Bombing of Dresden, Germany during WWII - Atrocious War Crime? Or "Necessary Evil"

[New England]

No, but the U.S.S.R was probably in the same ball park as the Nazi's and probably did more more harm to communism.

i don't know how you can say they were "in the same ballpark" when the nazi's tried to take over the world, and the soviets acted in response to it.


hell, germany tried to take over the world 2x. i will never trust a german as long as i live.


ww2 is a clear case of a war with good guys and bad guys. i understand that it's tough to look for morality when a war is involved, but i know you're smart enough to know that hitler wanted to take the world over by force, and the state actors who fought against him did not.

[BattlingNelson]

It was unneccesary. A warcrime? Maybe. On the other hand a lot of the british area bombing campaign deliberately targeted civilian areas which certainly wouldn't be possible to carry out for a western democracy today. The standards was different then.

[1bad65]

Civilians should pay the price for their government's prior military decisions? That's terrible logic.

I didn't actually say that. I said the bombing was justified.

That said, it was the German people who did allow Hitler and the Nazis to achieve power. When you elect/choose bad leaders, that often times leads to bad consequences.

[1bad65]

i don't know how you can say they were "in the same ballpark" when the nazi's tried to take over the world, and the soviets acted in response to it.

Not really. The Soviets made a pact with Germany that included splitting up Poland after they both invaded that country. Like Germany, they attacked Poland for no reason other than to acquire territory. Then they attacked Finland and occupied the Baltic states.

ww2 is a clear case of a war with good guys and bad guys. i understand that it's tough to look for morality when a war is involved, but i know you're smart enough to know that hitler wanted to take the world over by force, and the state actors who fought against him did not.

It's not clear cut though. The Soviets were vile. They murdered thousands of Polish officers at Katyn Forest, and they kept thousands and thousands of Germans (and other Axis countries) soldiers captive for at least a decade after the war ended. For example; out of the nearly 110,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 5,000 ever returned. Then we had their actions in relation to the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

And they hardly liberated the countries they overran. They simply installed puppet regimes in the Eastern European countries they 'freed'. They put up walls and checkpoints and killed anyone daring to try and leave. Not until the Cold War ended in the late 80s-early 90s did those people see free elections.

[Barn]

i don't know how you can say they were "in the same ballpark" when the nazi's tried to take over the world, and the soviets acted in response to it.


hell, germany tried to take over the world 2x. i will never trust a german as long as i live.


ww2 is a clear case of a war with good guys and bad guys. i understand that it's tough to look for morality when a war is involved, but i know you're smart enough to know that hitler wanted to take the world over by force, and the state actors who fought against him did not.

I agree if we're segregating based on WW2 alone. The Russians were on the side stopping global tyranny. However they were a horrible regime themselves who were also keen on expansion. I don't think it's too far fetched at all to say the U.S.S.R has worked towards serious Communist expansion looking towards ruling the world.

They were on the 'right' side of the war but still not nearly on the right side of morality.

[Rostov Papa]

Of course it was justified. Well before Dresden was bombed the Germans bombed their fair share of cities. London and Warsaw being just two examples. Actually it was the Germans who first conducted large scale bombing of civilians in a city, at Guernica. Despite world outrage (Picasso painted one of his most famous works as a reaction to that bombing), the Germans continued to bomb cities all over Europe. The only reason they stopped this was because their war machine became unable to do so.

London and Warsaw were huge manufacturing centers of the war. With key strategic locations. LOL they were the capital f-ing cities!

Guernica also had a weapons manufacturing center, and was done at the order of the Spanish government. LOL, not evne 1000 people died. Some estimates as low as a few hundred. It was also very,veryclose to the battlefield front.

Dresden almost 30k people died. The Germans were all but defeated. There was nothing of military significance in a town that was full of elderly, women, and young kids.


If you want to play the artist game as a reaction to tragedy - how about Kurt Vonnegut writing Slaughterhouse 5 based on the horror of the fire-bombing of Dresden.


There's no way of justifying this bombing, unless it is on the grounds of punishing a country's most vulnerable for the actions of their government.

[Rostov Papa]

i don't know how you can say they were "in the same ballpark" when the nazi's tried to take over the world, and the soviets acted in response to it.


hell, germany tried to take over the world 2x. i will never trust a german as long as i live.


ww2 is a clear case of a war with good guys and bad guys. i understand that it's tough to look for morality when a war is involved, but i know you're smart enough to know that hitler wanted to take the world over by force, and the state actors who fought against him did not.

Yeah, you still believe that ole schtick that if the Germans won, we'd be speaking German.

It's ok... 99% of people are like you - they are conditioned from the youngest of ages that the Nazis were somehow a separate and distinct evil the likes of which the world has never seen.

Some European countries actually have laws against revisionism regarding the second world war. You better believe the version we tell you, or else you're going to prison for several years (seriously - not even joking).

So it's understandable that you would believe this. When I was a kid I did too.

[Barn]

Dresden almost 30k people died. The Germans were all but defeated. There was nothing of military significance in a town that was full of elderly, women, and young kids.

This is copy and pasted from the Wiki article, go to it if you want the sources to each claim. Saying there was nothing of military significance seems stupid when both the American's and German's said it was significant.

An official 1942 guide to the city described it as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that were supplying the army with materiel.[29] The contribution to the German war effort may not have been as significant as the planners thought.[30]

The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing, which was classified until December 1978.[31] This said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid.[32] According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); as well as factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch & Sterzel AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebrüder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.[33]

The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east-west along the central European uplands.[34] The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig.[34] Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians".[35]

[1bad65]

London and Warsaw were huge manufacturing centers of the war. With key strategic locations. LOL they were the capital f-ing cities!

You must have missed where I said "London and Warsaw being just two examples".

Below is what Wiki says on the subject:

"Notably, the Luftwaffe bombed Warsaw, Wielun, and Frampol. It is believed that the bombing of Frampol was an experiment as it had no targetable industry and no military units were stationed there.

In his book, Eyes on the Sky, Wolfgang Schreyer wrote:

Frampol was chosen as an experimental object, because test bombers, flying at low speed, weren't endangered by AA fire. Also, the centrally placed town hall was an ideal orientation point for the crews. We watched possibility of orientation after visible signs, and also the size of village, what guaranteed that bombs nevertheless fall down on Frampol. From one side it should make easier the note of probe, from second side it should confirm the efficiency of used bombs."

The Germans also bombed Rotterdam, Holland in 1940. Many other British cities were hit in the nine-month Blitz (1940-1941), including Birmingham, Liverpool, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff, Clydebank, Kingston upon Hull and Coventry.

Then you had the V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks the Germans launched on English and French cities later in the war.

[Weebler I]

From wiki, an RAF memo to airmen, I thought the last part was interesting:

Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.[36][28]

Yeah, you still believe that ole schtick that if the Germans won, we'd be speaking German.

It's ok... 99% of people are like you - they are conditioned from the youngest of ages that the Nazis were somehow a separate and distinct evil the likes of which the world has never seen.

Some European countries actually have laws against revisionism regarding the second world war. You better believe the version we tell you, or else you're going to prison for several years (seriously - not even joking).

So it's understandable that you would believe this. When I was a kid I did too.

What are you saying here JoeyJoeJoee, the Germans were the good guys and the world would be a better place if they had won? because that's how you're sounding.