Dresden, 1945

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Sandeep,

I first asked you in post #464.

I asked you a second time in post #472.

You still haven't answered.

Here it is again:

"You post, "US army land warfare doctrine prevailing during WWII, made hostage taking and disposal "officially sanctioned policy".

You will, of course, be both providing sources for this quote and claim and some examples of it in action? You are obligred to do so on AHF if requested."

Consider this a third such request, as you ignored the first two.

Well?

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Takao,

FM 27-10 Rules of Land Warfare (October 1, 1940) is just a US Army republication of the International Laws of Warfare as they stood in 1940. There is nothing US-specific about it.

The implication of, "US army land warfare doctrine prevailing during WWII, made hostage taking and disposal "officially sanctioned policy" "is that there was something US-specific that Sandeep was referfring to. This actually applied to ALL signatories of the Hague Conventions, etc..

If all the Americans were doing was adhering to the laws of war, this is to their credit, and is hardly a black mark against them.

It also ignores my request to Sandeep for "some examples of it in action" by US forces. Were there any? If there were none, then the US was not just keeping to the letter of the law, but its spirit as well. Have you any examples of hostage taking by the US? (An open question, as I don't know the answer.)

Cheers,

Sid

[wm]

The offending forces or populations generally may lawfully be subjected to appropriate reprisals.
Hostages taken and held for the declared purpose of insuring against unlawful acts by the enemy forces or people may be punished or put to death if the unlawful acts are nevertheless committed.
...
The acts resorted to by way of reprisal need not conform to those complained by the injured party, but should not be excessive or exceed the degree of violence committed by the enemy.
Villages or houses, etc., may be burned for acts of hostility committed from them, where the guilty individuals cannot be identified, tried, and punished.
Rules of land warfare, 1940

This is an American interpretation derived from customary laws of war. There is nothing like this in the Hague Conventions, but it isn't forbidden either, except:

Art. 50.
No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

We are just putting the record straight on the angels...

Sandeeper Instead of Sarcasm give us references to those orders you say were issued sanctioning US Hostage taking and disposal of hostages

Which combatant command issued them and when Where can transcripts be found?

Also what order specifically says it ok to nuke civilians

Will look up and provide references to US army land warfare doctrine permitting hostage taking.

And for nuking civilians .. are you seriously asking me for a source to show they were done with official sanction? Really? In earnest?

So in other words you invented the hostage taking and disposal claim without any proof

What was the Target parameters for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just to kill civilians?

awaiting your next deflection

What exactly is wrong with you ? Are you quite OK sir?

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Hi Sandeep,

I first asked you in post #464.

I asked you a second time in post #472.

You still haven't answered.

Here it is again:

"You post, "US army land warfare doctrine prevailing during WWII, made hostage taking and disposal "officially sanctioned policy".

You will, of course, be both providing sources for this quote and claim and some examples of it in action? You are obligred to do so on AHF if requested."

Consider this a third such request, as you ignored the first two.

Well?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Sid..

If its not asking for too much.. you would need to wait a bit till I get around to it. Need free time to dig up references from a repertoire stretched over decades.

Cheers
Sandeep

[LineDoggie]

Hi Sandeep,

I first asked you in post #464.

I asked you a second time in post #472.

You still haven't answered.

Here it is again:

"You post, "US army land warfare doctrine prevailing during WWII, made hostage taking and disposal "officially sanctioned policy".

You will, of course, be both providing sources for this quote and claim and some examples of it in action? You are obligred to do so on AHF if requested."

Consider this a third such request, as you ignored the first two.

Well?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Sid..

If its not asking for too much.. you would need to wait a bit till I get around to it. Need free time to dig up references from a repertoire stretched over decades.

Cheers
Sandeep

In otherwords you made a deliberately false claim and now are trying to avoid answering

[David Thompson]

An uncivil post from LineDoggie was removed pursuant to the forum rules.

[Bolshevik]

Personally I'm going to put my two cents worth into this debate and damn the consequences...

Before Dresden, there was lots of talk in military and civilian life about an Alpine Redoubt and possibly continuing resistance from a guerrilla point of view.

After Dresden, all such talk suddenly disappeared...

It was a necessary step in breaking German morale, and it could have been achieved a lot earlier, and we have Albert Speer as the source of information there

After the Hamburg Firestorm in mid 1943, Speer commented that " six more raids like that one would have finished the war"

If Dresden is considered a war crime, then continued resistance from Germany after D-day has to be considered as the same thing.

Six more Hamburg's might have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars..

But the Allied Bomber offensive did not have that capacity in 1943, for the simple reason that production of bomber aircraft and training of aircrew had to take a back seat to preparation for Overlord and supplies for Russia and China and still have something left over to prosecute the war against Japan.

Six more Hamburg and Dresden's to finish the war in 1943.

And those are Speers exact words

[Hans1906]

Another german documentary about the Dresden bombing:

Mythos Dresden - Der lange Schatten einer Bombennacht / Myth Dresden - The long shadow of a night of bombing

A few weeks before the end of the war, Dresden became the target of a devastating air strike. And misused for political propaganda. Contemporary witnesses, historians and archaeologists in conversation.

Mutual offsetting of guilt still makes no sense, from either side.

I remember a TV interview with a crew member of an allied bomber, who saw the city of Berlin again after 1945.
The old gentleman, an English or American veteran, wept, he said:
"We saw a red hell of flames more than 50 kilometers before our own bombs were dropped. What I later had to see for myself in Berlin, in the city that no longer existed, shocked me deeply."

The interview is online, maybe I'll find it later, then I'll post the documentary here.


Hans

[Hans1906]

A little reminder of my time as a German soldier in Canada:

In 1979 we were in Shilo, Manitoba, tank shooting, normal German military service overseas back then.
Late one night, an elderly gentleman drove us from Brandon back to Shilo in his cab.
We got talking, he said to me, I've been to Germany before.
When I asked where, his answer was, in the air, 1944/45.
We dropped bombs on your country, and now you're practicing here in our country, with your tanks.

A strange encounter, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere in Manitoba, in a cab.
But I remembered it, I will never forget it...


Hans

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Sandeep,

I asked, "You will, of course, be both providing sources for this quote and claim and some examples of it in action? You are obligred to do so on AHF if requested."

You replied, "If its not asking for too much.. you would need to wait a bit till I get around to it. Need free time to dig up references from a repertoire stretched over decades."

Always glad to oblige.

Just withdraw your post in the meantime and come back with a new one containing some evidence when you are ready.

I look forward to your provisional retraction.

Cheers,

Sid.

[David Thompson]

Sandeep -- To avoid this problem in the future, please provide the source when you post. From the forum rules:

5. Back up your claims
We wish the forum to maintain a high standard. While posting on the forum isn't on the same level as writing an academic text, we want to maintain a balanced level of scholarship.

When you include a quote, cite the source. Include enough information to allow other members to find the source themselves. As a minimum, include the author, title/issue, and page number (for monographs and serials) or a link to the specific article (for websites).
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If another member challenge one of your claims, you must cite a source for your claim.
If you make a claim that is obviously controversial, you should cite a source immediately.
Do not post your opinion without supporting it with facts or context.

app.php/rules#back-up-your-claims

[LineDoggie]

An uncivil post from LineDoggie was removed pursuant to the forum rules.

It was civil but I get it, a financial supporter gets a free pass to libel

[wm]

The first place to suffer... was the northwest German town of Sogel, where a number of civilians harboured Wehrmacht bazooka men and participated in a revolt against Canadian troops on 10 April, the day after the community was captured. After five Canadian soldiers lost their lives suppressing this disturbance, civilians were ordered to leave their homes, and the centre of town was systematically blown into rubble.

Similar measures were undertaken in Freisoythe, where a Canadian battalion commander was killed in a battle with fifty cut-off German troops (although it was believed at the time that the officer had been killed by a franc-tireur), and, in Mittelsten, where an unnamed transgression caused the Canadians to send out a 'punitive expedition' with orders to bum down the village.
...
Near Wilhelmshaven, where a Canadian soldier lost his arm to a booby-trap strung to his tank hatch by a civilian saboteur, the houses of three suspected culprits were demolished by bulldozers and armoured recovery tanks.

The Americans often conducted themselves with a similar aggressiveness, thus reiterating the fact — shown so vividly in the American West, in the Philippines, and in Vietnam — that American citizen-soldiers have traditionally been uncomfortable in an environment of partisan warfare. They engaged in summary executions, took hostages, and destroyed private property, although their bark was sometimes worse than their bite.
...
By the spring of 1945, Third Army soldiers were being issued with genuine orders to burn all dwellings containing SS francs-tireurs.
...
Some units warned Burgermeister in threatened towns that a single shot fired into the backs of American troops would result in the affected community being destroyed by fighter-bombers.

At Stuppach, in northern Wurttemberg, townfolk were suspected of harbouring a wounded German officer, but they were instructed to produce within three hours either the officer or a good explanation; otherwise, all male inhabitants would be shot, women and children would be driven into the hinterland, and the town would be leveled.

In the same region, two U.S. soldiers were garrotted by German stragglers. American authorities mistakenly believed that surly local civilians were responsible, and on 18 April they conducted a brutal security sweep, arresting the entire military-age, male populations of villages such as Bffichlingen.
In northern Baden, combat troops destroyed the town of Bruchsal, apparently in response to some unnamed atrocity by the SS.
Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement by Perry Biddiscombe

[Hans1906]

Similar measures were undertaken in Freisoythe, where a Canadian battalion commander was killed in a battle with fifty cut-off German troops (although it was believed at the time that the officer had been killed by a franc-tireur), and, in Mittelsten, where an unnamed transgression caused the Canadians to send out a 'punitive expedition' with orders to bum down the village.

wm,

I wrote a little bit about the city of Friesoythe earlier: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=261055&p=2377762&h ... e#p2377762

Nothing against a quote from a book, but if so, then at least the names of the towns should be spelled correctly, that would be desirable.

This might read like "nitpicking", but it's important sometimes.


Hans