Some comments on the "Genocide" issue:
Is it an act of "genocide" to bomb a city whose inhabitants are active participants in another bigger act of genocide, particularly if the bombing brings the bigger act of genocide in that city to a halt?
See the following:
"During February 1945, several hundred remaining Jews still resident in Dresden were destined to be sent to their deaths in concentration camps. The chaos following the bombing provided many a chance to escape, while others were put to work in rebuilding the city, thus the bombing may have saved several hundred potential Holocaust victims.
An account in the diary of Victor Klemperer supports this. On February 12, 1945, the order was given to deliver call-up letters to virtually all of the remaining handful of Jews in Dresden to be deported, but the bombing the next night destroyed much of the train station and threw much of the city into chaos. Victor Klemperer and his wife, Eva, fled amid the chaos. He removed the "J" and yellow Star of David from his jacket and they began heading south. By walking, riding on carts, trucks and trains they eventually reached Bavaria. They had picked up temporary identification papers, which did not show his Jewish origins.[37]
Today, a placard at the Dresden Main Station memorializes the Jewish citizens of Dresden who were sent from there to the concentration camps."
Taken from:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ent ... rld_War_II
And this from Klemperer's diary:
"We sat down for coffee at about half past nine on Tuesday evening, very weary and depressed because during the day, after all, I had been running around as the bringer of bad tidings, and in the evening Waldmann has assured me with very great certainty (from experience and remarks he had recently picked up) that those to be deported on Thursday were being sent to their deaths ("pushed on to a siding"), and that we who were left behind would be done away with in just the same way in a week's time -- then a full-scale warning sounded. "If only they would smash everything up!" said Frau Stuehler bitterly, who had chased around all day, evidently in vain, to get her boy freed from the work duty."
I have looked carefully at the definition of genocide given in the Genocide Watch website and find it difficult to see how it applies to Dresden. One key failure is the inability to show intent. There was no deliberate intent to kill civilians. Civilian deaths would almost certainly occur but that was not the deliberate intention - the attack would have been a success if no civilians had died.
The fact that Dresden was just another target for Bomber Command supports this contention.
The rationale behind the area bombing campaign was to target the morale of the civilian population in an attempt to get them to force the government to surrender. One of the ways of achieving this would be the physical destruction of their housing by fires. The means of creating the fires was by a mixture of high explosive and incendiary bombs.
One definition of Genocide [Martin Shaw 2007] is:
"Genocide is a form of violent social conflict or war, between armed power organizations that aim to destroy civilian social groups and those groups and other actors who resist this destruction. Genocidal action is action in which armed power organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to destroy their real or putative social power, by means of killing, violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as members of the groups"
By this definition, the strategic bombing campaign was the opposite of Genocide since the intention was not to destroy the power of the German civilians in the cities but to encourage them to exercise the power that they had in order to force a change in government policy!
Regards
John
