Dresden marks anniversary of WWII bombings

[Oberon]

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

Indeed, it's war. However, this thread marks Dresden's anniversary. Not to lessen other tragic events, if we can focus on all things Dresden, for the purpose of this thread.
It is all too easy to compare and ie then lessen or multiply the nature of the event, it's human nature.

[tater]

During the Soviet era, they used Goebel's figures, which were the official German figures contemporary to the bombing with a zero added to the end.

Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor is a good read on the subject.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Indeed, it's war. However, this thread marks Dresden's anniversary. Not to lessen other tragic events, if we can focus on all things Dresden, for the purpose of this thread.
It is all too easy to compare and ie then lessen or multiply the nature of the event, it's human nature.

Oh, indeed so and no disrespect to the dead intended, however there was a danger of this turning into less of a homage to those fallen but more an attack on those who conducted the event, which would be rather hypocritical.

[UnderseaLcpl]

I wish the US would give as much concern to the Dresden fire-bombing as it does to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In truth, I wish there was as much concern given to the entire allied bombing campaign. We talk about terror now as though it were some kind of recent and heartless invention by other people, but we and our allies bombed civilian areas for the sole purpose of sowing terror. Even when we didn't bomb civilian areas, we managed to hit them a great deal of the time, which is little better, and we threw thousands of bomber crewmen into the teeth of German interceptors with no support and without regard to strategy.

Militarily speaking, we have learned from those mistakes, though it took us a while and we reformed our approach for the sake of battlefield efficacy, not regret. However, there is very little mention of the allied bombing campaign and the horrors it inflicted upon civilians in the textbooks our children study, other than to portray it as a heroic success. The most valuable lessons are not being learned.

[tater]

The total number of civilians killed by allied bombing adds up to noise just compared to the axis murder of civilians under their direct control.

Given that a good % of civilian bombing deaths are in fact "legitimate" legally, the number of improper deaths is an even smaller % (all japanese males over 15 (and under 65) were conscripted as a "home guard" and women 17-47 as well at the time of the firebombing. That made the bulk of japanese fatalities in the firebombing in fact "troops." The actions of the civilians on Okinawa demonstrate that they were more than willing to die in great numbers (at their own hands), too. Also, many of the targets were in fact fine. Dresden in particular. Contrary to myth, it was not a town of art workshops, virtually all industry there had long since been converted to wartime supplies. The least "military" factory was the cigarette plant (cigs that wen to... the military). Given it's proximity to the Russian Front at the time of the bombing (under 90km as I recall), it was a legitimate target as troops were moving towards the front, even while refugees went the other way. The axis also threw all the "rules" out the window given their wholesale, sometimes mechanized slaughter of civilians who had already capitulated to them.

The axis was in complete control. THEY started the war, it was their choice to wait to surrender as long as they did. Their surrender was long since a foregone conclusion, and they in fact did so, so the poor timing (not quitting before they were bombed into the stone age) is their own fault.

The US bombing campaign (daylight) would have been better had we concentrated on the petroleum supply chain, but other than that, I have little problem with it. High-altitude strategic bombing over Japan was very ineffective due to the jet stream.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by tater

The total number of civilians killed by allied bombing adds up to noise just compared to the axis murder of civilians under their direct control.

Up to 5 million civilians killed by german troops in WW2, right. Only a tenth (about 500,000+ civilians) in Iraq, up to now. But then US soldiers call them "sand ******s" - somehow reminds me of people defined as "inferior", by a "superior" ... race ? Nation ?
I really doubt anyone has learned anything from history, other than being self-righteous and hypocritic while only seeing others committing war crimes, or crimes against humanity. What the US did to its own US people of japanese origin in WW2, deserves an own monument of shame.

The axis was in complete control. THEY started the war, it was their choice to wait to surrender as long as they did. Their surrender was long since a foregone conclusion, and they in fact did so, so the poor timing (not quitting before they were bombed into the stone age) is their own fault.

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914 initiating the first world war, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Greetings,
Catfish

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Catfish

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Greetings,
Catfish

Because obviously if he was so opposed to a world war the most sensible thing to do was to invade neutral countries like Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union...

[tater]

Every excess death in Europe (and North Africa) during WW2 was Germany's fault. On all sides. There were 6 million killed in the camps alone. More civilians elsewhere. Plus all troops killed on all sides. 25 million is closer to the mark, not 5 million. The total deaths to allied bombing (all theaters) were ~600,000.

The country that starts the war gets credit for all deaths. It's like a robbery. A guy robs a store, and someone in the back room has a heart attack and dies (completely unaware the robbery is going on). The robber is now charged with murder since a death occurred during the commission of a crime.

Japan killed maybe 10 million total.

Regarding Iraq, the war started when Iraq invaded Kuwait (the intervening years were a cease-fire that could have legitimately gone hot the very first time they so much as turned on a radar). Iraq is responsible for the outcome.

[tater]

Originally Posted by Catfish

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914 initiating the first world war, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Wow.

[MH]

This :

Originally Posted by Catfish

Up to 5 million civilians killed by german troops in WW2, right. Only a tenth (about 500,000+ civilians) in Iraq, up to now. But then US soldiers call them "sand ******s" - somehow reminds me of people defined as "inferior", by a "superior" ... race ? Nation ?
I really doubt anyone has learned anything from history, other than being self-righteous and hypocritic while only seeing others committing war crimes, or crimes against humanity. What the US did to its own US people of japanese origin in WW2, deserves an own monument of shame.

vs that:

Originally Posted by Catfish

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914 initiating the first world war, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Greetings,
Catfish

Hitler wasnt so bad.
World domination of master race slavery concentration camps mass murder on industrial scale-yes Hitler was just another guy that did not win.
Damn the English who started ww2.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

Agreed....it was a time of war and many were killed on either side as a result of bombing.

So many could have been saved had Germany had the foresight or common sense to surrender earlier when it was obvious what the eventual outcome would be.

May all the victims regardless of their country of origin RIP.

Caution Long Post Ahead...

It helps to put the Dresden raid into context since it was the logical culmination of 25-years of airpower theories as applied to total war. Remember that the three greatest inter-war bomber theorists were all Allied in WW1, Britain's Hugh Trenchard, Italy's Guilo Douhet and America's William Mitchell. All advocated bombing civilian targets and the use of terror as a legitimate weapon.

As early as 1920 British Secretary of State for War, one Winston Churchill advocated the RAF dropping mustard gas bombs on Iraqi towns during the Iraqi Revolt 1920-22. The only reason why it didn't happen (see Ferguson The War of the World) was that the bombs were not available in quantity so high explosive was subtituted with great effect. Later the Italians would successfully use chemicals and high explosive bombs in Abyssinia both during the war and the resistance after.

Ironically only the Allies entered the war with effective bombers specifically designed to bomb urban targets, the B-17 first flew in 1936 and the RAF's Short Stirling in 1939. The Allies were already pumped to bomb Axis cities long before the Luftwaffe hit urban London for the first time. Bomber Command had exercised massed night bombing techniques starting as early as 1934 so the oft-repeated canard that they were "forced" into doing so by losses in 1940 is probably a bit of after the fact hyperbole.

Nevertheless, Dresden was a watershed event. As noted above the city did meet all the criteria of a legitimate military target as such things were understood in 1945. There was no reason to slack off even with the end in sight although undamaged urban areas in unoccupied Germany were at a premium by February 1945. Who on the Allied side could forget how Hitler manipulated the German public to achieve power with his "stab in the back" propaganda effectively hiding the defeat of the German armed forces in 1918? In 1945 and with vast urban areas in ruins, there could be no repeat of such lies, everybody in Germany, Nazi or not, knew that they were beaten; completely, decisively and totally at the mercy of the victors. In 1919 it was possible to spin defeat into some sort of victory but the bomber took that option off the table in post-war Germany, East or West.

For all of that it is possible that the bomber theorists were correct and the defeat of a nation by destruction of its infrastucture and terrorizing its citizens could be achieved by the bomber alone. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that the a solution had been developed to the biggest operational problem of strategic bombing, the need to revist the target time and again. So complete was the destruction caused by the atomic bomb that there was nothing to repair, huge swaths of cities could simply disappear in an instant.

Fortunately one of the lessons learned after Dresden was that destruction on this scale had a political cost and after Japan surrendered, paying that cost ceased to have relevance in the limited wars during and after the Cold War. When, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay told President Kennedy that the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union would probably cost the lives of only 20-30 Million Americans, the latter very sensibly looked for another solution. The political and moral lessons of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been well learned.

In 1939-45, targeting of civilians and their infrastructure were reasonable responses on the rocky road to defeat Nazism and Japanese militarism. In the limited wars of today the opposite is true and Dresden was one of those seminal events that proved it to be so.