Dresden- Justified or Not?

[TrailblazingScot]

Just spotted that Drakan thinks also that London had no military significance, I'm going to stop typing here, but needless to say, what an...

 

[Dragonlord]

Very controversial thread...

I find it interesting to note the reactions of some of the posters, who discount the very thought of Dresden possibly having been a war crime by diverting the discussion to the undoubted German war crimes. Those aren't in doubt!
What's supposed to be the point?

I see several incredible arguments on this thread:

- Any war crimes are justified if the other side commits them too
- We want to win the war, so anything we do is justified
- We are right and the others wrong, so whatever we do is justified
- All is fair in war / there is no morality in war

Please think about what you're saying here. How is that thinking any different from what the Nazis thought? And any other war criminal throughout history?

It was fair and correct to put the Nazi leadership on trial at Nuremberg and execute the worst offenders - it was a good precedent, which should be followed for other offenders as well (see Milosevic of Serbia for instance) - but only if the rationale is morality, not revenge.

People, by using arguments like the above, YOU are the ones who support the revisionists claiming Nuremberg was 'victors justice' !

Morality can't only be applied to the losers in a conflict, or it's only an excuse for revenge!

Killing civilians to institute terror and 'persuade' the survivors to follow a different course is the very definition of terrorism, I agree - and very few people except terrorists deny that terrorism is a crime.

No one can dispute that Germany committed the first such crime of deliberately killing civilians by indiscriminate bombing (Guernica anyone?) - but why should that excuse Dresden?
Dresden was especially horrific, because obviously civilian casualties were not only tolerated (so-called collateral damage) but the whole object of the exercise - they set it up specifically to kill as many civilians as possible.

So, what else can you count Dresden as, if not a war crime?

And why does it bother some of you to admit that, yes, the Allies also committed some war crimes? That doesn't excuse the German war crimes either, so where's the problem?

 

[LouLong]

Not to say it was not a war crime but many people seem to check its military value.
I don't agree. It was a political act to break the German morale and population support of the government and the war.

In a time of "total war", the civilians were considered part of the military problem. This started during the USCW, was seen during the Boer War, the Spanish civil war and of course the peak was reached during the two world wars.

In a way I would put the blame on the ideology shared by most people, armies and governments of that time.

In spite of the huge number of casualties I would not call it a "war crime" stricto sensu paralleled to German war crimes against jews or Slavic people. It was more a total act of war such as the bombing of Coventry.

One thing to say is that the US may not have used the A bomb against German civilians which means the mass bombing decision was not that easy to take.

Let's just hope this kind of total war don't reappear too soon.

 

[Reno]

Lets hope that it dosent EVER happen again...

 

[FriendlyFire]

War itself is a crime

 

[Stapel]

It is said that it was good to kill German civilinas as they were enemies. This is the same level as Nazis have. The very same level. The unnecessary death of civilians is not justifieable.

In general, it was believed it could bring an end to the war earlier. Still wrong, but definately a different level than many nazi crimes.

It was clear Germany lost the war. But now the Brits any US bomb Dresden, which was without any industrial or military target. Just the "Florence of the Elbe". Tell me, firendly fire what was necessary to bomb Dresden?

Some people say the German people needed to be defeated beyond any level in order to prevent a new uprise. Maybe that made sense according to the march 1945 logic? This might be the lamest of all arguments, but it is still a better one than killing people for their race.

The concept of total war means you need to defeat the people, and not only the army. Today we all know that doesn't make sense. But maybe it did according to 1945 lines of thinking?

The ideas of total war are beyond our imagination. It is very hard to judge on the matter today.
For those interested: A study on Sherman's campaign in 1864 might help you to understand the concept of total war.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

The point some people are missing is in the thread title as regarding whether Dresden was justified. The debate isn't about whether it would come under the terms of war crime, but whether it is justified.

Just because it comes under a ridiculous definition of war crime which is arbitary and is not the definitive answer to what is justifiable conduct in war, doesn't mean the act wasn't justified. There are some posters such as myself who have laid out the justification for the action of the RAF, but the opposition seem to cry 'war crime' and then try to make out that there is little or no difference between the actions of the Nazis and the British in WW2 which I argue is worrying and not only that, wrong.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

It is quite scary that some Germans on this thread are trying to rewrite History. It appears they are regurgitating Nazi and Russian propaganda of the 40s, 50s etc.…..

There is a fairly recent book out, based on new information obtained from the former East Germany, that maintains that the bombing of Dresden was justified.
The book is Dresden Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor.

There are many reports on the book if you Google it. This is one of the many reports I found.

Even before the war was over, a legend grew up around the bombing of Dresden - largely thanks to Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Nazi propaganda described Dresden as a city of no military value, crammed with refugees from the East. The "Florence on the Elbe" was allegedly obliterated in a senseless act of barbarism. Later accretions to the myth included the obscene suggestion that Dresden was targeted by the Western Allies as an object lesson for the Russians.

Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few hundred.

Thousands of impressed foreign workers and slave labourers toiled in the city's armaments industries. Dresden had not been turning out harmless porcelain or consumer goods for years. More than 120 factories were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in 1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards.

Nor was Dresden selected on the whim of the maligned Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris, head of Bomber Command, at a time when the war was won. It was identified as a target by the Joint Intelligence Committee, which perceived its strategic role in resistance to the Red Army. The German high command designated it a strongpoint, although this was wishful thinking rather than military reality.

Just four weeks earlier, the German army had ripped a massive hole in the Western front and advanced halfway to Antwerp before they were stopped at massive cost. To Allied soldiers and air crew, in the first weeks of 1945 Germany looked anything but beaten. Nor were Allied civilians sanguine about victory while V1s and V2s were inflicting heavy loss of life on Brussels, Antwerp and London.

If Dresden was defenceless, this was the fault of the local Nazi Party leadership and military overstretch. Raids on nearby cities offered plenty of warning, but the Party boss contented himself with building a private bunker. Seven batteries of heavy anti-aircraft guns were stripped away to defend the Ruhr area or for use against Russian tanks on the Eastern Front.

Protection for civilians was incompetently constructed. Tunnels connecting basements and cellars functioned as convector ovens once the firestorm began. People were instructed to stay underground when they should have rushed up to roofs to extinguish incendiary bombs.

Taylor does nothing to minimise the horror of the two RAF assaults and the less effective US Army Air Force raid the following day. But he points out that bombing continued until the end of the war, by which time several towns were relatively worse hit. Nazi propaganda fastened on Dresden because its cultural importance resonated in Britain and among neutrals.

During the 1950s, a succession of Communist officials supplemented their incomes by churning out stories of the raids that uncritically used casualty figures doctored by the SS. These tracts were explicitly intended to blacken the Western Allies' reputation, but this did not prevent the right-wing Nazi apologist David Irving from happily recycling the fantastic computations in his bestselling 1963 book, The Destruction of Dresden.

As if the fate of Dresdeners was not bad enough, their memory is still traduced for crude political reasons. In laying to rest the legends, Taylor's authoritative and moving account provides a truer, more fitting memorial.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ignoring some of the BS I don't think Dresden was as innocent as Goebbels portrayed it I doubt bombing Dresden shortened the war by a single day given the state of the German economy and the disruptions caused by the rest of the bombing campaign. As to the earlier photo I didn't feel anything. Just another photo of more war dead to me. Photos like that don't disgust me anymore regardless of whose in them. Maybe reading books on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust when I was 11-14 years old made me immune to it.

 

[privatehudson]

I don't agree with you Privatehudson. The British didn't start bombing civilians in WWII. It was clearly the Germans who started this. What military interest might London have ? None, it was full of civilians at the time the first V1 and V2 fell. The Germans bombed sistematically civilian population in large cities. So it's little surprising why they ended being fed up and did what they did in Dresden.

My point wasn't clear, but it was that the British were the first to organise massive and frequent raids against the enemies civilian targets. The germans may have started and continued to attack civilians, but the British began the process of massive attacks against them.

I see several incredible arguments on this thread:

- Any war crimes are justified if the other side commits them too
- We want to win the war, so anything we do is justified
- We are right and the others wrong, so whatever we do is justified
- All is fair in war / there is no morality in war

I have never argued these, I have argued that actions that may later be considered a warcrime are justified if there is little other choice and it will assist in bringing the war to an end sooner. I have suggested that the peacetime ideological theories of how war should be fought are, to say the least pathetically out of touch with reality, and whilst morality should not be ignored, to pay attention to it completely would be to loose the war. In the exceptional circumstances of WWII, this was simply not an option.

And why does it bother some of you to admit that, yes, the Allies also committed some war crimes? That doesn't excuse the German war crimes either, so where's the problem?

Because sooner or later, if both sides are seen as guilty, people will start thinking that maybe Hitler and his goons weren't so bad after all

Mega Tsunami:

Excellent read

 

[Drakan]

KoC: as usual, you shine for your politeness.

Dresden bombing THE WAY IN WHICH IT WAS CARRIED OUT that February 13, 1945 was a War Crime under modern standards. The civilians were the ones that were expressly and specifically being targeted, not the factories you point out in that particular raid we are refering to.

Regarding Coventry I don't argue with you it had some strategical importance, but the Luftwaffe aimed for the civilians not for the factories in the raid I'm talking about which made them retaliate, as they did, towards Dresden. We're being specific here and not talking of bombings throughout the war.

As for London, perhaps I haven't expressed myself correctly, what I meant is that when it was bombed by V1's and V2's indiscriminately, the same as when it was later on bombed by German bombers. The Germans were targeting the city itself, the civilians, not the factories. They were killing the people, the civilians on purpose, and that to me has no strategical importance. Of course London had it's importance, it was of paramount importance, it's only blatant. What I meant is that it was the civilians being targeted mostly, in the context of this thread (bombing civilians) it served no purpose strategically, save inflict terror and loss of morale on the British population, which is injustifiable as well.

Please don't take the bombing of Dresden as something almost personal. We are talking of one war action which was a mistake IMHO, and nowadays would clearly be considered a War Crime. The thread refers to a particular bombing, not throughout the war as you seem to suggest. Everybody here I suspect fully defends the bombing of Nazi Germany in WWII, no one argues that. In that air raid the factories, if at all, were a secondary target, being the main one the city itself, the civilians, and that is what I oppose to. As I have already written down, for that crime committed by the R.A.F. one could easily point out a hundred crimes or more perpetrated by the Nazis. No one here is trying to say the British acted as the Nazis all the time. I'm just saying that in that particular raid they went awfully wrong. Only that.

As I wrote down it was done in retaliation for the bombing of Coventry by the Germans shortly before which had purposefuly targeted the innocent British civilian population, not the factories as you point out in your post. There were other air raids in which, naturally, the factories were hit, but in the case of that particular bombing of Coventry I refer to and to which the British retaliated with Dresden unjustifiable bombing; in both cases it was the civilians being targeted, not the factories you mention. And Dresden's case was infinately worse than Coventry because at the time it was packed with a massive influx of refugees and the R.A.F. knew this fact.

I believe no one is comparing the bombings carried out by the R.A.F. in general with the Nazis. All we are saying is that Dreden in particular was not justifiable in the manner it was done by the R.A.F.. It was the civilians being targeted in that particular raid to which this thread refers to, not the German War factories you point out, so please don't mix it up. I'm sure other raids were carried out in which, specifically, the factories were targeted but not in this one to which this thread refers to. In almost every German (and British) city at the time to a greater or lesser extent they were producing war equipment.

Who's making facts up ? Do you mind pointing out which are, in your opinion ?
Let's try to be less aggressive KoC.

 

[Adler17]

It is remarkeable how many people especially in Britain try to justify a crime, which isnt justifieable. It is a war crime. Nothing more or less. This is in no means a rewriting of history, but the truth. That it is a number lower than the Holocaust I agree. But it is high enough to be one of the most shameful crimes in history. That someone kills someone because the other did a crime on him is a murder as well as someone murders someone because of racial motives. Both are murderers.
Dresden was FULL of refugees. Dresden had NO Flak. Dresden had factories I admit but the worth of these factories was very low if any. Dresden was full of artificial jewels, like the Zwinger, the Frauenkirche or the other old buildings with the paitures of Cranach and many others. Also the Russians had alreadz crossed the Oder river, the Brits anz US were at the Rhein and who can say Germany was not beaten.
This discussion shall not lead to the glorification of Hitler or one of his monstrous helper, but the truth about a warcrime commited bz the allies. The discussion of some of you is very near to the argumentation of Nazis. Consider this.

Adler

 

[Benderino]

It is remarkeable how many people especially in Britain try to justify a crime, which isnt justifieable.

It is remarkable how many people, especially in Germany, try to claim victim status during a war that was committed by their own people! You reap what you sow.

 

[Provolution]

Fair enough, let the Germans keep Dresden as a monument to their victimization to unfair treatment, humanity and in general apologism, and let that be their 2 D-Mark to the grand debate, allowing them to emphatize on common grounds in similar debates.
They need to be 100 % right for their own sense of wellbeing, just let them get that recognition, and please restrain the pride of the Anglo-American Eagle. The Germans will probably stay out of wars for yet another couple of centuries thanks to this.

 

[Boleslav]

It is remarkable how many people, especially in Germany, try to claim victim status during a war that was committed by their own people! You reap what you sow.

In what way was WWII 'committed' by the German people?

 

[TrailblazingScot]

By supporting and being part of the apparatus with which Hitler and his supporters went around invading Europe and committing genocide against certain ethnic groups.

Without popular support Hitler would have not been able to conduct his war and remain in power, especially when the war started to go from bad to worse.

 

[Benderino]

In what way was WWII 'committed' by the German people?

WWII was started by the Germans. I'd like to see you refute that statement.

 

[privatehudson]

It is remarkeable how many people especially in Britain try to justify a crime, which isnt justifieable.

With respect that is your opinion not fact.

That it is a number lower than the Holocaust I agree. But it is high enough to be one of the most shameful crimes in history. That someone kills someone because the other did a crime on him is a murder as well as someone murders someone because of racial motives. Both are murderers.

Remind me, did millions die in Dresden? Then lets refrain from making ridiculously overblown statements like "one of the most shameful crimes in history" if we want to be taken seriously The justice system in certain countries under your defenition is now "murderers"

Dresden was FULL of refugees. Dresden had NO Flak. Dresden had factories I admit but the worth of these factories was very low if any. Dresden was full of artificial jewels, like the Zwinger, the Frauenkirche or the other old buildings with the paitures of Cranach and many others. Also the Russians had alreadz crossed the Oder river, the Brits anz US were at the Rhein and who can say Germany was not beaten.

I believe the new book refutes much of this. You might like to take the time to study it since it appears to be a subject of interest to you. In the interests of furthering your knowledge of course...

This discussion shall not lead to the glorification of Hitler or one of his monstrous helper, but the truth about a warcrime commited bz the allies. The discussion of some of you is very near to the argumentation of Nazis. Consider this.

I'm afraid no matter how often you and others repeat this tripe cannot make it true, especially about me. I have repeatedly stated that the actions of the allied air raids should only be considered in the extreme circumstances of WWII or similar, and only if it is believed it will bring the war to an end sooner. Comparing this point of view to the Nazis is an insult to my intelligence

 

[Boleslav]

WWII was started by the Germans. I'd like to see you refute that statement.

Certainly!

If WWII was 'started' by anyone, it was the Nazis. As I've said far too often before on this thread, Nazis and Germans are far from being interchangeable.

... and we're kinda off-topic a bit here anyway.

 

[Hitro]

It is remarkable how many people, especially in Germany, try to claim victim status during a war that was committed by their own people!

That's racism on the Nazi level. Plain and simple. Either you think about people as individuals or as members of larger entities (nations, races, etc.).
You obvious do the second.

Nobody in this thread was claiming "victim status" for the country, it is about individual people falling victim to a war crime.

Some ten year old child that was incinerated in the burning residential areas of Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne, etc. is as much an innocent victim of the war as a ten year old child that had to share the same fate in London, Coventry or Belgrade.

The above is of course only true if you aren't thinking in racist terms, because if you would every member of a certain people (usually what a people exactly is is your personal definition or that of your favourite ideologue) is an enemy and a target.

Of course that is a not uncommon thinking, but it is very thinking of all those regimes that have brought genocide over the world. And for that reason alone I think that the world is better off with each individual less that thinks that way...