongols.
When the Persian Emperor, Xerxes, sacked Athens in 480 BC, over 10,000 Athenians were put to the sword.
Targetting civilians during wartime is not something new. More civilians died during WW2 that were previously killed, but that's because the technology was previously lacking.

BTW, the country that suffered the largest number of civilian dead in WW2 was the USSR, where over 15 million people died. The country that suffered most in proportion to its population was Poland, with 6,028,000 or 17% of its population of 35.1 million killed.

3. Different bombing strategy. Not really a viable option and even if it was the limitations of the technology involved probably would have been similar to option 2.

The alternative options aern't really very nice now are they. What would you have done? Remember sparing the enemys civilian population wasn't a high priority as they didn't spare yours. The Allies were damned if they do damned if they don't.
Sure, precision was lousy. That's why you had to use huge bomber fleets to take out... whatever. No one is saying it had to be precision bombing, since it clearly wasn't feasible yet.
Besides, most of WWII bombing wasn't directed at civilian targets. It seems to have worked despite this. Things got blown up right and left. The Allies weren't bombing Hamburg and Dresden in the fashion they did out of desperation over their inability to hit bugger all. Bomber Harris had to fight his own people to get permission to test his ideas. There clearly were perfectly good alternative ways of using the bomber fleet.

Also no one has said sparing the enemy population needs to be a priority. Just don't make them the primary target and you'll be fine with posterity.

The intention behind the bombings matter here. What you seem to be saying is that since bombing military and industrial targets resulted in massive civilian casualties, it was just as well that they made the civilians their primary target.

It was the British who bombed Germany's civilian targets before the Germans bombed Britain's. During the "battle of Britain" Gemany exclusively bombed radar-station, airfields and other Military targets. Britain bombed Berlin and some days after that Germany bombed London.

So the "You reap what you sow" is not historically correct.

ROFLMAO

:D

How convient to forget to mention:

Warsaw bombing = warcrime ?
Rotterdam bombing = warcrime ?
Strafing of civlian refuguee column = warcrime ?
Bombing of Dover = warcrime ?

Heck The entire invasion of Poland = warcrime
The Invasion of neutral countries = warcrime

You could make the arguement that Dresden wasn't a terror bombing. I don't see how one could make that argument. The entire point of the Dresden fire bombing was to destroy the city and it's population.

I also don't buy into the line of reasoning that the bad things done by one side justify bad things done by the other. It seems to be a popular line of reasoning and shows up in many arguments, not just about war.

I think the best defence for the firebombing of both Dresden and Tokyo and the A-bomb was that the allies cared only about their own casualties and not those of nations they were fighting against (and rightly so). They were looking to break the spirit of the enemy and thereby shorten the war and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of their own troops (perhaps millions in the case of invading Japan proper). Most of the troops involved on both sides were merely drafted civilians and the war was being won or lost in the factories as much as on the battlefield so the line between soldier and civilian was already blurred. The societies of all the participants were fully moblized at ever level with victory being the only possible (and in the case of the non-Communist allies, moral) objective. WWII was an existential struggle in the truest meaning of the word, not just a mere war. The strategy of high intensity bombing failed in Germany but was eminently sucessful in Japan. In the case of Japan allied decision making was strongly colored by the battles of Iwo Jima and other islands where the Japanese held out to the last man even after they had clearly been defeated, a large percentage of allied casualties in those battles came long after the outcome had been determined.

It needs to be understood that we are looking at this with the benefit of hindsight. The events that happened look predestined now but at the time they were not. Even after D-day the Germans broke through allied lines at the Battle of the Bulge and for a time put them in a state of extreme panic.

So here it is again and like Longasc said before much rubbish is told here.
1. Targeting civilians is a warcrime. It was a cause of the 30 years war that civilians should be out of the target list. This resulted in the end in the Hague and Geneva conventions. So targeting civilians in ww2 was ever a war crime. So were Warsaw and Coventry as like Hamburg, Hiroshima, Tokyo and Dresden.
2. The "justification" is ever the Nazis did bad things. True! But this never leads to a justification of doing attrocities themselves. If you kill the children of a murderer you are a murderer yourself. There is nothing to debate about that. And although a time has to be judged after the time´s point of view it can´t be judged in another way. Killing civilians were bad in 1900 as well as in 1914, 1945 or 2005. The international law was and is protecting civilians. So the bombing was ever a warcrime.
3. The aim to break the German morale was never achieved. Infact the morale was boosted by the attacks. Hitler would have more likely put out of action without the bombings or if the bombers dropped papers with infos from the KZs. Also attacking other targets like the refineries or railway stations would have been much more effective. But this wasn´t done until the very end.
4. Also the neccessary means were never allowing killing so many civilians, especially in 1945 when the war was over. It was clear Germany was losing.

At last: Here is a thread we had already before. And again here some people argue indeed in the very same way like many other bad men before (Nazis e.g.). This attitude should never be supported! Nevertheless we had the thread before and I suggest to add all these threads to one and make it sticky for a year or so and then close it for this time. Otherwise I fear the climate in this forum is poisoned. Here some still thinks that the allies were the white knights fighting the Nazi devil and did never bad things. That is completely false.

Adler

3. The aim to break the German morale was never achieved. Infact the morale was boosted by the attacks.

The one thing I can say in defence of the fire bombings was that this outcome was not known until it was tried.

I agree they were an atrocity. 1936 to 1945 was the darkest time in human history to date.

That is pretty irrelevant, because in the times of Dresden raid, was was almost over. There was no need to break their morale.


20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the time, check out how many V1 and V2 rockets were hitting British cities around the time of the Dresden bombing.

Beats me why there's this desperate clamour to label Dresden a war crime, anyway. There's no real attempt to label the Blitz or the bombings of Coventry (or dozens of other British cities) as war crimes. It was a bombing war- people got killed. Deal with it.

At last: Here is a thread we had already before. And again here some people argue indeed in the very same way like many other bad men before (Nazis e.g.). This attitude should never be supported! Nevertheless we had the thread before and I suggest to add all these threads to one and make it sticky for a year or so and then close it for this time. Otherwise I fear the climate in this forum is poisoned. Here some still thinks that the allies were the white knights fighting the Nazi devil and did never bad things. That is completely false.

Adler

Of course but what are you going to do ?

i:e paris train marchalling yards 1944 was bombed the living daylights out of even though the Allies KNEW that almost all the casualties would be french civilians. They did so anyway inorder to paralysis the German logistics.

IIRC 40,000 French civilians died.

Beats me why there's this desperate clamour to label Dresden a war crime, anyway. There's no real attempt to label the Blitz or the bombings of Coventry (or dozens of other British cities) as war crimes. It was a bombing war- people got killed. Deal with it.
A matter of setting the record straight in the face of some complex, but flawed reasoning?:)

No one has denied any Nazi war crimes so far. Or claimed that the sides were 'equally bad'.

Or we can just chalk it up to the odd little ways of 'furriners'. ;)

Of course but what are you going to do ?

i:e paris train marchalling yards 1944 was bombed the living daylights out of even though the Allies KNEW that almost all the casualties would be french civilians. They did so anyway inorder to paralysis the German logistics.

IIRC 40,000 French civilians died.
They weren't made the specific targets. The intention was to disrupt German logistics, not to kill French civilians.

This would only be an argument if the rest of us were saying that causing any civilian casualties at all constitutes a war crime. We don't.

This was WWII. You don't even have to try to miss them, just aim for something legit in their vicinity and we will agree you were within your rights.

I agree to a degree with Kafka. We as countries can either spend decades arguing about what was and wasn't a warcrime (and the attendent tension that sometimes can cause) or we can simply admit that the desperation of the period caused some horrific events and get on with our lives.

I'm sad things like Dresden happened, but we're going to be here a damned long time if we're getting all the countries of the world to appologise for all the crimes they've committed. It's possible to argue that since it's more recent it would have more validity, but frankly there's no-one left alive (to my knowledge but given that they'd probably be 90+ by now...) who would have had a significant influence on making the decision to bomb Dresden in that fashion. Seems to me the appology would be pretty much about politics than actual sense of guilt or regret.

Call it a warcrime if it makes you feel better, the allies weren't perfect whether it's admitted to or not. I don't know many serious followers of that period of history who think that they were, so what's it going to prove? Let us just hope that in the future when they have less access to first hand accounts they don't loose sight of who did the worst warcrimes and assume both were as bad as the other.

look at it this way. Some people here have got quite upset about this discussion. Imagine how upset the people in 1940 would have been when the bombs were falling. The Germans started the war and started bombing civilians 1st. The allies retalited. They are both guilty of warcrimes I suppose but I don't hold any grudges vs Germans for bombing London. Both sides used bombing population centers as a misguided in hindsight attempt to shorten the war. War sucks and civilians get targeted by military forces.

However theres a huge difference IMHO between bombing civilians and the Holocaust. Adlers arguement was the bombing was a warcrime by both sides which is technically correct I suppose. My main objection is however the Holocaust was a definate warcrime and by calling the Allies war criminals to me seems to be an attempt to whitewash the crimes of the 3rd Reich.

Nazis=Warcriminals
Allies = Warcriminals

Using this logic to me while technically true theres a huge difference between the 2 sides. I suspect most Germans wish Germany had fought and won WW2 under a different regime. To me any pride the Germans can feel from their nations battlefield achievements or technological achievements in WW2 will be forever tainted by the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

Since at least the 60's "historians" like David Irving have been trying to minimise the crimes of Germany while arguing that the Allies were as bad or worse. I think we can agree an Allied victory was for the best. To me people arguing that the Allies were war criminals (while technically true) are trying to drag the Allies down to Nazi Germany's level. The Allies were no perfect little angels by any means though. Hitler was such a little turd look how we're still arguing about it today and obviously emotions can run high so I apologise to Longasc and Adler for any offense I have caused.

Its Anzac weekend here so on monday I'll drag my ass out of bed at 6am and attend the Anzac day service. My Great Granfather was a WW1 vet and as a child I remember him and he was gassed in the trenches so sometimes I'm not in the best of moods towards historical Germans. I in no way blame or hold modern day Germans responsable for the actions of their grandfathers although to her dying day my grandmother didn't like Germans or Japanese.

Momentarily disregarding what has been said in the thread. (No single poster here needs to feel adressed by what follows.)

If one samples the general public image of WWII in the UK (+Commonwealth?) and the US, and compare it with the German one in particular, what is striking is how uncomplicated things seem in the English speaking world.

WWII is a very upebeat national myth (John Keegan has labeled it so for Britain) of overcoming great odds to emerge triumphant against and enemy seemingly Evil incarnate — 'the greatest generation', 'their finest hour' etc.

Obviously things have to be more complicated in Germany. And when comparing what the general public get in the UK/US etc. and in Germany, then the former does come across a little bit simple — at times it looks like a form of "Huzza, we won the war! How d'ye like them onions Fritz?!'

Compared to the utter seriousness with which most Germans have to eat, sleep and crap with WWII on their mind, they might as well be on different planets.

Verbose: Pretty good observation. That is also the main reason why some of the more containt German CFC members can become extremely upset about especially the British press, certain types of Hollywood movies and terms like 'Krauts'.
We do not consider WW2 'funny' in any way. Nothing wrong with satire, but we leave WW2 jokes to the Neonazis. And consider anyone making them or pledging for massive warfare as similarily minded.
Also, since we're about the least nation represented on CFC where military service is mandatory, and consciencious objection possible, some of us (me!) hade to made this choice already. I've been to one of Germany's elite units, and did quit halfway since I found that training to kill simply disgusting. I hate any First Person Shooter since that days, and I cannot understand how immature many posters here argue.

If one samples the general public image of WWII in the UK (+Commonwealth?) and the US, and compare it with the German one in particular, what is striking is how uncomplicated things seem in the English speaking world.

I'd certainly say that's true amongst the "uneducated" masses yes and personally consider it a damned shame. However just because those with little to no understanding of the war consider it in black and white terms does not explain those British or Americans who look at it in a more educated manner, yet support or excuse the bombings. So in terms of relevance to the posts here it is pretty removed.

As for humour about war, I don't mind it. There's serious discussions and there's humour, I like to be able to enjoy both without getting worked up about things. WW2 is a very serious subject, but that's no need to allow it to have a negative impact on the future.

We do not consider WW2 'funny' in any way

Hitler proud boast that whereever the Allies landed germany would be ready to meet them. Yes the vaunteed Atlantic wall and Hitlers deluded scheme.

During a commando raid. The British had succesfully blow up a radar installation, capture prisoners and were procceding to gather documents and intell. One "chap" a Lt had captured a German radio operator and at gun point forced him to send direct to berlin a message, "Iam here. stop where are the armies you promised would meet us ? stop"

Those crazy British are at it again.

Concerning the British and their German bashing I think that is also a kind of racism but since they seem not to win again Germany in soccer in the final rounds of championships I am not so upset :p . We don´t only talk but act! ;)
Concerning the allied bombing war: Here it is said that the allies were in a bad situation and the German started and so on. If they were in this bad situation, as I agree they were, they had still to keep rules. Cicero wasn´t right when he said: Inter arma enim silent leges (Under arms the also the laws are silent). This opinion was to be banned by the reactions of the 30 years war which was kept mostly until 1939. The Nazis started the war. And it is in no way a whitewashing of the Nazis but to find the dirt in the Allied´s side. They commited war crimes. There is nothing to discuss. They are in no way justifieable. You can´t justify a crime with another. If you do so you´re on the very same level like the Nazis. Also the means the Allies, mostly the British, used in these terror attacks were in no way suitable to end the war. If you quote Goebbels and say he said these attacks should be more intensified to be successful you are just justifiying a genocide! So be careful.
A personal note: My grandma lived in Hamburg that time and was a teenager. She cycled an open street once when a Spitfire appeared behind her. The pilot shot at my grandma although it was clear that there was a teenie cycling. There was no other target. And only because she fell into the ditch of the street the MG salvos missed her. Since that day she was not very keen on the British until her last breath. I also don´t hate the British for that but wanted to show that innocent people were attacked!

Adler

I just think it needs to be recognised that all European nations are more or less out of sync, where WWII is concerned. The British may actually have the healthiest attitude towards their war experience, with jokes and all, but it's still a very priviliged position. Seeing someone exercise that kind of privilige, taking it for granted, can be slightly upsetting.

The German way of dealing with WWII at times feels like a grueling slog compared to the British. My personal experience of discussing these things with Germans in Grmany, is that they can be so deadeningly serious about it. It's often a combination of utter sincerity and a form of ritualisation that compells any Germans present to categorically state his/her exact position, with no ambiguities.

It's not that hard to understand why and sympathise with it though.

The playing field is so obviously uneven when WWII is brought up. Considering what happened I neither think it could be even, nor do I want it to. I don't find it a gross injustice that the Germans don't get to deal with WWII on the same terms the British (or anybody else) do.

I am in favour of giving the Germans a bit of a break because of the way they have dealt with WWII, especially in the last 30 years. The post-war denazification wasn't that thorough. The real work Germany has done over this has occured recently. And if they have now come to the point where they think the suffering of German civilians deserve recognition, I think they have good reason.

To defend my fellow countrymen a little, that pretty much is the way we deal with war overall. The British do tend to have a habit of not entirely taking war seriously enough even during the conflict, so I don't think it's anything specific to WW2. I guess it's just part of how we deal with such things. Regretably many in the country are woefully ignorant of the period, but that's not something entirely specific to anglo-saxons to be fair.

Concerning the British and their German bashing I think that is also a kind of racism but since they seem not to win again Germany in soccer in the final rounds of championships I am not so upset

We won the one that mattered :mischief:

If you quote Goebbels and say he said these attacks should be more intensified to be successful you are just justifiying a genocide! So be careful.

:hmm: I vaguely recall various anti-bombing people suggesting this might have been a valid threat against Germany to attempt to stop the holocaust! You guys need to make your minds up ;)

A personal note: My grandma lived in Hamburg that time and was a teenager. She cycled an open street once when a Spitfire appeared behind her. The pilot shot at my grandma although it was clear that there was a teenie cycling. There was no other target. And only because she fell into the ditch of the street the MG salvos missed her. Since that day she was not very keen on the British until her last breath. I also don´t hate the British for that but wanted to show that innocent people were attacked!

My Grandfather saw Belsen, I'm going to argue he had more justification for disliking Germans if such an argument has any validity at all. Innocent people are always attacked in a war regreably, that specific event is less deliberate malice and probably more a mistake. Planes fly very fast, how certain are you the pilot knew she was a teenager given the amount of time he had to make such a judgement?

Finally I'm not seeking to justify the allies crimes (though some did have military reasoning despite your outcry I might add), I'm saying that we need to be careful that future generations do not to loose sight of who was the real evil in the war in our determination to get the allies to appologise and admit to every single last thing they did wrong. That's where the "germans did it too/first" is very relevant, because if we forget that we loose sight of who the real evil where.

So please quit acting like I'm excusing anything.

To defend my fellow countrymen a little, that pretty much is the way we deal with war overall. The British do tend to have a habit of not entirely taking war seriously
Sounds reasonable, and a pretty healthy attitude.
However, the problem is that while the Brits allow themselves to make jokes about everything, they refuse the same right to others...

Also, I for one do appreciate your personnal POV, and can fully accept it. I wouldn't even beat on the 'uneducated masses' btw; those are indeed identical in any given Western country.
The real oddity is the hatred against Germany preached by the British Mass media, plus the entirely wrong image they spread of today Germany. Something that has reached such an extent that our Foreign Secretary already needed to adress it.

A bit similar like the French bashing some time ago in the US. But, while France is halfway on the other side of the world for the average American, a ticket to Germany costs about as much as a lunch...

Another interesting thing is how the British and US forces acted during the time they had a significant presence in Germany:
The local US authorities treated their German neighbors pretty nicely, and indeed most Germans saw the GIs as allies and friends. I grew up in one of cities with the biggest US garrisons, and had some US friends at that time, and lots of contact.
The Brits acted like 'colonial occupators' (not in a way the Russians did in East Germany, more like you'd think they did in India some decades earlier). The officers participated in social events etc, but the common soldiers only got in contact with the Germans with the goal to get as drunk as fast as possible and than start some quarrels. I life near Herford today, so I know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, enough threadjacking (though I find this topic a lot more interesting as the original one, which has been discussed over and over again anyway :p ).

However, the problem is that while the Brits allow themselves to make jokes about everything, they refuse the same right to others...

I don't think that's true overall to be honest. Some of our best comedies send up the British a lot more than they do the Germans, French or Americans. Take Blackadder for example, most of that plays on the the British/English than forieigners. We tend to object to others humour because on the occasions they do make fun of us it's usually so boring, predictable and silly like Friends in London or whatever it was.

Given some educated and good comedy about the Brits I laugh as much as the next guy. ;)

The real oddity is the hatred against Germany preached by the British Mass media, plus the entirely wrong image they spread of today Germany. Something that has reached such an extent that our Foreign Secretary already needed to adress it.

I really wouldn't worry about it too much. The mass media like making sensational news stories or playing on people's ignorances. The majority of people with any brains think the likes of the Sun and Mirror are not even worthy of being used to line cat litter trays. The Mirror had the bright idea of putting "Atchung Surrender!" on their front page just before a world cup game with Germany.

They're as ignorant regarding British events as they are regarding Germans or French believe me. Have you ever heard of the Hillsborough disaster? Playing on the sterotypes of Liverpool people (the fans who died in the disaster being Liverpool FC fans) of being thieves, the Sun accused them of urinating on the dead and looting their wallets as they lay there. They even attacked them for vandalism when they ripped down some advertising hordings. What they were really doing it for was to create a makeshift stretcher. The accusations were plain ignorant, and since then the Sun has always been very unpopular on Merseyside. A short while ago (that would be 15 or so years later) they made a piss-poor appology on the issue but it was very weak to say the least.

That's the kind of paper you're referring to, so believe me it's not out of any dislike or ignorance of Germans specifically, it's just plain and simple ignorance. Regretably there's probably a million or so people who buy such tripe, but what can you do, millions of people watch Jerry Springer :D

The Brits acted like 'colonial occupators' (not in a way the Russians did in East Germany, more like you'd think they did in India some decades earlier). The officers participated in social events etc, but the common soldiers only got in contact with the Germans with the goal to get as drunk as fast as possible and than start some quarrels. I life near Herford today, so I know what I'm talking about.

That's nothing unusual, British soldiers do that in Britain with the British :lol: Nothing to do with colonial attitudes ;)

No, it was not a war crime, it was the only means of war at that stage.

After Dunkirk and until D-Day, the bomber provided the only effective weapon to hit Germany in its heartland, the centre of gravity where it was to be defeated. It provided a means of striking, and had the accompanying effect of destroying the Luftwaffe as a fighting force capable of challenging for air superiority.

That the Normandy landings could occur under a virtually completely Allied sky was due to the bombing campaign, and particularly the dominance of the P-51 as an escort fighter wearing down Luftwaffe fighter strength.

Some have previously stated that others are employing 20/20 hindsight, and that is quite correct in one's own view. It was a total war, at the apex of the industrial age. The actions of the Allies were justifiable in military terms; in strategic terms; and in moral terms. The genie had been let out of the bottle by the Axis, and it came back to visit them with a vengeance.

The RAF bombed at night, which made things even more difficult to avoid a wide dispersal of bombs. Deliberately hitting area targets was using the decisive weapon of the bomber in the best way it could. The Allied Strategic Bombing Survey does show that both the RAF and the USAAF did not achieve what they thought they could and what they thought they did, but this was after the fact.

The ends justified the means in this situation as from the Allied perspective, the ends and the struggle engaged in were of the utmost importance. The aim was total victory in total war, and this was achieved. The strategic bombing campaign of the Allies not a war crime, but rather a brilliant and terrible display of total war. Bomber Harris said on the wireless that they were coming, and they came.

As a side note, there is a frequent raising of this topic and the nuking of Japan as war crimes by the Allies, but there does not seem to be the same focus on the actions of the Soviet Union. As to why there seems to be this imbalance of outrage is an open question...

As a side note, there is a frequent raising of this topic and the nuking of Japan as war crimes by the Allies, but there does not seem to be the same focus on the actions of the Soviet Union. As to why there seems to be this imbalance of outrage is an open question...

Err...simply because Kattyn or the mass raping of German women in 1945 are an undisputed war crimes, as much as lots of things Germany or Japan did, or Italy in Ethopia?

See my posts in the other threads, this invention that the bombing campaign was of little value against moral or material, or in tying down vast amounts of manpower, material and weaponary is laughable.

As for it being a crime, when one side has completely ignored the rules there is not obligation to stick to them yourself with regard to that combatant. Irregardless, in Modern War, the entire populace is part and parcel of supporting the military machine and is a valid military target. If you have the luxury of being merciful either granted by technology or that your nation hasn't suffered particularly, go for it. But the Germans had done so much to deserve all they got for forcing economic catastrophe upon Britain, killing and maiming so many of her citizens and ending her Empire, for inflicting terror and nearly achieving our subjugation - we/they had just cause. Both German and Japanese got their just desserts and were sent the clear message that they had been defeated and they had let their leaders take them to ruin by inflicting War on so many other countries and all the terrors that this brings even from merciful conquerors and the Nazis and Japanese weren't.

Why do Germans make such a big deal about it? Well, to try and tar the Allies and inparticular Britain with the same dirty brush of mass murder that the Germans of that era had got coated by.

As Simon said, this way of War was one in which Britain could hurt the Germans whilst for so long being off the continent, it was our early second front and it was one way of showing the Germans and our Russian Allies that we were still in it and causing the Germans alot of grief.

Err...simply because Kattyn or the mass raping of German women in 1945 are an undisputed war crimes, as much as lots of things Germany or Japan did, or Italy in Ethopia?


They are rarely mentioned, certainly not in the same breath, were certainly not prosecuted (with good reason, given the notion of victor's justice) and are the real Allied war crimes to stand on the rooftops and shout about. They even put other allies in postwar gulags, with the Czechoslovak RAF blokes being held until 1951 in some cases.

But, Uncle Joe gets a free ride for various reasons, some from then, some from now. An example is a National Geographic article about the Soviet sinking of the large German freighter packed with East Prussian refugees in the Baltic. It briefly dallies with the idea of it being a naughty thing, but then floods this notion with hagiographic justification. A lonely footnote of history, left blowing in the wind.

If we are seeking blood on the paws of WW2 Allies, then the Evil Red Empire is the first place to look, and even now should be shouted about, given the nostalgia about Stalin that is kicking about.

I suppose one would have to also look at the motivation behind aerial bombing as well. When Germany was bombing England the goal was to force England to surrender through the destruction of its industrial capacity, airforce and later to terrorise the civilians. More or less the same goals as bomber command although in 43 onwards the Allies had more resources and bigger planes than the Germans ever had.

Due to the war situation the Allies didn't have much choice in what to do. Sit there and do nothing or bombs away. One overlooked fact is the bombing campaign wore down the Liftwaffe and an interesting note is that while most of Germanys resources were directed to the eastern front around half of the Luftwaffes forces including their best pilots were used to defend the homeland. Without the bombing campaign all of those forces could have been used on the eastern front or at Normandy. Its hard to say if any of the close battles on Russia could have been decided with better air support.

The western Allies plan was to wear the Germans down with industrial attrition which in addition to disrupting the industrial base also included destroying the Luftwaffe as well. While technically a war crime I suppose the greater crime would have been letting Germany win the war. In a perfect world the war would have been won regardless but often leaders are faced with difficult decisions and often have to go with the lesser of two evils.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is in WW1. The Germans were the first to use gas on the western front. The English and French responded in kind. In WW2 the Germans were the first to use level bombing. The Allies responded in kind and then some. In war you don't fight with one hand tied behind your back and at the time it was believed they could win the war with minimal casualties required from a cross channel invasion and advance into Germany proper.

They are rarely mentioned, certainly not in the same breath, were certainly not prosecuted (with good reason, given the notion of victor's justice) and are the real Allied war crimes to stand on the rooftops and shout about. They even put other allies in postwar gulags, with the Czechoslovak RAF blokes being held until 1951 in some cases.

But, Uncle Joe gets a free ride for various reasons, some from then, some from now. An example is a National Geographic article about the Soviet sinking of the large German freighter packed with East Prussian refugees in the Baltic. It briefly dallies with the idea of it being a naughty thing, but then floods this notion with hagiographic justification. A lonely footnote of history, left blowing in the wind.

If we are seeking blood on the paws of WW2 Allies, then the Evil Red Empire is the first place to look, and even now should be shouted about, given the nostalgia about Stalin that is kicking about.

No question. Maybe the situation in Germany is indeed different; we have absolutely no doubt about Stalin's crimes, and they are very well known and frequently adressed. Literature Noble laureate Grass' 'Im Krebsgang' just brought this up again, as well as countless TV features currently running about the end of WW2 50 years ago.
But I admittedly do not know how present those are in the rest of the world (outside Germany and the former Warsaw Pact countries).

Sounds reasonable, and a pretty healthy attitude.
However, the problem is that while the Brits allow themselves to make jokes about everything, they refuse the same right to others...


Nonsense. I'm going to have to introduce you to Vincent at CG. Here's one of his quotes-

"When I get a few minutes spare, I'll upload the photos of Britain that my Grandfather took. They're a bit blurred because he had to take them through the canopy of his Stuka."

I laughed my arse off at that one.

First here is something said the Germans did it first. Yes the Germans did use gas first in ww1 but only because their industry was a bit faster than the Entente, which also planned the use of gas. Otherwise they would not have been able to respond so fast. Yes the Germans bombed Guernica and Warsaw. Both war crimes. But the Brits under command of a certain Harris did this before in the Arab uprisings. There enemy towns and villages were bombed in the same way. The German Luftwaffe had as main target the British air industry and airfields. So legal targets- until a few bomber missed their target to drop accidentally some bombs over London. In the very following night the British bombed Berlin and the German target switched a bit. Because there were some revenge missions because of that. Mostly the Germans kept their aim of attacking factories but because of the fact that the worker houses were near to these factories many civilians were collateral damages. Also the British air force in contrast to the Luftwaffe had the plans to carry out terror bombardments. They wanted to use them. Therefore they had relied on heavy bombers. The Luftwaffe was designed to be used in a tactical way and lacked very much in strategical bombers. Only the He 177 Greif is to mention, a plane that was not operational before 1942/ 43. So the Luftwaffe was in trouble as she was ordered to do a job she was not able to do.
Civilians are said here are a valid target in a war. Fine! You just justified ALL terror bombings and the massacre on civilians on all sides. It is also against all international laws. Civilians are protected regardless what happens. Yes there is something called repressal which means if the enemy does something against the rules you are allowed to break the rules in another point. But this stops when civilians are the main target. Also when the enemy stops breaking the rules you are also not any more allowed to break the rules. So the extensive use of bombers against German civilians should also never used to be only repressals but to break the German morale and was still continued as terror bombing when it was clear that the aim was missed. Also we should not forget the fact Harris himself said that except Essen all bombardments were used to kill German civilians.
If you argue he is right you follow the argumentation of Nazis. Some here seem to do that...

Adler

P.S.: My Grandma drove an open way. She was alone and had long hair. So a pilot shich shoots at her must have recognized she was only a young woman, no legitime target at all. Otherwise he was blind.

If we are seeking blood on the paws of WW2 Allies, then the Evil Red Empire is the first place to look, and even now should be shouted about, given the nostalgia about Stalin that is kicking about.

I think all the people who post in this thread are perfectly aware of Soviet crimes. The view of the Second world war has shifted into "Evil Germans attacked good Allies, than they attacked also evil Soviets and than the good Allies used evil Soviets to help them in the defeating of Reich." But Allies are clearly percieved as the pure good.

I just want to get rid of that stupid thinking "we're the winners, so we're always right, no matter what we did".

P.S.: My Grandma drove an open way. She was alone and had long hair. So a pilot shich shoots at her must have recognized she was only a young woman, no legitime target at all. Otherwise he was blind.

I doubt he even noticed such things given the speed he was flying at. Calous perhaps but hardly crime of the century.

The Luftwaffe was designed to be used in a tactical way and lacked very much in strategical bombers

Precisely. The luftwaffe certainly did not lack the intention to attack civilian targets in a terror campaign, it proved quite willing to do so. It simply lacked the means to do so on anything like the same scale. It wasn't quite as easy bombing civilian targets when the enemy's air force had modern warplanes and a refusal to surrender.

Also when the enemy stops breaking the rules you are also not any more allowed to break the rules

Between mass murder of Jews and undersirables, mass starvation of the Russian POWs, terror attacks using V1 an V2s, indiscriminate attacks on shipping and god knows what else, when did the Germans stop breaking the rules in WW2? I haven't personally used this form of argument so far, but it seems to me that it wouldn't be hard to continue to find german flouting of the rules.

Also we should not forget the fact Harris himself said that except Essen all bombardments were used to kill German civilians.

Well it seems Harris was ignorant of the use of the USAAF then.

And for the final time, I really don't see how people quite think that someone who killed civilians with the overall intent of shortening the war is quite on the same wavelegnth as a group of people who killed civilians because they were of a particular ethnic group and would have done so with or without a war going on. Harris and by extension Churchill may have been wrong, but at least Churchill wasn't seeking to kill every single German.

The German way of dealing with WWII at times feels like a grueling slog compared to the British. My personal experience of discussing these things with Germans in Grmany, is that they can be so deadeningly serious about it. It's often a combination of utter sincerity and a form of ritualisation that compells any Germans present to categorically state his/her exact position, with no ambiguities.

An obvious observation, but one that is worth stating is that Germans obviously feel the weight of history when discussing the war in a way that people from other countries do not.

I don't think that anyone from Germany born after 1930 (at the latest) should have to answer for the actions of their country in the war unless they are skinheads who refuse to recognise the past, and not all citizens of the Axis supported their governments even in that era, a friend and former boss of mine's father spent much of the war under arrest for trying to protect the jews of Florence (he is Italian, his view of Germans is not as forgiving as mine, caused by his personal experience of the war). It was another era, the perpetraters of the sins of the past are mostly in their graves now. It is not like Germany has tried to airbrush this era out of their history (unlike Japan).

Beats me why there's this desperate clamour to label Dresden a war crime, anyway. There's no real attempt to label the Blitz or the bombings of Coventry (or dozens of other British cities) as war crimes. It was a bombing war- people got killed. Deal with it.

eh, everyone calls the bombings of Coventry and London and all otehr British cities hit 'war crimes' - so it is rather a question why Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim etc are NOT war crimes.


:rolleyes:

eh, everyone calls the bombings of Coventry and London and all otehr British cities hit 'war crimes' - so it is rather a question why Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim etc are NOT war crimes.


:rolleyes:

Keep rolling and rolling those eyes until you're really, really dizzy. Britons don't tend to call them "War crimes". I should know- I've been one for a very long time.

It's just "the war". That's how it was.

Keep rolling and rolling those eyes until you're really, really dizzy. Britons don't tend to call them "War crimes". I should know- I've been one for a very long time.

It's just "the war". That's how it was.

ah, the british art of understatement :p

It's just a fact of life. There were still bombsites around when I grew up.

There was a war. In war, bombs got dropped on cities. People got killed. What would be the point of prosecuting Luftwaffe survivors?

That's just how it was. We don't sit down and swoon, with the backs of our hands against our foreheads like the consumptive heroine of some Victorian melodrama. It was a war. There were bombings. Get over it.

Yes, targetting civilians is always a war crime, so the Allies did commit war crimes during WW2, which include Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But we have some things to consider:

-Most of the civilians killed by allied bombing campaigns were actually killed by accident, as the accuracy was very low.
-It was politically impossible to sacrifice some of your soldiers to save enemy civilians. Look at the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for exemple. While they were both terror attacks, they forced the japanese to surrender and thus saved the lifes of countless americans soldiers. So while this does not in anyway make those bombings ethical, they sure make them understandable.

Nonsense. I'm going to have to introduce you to Vincent at CG. Here's one of his quotes-

"When I get a few minutes spare, I'll upload the photos of Britain that my Grandfather took. They're a bit blurred because he had to take them through the canopy of his Stuka."

I laughed my arse off at that one.

At the risk of leading the thread astray this brings to mind something my uncle (by marriage) said at a job interview to be a delivery driver in London.

Interviewer "Do you know London very well?"
Uncle " Only from the Air"

The comedy value is that this was the 1960's and my uncle was former Luftwaffe with a strong German accent.

He got the job by the way. The interviewer thought it was hilarious.

So do I, in this context.



Well, actually they had - Germans were than much more willing to fight. They wanted "revenge" for this killing.



That is pretty irrelevant, because in the times of Dresden raid, was was almost over. There was no need to break their morale.



I wouldn't say that. Germans kept fighting to the bitter end, even in encircled Berlin, without any chance, they fought (but I admit that was because they feared Russians much more than Allies).



This thread is supposed to be rather about the conventional raids. Nuclear bomb was a weapon nobody was prepared for, so it's obvious it caused a great shock. My question regarding nuclear bomb is - was it really necessary to drop a-bombs on densely populated cities, causing so much suffering and death?

Apparently it was necessary, because it refused to surrender until it happened. Japan was given plenty of opportunity to do so. It even hesitated after the first bomb was dropped!

It's funny how you shrug off my question about whether you asked the Dresdners whether they felt lower morale after the bombing of their city. Obviously you don't know. I don't either. As far as the Germans fighting to the bitter end, they most certainly did. They did so because Hitler wouldn't allow for anything else, and the people worshipped him. They had no idea that he wanted them to go down in a blaze of glory.

Most of the Germans wanted to surrender in winter 1944/ 54 at last. However this was not possible with Hitler. Nevertheless the war was over, these missions were only terror bombings. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are described in other threads (which were also war crimes).
Luiz, Harris targeted the civilians as main targets, not the industry! This makes him a war criminal. Also I never said the bomber pilots were the evil but their leaders. I know of many British pilots who changed their attitude towards the bombing war dramatically after Dresden...
@ Hotpoint: Did your uncle deliver the goods by a He 111? ;)

Adler

Oh on a side track here:

Heres a moral delema

Bombing of concentration camps.
During the last year of the war, detailed information was succesfully smuggled out pertaining to locations and operations of concentration camps. It was requested that the allies bomb them to halt to clockwork killing.

In fact Survivurs of the holocaust had expressed that they strongly hoped the camps and themselves be bombed.

yet the Allies believed it was a German trick in which to lure them into destroying "evidence" and passing the blame. As we all know the Allies did not bomb the camps.
In a strange way the concetration camps help win the war by diverting resourcse needed at the font. In fact it was Erichmen who was in fact "sabataging" the war effort by giving priorty to fullfilling hes "mission" instead of prioriting for the front.

It's just a fact of life. There were still bombsites around when I grew up. the same is true for my childhood neighbourhood.

There was a war. In war, bombs got dropped on cities. People got killed. Uh, yes, black is black and white is white and there's no need to differntiate further.
In fact, there is a HUGE difference between a bomb dropped accidently on a civilian house, by error when aiming for a building next to it, or with the SOLE intent to kill civilians.
What would be the point of prosecuting Luftwaffe survivors?
None - unless you prosecute the people who planned the bombings to hit civilians.
If we follow your attitude, then the Nuremberg trials would have been unnecessary and Göring should have gne free.

That's just how it was. We don't sit down and swoon, with the backs of our hands against our foreheads like the consumptive heroine of some Victorian melodrama. It was a war. There were bombings. Get over it.

:rolleyes:

Let's take you argument a bit further. 'There was a war and fascist racists in power. Jews got killed. Get over it.'

Does that sound right?

Uh, yes, black is black and white is white and there's no need to differntiate further.
In fact, there is a HUGE difference between a bomb dropped accidently on a civilian house, by error when aiming for a building next to it, or with the SOLE intent to kill civilians.


Oh come off it. The Blitz on London, the bombing on Coventry, and many others on both sides would satisfy the culpability tests for criminal guilt on the grounds of recklessness alone- and that's the most charitable interpretation,


None - unless you prosecute the people who planned the bombings to hit civilians.


Because the bombers were just obeying orders, right? That defence doesn't work, though- as numerous war crimes have established.


If we follow your attitude, then the Nuremberg trials would have been unnecessary and Göring should have gne free.

Let's take you argument a bit further. 'There was a war and fascist racists in power. Jews got killed. Get over it.'

Does that sound right?

Nope. It sounds utterly bizarre because, in case you missed the point, I'm arguing that by the standards of the time the bombing of cities was not a war crime. The attempted deliberate extermination of civilians in the camps was a war crime.

So what's it to be? Do we prosecute RAF and Luftwaffe bomber crews, or do we accept there is a difference?

A crime can´t justify another. Also you will be condamned as murderer if you are objectively acting in self defense but you do not want to self defend, at leat in Germany (Clarification: If you kill a man who is attacking you, but you don´t know that, for example you are aiming at someone with a rifle and this one has a bomb laid near to you and you shoot him before he just can push the button without knowing the bomb).
So the bombings of the RAF are still war crimes, regardless what happened in the KZs or elsewhere.

Adler

By 'the standards of the day' of most nations bombing civilians was a war crime according to international treaties.

The Nazis considered these treaties utter rubbish of course.

And at the same time the British had been very, very careful not to sign anything of that sort — knowing how they had used air power in their colonies.

So no, neither Nazi Germany nor the UK of the day considered exclusively targetting civilians a war crime.

Just about everybody else did though.

eh, everyone calls the bombings of Coventry and London and all otehr British cities hit 'war crimes' - so it is rather a question why Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim etc are NOT war crimes.


:rolleyes:

Well, THOSE people who say that are poor, confused and mentally feeble individuals and I throw rocks at them...I for one did not argue along that rationale.

A crime can´t justify another. Also you will be condamned as murderer if you are objectively acting in self defense but you do not want to self defend, at leat in Germany (Clarification: If you kill a man who is attacking you, but you don´t know that, for example you are aiming at someone with a rifle and this one has a bomb laid near to you and you shoot him before he just can push the button without knowing the bomb).
So the bombings of the RAF are still war crimes, regardless what happened in the KZs or elsewhere.

Adler

We have exactly the same concept in English criminal law- it's the test of Mens Rea. However it's pretty pointless applying it to soldiers in wartime because a totally different set of rules apply.

"Sorry Mr Smith. We cannot be held responsible for the accidental death of your family, because the 500 pounds of TNT was actually dropped on the ball-bearings factory next door."

You see? Wars, as we know it, would be prosecuted out of existance. That's probably not a bad thing, but I doubt our governments would agree.

We have exactly the same concept in English criminal law- it's the test of Mens Rea. However it's pretty pointless applying it to soldiers in wartime because a totally different set of rules apply.

"Sorry Mr Smith. We cannot be held responsible for the accidental death of your family, because the 500 pounds of TNT was actually dropped on the ball-bearings factory next door."

You see? Wars, as we know it, would be prosecuted out of existance. That's probably not a bad thing, but I doubt our governments would agree.

bolding by me

Again: it is not the SOLDIER, but rather the general who orders the bombing.

And yes, if the TNT is dropped on a factory, intentionally, then it is not a war crime if a civilian gets killed. If it is dropped on the civilian, intenteded, then it is. MHO.

bolding by me

Again: it is not the SOLDIER, but rather the general who orders the bombing.

And yes, if the TNT is dropped on a factory, intentionally, then it is not a war crime if a civilian gets killed. If it is dropped on the civilian, intenteded, then it is. MHO.

Nothing to add here.

On the Hague conventions: Both Britain and Germany were member states of these conventions damning the intentional killing of civilians! And even if they would have been not in these treaties there was a common usage not to target civilians so both sides commited war crimes by bombing civilians intentionally.

Adler

And even if they would have been not in these treaties there was a common usage not to target civilians so both sides commited war crimes by bombing civilians intentionally.

Oh but I beg to differ. The history of the Boer war for example and many campaigns in Africa, or North America are filled with deliberate attacks/actions on civilians.

bolding by me

Again: it is not the SOLDIER, but rather the general who orders the bombing.


Again: the "I was just obeying orders" defence is not accepted. As demonstrated by the penalties faced by those acting in the Einsatzgruppen. Fail to pursue the perpetrator, and you play into the General's hands.


And yes, if the TNT is dropped on a factory, intentionally, then it is not a war crime if a civilian gets killed. If it is dropped on the civilian, intenteded, then it is. MHO.

It's a crime under normal criminal law, however. Hence my utterly correct point about the uselessness of applying the normal Criminal Law stipulations. And that's not MHO- it's a fact.

In a war you have to differ: Warcrimes which are obvious then the soldiers are guilty, despite the fact that the order has to be recognized in the punishment. This means if you have the order to shoot civilians with MGs. On the other hand there are warcrimes which are not able to be seen or when it is very difficult to recognize by the average soldier. Then these soldiers are indeed only acting after orders. They are tools. If they recognized this however they are also guilty. IMO the bomber crews of ww2, except the B 29 bomber crews of the nuclear bombers, were only tools. However the general who orders to bomb is in all cases guilty, either because of instigation of a warcrime or because of being an indirect perpetrator. So Harris is guilty where it is doubtful by the crews.
PH, I meant generally it was kept. However there were exceptions. Also colonial warfare is a whole exception. But in normal wars generally these laws were kept.

Adler

Again: the "I was just obeying orders" defence is not accepted. As demonstrated by the penalties faced by those acting in the Einsatzgruppen. Fail to pursue the perpetrator, and you play into the General's hands.

That is true - when the individual soldier KNOWINGLY commits a crime.
Which does not really apply to Dresden.

PH, I meant generally it was kept. However there were exceptions. Also colonial warfare is a whole exception. But in normal wars generally these laws were kept.

Which only goes to prove that in each war during history countries will attack civilians if they feel under severe pressure or in a particularly desperate situation. Examples like Murat in Madrid spring to mind, though why we should feel obliged to ignore colonial examples when the demonstrate the point quite aptly is... well anyway.

I think what Adler meant was that there have been attempts to regulate warfare between western nations, but historically these attempts have usually not been extended to colonial wars. Not that he thinks there are good reasons for this.

(The doctine of 'Small Wars' stated that the primitive societies were so primitive it made any distinction between combatant and non-combatant impossible, hence all were legal targets.)

Good point. That doesn't mean though that there are not enough examples from pre WW2 though in "regular" warfare, even during the more "enlightened" times ;)

That is true - when the individual soldier KNOWINGLY commits a crime.
Which does not really apply to Dresden.

Excellent. So we agree the bombing of Dresden was not a war crime.

Anyone else?

Good point. That doesn't mean though that there are not enough examples from pre WW2 though in "regular" warfare, even during the more "enlightened" times ;)
And that's why people started signing conventions to check the worst forms of abuse of civilians in the 19th c. in the first place.

They were still under the assumption that humanity was 'progressing', and that things like that should stop.;)

Excellent. So we agree the bombing of Dresden was not a war crime.

Anyone else?
Laws are made by human beings. Legality depends on agreement. If the British decide that bombing civilians is legal, then it is to them. It doesn't mean anybody else must agree though. Question is if they will seriously try to impose their defintion of legality on the British.
Since no one has been indicted, much less convicted, that wouldn't seem to be the case.

Had the Nazis won WWII gasing Jews would have been perfectly legal. From that perspective, the Brits considering all their actions (well, everything gran'dad did in the war) justified is certainly a lesser evil.
:coffee:

And that's why people started signing conventions to check the worst forms of abuse of civilians in the 19th c. in the first place.

Based on outdated expectations of warfare and situations nowhere as extreme as would be seen and experienced in WW2 yes.

They were still under the assumption that humanity was 'progressing', and that things like that should stop

*shrugs* They couldn't appreciate how desperate things would get.

The difference is, that "they" weren't German people, but Nazis - totalitarian regieme.
You gonna tell me that the Germans didn't support Hitler?

If the Wallies had lost the war, they most certainly would have been tried for warcrimes (Dresden springs to mind). Wallied strategic planners have even admitted as much.

-V

You gonna tell me that the Germans didn't support Hitler?

Not all Germans supported the Nazi regime. In fact, many historians decry the fact that the anti-Nazi movement in Germany wasn't strongly supported by the Allies.

-V

If the Wallies had lost the war, they most certainly would have been tried for warcrimes (Dresden springs to mind). Wallied strategic planners have even admitted as much.

-V

But, luckily for us, your the side you cheerlead via your use of the term "Wallies" for the Allies lost.

Luckily the Allies won indeed. But is the winning of a war a justification of warcrimes? Highly questionable. Also this should not prevent the allied war criminals from a trial.

Adler

Also this should not prevent the allied war criminals from a trial.

Common sense prevented that :)

What do you think about this topic? IMO according to todays standards, intentional bombing of civilian targets in order to kill enemy civilians to disrupt morale of the enemy is called terrorism.

These air raids killed more than 500,000 (real number is higher) people in German cities, with no effect on enemy morale.

In your opinion - was that justifiable?

Let's get one thing clear. By a reasonable interpretation of the current status of the Geneva Conventions, the atomic bomb attacks on Japan neither are, nor were, a war crime. In fact, there is nothing in the Geneva Conventions now, or then, which makes it so.

And on a personal level, my degree of sympathy for the vicitims of these attacks is somewhat muted by the barbaric behaviour of the relevant governments, which the bombed populations continued to enthusiastically support to the death. My degree of sympathy for their modern day apologists is somewhere closer to utter contempt.

Dresden would obviously fail the test of the relevant parts of the 1949 convention, as would, I suspect, the atmoic bomb attacks, or the firebombing of e.g. Tokyo. There are, however, caveats in the Conventions regarding non-signatory nations, and it may well be that neither Nazi Germany nor Imperial Japan were entitled to protection under the conventions on strict legal grounds. Which would, i suppose, make the above noted actions immoral but not necessarily criminal.

Actually, I think I need to revise my conclusions, based upon the following (and especially Art 51.5(b) ):


PART IV: CIVILIAN POPULATION
Section 1: General Protection Against Effects of Hostilities

Article 51: Protection of the Civilian Population

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.

4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited....

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:

a. an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
b. an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

If one were to assume that the demands of the Conventions upon combatant countries have become more stringent with time, rather than less (as I think they have) then clearly any act which could be found acceptable by the current standards is also permissible by any earlier standard (at least in the absence of proof that the standard was stronger in the past).

51.5(b) appears to imply that the end does in fact justify the means. If one were to accept the rationale that the atomic bomb attacks were launched with the intent of causing a Japanese surrender (pretty reasonable statement) and that they did cause such (again, a reasonable statement) then the anticipated and actual military advantage obtained by the bombings (total victory) would appear to justify the large civilian loss of life associated with the attacks.

By a same rationale, the utter absence of any demonstrable link between the bombing of Dresden and any military advantage gained would push it very much towards the war crimes side of the ledger. Tokyo would seem to be somewhere between them.

(I am conscious that this is an argument that terror bombing is acceptable; however, that does seem to be the actual implication of the current wording of the Conventions - provided the terror is in fact induced to the extent that a significant or very significant advantage is gained. This would actually also appear to exonerate the bombing attack on Rotterdam in 1940.....)

Two questions of relevance:

(a) Was any German officier charged post-war in connection with the Rotterdam attack (which would tend to confirm or deny the thesis that it was 'acceptable' by the standards of the time)

(b) What, if any, conventions existed during WW2 that correspond to the Fourth (1949) Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

I wonder if the whole notion of warcrimes isn't mostly retrospective with a strong dollop of victors justice.

Is there more than just a bit of irony in that we proscribe a notion of legal or illegal around an action who's inten