Was Allied bombing of Germany Jan - April 1945 a war crime?

Harris, whose words have the virtue of bluntness, wrote in February 1945: "I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier."

"Even if I bought that argument about supply lines," says Friedrich, "would that justify the killing of 30,000-40,000 people? When the Germans killed 30,000 PoWs, that was treated as a war crime. Perhaps Dresden should be."

Does he believe all bombing raids on German cities were war crimes? "We have to take it city for city. The legitimacy of Hamburg is a different question from that of Wurzburg. But regarding Dresden, even if you buy the argument about supply lines, you are entitled to look at tens of thousands of people who were killed and ask were the supply lines worth it."

When the book first appeared, a Protestant priest told him German civilians had to die in British bombing raids, Friedrich says, "because this is the answer of heaven to the Holocaust. Philosophers, priests and poets have been the most cruel defenders of British mass killing. But how could they all have deserved it? Even the 30,000 children?"

Is there not something in this, I ask? It was the Germans who started the war and the bombing of civilians. Harris prophesied, climbing on the roof of the Air Ministry in London one night as bombs were exploding all around, "They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind."

"I agree," says Friedrich. "The Germans did start the war. And we did bomb London and the cities of the English Midlands first. It is even true that the British learned from what the Luftwaffe did. For him [Harris] Coventry wasn't the grave of 600 persons but an innovation in warfare. He learned from it how to get at the infrastructure of a medieval city, how to make firefighters' work more difficult by destroying water mains and so on. Then, as the war progressed, this whole method of city bombing became a combined endeavour - each side learned from the other about radar, anti-aircraft and so on. Churchill and Hitler changed during the war. They were pushed to the abyss."

Are you suggesting Hitler and Churchill are morally equivalent? "No. That would be silly." Rather, Friedrich is echoing the prescient wartime words of English pacifist writer Vera Brittain in Seeds of Chaos. She prophesied with "complete confidence that the callous cruelty which has caused us to destroy innocent human life in Europe's most crowded cities, and the vandalism which has obliterated historic treasures in some of her loveliest, will appear to future civilisation as an extreme form of criminal lunacy".

There have been many conciliatory gestures over the years. In the 60s, young people went from Coventry to Dresden, those two cities whose historic cathedrals were left in ruins, to help rebuild a bombed hospital. In 2004, a gift from the British people of a golden cross was placed on top of the rebuilt Dresden cathedral, the Frauenkirche. It had been made by a London goldsmith whose father had flown in a bomber over the city on February 13 1945.

Friedrich thinks such gestures are insufficient and believes the British head of state ought to make a symbolic gesture to recognise the suffering of German civilians. In this the Queen seems to be in a vexed position: when she visited Dresden in 2004, she did not lay a wreath at the Frauenkirche because, Canon Paul Oestericher contended in the Guardian, "her advisers feared tabloid headlines".

What should the Queen do? "There are mass graves in cemeteries where the bomb victims lie - in Kassel for example," Friedrich says. "Why not simply go to these mass graves of the bombing campaigns and stand there and pray? Ronald Reagan went to the SS graves. Why could not the Queen pray for Germany's civilian dead?"

Bombers & survivors

Bill McCrea, pilot, on the raid on Hamburg of July 27 1943: 'All I was thinking about was dropping my bombs and getting home - the same as everybody ... It was an appalling sight. Every so often it was just burbling up, just like a volcano. Every so often there was another explosion, another bomb went in ... there was just a whole sea, a mass of flame.'

Ted Groom, flight engineer, on the raids of July 1943: 'Today, I would think "Poor sods". But at the time, when you're young, you just think "Cor, this is a damn good show tonight!" I never thought about them, because I could remember London, Coventry and all these places. To me it was something that they'd asked for.'

Gretel Simon, survivor of the bombing of Kassel, October 1943: 'When the first bombs hit around 8.25pm, the bricks around the hole through the wall were flying around like pieces of rubble. After every close hit there was such a churning of dust and air through the cellars that you thought the building would collapse ... The sound of buildings crashing down nearby was so dreadful, as was the terrible thunder of two factory chimneys that collapsed, both landing right next door. Peeking out through the cellar hole you could see only a sliver of the sky, glowing red.'

Elisabeth Gerstner, on the bombing of Bonn, July 1944: 'I saw the aeroplanes in the sky, a whole swarm of silver birds glistening in the sun. Then I saw the bombs falling. The blast knocked me down the steep stairway to the bunker. I banged with my fists and my feet against the door and they opened up for me. Usually they don't open up the bunker door once the bombs start falling.'

· The Fire is published by Columbia University Press in January, £21.95.

· Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943, is published by Penguin in February £20.00 hardback and £13.20 paperback

What should the Queen do?

Yes, the history of the victor is generally the story that is favored in both poplar culture and in (what is considered) scholarly academia. How else could the tale of over 80,000 human sacrifices over the course of four days by the Mexica (Aztec) be seriously considered in academia? The logistics alone, based on their population, would seem counterintuitive to any rational person. And when you add that no physical evidence has been found to support such a claim, the continued consideration in academia can only be explained by Eurocentric tendencies within academia. So, when Steve 41oo writes, "History is usually recorded from the point of view of the victor," he is absolutely correct.


"LeMay said, ?'If we had lost the war, we would all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LaMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"
-Robert McNamara

In the case of the political and military leaders of the vanquished Axis immediately following the WWII, more important than history, the Allied victors' ability to construct the intellectual and legal framework which governed the war crime tribunals following the war were more important to their immediate future.

Was the deliberate targeting of German civilians a crime? No. The framers of the WWII war crime tribunal made sure that the bombing of urban civilian centers was not apart of the post facto crimes; and it makes sense. For, the winners' (Allied) air forces did much more bombing of urban civilian centers than did the Germans.

Was it immoral and should it be considered a war crime? I don't have an answer for that, but it was a crime against humanity, and all belligerents share in that responsibility. And apologists who argue the notion, as Setanta did that "our responses were fairly civilized given the horrendous crimes of the opponent" are beyond ridiculous.

What I find most offensive is the hypocrisy of it all. We (the U.S.) have very smart people who concoct very persuasive logical rationales to exonerate our military actions from the immoral implications and judgments of immorality, while at the same time persuading public sentiment of the "immoral" acts of any current enemy our (US) government says we have. However, those who stay true to principles and intellectual honesty recognize the hypocrisy. Put simply, the tribunals were a farce.

i believe Hitler did what he did in an attempt to save Germany from the economic enslavement that was undergoing by Jews and Americans. This enslavement exists even today, not only for Germany(which as far as i know still hasnt the right to consitute National Army)

DoctorX wrote:

i believe Hitler did what he did in an attempt to save Germany from the economic enslavement that was undergoing by Jews and Americans. This enslavement exists even today, not only for Germany(which as far as i know still hasnt the right to consitute National Army)

To believe means not to know as common German saying goes.

Our Bundeswehr - the German Armed Forces - just celebrated its 50th anniversary - we even issued a stamp about that event last year.

Re your other part of the above response: as a German and someone who studied history at university I have a totally different opinion as well.

it's kind of strange looking back now ... we all thought it was just a big adventure . i guess kids (we were all 14 and 15 years old) can come through some pretty scary situations without much damage .
hbg

DoctorX wrote:

Ok then can you give me some rough estimate of the German forces in infantry, air force and navy. For sure German soldiers and forces exist only within NATO but out of it i dont believe so (again with the same notion for believe).

You seem to have a funny concept about Nato at wikipedia.

Bundeswehr at wikipedia

I dont have a funny concept at all. Bundeswehr is essentially under pure Nato command.