They have reasons to be angry with Churchill, as he knew what was to become of Coventry and let it happen anyway.
75 Year Anniversary of the Bombing of Dresden, justified or not?
- Thread starter weltweit
- Start date
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Uninformed nonsense.
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Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
But why would any state recognise (the) rules other than when it suits them? If you've decided to go to war, surely you've decided to try to win. War is not civilised.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
TBF there isn't any evidence (from major wars at least) that war crimes (at least in terms of an investigation, trial and sentence) "work", or are anything other than victor's justice. They should all be punishable, but I am struggling to think of an occasion where they ever have been. I mean just from that war you have the debate over bombing civilians, the contrast in fortunes between U-boat skippers who machine-gunned survivors in liferafts and USN and RN captains who did the same thing, or what was done to POWs by the Germans (criminal) and Soviets (not criminal).
As for Dresden, it was obviously a horror but by no means a unique one, and I think Harris' point about the hypocrisy of the politicians who only seemed to be bothered by Dresden because it looked nice (as opposed to somewhere like Pforzheim, Tokyo or Hamburg) and because they thought Jerry was beaten by then is still valid. Bomber Command had been ordered to carry out worse by the same politicians in the past and had suffered hugely for it, so they were the last people who should have complained about the humanity of it or indeed feel so ashamed by the raid that the contribution of Bomber Command to the war effort was obscured and minimized for years afterwards (and still is today, FWIW).
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likesfish
You can't park here sir
yes but you can always make things worse.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
mauvais
on reddit or something
Because they can recognise that specific wars are shorter than remembered history, and that in future the same standards, or lack of, may be applied to them to their detriment. This is why we have and generally obey The Geneva Convention and suchlike, not out of altruism but to set commonality so that if e.g. your expensive soldiers are taken prisoner, the enemy isn't inspired to very visibly do to them whatever horrible thing you might have done to theirs. It's both sensible and absurd at once. Also think about it in terms of maintaining control and it starts to become a little more clear.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Meanwhile unit 751 were busy advancing science.
on the subject of the nukes, there is the argument that the threat of Russia alone would have produced surrender.
and so on
and so on
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Perhaps the Americans and British didn't want Russia to take the surrender?
No it's not. Knew all about it but to intercept the Germans would mean letting them know their codes had been broken.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Highly contentious. There were other (non-Enigma) indicators of the raids but didn't necessarily pinpoint Coventry.
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Political bollocks le may hated nukes so much. Well till he got the job with strategic air command. Same with Dresden everyone said it was an atrocity after the fact . Before hand all fore it.on the subject of the nukes, there is the argument that the threat of Russia alone would have produced surrender.
and so on
I'm no expert but perhaps it could have been done in a way that didn't result in so many civilian deaths. The idea that it wasn't a military target is false though, and is actual Nazi propaganda. There were military targets there, including the Waffen SS, however there was also slave labourers there, victims of the Holocaust. So, any targetting of Dresden would have had to have been very carefully done.
Dresden: The World War Two bombing 75 years on
A firestorm caused by Allied bombers destroyed the historic centre of Dresden in February 1945.www.bbc.co.uk
The bombing of Dresden was controversial at the time the city was firebombed which caused a fireball which killed tens of thousands and destroyed the centre of the city.
Should it have been done?
Hamburg was as bad in July 1943.
Hot weather and a week of night raids with HE and incendiaries caused a firestorm that deprived the city of oxygen, killing and burning more than 40,000.
My dad was serving in Bomber Command in Lincolnshire, loading Halifaxs and Lancasters with bombs.
He never spoke about it. But used to get upset years later. When the nightly news showed the US pouring bombs onto the Vietcong and civilians. It was only after he died that I found out about his armouring days off my uncle.
Hot weather and a week of night raids with HE and incendiaries caused a firestorm that deprived the city of oxygen, killing and burning more than 40,000.
My dad was serving in Bomber Command in Lincolnshire, loading Halifaxs and Lancasters with bombs.
He never spoke about it. But used to get upset years later. When the nightly news showed the US pouring bombs onto the Vietcong and civilians. It was only after he died that I found out about his armouring days off my uncle.
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Not really bomber command was set up to burn cities.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
It was actually set up to deliver precision bombing against military targets, but found out quite quickly and at a high cost in lives* that this was impossible, given the technology available and the almost suicidal risk of doing it in the daytime when they could actually see what they were aiming at. That allowed Harris and others (who had always favoured area bombing) to come along and say that they might as well bomb cities, given thats all they could hit at night, and gradually he was able to build his force into one that specialized in attacking cities.
* though not by the standard of what they suffered between 1942 and 1944
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Japanese high command was batshit insane though. Simply believing killing enough invaders would get the allies to accept their surrender on their terms. You just end up with a higher body count and Japan under communist rule.
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
Nagasaki, 75 years today.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
Is that the Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papapers fame?
Yeah, that's right. The Pentagon papers are only part of what he planned to leak. Iirc he leaked them first and alone so they would get covered and attention as he thought they could have an immediate effect. He also planned to leak a lot of stuff about the US nuclear arsenal, command and control etc but due to various issues like losing it all for a while only recently has.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
Ta fpor that, very interesting
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
how would you suggest they achieved the necessary level of precision?
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Short of time travelling and picking a vast number of Lazer guided bombs you can't do it with ww2 tech.
The US had the highly complex norden bomb sight which in reality was pants.
Mosquitos did a few precision strike but after they hit a school instead of Gestapo hq they stopped those.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Quite
ffsear
Well-Known Member
It was a complex piece of tech at the time. Very accurate. Problem was they didn't have enough of them and often only the lead aircraft in each squadron would carry one. The other aircraft would simply bomb when they saw the lead bomber drop theirs.. Precision bombing effectively became area bombing.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
They also flew higher which altered the speed of the bombs nobody really understood supersonic velocities. The Weather in Europe was worse so most of the the accuracy turned out to be theoretical
all's fair in love and warDresden: The World War Two bombing 75 years on
A firestorm caused by Allied bombers destroyed the historic centre of Dresden in February 1945.www.bbc.co.uk
The bombing of Dresden was controversial at the time the city was firebombed which caused a fireball which killed tens of thousands and destroyed the centre of the city.
Should it have been done?
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
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