Adler17
Zardnaar, the German bombings were generally bombings of industrial/ military targets. That in Britain so many civilians were hit was mostly because their homes were in the factory areas
Uhmm, no, the Blitzes of London, Merseyside and Coventry used civilian targeting weapons like incendaries and mines. Plus, you have already stated that it should be military and not industrial targets in the main. By that rationale, the luftwaffe high command are as guilty of war crimes as any of the RAF and USAAF. Generally just doesn't hold water. Plus the Germans later began raining V1 and V2s indiscriminately down on England and Antwerp without a care who they hit. Oh and it's also to be presumed that a lot of the daylight targets the USAAF hit were also in industrial areas in some cases also.
I do not deny German terror bombings but they were less than the British/ US
Which had virtually nothing to do with the desire of Goering and Hitler and everything to do with the simple fact that the Luftwaffe simply could not mount the kind of raids the allies did. The Luftwaffe lacked a heavy bomber of the class of a Lancaster or B17 with the exception of the FW Kondor, but that was mostly used over the sea. Nevertheless, this didn't prevent the Luftwaffe from attempting precisely the same objectives as Harris, namely shatter British morale by bombing cities and towns. It failed through the fact that the Luftwaffe simply wasn't equipped or trained for that kind of raid.
But the difference of the allied bombings is: Civilians were their main target. This admitted Butcher Harris himself. The exception is only Essen.
When oh when will you learn to differentiate between daytime and nightime raids? The USAAF (and to a lesser degree the RAF) spent much of the war targetting ports, ball-bearing factories, marshalling yards, u-boat pens and so on. These are all either industrial or military targets. Your analysis of the raids only applies to the nightime attacks, which by their nature were irrelevant anyway, wherever you targeted, hitting the city was hard enough, let alone a set area of it.
And like you said: the bombing raids were not able to stop the German industry until in late 44 the refineries were bombed. Why didn´t they do that first?
It's almost impossible to stop a country's industry purely from air attacks with limited range over said country. What is certain is that without the raids, german production would have been
even higher. As it was though the raids did have signifigant effect, reducing Germany's strategic movement, making her supply situation bad, limiting her production, tying down hundreds of top-line fighters that could have been put to great use at the front and so on.
Hitler was also not elected by the Germans. Even in the last election which was hardly a democratic one he got only 44 %. He had to coalate with the DNVP by Hugenberg. Hugenberg said only one day after he made the biggest error in his life! How right he was...
Wow, 44% is only like... nearly 1/2 of those voting. Whilst I appreciate that this is not a fair election, it's quite wrong to say that Hitler lacked decent level of support from the German people.
The army didn´t support Hitler. They supported Germany. They fought not for Hitler but for Germany.
Nice rhetoric, mostly irrelevant. Keeping your honour by fighting for a lunatic who is slaughtering millions and engaging most of the world in a war just because he was head of the army and government hardly seems very honourable to me. Duty goes out of the window when a fanatical dictator with genocidal tendencies takes control. The fact remains that the Army had the power to remove Hitler if they wished to. For all the attempts that happened, not many of them were prepared to give their life to remove Hitler. Plus, despite you quoting some famous commanders, the truth is many of the remainder were ardent supporters of Hitler until very late in the war.
As far as I'm concerned, by fighting "for germany" the majority of army commanders ignored their duty to their country in favour of their duty to their leader. Of all the Germans alive in WWII, these were those most able to do something about Hitler, and frankly, the number that did were pitifully few at the end of the day. Too many ignored the whole thing entirely. They are responsible for the destruction of Germany and the extension of the war. It is to these that you should look. Harris and others believed, rightly or wrongly that their method would work, would end the war sooner. So they might have made a mistake, at least they weren't fighting for a maniac by extension of avoiding their duty to their country.
The same is the German people. After Stalingrad Hitler had no real support. But what should they do?
True, the Germans were stuck really, the Army etc have the blame for Hitler being in power, the people had almost no ability to remove him. However, they did place him there in the first place, and support his invasion and annexation of numerous countries.
The Holocaust was mainly done by SS. Who were leading the KZs? Yes there were also civilians, but mainly the SS is responsible. There were also sometimes Wehrmacht soldiers involved, but that´s very rare in contrast to the SS.
But you can be pretty sure they were involved in brutal anti-partisan operations in Russia and many in the high command of the army would have found it very difficult to not know about the events in the camps, or at least suspect.
The bombings should destroy the German support for Hitler. That´s why Civilians were bombed. But this was not stopped when they saw the opposite was the fact. No these bombings prlonged the war and did not stop it.
Again, the raids did have a signifcant affect on the German war machine and military overall. However, you do contradict yourself here, earlier you said that Germans stopped supporting hitler after Stalingrad, now you claim that they supported him more because of the bombings, so which is it?
There were indeed 20+ millions Russians dead in the war. But these figures are not very trustworthy. Sure too many civilians were among the dead but mostly SS deeds. 13 millions of these deads were soldiers. With these deads well it was war and they were our enemies. No sympathy with them.
Not very trustworthy by whose opinion or source? Most claims I saw center roughly around 21 Million. And to say this was mostly the cause of the SS is a joke, the army cannot have avoided some responsibility for the actions, especially the reprisal attacks on civilians in the wake of partisan operations.
Remember Stalin is in fact as evil as Hitler!
Remember that you and others who argue for Trueman being a criminal have already stated that "He did it first/too!" is not a valid point.
First they had problems to have enough Uran
I seem to recall saying precisely this when explaining about not nuking an island did I not?
With the terror bombings the war was prolonged. And the killing of innocent civilians in times when it was clear that Germany can´t win I think is nothing but murder!
And clearly the responsibility of those capable of removing Hitler from power, but not doing it.
And the bombing runs had not the industry as target but the living quarters. I suggest to look in a book about the air war and the bombing in Germany. Then you´ll see the truth. I don´t know an English book about that. But you will find it.
I've read at least 3. I suggest you re-read yours and pay attention to the precision (so to speak back then) raids against industrial/military targets during daylight. Not all allied attacks were "terror attacks" as you repeatedly insinuate.
And as a result, we conclude in 2004 that it's not that bad to hit civilians in a total war since, after all, they support the soldiers. That really gives to me a feeling that not only we've understood nothing about world war 2, but that we're also today even uglier monsters than we've never been in the History of the Humanity.
I do hope that's not targetted at me.
