Can the bombing of cities be considered as "Warcrimes..

[Scott Smith]

Scott, Scott, Scott! Your note on Dawidowicz and Auschwitz was not only completely irrelevant, but even worse, it would have also destroyed the thread!

I thought we had made an arrangement?! :roll:

Note that the problem is not the topic "Dawidowicz and Auschwitz", I have moved the posts into a new thread, the problem is that this thread is about the bombing of cities. Imagine what a new (or old) user must believe when he wants to read more about if the bombing of cities was a War Crime and what he finds after a few posts is the clash about the death toll of Auschwitz! And you know what debate follows if you make this statement about Dawidowicz.

Oops, you know how I get carried away with Roberto! We start on strategic bombing and wind-up with the usual "you're a Nazi apologist" routine--whereupon inevitably follows a "moral equivalency" argument and a "whose ox is being gored." Sorry.


Here is that thread, btw, which began when Roberto went on a tangent about the Jews in post Mon Oct 07, 2002 11:36 am Post subject: Re: Those Damn Germans... above.

Auschwitz death toll (splitted from Can the bombing..)

[Hans]

Sorry.

There should be a grinning smily with a broken teeth.

[Scott Smith]

Well, if I expected anything worth understanding to come from Smith, I would now humbly ask him to explain his "thesis" once again for me to understand it correctly.

As I don't, I'll just tell him what he can do with it.

Caldric made the point about "those damn German" aggressors, whereupon I made the counterpoint that this has to be seen in the context of Allied containment from 1871-1945. It's not that hard to understand, my Dear Roberto.

[Caldric]

To get back to the original post, although the side street was very exciting and all, you never stated Scott what you think of the fact that both the leaders of Germany and Japan could turn the bombing off easy.

Simple surrender during an impossible war that there was no hope of winning. There would be no+ Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden, Raping of Germany (at least not on the scale seen in history). Or let me just quote myself.

Caldric Wrote:

And one last thing, Japan and Germany could have turned the bombing off at anytime, it was in their power to bring it all to an end. Surrender after summer 1944 was the way out, there would have been no Nagasaki, no Hamburg, no Dresden, no Hiroshima, the rape of Prussia and Eastern Germany and the sporadic crimes committed against the Germans in the West would not have happened. It was all up to this handful of criminals to stop the misery they caused their people. The saviors of these nations became the bane and destroyer of their own people. Surrender that was already going to happen could have stopped it all, it was not Hitler or Tojo cared one damn bit about their people, only self-preservation both were cowards.

So who is trully to blame? Japanese and German aggression or allies executing a war that is using tactics and strategy that is common practice for the day.

[Hans]

The bombing of Dresden. War Crime?

Photos scanned from Götz Bergander Dresden im Luftkrieg.

[Caldric]

Ok Hans so people died, is a horrible thing, but pictures of dead people and burning city make it no crime. But we are not just talking about Dresden but all the bombing.

The fact remains that without German and Japanese Aggression and their refusal to surrender and we would not be even talking about this.

[NewXieland]

Ok Hans so people died, is a horrible thing, but pictures of dead people and burning city make it no crime. But we are not just talking about Dresden but all the bombing.

The fact remains that without German and Japanese Aggression and their refusal to surrender and we would not be even talking about this.

I think the delimma remains that by late 1944 the war in Europe was pretty much won and really there was little tactical or strategical need to bomb Dresden, especially given the fact that if was flooded with refugees. Bombing German cities and killing civilians would of hardly encouraged Hitler to surrender. By late 1944/45 he was upon the fringes of lunacy and seldom cared for the welfare of his people was his Furher Myth was shattered...

[Scott Smith]

The fact remains that without German and Japanese Aggression and their refusal to surrender and we would not be even talking about this.

What if the Soviet Union went to the United States with Caldric as President and said, "surrender now to the World Revolution, you Imperialist Dogs or we will fire all of our nuclear weapons at you, and spread Cobalt 60 and Strontium 90 and Iodine 131 and kill every last one of you, regardless of cost to us."

I hope you would say, "Screw You, Ivan. No Surrender!"

Aggression is a very polemical concept, and as far as surrendering, I don't think that is practical when the demand is for Unconditional Surrender!

What ground-troops was Dresden going to surrender to?

If the Americans and British had invited the Germans to the *negotiation* of a peace settlement at Yalta using the bombing of Dresden (or potential bombing) as leverage and the Germans still refused to come, then maybe it wouldn't have been so bad.

Hitler's offer to the British for peace terms in 1940 was very generous! Churchill responded to Hitler's offer by ramping-up the violence with bombing provocations on Berlin, so Hitler Blitzed London--which was exactly what Churchill wanted, I would argue.

For that matter, Churchill knew that Dresden wasn't going to end the war, but he wanted some leverage to intimidate Stalin with at Yalta, but here he was way out of his league.

[Karl da Kraut]

In WWII hundreds of thousands of people were killed by aerial bombardments; not because of a misfortune but intentional. Intentionally killing civilians, regardless of their nationality, - if by bullets or bombs - is always a war crime.

The simple fact that an enemy won't surrender is no permission to kill his civilan population by all means.

A major strategic aim German air campaign against the UK and that of the Allies against Germany was to shaken enemy morals. The opposite was achieved; stabilization instead of destabilization. The terror attacks stengthend the morals and fostered the hate against the enemy. Until today?

[Caldric]

Scott there was no negotiating with Hitler, it had already be tried once. He was not going to negotiate anyway, and after you defeat him the negotiations are not even up for question. Hitler could have negotiated with the ingratiating UK in 1938 and 39.

The peace Germany offered the UK in 1940 pretty much gave them permission to exist.

[Caldric]

Ok Hans so people died, is a horrible thing, but pictures of dead people and burning city make it no crime. But we are not just talking about Dresden but all the bombing.

The fact remains that without German and Japanese Aggression and their refusal to surrender and we would not be even talking about this.

I think the delimma remains that by late 1944 the war in Europe was pretty much won and really there was little tactical or strategical need to bomb Dresden, especially given the fact that if was flooded with refugees. Bombing German cities and killing civilians would of hardly encouraged Hitler to surrender. By late 1944/45 he was upon the fringes of lunacy and seldom cared for the welfare of his people was his Furher Myth was shattered...

Dresden was not really any different then Tokyo or Stalingrad or Moscow Leningrad etc. The Germans have no sacred hold on being bombed, they did it to their enemy also.

People have the same problem whenever they discuss these issues, they think modern, they do not think 1940's, when ones very exitence was threatened. Japan if victorious would have made Asia tens times the hell it already was under their thumb. Millions died by their hands, the same would be the fate of Europe. Dresden is just one more of a thousand tragic events of WWII. And a small price to pay in my opinion if it even remotely helped bring the war to a close. Horrific it was I do not doubt it, but it was a common practice of the time. Total war is a horrid thing as we all know, and total war also means total destruction of your enemy.

[Scott Smith]

Scott there was no negotiating with Hitler, it had already be tried once. He was not going to negotiate anyway, and after you defeat him the negotiations are not even up for question. Hitler could have negotiated with the ingratiating UK in 1938 and 39.

No, the British would not negotiate after Munich. They had given Hitler what he asked for but as little as possible of what he wanted, which was to end the Versailles encirclement, and solve the German minority and Danzig problems in lands that had been taken from Germany/Austria.

You can't negotiate with Hitler? Well, you CAN negotiate with anyone out of mutual self-interest, a win/win agreement. But it is much harder when your respective minimum-acceptable conditions or terms of settlement are very far apart or you otherwise have no leverage with your opponent. Hitler sought to gain that leverage from the German excellence of arms in 1939. But even if nobody wins a decision on the battlefield, sometimes conflicts can still be ended anyway because it is just not worth fighting anymore. Hitler didn't want to fight the British and French, but he was going to achieve his objectives. And the British and French didn't want to fight Germany again--in their view they had already achieved their objectives. Been there--done that! So they weren't going to accept any peace with Germany in 1940 that left Hitler alive, because he had dared break the encirclement! From 1943-45, they weren't going to accept any peace with Germany whatsoever short of Unconditional Surrender.

I stand by my assertion that the Allied demand for Unconditional Surrender was one of the worst War Crimes because it meant that the Germans could not quit on any terms.

In propaganda leaflets the Allies claimed that they would not massacre or enslave the Germans; they only wanted to insure that the Nazi generals could not create another Dolchstosslegende, they said, about how Germany did not surrender in 1918 but was betrayed. (They didn't mention that Germany wasn't even invited to the peace settlement at Versailles except to sign the unilateral agreement, of course.) But anyway, it is doubtful that this propaganda was too effective on the German masses prior to Allied troops actually closing in. And as Karl correctly notes, the Allied bombing only encouraged the Germans to rally around their government.

The peace Germany offered the UK in 1940 pretty much gave them permission to exist.

Exist with their empire fully intact, no war-crimes trials, no reparations, no war-guilt clause. Not a bad deal considering that they declared war on Germany.

[Scott Smith]

Japan if victorious would have made Asia tens times the hell it already was under their thumb. Millions died by their hands, the same would be the fate of Europe. Dresden is just one more of a thousand tragic events of WWII. And a small price to pay in my opinion if it even remotely helped bring the war to a close.

Well, WWII was bad in China from 1930-1945, and with the Rape of Nanking and all, but was the postwar Communist takeover any better? That fiasco was practically engineered by the imperial incompetence of the U.S. government, including that of General Stillwell and Secretary of State/Defense George C. Marshall. Of course, we did not apply the same moral standards against the Commies as we did against the Japs and Nazis because we had already had our Peoples' War by then.

[Roberto]

I stand by my assertion that the Allied demand for Unconditional Surrender was one of the worst War Crimes because it meant that the Germans could not quit on any terms.

Why, and I thought there is no such thing as war crimes insofar as whatever the governing bodies of sovereign nations decide to do is legal (the term "crimes" implies a breach of law).

As to Unconditional Surrender itself, who could be expected to negotiate terms with Adolf after he had broken just about every treaty that Germany had ever entered into, staged wars of unprovoked aggression against several countries (especially the Soviet Union) and slaughtered millions of unarmed non-combatants in actions only remotely if at all related to any acts of war?

And what is this "the Germans could not quit on any terms" - baloney supposed to mean?

The demand for Unconditional Surrender was directed not against the German people, but against the Nazi government. If Hitler and his fellow murderers had thrown the towel and taken responsibility and submitted to judgement for what they had done, most of the destruction and death that visited Germany in the later years of the war would have been avoided.

But such a coherent attitude was too much to be asked of Smith's beloved Führer, who from a certain point in time onward was fighting for nothing other than his own miserable existence.

And who chose to draw millions of Germans into oblivion with him so as to last a little longer.

[Roberto]

Well, WWII was bad in China from 1930-1945, and with the Rape of Nanking and all, but was the postwar Communist takeover any better?

No.

Neither was it a necessary consequence of Japanese defeat.

Neither did all countries invaded and savaged by the Japanese fall to Communism after World War II.

Malaysia and the Phillipines, for instance, were much worse off under Japanese domination than after the Japanese defeat. Especially the latter:

A full account of all massacres of Filipinos by Japanese troops would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St.Paul's College. In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were shot or bayoneted. Around 100 were bayoneted and shot inside a church at Ponson and 169 villagers of Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold blood. On Palawan Island, 150 American prisoners of war were murdered. At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. The Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders as a bare minimum.

Source of quote:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html