German irritation over British bomber memorial

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/controversial-memorial-to-british-wwii-bombers-to-open-a-840858.html

They want that memorial? Let them, I have no objections. But it is a good idea that the diplomatic discussion led to a small recognition of the victims of such attacks, too. Most people killed in the bombing of cities were neither military, nor Nazis, but civilians that happened to live their lives right in the line of fire. To call these raids criminal imo is misleadsing, since in that time and with that technology and that tactical understanding all combating sides tried and did what they thpught was militarily necessary to win final victory. Now, occupation of cities and then committing attrocities against the occupied population - that is criminal, Nanking for example. The bomber raids against cities were not. They were what was tried to win the war. Criminal you call them from that moment on when the commanders kinew that they were militarily ineffective, becasue then you accept the killing for zero effect gained. That's when fighting turns into senseless murder for no purpose.

So the only debate legitimate here is not whether bombing raids against cities in WWII, in that setting, were criminal per se or not - the only debate is about since when commanders should have known about the real or lacking effect that one originally hoped for. This can only be assessed from the perspective of that past tiemframe. Judging the thing from today's modern standards and information, makes no sense.

[HunterICX]

The memorial is about the men who didn't return flying these missions because they where ordered to, it is not to memorate the commanders that gave them these orders. So I fail to see why the Germans are irritated by this.

HunterICX

[danlisa]

Foremost, Bomber Command has never received the appropriate recognition for their actions and sacrifices in WWII. So I welcome the memorial.

Does Germany not have a similar memorial for airmen lost when they were on bombing runs over London, Coventry etc?? TBH, I'm not even sure this would be commemorated in Germany, given that they wish to expunge all Nazi history, however, not all airmen were given to those political views.

Sound like complaining for complainings sake.

I don't think that Bombing Raids should be classed as criminal during wartime activities in WWII. The inherent inaccuracy of the technology determined the result of mass 'civilian' casualties/fatalities. However, should the same happen today, given the accuracy of our weapons, then yes, it's criminal.

[BossMark]

The memorial is about the men who didn't return flying these missions because they where ordered to, it is not to memorate the commanders that gave them these orders. So I fail to see why the Germans are irritated by this.

HunterICX

Foremost, Bomber Command has never received the appropriate recognition for their actions and sacrifices in WWII. So I welcome the memorial.

Does Germany not have a similar memorial for airmen lost when they were on bombing runs over London, Coventry etc?? TBH, I'm not even sure this would be commemorated in Germany, given that they wish to expunge all Nazi history, however, not all airmen were given to those political views.

Sound like complaining for complainings sake.

I don't think that Bombing Raids should be classed as criminal during wartime activities in WWII. The inherent inaccuracy of the technology determined the result of mass 'civilian' casualties/fatalities. However, should the same happen today, given the accuracy of our weapons, then yes, it's criminal.
QFT both of you :yep:

[Herr-Berbunch]

Criminal - no. Shocking - yes. Even Churchill said Dresden was going to far.

Whilst they were mostly civillians killed in those raids, they undoubtedly had friends and family in uniform, they worked towards the war effort whether they wanted to or not, and whether it was working in a munitions factory, knitting sweaters, or picking apples. Every bomb dropped was a step towards peace.

Memorial or not, we will remember them, on all sides.

[Oberon]

Ditto for what BossMark has said. It isn't about the leaders, or the commanders, it's about the airmen who braved flak and fighter on their mission, and indeed there should be recognition of the civilian and service personnel injured or killed in these raids, be they in London, Berlin, Tokyo or Leningrad.

[Tribesman]

Long overdue

[NeonSamurai]

See I would argue that many of these attacks were criminal as they purposely targeted non-combatants. The Blitz, Dresden, the carpet bombing of cities by the allies late in the war, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. All the powers involved in WW2 were guilty of intentional terror bombing.

I see a huge difference between that and collateral damage.

[Herr-Berbunch]

See I would argue that many of these attacks were criminal as they purposely targeted non-combatants. The Blitz, Dresden, the carpet bombing of cities by the allies late in the war, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. All the powers involved in WW2 were guilty of intentional terror bombing.

Destroy the homes of those who work in the factories and make those on the front lines worry about those at home, destroy their morale, reduce their work-effort. I'm not saying it was right, but that was the reasoning given.

[Skybird]

See I would argue that many of these attacks were criminal as they purposely targeted non-combatants. The Blitz, Dresden, the carpet bombing of cities by the allies late in the war, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. All the powers involved in WW2 were guilty of intentional terror bombing.

I see a huge difference between that and collateral damage.
I think the difference between criminal and non-criminal still is that in WWII it was thought that shattering the combat moral of the German population (or the Londoners) by putting their cities to ruins, was possible. That is what made it a military "tactic", although one that did not work: it did not break public moral, but brought people closer together in stubborn determination. But that we know onyl since afterwards, and today.

To imply present moral standards on situations back then and inside that war, imo does not match.

I agree though that the victims of such bombing raids againbst cities were no collateral damages, but the intended target of such attacks. But again: not a target for gaining personal satisfaction or revenge by for example committing mass rapes like the Soviets in berlin and the Japanese in Nanking, but a target due to miliutary assumnption on how that would help to break the combat will of the German and help to let the enemy collapse form within.

I am not in the historic knowledge since when, if ever, Allied commanders realised the tactic did not work. If at some point they realised that it was ineffective and id not work for the desired result, from then on continuing such attacks would have been a "crime", imo. By my thinking, it then no longer is an issue covered by the standards of war, but the moral standards of peacetime, since it would have been then a tactic that serves no military purpose anymore. (I argued in past threads that it makes no sense to imply peacetime standards onto acting in war, but that war has its own set of standards and needs, and that these are very different from those in peacetime. It already starts with that at war you do not get punished for doing what when doing it in peacetimes you would serve life in prison for: killing other humans).

BTW, the Nazis had started with targetting cities. During the conquest of Poland already, at the very beginning of WWII, Warsaw was subject to extremely intense artillery shelling and dive bombing attacks. This later repeated often during the war in Russia.

[Oberon]

BTW, the Nazis had started with targetting cities. During the conquest of Poland already, at the very beginning of WWII, Warsaw was subject to extremely intense artillery shelling and dive bombing attacks. This later repeated often during the war in Russia.

It goes back further than Poland, the first trials of terror-bombing was in the Spanish Civil War with the particular note of Guernica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

Although it goes back even further than that to World War One and the Zeppelin raids on London, and then joined by the bomber aircraft once they got into service. Mostly ineffective they still managed to kill over a thousand people. The fact that on most occasions the bomber got through lead to the myth 'The bomber will always get through' which affected the thinking of British doctrine and spurred on the development of RADAR and large bomber forces for retaliation, in a form of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Bomber Command practiced bombing in Iraq between the wars, and it became our policy in dealing with Arabic uprisings which reduced the amount of troops needed on the ground, and the Condor Legion practiced in Spain.
Then there's Japanese bombing of Chinese cities which also took place before Poland. It snowballed when the war spread out across Europe though and the raids began.

[Skybird]

Well, I was focussing on the timeframe Sept 1939-45.

That Zeppelins had bombed London in WWI, was new to me. Did they return back to safety?

[Herr-Berbunch]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-432405/The-Blitz-Britains-1915-terror-attack.html

To be fair, the first couple bombed Great Yarmouth. Nobody noticed. :O:

[Sammi79]

It is a good thing. I wish my Grandad were here to see it. Many of his close friends died doing their job. He never spoke about his missions, apart from once when pressed by me when I was a child to relate a story about a bird strike on take off, that meant flying the rest of the 10+ hour mission with no windscreen and the entire crew covered in blood and feathers whilst slowly succumbing to frostbite. One of my cousins who was his favourite Grandson has since his death researched everything he could find out about his tours of duty, from RAF records, other survivors etc... There is a painting hanging in RAF Hendon that captures a moment that happened to him and his crew, by a crew member of another aircraft. My Grandad was flying in close formation when a bomb from a higher formation hit the aircraft directly ahead of his, and detonated all the bombs inside. His Lancaster was tilted past the vertical by the blast and badly damaged, after somehow managing to regain control he limped back to Mildenhall where the Lanc was written off. The mission was a complete disaster, so the next morning they were ordered to repeat it. It took nerves of steel to do that job, and I am only finding out about it now, 9 years after his death.

5th November, 1944 over Solingen. My Grandads Lanc is the one directly left of the explosion.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/s720x720/181384_3006338016321_1360002207_n.jpg

He did his duty then lived out the rest of his life in shame and regret. In his own words 'Son, please do not ask me to tell you these stories. I have to live with the fact that I dropped hundreds of tons of high explosives on people whom I had never met and had no personal quarrel with. It is something I hope you never have to understand.'

RAF bomber crews took horrendous losses, and suffered an unimaginable level of physical and mental stress. They always deserved a memorial, some would say more so than other less affected branches of the military, and it is a testament to compassion for the victims of these raids that it has been put off til now. I am truly sorry if any Germans feel irritated by it. With the comfortable benefit of hindsight we may not think what they did was right, but it was their duty.

Regards, Sam.

[Oberon]

Well said Sam, and a salute to your grandfather, and Herr B I think the Zeppelins actually improved Great Yarmouth :O:


Well, I was focussing on the timeframe Sept 1939-45.

That Zeppelins had bombed London in WWI, was new to me. Did they return back to safety?

Most didn't, I think over half were lost of the 125 deployed, I think they were mostly successful in night raids, but even then searchlights and that could pick them out for the fighters with incendiary ammo and flak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin#1915_bombing_raids

The last Zeppelin shot down on British soil came down not that far from here brought down by fighters from the aerodrome that used to be down the road. The dead were buried in Theberton churchyard, and this little memorial is in the church itself:

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk20/Cavboy80/CAV333.jpg

[BossMark]

Very nice post Sammi and I too salute your Granddad.:salute:

My Uncle was a navigator in bomber commend he also didn't say much to me about the war, until I asked him how ha got the burns on his arms. He then told me that his plane was hit by tracer from a ****e-Wulf 190 fighter on the return trip from a raid on Berlin in 1943 and he said he burned his hands dying the fire out which stared near the radio compartment he said that was trying to save the radio operator who was badly injured in the attack. My Dad then later told me that was awarded the DFC for his act of bravery in saving the radio operator.

He was then put on light duties right up to the Nuremberg war crime trials where he was a chauffeur for one of Generals who was in charge (I can not recall the generals name)

Sadly my Uncle died in 2001

[Ducimus]

They want that memorial? Let them, I have no objections. But it is a good idea that the diplomatic discussion led to a small recognition of the victims of such attacks, too. Most people killed in the bombing of cities were neither military, nor Nazis, but civilians that happened to live their lives right in the line of fire.

Yeah, cause Germany was an innocent victim and never did anything like that during world war 2. :shifty:

[Skybird]

Yeah, cause Germany was an innocent victim and never did anything like that during world war 2. :shifty:
Dumpfbacke. Have you an idea how many elderly and mothers and children got killed in these attacks? Well, the physically combat-capable men were all away, so what was left were women, elderly people, children for the most. The real hard and mean Nazi scum, I mean, the battle-hardened troops that costed your army so dearly...

You get my point. Your sarcasm is unneeded, I think. Most Nazis inEurope were Germans. But not all Germans were Nazis. That may ruin your completely demonised image of how evil Germans are, but I cannot help it. If you want to accuse a majority of Germans of anything, than that many remained silent instead of engaging themselves in an underground resistence.

But before you complain about that, be certain that you would have the courage yourself to do that in case of living under a brutal dictatorship that kills and tortures and where police and justice do not deserve that name and where your family is at risk. It's easy to be a hero by mouth only, you know.

That's why I said in another thread some weeks ago that I do not say that I know what I would do in such extreme situations, only that I know what I hope I would have the courage to do if facing such extreme situations.

[Codz]

Yeah, cause Germany was an innocent victim and never did anything like that during world war 2. :shifty:

He's trying to say that the civilians didn't deserve to be killed in those raids. To call all Germans Nazis is like calling all Americans Republicans or all Russians Communists.

[STEED]

I am so tired of this dribble, how many more years is this going to continual? What's done is done, stop complaining and move on. If Germany wants a memorial to their war dead I have no objections what so ever so please let us have ours.

[Ducimus]

Dumpfbacke. Have you an idea how many elderly and mothers and children got killed in these attacks? Well, the physically combat-capable men were all away, so what was left were women, elderly people, children for the most.

I stopped reading there, because of all the things Germans did in WW2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euhzap-0vso), i find the argument against a British war memorial hypocritical at best.




I am so tired of this dribble, how many more years is this going to continual? What's done is done, stop complaining and move on. If Germany wants a memorial to their war dead I have no objections what so ever so please let us have ours.

Which is basically what i'm trying to say. So the British want to put up a war memorial to their dead in their own bloody country. Big freaking deal! What business is that to the Germans? IMO they should just be quiet about it.

[vienna]

Manned aerial bombing is an unusal form of warfare in that the scale of devastaion is rarely seen first hand by the persons doing the bombing. They fly high over their targets, drop their munitions and, with any luck, they fly away safely. I remember an episode of the TV series M*A*S*H involving a bomber pilot who was shot down over the area near the hospital. He managed to make his way to the 4077th and was telling the doctors about how being a bomber pilot was a rather comfortable way to spend the war. It was, to him, a matter of wake up in the morning, get your orders, fly to the target, drop your bombs, and then head back to the base for lunch or dinner. Hawkeye was quite miffed at the pilot's callousness and indifference to the lives he affected with his flights. Claiming they were short of people to help in the hospital, Hawkeye enlisted the pilot to assist in tending to injured civilians in the wards. The pilot came upon a small child who was severly injured and difigured and he was appalled by the sight. He asked how it happened and Hawkeye told him she was one of the civilians from the area where the pilot had flown his most recent mission; she was a part of the "collateral damage". The pilot's initial reaction was one of anger towards Hawkeye for "setting him up"...

War is, as often quoted, "Hell", and, as such, breeds many demons and sufferings. We have gone from large flights of bombers flying into flak, to a single plane with a single bomb flying over a city on a pleasant morning, to a pilotless craft controlled from thousands of miles away by a "pilot" with a "joystick" who probably recieved his initial training on an X-Box as a child. We are gowing inured to the physical effects of today's "video game" warfare. It only seems right to try to remember and commemorate those who fought a very human war and paid a very high human price as both soldier and civilian. The German goverment may protest; it is only the pro forma act of any government to placate those who have very loud voices (who, in many cases, also have never fought in a war) and make bothersome gnats of themselves; that is for the politicians and diplomats to deal with; for the survivors, descendants and others touched by such acts of war, the memorials are a way of humanizing the grossly inhuman...

...

[MH]

But before you complain about that, be certain that you would have the courage yourself to do that in case of living under a brutal dictatorship that kills and tortures and where police and justice do not deserve that name and where your family is at risk. It's easy to be a hero by mouth only, you know.


Come on most had been quite happy...certainly during the initial success.
The hysteria was overwhelming even in the military.
Later on when bombs started to fall things might had changed.
As far as resistance look at other couturiers....in particular to the east which had been terrorised the most.

Maybe they open McDonald's next to memorial.....

[BossMark]

I just wish that Germans had dropped a few bombs on the Thatcher household :yep:

[Bilge_Rat]

My Great-Uncle flew as a navigator for the RAF during the war. He was Canadian, but many served in the British forces. His bomber was shot down over Burma and the crew spent weeks walking back to allied lines. Of course, I only found out all this after he died from his daughter. He never talked about the war.

Its about time they have a memorial.

[Penguin]

Arthur Harris got his memorial 20 years ago. If he, the one who commanded it, got a memorial, why not the grunts who worked for him.

Thanks, Sammy, for sharing your memories. :salute:
As a German I can say, I talked with many vets from the German side who ha similar memories, recognizing in hindsight how inhuman the whole thing was.
I knew people who just did what they were told, I knew people whose choice was death or Strafeinheit, I know people who had their ****ing childhood in a bunker any night and I got to know people who were convinced of an ideology back then.
Good that we know better today. One of the reasons why put an extra eye on the protection of civilians today.

Some stuff which wasn't mentioned so far:
- Germany had their production peak of their military industry in 1944 - despite all the bombings,
- The bombings did bind military personal - half a million of regular troops were in the flak units - not even speaking of all the Flakhelfer and civilian personal.
- Let's not forget the people who were civilians, behind the front. The ones who had not the luxury to walk into a bunker, the only luxury was to survive one more day in a camp.
So many Germans who were civilians during that time told me how bad the war is, but most told me how terrible the war was when all the **** came back. The seed was planted before. "Coventry, Rotterdam, Leningrad, never heard of it - but the war was terrible when it came back here...."
During all this time, even when the war came back to Germany, civilians were killed behind the front, the extermination machine still went on.

[Seth8530]

My main objection to many people's understanding of the war is that most people tend to think that it was a one sided affair.. The Germans were killing and torturing civilians and we came in to save the day.. What no one tends to mention is the fact that we burned Dresden to the bone. We dropped fire bombs on wooden Japanese cities because we knew they would burn really well. We had every intention on burning civilians alive.

So my question is. Nazis or not who the hell is so self righteous to call themselves the good guys in a war like that? How much better were we than these Nazis? We burned children alive for crying out loud and did not think twice.

The only difference I see between the allied powers and the Nazi's heinous acts during the war was that they did it a lot more personally. And suddenly that gives us the high horse to say they were evil.

[Marcantilan]

Well, German submariners have their memorial at Kiel (see: http://www.uboat- memorial.org) They sunk civilian ships, killed civilians and so on.

Why not a memorial to honour bomber crews?

The important thing is to remember the young men who fought, and more than often lost their lives for their country.

The strategy, or the political gains of their actions, sometimes is better to be forgotten. But that is not the point of any memorial.

[Chuck U F4rley]

Okay, for the last 10 years or so I have only been lurking, rarely posting except for some photos of a type XXI, but this topic actually draws a reply from me:

I am german and I am not upset about this memorial. Ancient history and I quite frankly could not care less, as long as the brave pilots are the focus, and not the terror bombing campaign. Go ahead, build all the memorials you want, for all I care.

One thing that DOES come to mind however, is how upset many Brits reacted, when there where plans to build a memorial for the rocketeers in Peenemünde. If you want to google it: I think it was in 92 and 94.

(And bevore some Sherlock here mentiones it: Yes, the "Join date" says "jun 2009". This is not my first account. If you only log in every few years, literally, it becomse kinda hard to memorize passwords...)

[Jimbuna]

The memorial is a long overdue act of recognising and honouring the sacrifice of over 55,000 airmen.

The same has been done for other sections/arms of the military in other countries as well so I don't see the big deal here.