Strategic Bombing as a War Crime

[Scott Smith]

My understanding of strategic bombing is when the main objective are not civilians but the varios industries purveying to the armament and munitions productions not civilians. And as such strategic bombing can not be considered as crime even if it can inflict some civilian casualties.

Well, the problem with that argument is that it's basically a lie.


In other words, if you read the newspapers of 1945, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was only because it was a "military target." There were lots of military targets there. The civilians were just collateral-damage.

Now, let's take the German Navy's Zeppelin raids on London in 1915. They were nominally directed against British troop barracks. These were missed and civilians were killed, so from the German military's point-of-view the attacks were a complete failure, little more than harassment raids. From another point of view it led to mass-hysteria and left a deep impression in England.

Technically, both sides tried some strategic bombing in WWI using Gotha and Handley-Page bombers in 1917-18. The Gotha IV could carry a thousand ton bombload over a long range and the German Luftstreitkräfte amased over forty machines to attack London. The Germans hoped that this plus the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare would end the war. On June 13, 1917 a force of eighteen bombers killed 162 civilians and wounded 432. There was no effective air-defense and no machines were shot-down. Again, the military damage was not impressive to the Germans but there was massive psychological panic and it became a Cabinet-level crisis. The RAF was created in 1918 and German cities were attacked.

The German attacks ended in early 1918 as British defenses improved and the Gothas were forced to night attacks. By then the Germans had been using Riesen (Giant) four-engined bombers that could carry a one-ton bombload. The total British casualties from German attacks from May, 1917 to May, 1918 was 836 dead and 1,982 wounded, with a German loss of 62 bombers in 27 raids. Only 19 were lost from enemy aircraft and ground-fire, the rest from operational accidents.

When the German offensive on London was called off it was resumed on Paris on several occasions, but with no panic or drop in morale, unlike the previous London attacks. The Parisians lost 303 civilians killed and 539 wounded before the Germans called it off.

The Germans dropped strategic-bombing and used the big bombers for strategic-interdiction, attacks on enemy airfields, depots and rail-yards supporting the battlefield. There was heavy air-support for Ludendorff's Spring, 1918 offensives. The Germans used the world's first all-metal aircraft for close air-support, the Junkers J1, with a 150 pound bombload. The use of the Luftstreitkräfte in surprise attacks supporting ground-troops became part of German aerial doctrine as "deep artillery" to attack hardpoints and staging areas. The Luftstreitkräfte amassed 3,668 frontline aircraft, including 35 fighter squadrons, 22 ground-attack squadrons, and 49 observation detachments, supporting three ground-armies attacking the British front. The offensive initially gained air-superiority but then became a war-of-attrition that the Germans couldn't hope to win.

In the last months of the war the Germans were on the defensive and outnumbered two or three to one, which the Luftstreitkräfte met proportionately with kills to the same 3:1 ratio to the very end, and especially against inexperienced American units. Of the 3,600 aircraft available in March, by the end of the war the Germans still had 4,500 aircrew and 2,709 serviceable machines on the Western Front, against 7,200 Allied aircraft remaining despite heavy losses.

The British strategic bombing offensive under the command of Air Marshal Hugh "Boom" Trenchard consisted of several heavy bomber wings and targeted the German Ruhr cities. The Allies made 353 raids on Germany and dropped 7,717 bombs, killing 797 and wounding another 380. The total cost in damages was about 15.5 million RM (about $3.6 million). RAF losses cost were far more than German damage, about one aircrew for one or two civilians killed.

For the Germans the raids were seen as little more than a nuisance and could be substantially reduced simply by taking precautions like seeking shelter. The Luftstreitkräfte developed extension air-defense doctrines including searchlights and Flak. In 1918 the German Flak-forces totalled 2,558 cannon from 37mm to 105mm; it shot down of 132 Allied planes in September and 129 in October.

The Germans learned different lessons from the air-campaign and air-defense than their British counterparts. For the RAF, strategic-bombing was thought to be much more effective than going over-the-top in the trenches largely because Germany ultimately lost the war.

Hope that helps.


Source: James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1919-1940. Univ. Press of Kansas (1997); pp. 34-43. ISBN: 0700608362.

German 88mm Heavy Flak gun in 1918.

[Roberto]

The same Smith who professes to be so “skeptical” when it comes to Nazi crimes seems to be a friend of throwing unsupported big figures around when it comes to the crimes of his beloved Führer’s enemies – or of the despised “Democracy-Capitalism”, for that matter.

It wasn't MY claim, nor was I giving an epistemological figure, but merely reporting what I heard over the evening news while I was eating my spinach.

And Smith didn't bother to submit that information to critical scrutiny, but instead cheerfully posted it. Very instructive.

Perhaps I heard wrong and they said 5,000 Iraqis per month instead of per day.

And the plausibility considerations that would immediately enter his mind in another context were conspicuously absent as well. Very instructive, once again.

That seems more reasonable anyway and is logical since the sanctions exempt food and medicine, which the British blockade of Germany did not--even putting neutral countries on a ration-system so they couldn't sell food to Germany.

Next time give such considerations a thought before I catch you shooting the bull, not afterwards. Just a piece of well-meaning advice.

If the typical estimate for the British blokade is 800 thousand then I won't quibble, but that may be very-low since we don't normally even think of disease as being war-related (or peace-related, as even after the Germans had signed the Armistice the blockade was maintained, while food requisitions from occupied territories in Eastern Europe were not).

And regarding war and disease, tens of millions died of the 1918 Influenza pandemic, including both of my grandfather's parents in Idaho--and it wouldn't have happened without the troop and population movements that spread germs in times of scarcity. It basically wouldn't have happened without the American entry into the war. Causality is a complex thing, Roberto, and one shouldn't try to draw too much political capital from it. I've always said that.

We're talking about deaths in Germany resulting from a policy enforced by the British government, not about the much more numerous deaths caused worldwide because people got sneezed on by the wrong person.

Anyway, the dead-Iraqis argument on TV was trying to say that it was more humane for the United States to go to war and be-done-with-it than letting "UN sanctions work," which is not going to "work" by any measure because when you stick your nose into somebody's rathole they are going to bite you one way or another.

Now, you know that I am against the war as much as the ridiculous sanctions, so I don't see what your problem is...

Mindlessly blown-up figures, my dear boy. My post was clear enough. Such proclivity is especially revolting when coming from someone who professes to be so "skeptical" in another context.

As far as I'm concerned, the USA is a sovereign nation and can make war on whomever it wants to, and the UN can just go to hell. But I don't think that killing Iraqis is "worth it," in the words of the former Secretary of State, and I don't think that American national interests are at stake. That is why I'm against the war.

Don't try to change the subject, Smith.

Furthermore, I find it curious that you obsess with "accurate" bodycounts on the one hand and argue that it doesn't matter how many were actually killed in Auschwitz, Belsen or Mauthausen. ONE is enough--isn't that it?

That was never my argument, as Smith well knows. It has always been my position that the death toll of a mass crime should be established as accurately as the records permit. Playing it down is an offense to the victims, as is blowing it up.

British historian Richard Holmes says that 40 thousand were killed in the firestorm of Hamburg and that Dresden was probably even more. Further, he admits that the target was deliberately chosen because it was swollen with refugees. In the next breath he accuses Irving of cant and moral-equivalency and trying to minimalize the Holocaust™, so this alone should establish his credentials for you as a "non-lying historian."

What exactly is raging Smith trying to tell us ?

And we know that victims of the Nazis are the worthiest Victims of all, don't we, Roberto...

No, we don't. Nobody said they were. Raging Smith is again brilliantly exposing his loose screws.

But you know what I think of a Bodycount theory-of-history, don't you.

What exactly is a "Bodycount theory-of-history" supposed to be, and where outside the mind of Smith does it exist ?

If anyone is a "selective skeptic" it is Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, who suddenly can't seem to find his skepticism when it comes to the claims, in toto, of the WWII Holocaust™, although to his credit he doesn't believe in the Human Soap story.

There's little reason to be skeptical about what is proven by solid documentary and eyewitness evidence, corroborated by physical evidence and conclusive demographic calculations. Strangely enough, that's exactly where Mr. Smith, who otherwise seems to be far less critical of his sources, professes to be "skeptical". Which suggests that his "skepticism" is oriented not by whether a lack or demonstrable dubiousness of records and evidence calls for being skeptical, but by whether or not an event fits into what he would like to believe.

Now, I know that the "dead Iraqis from the sanctions" totals have been given from one-half to a one million, but I have tried to use the more conservative figure myself, and certainly not because I want to dishonor their dead.

5,000 Iraqi kids a day - "the more conservative figure".

The bottom line is that we have to ask ourselves how far we want to go to make others comply with our will. I for one don't think it is "worth it."

Neither do I in this case, as Smith well knows. My point, which he desperately tries to obfuscate, is that arguments in this respect should be based on facts, not on propaganda.

By the way, you should be hearing what Americans are saying about the French and Germans these days for not backing Bush. Mostly we realize that having brainwashed the Germans into being peace-creeps for decades we can't very well expect them to be tigers when we dial them up, can we?

Who is "we"? Smith, a few like-minded true believers, and ... ? I ask because this supposed "brainwashing" of Germans obviously happened only in the minds of Mr. Smith and others of his persuasion.

But France is really the butt of scorn for Americans right now since we perceive them as rude and owing us big-time for their liberation--both in dollars and in lives.

Why, did those bad Yanks also "brainwash" the French ?

I for one, however, hope the French have learned their lesson when they declared war on Germany in 1939 over Danzig.

Over Danzig, Smith keeps repeating. Even though his beloved Führer himself told his inner cirle and military commanders on 23.05.1939 that not Danzig, but gaining "living space", was the issue, as Smith well knows. Very instructive.

Have a good weekend, Roberto.

I had a nice one, thanks.

What about you, Smith?

You sound like you got yourself a new set of carpets to chew on.

If you haven't, you definitely should.

[Roberto]

For the second time, the topic of this thread is strategic bombing as a war crime. Please stay on the subject.

Sorry, David.

What follows definitely belongs to the topic. It made my skin crawl.

[...]It is not surprising that the disaster of Hamburg terrified the German war leaders. “We were of the opinion,” Speer said in his interrogation in July 1945, “that a rapid repetition of this type of attack upon another six German towns would inevitably cripple the will to sustain armament manufacture and war production. It was I who verbally reported to the Fuehrer at that time that a continuation of these attacks might bring about a rapid end to the war.”
In spite of all that had happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a comparatively humane method. For on thing, it saved the flower of the youth of this country and of our allies from being mown down by the military in the field, as it was in Flanders in the war of 1914-1918. But the point is often made that bombing is specially wicked because it causes casualties among civilians. This is true, but then all wars have caused casualties among civilians. For instance, after the last war the British Government issued a White Paper in which it was estimated that our blockade of Germany had caused nearly 800,000 deaths - naturally these were mainly of women and children and old people because at all costs the enemy had to keep his fighting men adequately fed, so that most of what food there was went to them. This was a death-rate much in excess of even the most ruthless exponents of air frightfulness. It is not easy to estimate what in effect were the casualties caused by allied bombing in Germany because the German records were incomplete and often unreliable, but the Americans have put the number of deaths at 305,000. There is no estimate of how many of these were women and children, but there was no reason why bombing, like the blockade, should fall most heavily on women and children; on the contrary, the Germans carried out large schemes of evacuation, principally of children, from the main industrial cities.
Whenever the fact that our aircraft occasionally killed women and children is cast in my teeth I always produce this example of the blockade, although there are endless others to be got from the wars of the past. I never forget, as so many do, that in all normal warfare of the past, and of the not distant past, it was the common practice to besiege cities and, if they refused to surrender when called upon with due formality to do so, every living thing in them was in the end put to the sword. Even in the more civilised times of to-day the siege of cities, accompanied by the bombardment of the city as a whole, is still a normal practice; in no circumstances were women and children allowed to pass out of the city, because their presence in it and their consumption of food would inevitably hasten the end of the siege. And as to bombardment, what city in what war has ever failed to receive the maximum bombardment from all enemy artillery within range so long as it has continued resistance?
International law can be argued pro and con, but in this matter of the use of aircraft in war there is, it so happens, no international law at all. There was never any agreement about it, with the single exception that about the time of the siege of Paris in the war of 1870 the French and Germans came to an agreement between themselves that neither side should drop explosives from free balloons.[...]

[JLEES]

Hello,
I’ll try to bring this thread back on track. The idea that strategic bombing is a war crime is hard to substantiate one way or the other. For example, stealing a candy bar in war by a soldier is technically a war crime, but it is not on the level of the Holocaust that exterminated six million people. The bombing of defenseless civilians is a war crime, but if the objective were to attack civilian housing to disrupt laborer’s whom supported the arms industries many would justify this action. In other words, if the target is the civilians that keep the arms industries running most people would argue they are fair-game in warfare. One of the main goals in warfare is the targeting of factories and civilians tend to live around them and support their production goals. When factories are attacked civilians tend to die, this is called collateral damage. Very few militaries go out of their way to pointlessly kill civilians when conducting strategic bombing, because it’s a waist of ordinance and endangers the lives of aircrews pointlessly. Many non-military types do not understand this. Meanwhile, in the past urban centers have been targeted with the objective of destroying the moral of those that supported the arms industries. Therefore, the purpose of the attacker was not to just pointlessly kill civilians, there was a higher strategic military goal here. Whether the goal was achieved is immaterial, the important point is there was a military goal. Did the US, Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy attack defenseless civilian targets in the war? Yes, they all did. Were these actions on an equal level as the SS Holocaust? No, they were not. Is the attack on civilians supporting the enemy war industries a war crime? That’s the question, which needs to be focused upon. Did soldiers within their military steal objects that did not belong to them while in conflict? Yes, they all did. It’s all about degrees of the crime; the intent of the perpetrator, they are not equal comparisons (Holocaust to strategic bombing). Often when this issue comes up on these types of forums the goal by some is to bash the US with selective arguments that ignore other nation’s past actions, or attempt to make far reaching comparisons have very little substance.
James

[witness]

My understanding of strategic bombing is when the main objective are not civilians but the varios industries purveying to the armament and munitions productions not civilians. And as such strategic bombing can not be considered as crime even if it can inflict some civilian casualties.

Well, the problem with that argument is that it's basically a lie.


In other words, if you read the newspapers of 1945, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was only because it was a "military target." There were lots of military targets there. The civilians were just collateral-damage.

Now, let's take the German Navy's Zeppelin raids on London in 1915. They were nominally directed against British troop barracks. These were missed and civilians were killed, so from the German military's point-of-view the attacks were a complete failure, little more than harassment raids. From another point of view it led to mass-hysteria and left a deep impression in England.

Technically, both sides tried some strategic bombing in WWI using Gotha and Handley-Page bombers in 1917-18. The Gotha IV could carry a thousand ton bombload over a long range and the German Luftstreitkräfte amased over forty machines to attack London. The Germans hoped that this plus the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare would end the war. On June 13, 1917 a force of eighteen bombers killed 162 civilians and wounded 432. There was no effective air-defense and no machines were shot-down. Again, the military damage was not impressive to the Germans but there was massive psychological panic and it became a Cabinet-level crisis. The RAF was created in 1918 and German cities were attacked.

The German attacks ended in early 1918 as British defenses improved and the Gothas were forced to night attacks. By then the Germans had been using Riesen (Giant) four-engined bombers that could carry a one-ton bombload. The total British casualties from German attacks from May, 1917 to May, 1918 was 836 dead and 1,982 wounded, with a German loss of 62 bombers in 27 raids. Only 19 were lost from enemy aircraft and ground-fire, the rest from operational accidents.

When the German offensive on London was called off it was resumed on Paris on several occasions, but with no panic or drop in morale, unlike the previous London attacks. The Parisians lost 303 civilians killed and 539 wounded before the Germans called it off.

The Germans dropped strategic-bombing and used the big bombers for strategic-interdiction, attacks on enemy airfields, depots and rail-yards supporting the battlefield. There was heavy air-support for Ludendorff's Spring, 1918 offensives. The Germans used the world's first all-metal aircraft for close air-support, the Junkers J1, with a 150 pound bombload. The use of the Luftstreitkräfte in surprise attacks supporting ground-troops became part of German aerial doctrine as "deep artillery" to attack hardpoints and staging areas. The Luftstreitkräfte amassed 3,668 frontline aircraft, including 35 fighter squadrons, 22 ground-attack squadrons, and 49 observation detachments, supporting three ground-armies attacking the British front. The offensive initially gained air-superiority but then became a war-of-attrition that the Germans couldn't hope to win.

In the last months of the war the Germans were on the defensive and outnumbered two or three to one, which the Luftstreitkräfte met proportionately with kills to the same 3:1 ratio to the very end, and especially against inexperienced American units. Of the 3,600 aircraft available in March, by the end of the war the Germans still had 4,500 aircrew and 2,709 serviceable machines on the Western Front, against 7,200 Allied aircraft remaining despite heavy losses.

The British strategic bombing offensive under the command of Air Marshal Hugh "Boom" Trenchard consisted of several heavy bomber wings and targeted the German Ruhr cities. The Allies made 353 raids on Germany and dropped 7,717 bombs, killing 797 and wounding another 380. The total cost in damages was about 15.5 million RM (about $3.6 million). RAF losses cost were far more than German damage, about one aircrew for one or two civilians killed.

For the Germans the raids were seen as little more than a nuisance and could be substantially reduced simply by taking precautions like seeking shelter. The Luftstreitkräfte developed extension air-defense doctrines including searchlights and Flak. In 1918 the German Flak-forces totalled 2,558 cannon from 37mm to 105mm; it shot down of 132 Allied planes in September and 129 in October.

The Germans learned different lessons from the air-campaign and air-defense than their British counterparts. For the RAF, strategic-bombing was thought to be much more effective than going over-the-top in the trenches largely because Germany ultimately lost the war.

Hope that helps.


Source: James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1919-1940. Univ. Press of Kansas (1997); pp. 34-43. ISBN: 0700608362.

German 88mm Heavy Flak gun in 1918.

Thanks.It certainly does help.
I do understand that the "strategic bombing" notion was frequently used as an euphemism for what as a matter of fact was done with the purpose of causing "massive psychological panic ".
However we can look at the aftermath of a particular bombing raid and made some conclusions ( the task of forensic expertise mostly ,which is of course not always feasible at the war time )If such an expertise can verify that in this or that particular area of bombardment there were not legitimate military or industrial targets and the majority of the victims were civilians then of course such a raid should be considered as criminal.
Again the possibility of such analysis is not always possible.
Maybe ( just a thought) the bombing raids can even be judged by the following criterion - whether collateral damage exceeds some preset casualties quota. Sounds pretty cynical of course..
So if it is proven then the collateral damage was far beyond a certain percentage of civilian casualties then we can talk of intentions to "deter"
so that to cause "massive psychological panic" which is criminal IMO

[witness]

Albert Speer was quite critical of the effects of the Allied bombing campaign during his interrogations at Nuremberg

Speer was at his most helpful in offering advice on where the Allied air forces went wrong in the conduct of the bombing campaign . . He explained that the area bombing carried out by the RAF had only limited effects on production. Its purpose he found "incomprehesible". The precision attacks carried out by the US Eight Air Force were regarded as more serious , but even here Speer insisted that the wrong target system had been attacked ,and there had been long delays between attacks that allowed Germany time to recuperate .It was Speer's view that the Allies should not have attacked the armamments industries ,but instead singled out the basic supply industries such as chemical or steel ('it is much easier to dam up a river near the source then near the delta ') and the transport net.
(Richard Overy ''Interrogations ")

Again be it military targets or industrial ones ( regardless engaged in the immediate armament and munition production or as Speer suggested
"basic supply industries " ) those can be considered as legitimate objectives of the bombing raids unless the collateral damage ( and I mean civilian casuaties here ) goes beyond some acceptable rates.
"Acceptable rates " ...? I am being cynical againg but I really don't see any alternative solutions..

[Scott Smith]

Now, I know that the "dead Iraqis from the sanctions" totals have been given from one-half to a one million, but I have tried to use the more conservative figure myself, and certainly not because I want to dishonor their dead.

5,000 Iraqi kids a day - "the more conservative figure".

I meant a half-million rather than a million. If you don't like the numbers question the UN about it.

As far as the other figure, I was just commenting on what was said on the evening news. But I'm not sure if it was 5,000 per month or day or year, and I don't really care as the point that I was trying to make stands.

The bottom line is that we have to ask ourselves how far we want to go to make others comply with our will. I for one don't think it is "worth it."

Neither do I in this case, as Smith well knows. My point, which he desperately tries to obfuscate, is that arguments in this respect should be based on facts, not on propaganda.

Sure. Facts and not propaganda. I'm all for that. The problem is that one person's facts are another person's propaganda.

Bush, Jr. claimed in his State-of-the-Union address that Saddam cuts out people's tongues. What do you think, Roberto, fact or propaganda?

I never said that the evening news didn't drip with propaganda, but if the UN claims that their own sanctions are killing Iraqi kids then this should give us pause for concern. Don't you think?

After the Gulf War we were told fantastic numbers of Iraqi troops were killed. And yet, here we are preparing to fight them again. If that is not Globaloney I don't know what is.

And, factually speaking, how many Iraqi civilians do you think will be killed as collateral-damage with air-attacks on purely military targets if Bush does go to war?

Factually speaking, no propaganda allowed, what criterion is "worth it"?

[JLEES]

Scott,
There maybe a large number of Iraqi children killed during the next Gulf War, like there were a large number of German children killed during WWII. Saddam like Hitler will have a lot in common when it’s over: guilt for leading his country into such a deplorable situation. He should have never attacked Iran, Kuwait and then violated the UN weapon sanctions knowing the US would respond militarily. Overlooking this guy’s crimes against his own people (which are sizable), I think we should place the blame where it belongs for this future conflict. I think the lessons of Munich 1938 and the failures of the League of Nations are being overlooked here on the Third Reich Forum of all places.
James

[David Thompson]

Please stick with the topic.

[Scott Smith]

I don't think "making the world safe for Democracy" is ever "worth it," and trying will only lead to the entire world hating us for our hypocrisy.

A dead Iraqi doesn't care if s/he was killed as collateral-damage, Liberation, Genocide, friendly-fire, or from a tactical or strategic attack. Dead is dead.

[Roberto]

Now, I know that the "dead Iraqis from the sanctions" totals have been given from one-half to a one million, but I have tried to use the more conservative figure myself, and certainly not because I want to dishonor their dead.

5,000 Iraqi kids a day - "the more conservative figure".

I meant a half-million rather than a million. If you don't like the numbers question the UN about it.

Angry because I pointed out an obvious contradiction in your statements, Smith ?

As far as the other figure, I was just commenting on what was said on the evening news. But I'm not sure if it was 5,000 per month or day or year, and I don't really care as the point that I was trying to make stands.

"I don't really care", he now says. How about "Sorry, my mistake" instead ?

The bottom line is that we have to ask ourselves how far we want to go to make others comply with our will. I for one don't think it is "worth it."

Neither do I in this case, as Smith well knows. My point, which he desperately tries to obfuscate, is that arguments in this respect should be based on facts, not on propaganda.

Sure. Facts and not propaganda. I'm all for that. The problem is that one person's facts are another person's propaganda.

Facts depend on evidence, not on points of view, however much Smith would like it to be otherwise.

Bush, Jr. claimed in his State-of-the-Union address that Saddam cuts out people's tongues. What do you think, Roberto, fact or propaganda?

Depends on the evidence.

I never said that the evening news didn't drip with propaganda, but if the UN claims that their own sanctions are killing Iraqi kids then this should give us pause for concern. Don't you think?

Of course I do. Did I say anything to the contrary ?

After the Gulf War we were told fantastic numbers of Iraqi troops were killed. And yet, here we are preparing to fight them again. If that is not Globaloney I don't know what is.

Why this furious crashing into open doors, Smith ?

And, factually speaking, how many Iraqi civilians do you think will be killed as collateral-damage with air-attacks on purely military targets if Bush does go to war?

No idea. I hope a repetition of what happened during the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia can be avoided, if Bush has it his way.

Factually speaking, no propaganda allowed, what criterion is "worth it"?

All administrative action is subject to the principle of proportionality, in a constitutional state. Killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians through bombing and/or sanctions to get rid of Saddam Hussein constitutes a clear violation of that principle.

[Paul80]

I followed the discussion and I can`t believe that some people are saying that areal bombing is not a war crime, just because there is a law, made by those who did the areal bombing, which says that it is all right. I think if the Nazis won the war, the holocaust wouldn`t be a war crime, too. To kill innocent peolpe and especially 80000 children is ALWAYS a war crime. Doesen`t matter how it is defined. Areal bombing kills everything on the ground: children, women, workers, anti-nazi-activists, jews, pows, etc.. So they are all guilty? Where is the difference between shooting peolple haply and burn them to death? For the single person there is no difference at all. In the end he`s dead. And why do you count up the victims? The english say we were right to kill germans because they killed us, the germans say that it was not that worse in russia because the russians killed also enough germans, and so on. There were a lot of war crimes in WW2, and areal bombing was one of it.

[Attila the Hunking]

Scott Smith wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, the USA is a sovereign nation and can make war on whomever it wants to, and the UN can just go to hell.

A fictitious dialog at Nürnberg comes into my mind:

Judge: Erich von Manstein [or insert any other Name which would fit] ,you are accused of having taken part in the planning and preparation of an aggressive war. What do you have to say? Guilty or not guilty?

von Manstein: What's the point in this man? As far I'm concerned , the German Reich was a souvereign nation and was therefore entitled to make war on whomever she wanted to, and the League of Nations can just go to Hell. [/b]

[Attila the Hunking]

A note on Laws/Agreements of War.

Let's have a look on the Hague Conventions:

(Laws and Customs of War on Land; October 18, 1907)

SECTION II
HOSTILITIES

CHAPTER I
Means of Injuring the Enemy,
Sieges, and bombardments
[...]
Art. 25.

The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

Art. 26.

The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities.

Art. 27.

In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.

It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand.

Dresden , in particular, was virtually undefended ( at least against aircraft) and smaller cities like Swinemünde, Pforzheim etc. were not either.
In those days Dresden harboured several dozens of (temporary) miltary hospitals. In addition there were civilian ones, like 'Krankenhaus Friedrichstadt' (one of the largest hospitals in eastern germany) or 'Johannstädter Krankenhaus'. At least the latter ones should have had big red crosses painted on their roofs. Both were situated within the targeted area. This area alsocontained the baroque center of the city, including churches, theatres ,the opera house and many buildings of considerable cultural/historic value.

In general strategic area bombing violates especially Art. 27 compulsorily, because of its indiscrimate nature. Not to mention strategical air raids particularly intended for psychological warfare against the civilian population.

[witness]

Orwell again

As I Please
Tribune, 14 July 1944
I have received a number of letters, some of them quite violent ones, attacking me for my remarks on Miss Vera Brittain's anti-bombing pamphlet. There are two points that seem to need further comment.
First of all there is the charge, which is becoming quite a common one, that "we started it," i.e. that Britain was the first country to practise systematic bombing of civilians. How anyone can make this claim, with the history of the past dozen years in mind, is almost beyond me. The first act in the present war -- some hours, if I remember rightly, before any declaration of war passed -- was the German bombing of Warsaw. The Germans bombed and shelled the city so intensively that, according to the Poles, at one time 700 fires were raging simultaneously. They made a film of the destruction of Warsaw, which they entitled "Baptism of Fire" and sent all round the world with the object of terrorising neutrals.
Several years earlier than this the Condor Legion, sent to Spain by Hitler, had bombed one Spanish city after another. The "silent raids" on Barcelona in 1938 killed several thousand people in a couple of days. Earlier than this the Italians had bombed entirely defenseless Abyssinians and boasted of their exploites as something screamingly funny. Bruno Mussolini wrote newspaper articles in which he described bombed Abyssinians "bursting open like a rose," which he said was "most amusing." And the Japanese ever since 1931, and intensively since 1937, have been bombing crowded Chinese cities where there are not even any ARP arrangements, let alone any AA guns or fighter aircraft.
I am not arguing that two blacks make a white, nor that Britain's record is a particularly good one. In a number of "little wars" from about 1920 onwards the RAF has dropped its bombs on Afghans, Indians and Arabs who had little or no power of hitting back. But it is simply untruthful to say that large-scale bombing of crowded town areas, with the object of causing panic, is a British invention. It was the Fascist states who started this practice, and so long as the air war went in their favour they avowed their aims quite clearly.
The other thing that needs dealing with is the parrot cry "killing women and children." I pointed out before, but evidently it needs repeating, that it is probably somewhat better to kill a cross-section of the population than to kill only the young men. If the figures published by the Germans are true, and we have really killed 1,200,000 civilians in our raids, that loss of life has probably harmed the German race somewhat less than a corresponding loss on the Russian front or in Africa and Italy.
Any nation at war will do its best to protect its children, and the number of children killed in raids probably does not correspond to their percentage of the general population. Women cannot be protected to the same extent, but the outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality. Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man? The argument usually advanced is that in killing women you are killing the breeders, whereas men can be more easily spared. But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred like animals. The idea behind it is that since one man is capable of fertilizing a very large number of women, just as a prize ram fertilizes thousands of ewes, the loss of male lives is comparatively unimportant. Human beings, however, are not cattle. When the slaughter caused by war leaves a surplus of women, the enormous majority of those women bear no children. Male lives are very nearly as important, biologically, as female ones.
In the last war the British Empire lost nearly a million men killed, of whome abou;three-quarters came from these islands. Most of them will have been under thirty. If all those young men had had only one child each whe should now have en extra 750,000 people round about the age of twenty. France, which lost much more heavily, never recovered from the slaughter of the last war, and it is doubtful whether Britain has fully recovered, either. We can't yet calculate the casualties of the present war, but the last one killed between ten and twenty million young men. Had it been conducted, as the next one will perhaps be, with flying bombs, rockets and other long-range weapons which kill old and young, healthy and unhealthy, male and female impartially, it would probably have damaged European civilization somewhat less than it did.
Contrary to what some of my correspondents seem to think, I have no enthusiasm for air raids, either ours or the enemy's. Like a lot of other people in this country, I am growing definitely tired of bombs. But I do object to the hypocrisy of accepting force as an instrument while squealing against this or that individual weapon, or of denouncing war while wanting to preserve the kind of soceity that makes war inevitable.