RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

Discussions on all (non-biographical) aspects of the Luftwaffe air units and general discussions on the Luftwaffe.
durb
Member
Posts: 627
Joined: 06 May 2014, 10:31

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#31

Post by durb » 06 Jul 2015, 23:27

The first civilian casualties of bombing campaigns of RAF were perhaps more "collateral damaged" than intended targets. Also with the bombing sights of 1940 and during the night it was even less possible to make accurate precision bombing than during the daytime. The daytime offensives over Germany were out of question in 1940 because they would have been suicide missions with limited numbers of RAF´s twin-engined bombers (without fighter escort) against the well-defended airspace over the Reich.

Bombing civilians and terror bombings were not a new thing by 1939/1940, only the growing scale was something new. Terror bombings had happened earlier in WW1 (German Zeppeline attacks etc.), Spanish Civil War, Sino-Japanese War and also in some colonial wars (when for example gas bombs were "acceptable" against "unciviliced tribes"). Even when the precision bombing is the aim, there is always some "collateral damage" even today when precision bombing methods are far more advanced than during the WW2.

Practically enemy cities can be always considered "legitime targets" if one wants to do it - there might be important traffic connections, administrative centers, military industry, soldier barracks or other "vital points" to be considered as legitimate military targets. Just "bad luck" for civilians if they happen to live in housing blocks near of these targets and fell victim for carpet bombing.

About the German views of "acceptable bombing" there is one view to be found from the diaries of the fighter ace Günther Lützow during the Spanish Civil War (he was considered a great gentleman and not a Nazi). He observed once the well bombed Spanish village as being "fantastically flat" after the bombing of Legion Condor and at that time he hoped to see also some French cities equally "flat" one day. Later he was not so enthusiastic about the "flat cities" when they started to appear in Germany.. (Kurt Braatz - Gott oder Flugzeit. Leben und Sterben des Jagdfliegers Günther Lützow)

User avatar
4thskorpion
Member
Posts: 733
Joined: 10 Nov 2009, 16:06
Location: United Kingdom

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#32

Post by 4thskorpion » 07 Jul 2015, 18:00

"...It is March 6, 1943, and two German soldiers are talking about the war. Fighter pilot Budde and Corporal Bartels were captured by the British a few weeks earlier. The war is over for them, and it's time to share memories.

Budde: "I flew two spoiling attacks. In other words, we shelled buildings."

Bartels: "But not destructive attacks with a specific target, like what we did?"

Budde: "No, just spoiling attacks. We encountered some of the nicest targets, like mansions on a mountain. When you flew at them from below and fired into them, you could see the windows rattling and then the roof going up in the air. There was the time we hit Ashford. There was an event on the market square, crowds of people, speeches being given. We really sprayed them! That was fun!"

Two other pilots, Bäumer and Greim, also had their share of amusing experiences, which they described in a conversation with other soldiers.

Bäumer: "We had a 2-centimeter gun installed on the front (of the aircraft). Then we flew down low over the streets, and when we saw cars coming from the other direction, we put on our headlights so that they would think another car was approaching them. Then we shot them with the gun. We had a lot of successes that way. It was great, and it was a lot of fun. We attacked trains and other stuff the same way."

Greim: "We once flew a low-altitude attack near Eastbourne . When we got there we saw a big castle where there was apparently a ball or something like that being held. In any case, there were lots of women in nice clothes and a band. We flew past the first time, but then we attacked and really stuck it to them. Now that, my dear friend, was a lot of fun." ."

Also:

"...The use of violence is an appealing experience, and it is one that comes much more easily to people than we have become accustomed to believing after 65 years of peace in Europe. Sometimes all it takes is a weapon or an airplane, as the following conversation between a German pilot and a reconnaissance soldier on April 30, 1940 reveals:

Pohl: "I had to drop bombs onto a train station in Posen ( Poznan ) on the second day of the war in Poland . Eight of the 16 bombs fell in the city, right in the middle of houses. I didn't like it. On the third day I didn't care, and on the fourth day I took pleasure in it. We enjoyed heading out before breakfast, chasing individual soldiers through the fields with machine guns and then leaving them there with a few bullets in their backs."

Meyer: "But it was always against soldiers?"

Pohl: "People too. We attacked convoys in the streets. I was sitting in the 'chain' (a formation of three aircraft). The plane would wiggle a little and we would bank sharply to the left, and then we'd fire away with every MG (machine gun) we had. The things you could do. Sometimes we saw horses flying around."

Meyer: "That's disgusting, with the horses…come on!"

Pohl: "I felt sorry for the horses, not at all for the people. But I felt sorry for the horses right up until the end." ."

Source: Rape, Murder and Genocide: Nazi War Crimes as Described by German Soldiers By Jan Fleischhauer

The myth that the Nazi-era German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, was not involved in war crimes persisted for decades after the war. Now two German researchers have destroyed it once and for all. Newly published conversations between German prisoners of war, secretly recorded by the Allies, reveal horrifying details of violence against civilians, rape and genocide.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 55385.html


User avatar
Ironmachine
Member
Posts: 5821
Joined: 07 Jul 2005, 11:50
Location: Spain

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#33

Post by Ironmachine » 07 Jul 2015, 21:02

Günther Lützow wrote:About the German views of "acceptable bombing" there is one view to be found from the diaries of the fighter ace Günther Lützow during the Spanish Civil War (he was considered a great gentleman and not a Nazi). He observed once the well bombed Spanish village as being "fantastically flat" after the bombing of Legion Condor and at that time he hoped to see also some French cities equally "flat" one day. Later he was not so enthusiastic about the "flat cities" when they started to appear in Germany.. (Kurt Braatz - Gott oder Flugzeit. Leben und Sterben des Jagdfliegers Günther Lützow)
And which spanish village was that?

User avatar
Juha Tompuri
Forum Staff
Posts: 11562
Joined: 11 Sep 2002, 21:02
Location: Mylsä

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#34

Post by Juha Tompuri » 07 Jul 2015, 21:04

4thskorpion wrote:Image
Hanusia Mika, machine-gunned by a fighter plane whilst picking potatoes - Warsaw, September 1939.
4thskorpion wrote:
Klaus1943 wrote:Regarding the photo of HM, I have seen this many times before and this is the first caption that claims she was gunned down by a fighter. What is the source of this particular photo? Where there are civilians near military units, there will be collateral damage as the USAF states.
I am sure there was a whole division of Polish infantry dug into the fields (just out of frame) as well as potatoes.

Photo of HM. See Juilen Bryan text in his account: Siege.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&start=15

Seems that the name of the dead girl was not Hanusia Mika, but Andzia Kostewicz.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... &start=120

Regards, Juha
Last edited by Juha Tompuri on 07 Jul 2015, 21:06, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: adding info

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#35

Post by Sid Guttridge » 08 Jul 2015, 19:51

Hi Klaus,

If, as you claim, "Churchill was more interested in killing German civilians" then on those statistics the RAF made a pretty pathetic job of it!

You seem rather uninterested in the fact that the Japanese, Italians and Germans had been engaged in bombing civilians in China, Ethiopia and Spain through much of the 1930s. Or that the Anglo-French tried (out of self interest at their aerial inferiority) to get the practice specifically outlawed at the League of Nations in 1938.

Why is the fact that German civilians finally began to get bombed in 1940 of such concern to you? It was hardly a watershed moment in the history of aerial brutality, was it?

Or are Germans somehow special and exempt from being bombed, whereas they themselves are free to bomb Spanish (Barcelona), Polish (Warsaw), or Dutch (Rotterdam) civilians with impunity?

A curious Sid.

User avatar
Ironmachine
Member
Posts: 5821
Joined: 07 Jul 2005, 11:50
Location: Spain

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#36

Post by Ironmachine » 08 Jul 2015, 21:08

You seem rather uninterested in the fact that the Japanese, Italians and Germans had been engaged in bombing civilians in China, Ethiopia and Spain through much of the 1930s. Or that the Anglo-French tried (out of self interest at their aerial inferiority) to get the practice specifically outlawed at the League of Nations in 1938.
In the SCW everybody bombed civilians: the Italians, the Soviets, the Germans and the Spaniards (both Nationals and Republicans). Both he British and the French bombed civilians in their inter-war colonial conflicts. Both sides bombed civilians in World War I. Still, there is a difference between deliberately targetting them and having them as colateral damage from an attack on a military target. But given the technology and tactics of those times, how many times there was no way to attack such targets without at the same time hitting civilians? Was ever a military target that was not bombed just to avoid posible civilian casualties?. Finger-pointing in that matter can quickly become an exercise in futility.
Regards.

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#37

Post by Sid Guttridge » 09 Jul 2015, 10:45

Hi Ironmachine,

Yup, "finger pointing in that matter can quickly become an exercise in futility".

That is why the small number of German civilian casualties on one night in March 1940 represent no noteworthy milestone in the history of aerial bombing.

You ask, "Was there ever a military target that was not bombed simply to avoid civilian casualties?" The answer would appear to be yes. The British Cabinet discussion on the first page of this thread shows that the British did not bomb the Ruhr in 1939 because it would cause civilian casualties. Two things motivated this stay of hand at this time, residual moral scruples and, more importantly, fear of greater retaliation. I am not sure how the inhabitants of Warsaw would have felt about that!

Cheers,

Sid.

User avatar
Ironmachine
Member
Posts: 5821
Joined: 07 Jul 2005, 11:50
Location: Spain

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#38

Post by Ironmachine » 09 Jul 2015, 13:59

Sid Guttridge wrote:You ask, "Was there ever a military target that was not bombed simply to avoid civilian casualties?" The answer would appear to be yes. The British Cabinet discussion on the first page of this thread shows that the British did not bomb the Ruhr in 1939 because it would cause civilian casualties.
Well, I make a different reading of the document. As far as I can make it, the Ruhr was not bombed in 1939 not to avoid civilian causalties, but because the British did not want to be the first to cause civilian casualties. It is not as if not being the first to do bad equals doing good. However, as the Ruhr was heavily bombed in later years, I would say it is not a counterexample to my (rhetorical) question. In a certain sense, the atack was not cancelled but delayed.

User avatar
4thskorpion
Member
Posts: 733
Joined: 10 Nov 2009, 16:06
Location: United Kingdom

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#39

Post by 4thskorpion » 09 Jul 2015, 14:37

The British believed, according to the 1939 war cabinet papers cited in this thread, that 60% of Germany's vital industry was situated in the Ruhr but delayed bombing such vital war industries in favour of dropping over the Ruhr and elsewhere on 3-4 September 1939 hundreds of thousands of leaflets asking the German population "Why support a war that you cannot win?" thus demonstrating HMG and/or Churchill was not solely interested in bombing and killing German civilians regardless as has been suggested by others in this thread.

What Churchill did say in May 1940 was:
Enemy_atrocities.png
and that much was without doubt true.
Last edited by 4thskorpion on 10 Jul 2015, 07:06, edited 1 time in total.

Klaus1943
Member
Posts: 28
Joined: 05 Oct 2014, 23:27

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#40

Post by Klaus1943 » 09 Jul 2015, 18:19

As I pointed out in my posting "Winston Churchill The War Criminal," WC learned in the Boer War that making war on civilians paid handsome dividends when he saw 25,000 Boer old men, women and children die in the British concentration camps and he carried out the policy in WW1 in depriving Germans of food as long as the middle of 1919 to force them to sign the Versailles Treaty, resulting in at least 750,000 German civilian deaths. WC was no stranger to killing civilians.

User avatar
4thskorpion
Member
Posts: 733
Joined: 10 Nov 2009, 16:06
Location: United Kingdom

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#41

Post by 4thskorpion » 09 Jul 2015, 20:31

Klaus1943 wrote:As I pointed out in my posting "Winston Churchill The War Criminal," WC learned in the Boer War that making war on civilians paid handsome dividends when he saw 25,000 Boer old men, women and children die in the British concentration camps and he carried out the policy in WW1 in depriving Germans of food as long as the middle of 1919 to force them to sign the Versailles Treaty, resulting in at least 750,000 German civilian deaths. WC was no stranger to killing civilians.
Nothing in this post proves your unfounded claim that the "RAF initiates Bombing of German Civilians" or ""Winston Churchill The War Criminal" unless you can provide details of any published speeches or documents where Churchill specifically states his preferred strategy was the RAF killing German civilians first and foremost as a war aim for the British government. The cabinet papers posted on this thread prove otherwise.

Klaus1943
Member
Posts: 28
Joined: 05 Oct 2014, 23:27

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#42

Post by Klaus1943 » 10 Jul 2015, 01:44

Like the criminal serial killer, the political serial killer never admits his crimes.

User avatar
4thskorpion
Member
Posts: 733
Joined: 10 Nov 2009, 16:06
Location: United Kingdom

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#43

Post by 4thskorpion » 10 Jul 2015, 07:05

Klaus1943 wrote:Like the criminal serial killer, the political serial killer never admits his crimes.
This merely demonstrates that you have no supporting evidence in any public speeches or documents to validate your outlandish claim regarding the RAF under Churchill and because "The political serial killer never admits his crime" one is therefore free to create such claims, but it is not history it is simply propagandist story telling.

durb
Member
Posts: 627
Joined: 06 May 2014, 10:31

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#44

Post by durb » 13 Jul 2015, 02:14

One thing popped to my mind - is the idea of using "human shields" a modern one? - With this I mean using civilians to cover up military targets in order to prevent the attacks against them (as there would be so much collateral damage to civilians that it would look too bad in PR-war).

It looks that during the conflicts of early and mid 20th Century the tactics of "human shields" did not work well (if they were even tried). Did everyone understand that the targets would be bombed anyway with no special regard to civilians - so that there was no special use for "human shield" tactics? Was it only from later 20th Century when killing civilians in war became so much maligned that the use of "human shields" became a possible idea? Or are "human shields" just a myth to explain/justify why "our side" has been "obliged" to cause "collateral damage" to (enemy) civilians while the enemy just "deliberately" kills "our civilians"?

In the war, specially at the propaganda battle there has been always two standards: "our side" is "obliged" to use "hard, but justified methods" to win the war whereas the "other side" makes "unprovoked attacks against innocent/helpless civilians" and otherwise is to be blamed of all the dirty tricks of war. Both the Axis and Allied used "hard but justified" methods to win the war and both sides accused each others for being "terrorists" to use such methods. In the end it perhaps does not mean much to the dead victims of "total war" who started it.

Bombing civilians is not the most effective way to win the war (maybe the atom bombs were exception of tule). The terror bombings were inefficient against determined enemy - British did not revolt against Churchill because of "blitz" and the ruining of German cities did not make Germans to revolt against Hitler. The bombed civilians are more likely to hate those who bomb them than to revolt against their own governement in order to make it surrender to the enemy (and by that way end the bombings).

User avatar
4thskorpion
Member
Posts: 733
Joined: 10 Nov 2009, 16:06
Location: United Kingdom

Re: RAF Initiates Bombing of German Civilians

#45

Post by 4thskorpion » 13 Jul 2015, 08:42

I am sure the use of "human shields" in war is as old as war itself.

Post Reply

Return to “Luftwaffe air units and Luftwaffe in general”