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

One day a the body of a man named Harris was being taken to St Paul's for a memorial service, and the procession included several carriages of the royal family, as well as a number of military detachments - Harris had served in the RAF, and he was the one who ordered the firebombing of Dresden.

LOL Hamburger - my father, who spent part of WWII in London, told me there was never the least problem with him speaking quietly in German to anyone he was with (whether in the street, in a club, in a hotel, or any other place) but that people DID tend to object to any and all "colonials" speaking loudly in bad English

Your response is meaningless, as it ignored the more than 60 cities which were intentionally firebombed by XXth USAAF.

In fact, i did not at any time refer to the atomic attacks.

To claim that civilian deaths were not a goal of firebombing is either incredibly naive or willfully disingenuous.

Since you are so obviously engaged in a whitewash of American policy with regard to the use of USAAF resources, i guess it's probably the latter which motivates you.

This is more than confirmed by your response to McNamara's remarks. The point of this thread is a discussion of war crimes. Of course, since you persist in trotting out unsupported statements from authority, and simply say that there were no war crimes,

it's easy to see why you would desperately wish to ignore Mr. McNamara's remarks.

The 1953 document reads:

Quote:

Among these were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany’s most important optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.), gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler).

These were not targeted, and, as McKee points out, in those cases where some small portion of these enterprises were hit, it was an accident of the overall operation, and not a result of precision targeting.

You continue to fail to respond to the ordnance mix of the operation,

and to ignore that the USAAF raid was an area bombing, and not a precision raid.

But CI, how can that be--the oracle, Oralloy, has already told us there was no fuel for a firestorm in or near the marshalling yard. Surely that is a mistake.

(So that Oralloy won't mistake himself, that was sarcasm.)

When i say that your conclusions are mistaken, referring to a report which i have pointed out is a whitewash and saying that you agree with that report's conclusions, does nothing to establish the truth of your conclusions.

Something else you don't know conclusively is whether or not the USAAF started a firestorm in Dresden.

With nearly 500 tons of high explosives dropped and nearly 300 tons of incendiaries dropped in the city center, and dropped in an area attack, not a precision attack, the conclusion is inescapable, except, perhaps, for those wishing to conduct a whitewash.

Unless you now claim that you were in the city center of Dresden on the morning of February 14, 1945 (which i am not prepared to believe), i have no reason to assume that you know any more about it than anyone else.

My references to the report have been for the purpose of showing what the USAF was willing to admit, and to refer to their data on the amount and composition of the ordnance used. Referring to that report does not oblige me to agree with its conclusions; nor am i so facile (as apparently you are) as to fail to notice what they don't mention--such as having specifically targeted and attacked locations which they listed as targets, but didn't attack,

and such that they make no mention of a firestorm.

They're conducting a propaganda exercise in a document the provenance of which is political. There is no reason to be surprised that it was written carefully so as not to give the impression that the USAAF did what in fact it did do--used an ordnance mix with a very high proportion of incendiaries in the area bombing of the city center.

Another point which it appears that you miss is that as the topic of this thread is whether or not the bombing of Germany in 1945 was a war crime, pointing out that fighter escorts shot up the roads around Dresden, deliberately and acting upon explicit orders, constitutes evidence of a war crime.

I haven't seen any reason to believe the report itself is mistaken however.

I haven't seen any reason to believe the report itself is mistaken however.

Sarcasm aside, it is true that there was not nearly enough fuel there to support a firestorm.

I wrote:

. . . and simply say that there were no war crimes,

I've never said any such thing.

Transportation targets are legitimate. It isn't a war crime to attack them.

Oralloy wrote:

I haven't seen any reason to believe the report itself is mistaken however.

In that you are deriving from it conclusions consonant with what you prefer to believe, this is no surprise.

In fact, German survivors report a firestorm in the city center on the morning of February 14.

Furthermore, the railway marshalling yards are in the city center, a fact which has been pointed out to you on several occasions, and one which you sedulously avoid taking notice of.

Your comment about "trying to get our bombs on the railyard" ignore the conditions on the morning of February 14, which was an overcast (quite apart from the smoke from the fires caused by the RAF) at bombing altitude, which is the excuse which the USAAF uses for the ordnance mix.

However, as i have pointed out, the USAF was attempting a whitewash, and in subsequent raids, the ordnance mix was distinctly different--for example, in the April raid, there were nearly 1700 tons of high explosives, but only slightly more than 150 tons of incendiary. But during the February 14th raid, the mix was just under 500 tons of high explosive with just under 300 tons of incendiary. The difference is telling, whether or not you are willing to admit. It is just another example of your having reached a conclusion which you are prepared to believe, as opposed to a conclusion deriving from the evidence.

You are correct to state that no special firsthand knowledge is needed on the subject of a firestorm in Dresden on the morning of February 14th, given that German witnesses tells us that there were. These were civilian survivors, not members of the NSDAP devoted to propaganda, or members of the military kowtowing to the Communists of East Germany, which is the implication of the USAF's 1953 whitewash.

The document not only does not mention a firestorm from the RAF attack, it does not mention any such thing from the USAAF attack. You are arbitrarily choosing to take notice of the effect of the RAF raid, while willfully ignoring the inevitable consequence of the ordnance mix used by the 92nd Bomb Group, as well as the testimony of the German survivors.

You have not established that there was anything like a precision strike on the marshalling yards in Dresden, and, in fact, the USAAF claimed to have used that particular ordnance mix because of the lack of visibility over the target area. They claimed they used that mix in order to be sure of their target while targeting with the H2X radar.

You continue to ignore that the marshalling yards were in the city center,

and that absent the opportunity to attempt precision bombing, bombing a wide area (look at Walter's map, the railway marshalling yards embrace the entire western portion of the city center) with that ordnance mix could not possibly have avoided civilian casualties.

You further ignore that strafing civilian refugees on the roads surrounding the city, strafing so indiscriminately that Allied POWs were also wounded and killed, also constitutes a war crime.

and claiming that this was a precision attack on a transportation target, and only a precision attack on a transportation target, when no precision attack was possible and given the ordnance mix is ludicrous.

But i long ago realize that when it comes to your partisan ideologies, no statement is too ridiculous for you.

Oralloy wrote:

Setanta wrote:

. . . and simply say that there were no war crimes,

I've never said any such thing.

I suppose this might only be true to the extent that your post #3499568, in which you write:

Quote:

Transportation targets are legitimate. It isn't a war crime to attack them.

. . . was subsequent to this post. I suspect you written this or something similar earlier, though (which makes you a liar), but i'm not going to waste my time hunting it down.