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

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You can continue to tout the 1953 Air Force report if you want, Oralloy, but that will never prove your case.

Sure it does. It is a reputable source that quite clearly pins the blame on the UK.

Setanta wrote:

You say that there was no firestorm from the USAAF attack, despite the ordnance mix used, because that report does not say that there was.

No, I say there was no firestorm from the USAAF attack because no report that has ever been written by any historian in the known universe says the US attack caused a firestorm. Nor do any of the eyewitness reports say that the US bombing caused another firestorm.

Setanta wrote:

Well, the report does not say that there was a firestorm from the RAF attack--so by your feeble criterion, there was no firestorm from that raid, either.

Trouble is, that is not my criterion.

Setanta wrote:

I see you as nothing more than a conservative, "American can do no wrong" propagandist.

Nah. I just defend us when we are accused of something we didn't do.

Setanta wrote:

You have no case.

When I defend the truth, I always have a case.

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No it's not--as the preface clearly shows, it's a white-wash effort based upon an allegation that the communists are spreading propaganda to discredit the United States. You are incorrect to say that no historians say that there was a firestorm, nor that there were any eyewitnesses so said as much; there are in fact, many eyewitness accounts of a firestorm raging, that morning. I notice that you avoid the question of that report mentioning fire storms at all--which is wise on your part, since it doesn't. This is one of your typical statements from authority. I have no reason to accept your statements from authority, and as much authority to insist upon my own statements. You claim that the contents of the report don't form your criterion, and yet you have presented no other. You can hardly "defend" us from an accusation of something we didn't do, unless you can show that we didn't do it. You haven't shown that. And you have no case to claim you are defending the truth, because you have completely failed to show that your statements from authority are the truth.

You have no case.

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@oralloy,

I don't fully understand the dispute here over the term "firestorm". However it is beyond dispute that the incendiary weapons we dropped on Tokyo (and other cities) and the British dropped on Hamburg (and other cities) were specifically designed to cause a mass conflaguration. They had no other function.

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It is also significant that the ordnance mix used on Dresden by the USAAF was 60% HE and 40% incendiary--precisely the mix the RAF used when it wanted to start firestorms. Oralloy can't seem to understand that, or, more likely, is unwilling to admit it because it torpedoes what passes for an argument on his part.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

No it's not--as the preface clearly shows, it's a white-wash effort based upon an allegation that the communists are spreading propaganda to discredit the United States.

I've seen nothing to convince me it was a white wash.

What is wrong with countering Communist propaganda?

Setanta wrote:

You are incorrect to say that no historians say that there was a firestorm, nor that there were any eyewitnesses so said as much; there are in fact, many eyewitness accounts of a firestorm raging, that morning.

Yes, but the issue is not whether they saw "a firestorm", but whether they saw "a second firestorm" after they saw the one started by the UK.

Of course they saw the firestorm started by the UK.

The reason they didn't see the firestorm started by the US is because there was no firestorm started by the US.

Setanta wrote:

I notice that you avoid the question of that report mentioning fire storms at all--which is wise on your part, since it doesn't.

I avoid it because I don't see any significance to the fact that they don't mention the firestorm.

Setanta wrote:

You claim that the contents of the report don't form your criterion, and yet you have presented no other.

My criterion is not "the report is true and anything not in the report is untrue".

My criterion is "the report is true, but there are other truths not mentioned in the report".

I do reference the report. But if they don't mention something, that doesn't mean I can't use it.

I think the fact that there was a firestorm after the UK bombers is so widely known that there is no need to reference it.

I think the fact that there was no second firestorm after the US raid is widely enough known not to require a reference either. (But in any case, there isn't really a ready reference for "things that didn't happen".)

Setanta wrote:

You can hardly "defend" us from an accusation of something we didn't do, unless you can show that we didn't do it. You haven't shown that.

Pointing out that the UK started the firestorm (intentionally) and the US didn't start the firestorm is a pretty good way of showing that we didn't do it.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

I don't fully understand the dispute here over the term "firestorm".

The firestorm is what killed most of the civilians at Dresden. The blame for any crime associated with their deaths goes to the people who started the firestorm.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It is also significant that the ordnance mix used on Dresden by the USAAF was 60% HE and 40% incendiary--precisely the mix the RAF used when it wanted to start firestorms. Oralloy can't seem to understand that, or, more likely, is unwilling to admit it because it torpedoes what passes for an argument on his part.

I don't see the significance, and do not think it torpedoes any of my arguments.

I'll acknowledge that this was the weapons mix however.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
I don't fully understand the dispute here over the term "firestorm".

The firestorm is what killed most of the civilians at Dresden. The blame for any crime associated with their deaths goes to the people who started the firestorm.

And just who, praytell, was that if not the crews of the (in this case) RAF bombers that dropped the mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs designed expressly to create a mass conflagration?

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There's little point in continuing the "yes it was--no it wasn't" exchange with Oralloy, who, as usual, cites no other authority than his own ex cathedra statements.

However, O'George, in the very same U.S.A.F. 1953 report upon which he relies as his only source, the mix of 60% HE and 40% incendiary which is the "firestorm recipe" is given as the ordnance mix used by the USAAF over Dresden. Oralloy is a shill for "my country right or wrong," "America can do no wrong" propaganda, and he is attempting to claim that only the RAF can have committed a war crime at Dresden, while alleging that any deaths caused by the USAAF were insignificant in comparison, and only regrettable and negligible "collateral damage."

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Yes. In war, everybody does stuff to everybody else. Then, the victors get to write the history books.

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I wasn't making a moral point at all. Merely a factual one. Incendiary bombs are designed to start fires and those who use them do so to start fires.

Bombing cities, whether with high explosive or incendiary bombs - or today with cluster weapons - is all the same from a moral perspective. I don't really understand the thinking of those who make moral distinctions anong them.

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@georgeob1,

Neither do i, O'George. There is also testimony to the effect, and the RAF web site makes this claim, too, that American P51 Mustangs shot up the road, which, by the morning of the raid, were full of refugees fleeing Dresden. One of the things which made the Dresden raid so horrifying, and an accurate count of the dead impossible was the tens of thousands of refugees from the Soviet advance who had found shelter in Dresden. That USAAF fighters shot up roads crowded with refugees qualifies as criminal in my mind, too. At any event, at least as criminal as the charge levelled against the RAF.

The thread title asks if the Allied bombing of Germany from January through April, 1945 was a war crime. My response is, that in general, it was not. But one can find specific cases. I consider Dresden to have been one of those cases.

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@McTag,

That is a canard i get tired of, and which others, apparently, never tire of peddling. It was Napoleon who came up with the laughable contention that the victors write the history. If that were literally true, we'd never know because we'd have no alternative version with which to make a comparison. If that were true, Napoleon, who was hated by the English with all the fervor that they later directed at Hitler, would not enjoy the reputation history has accorded him.

After his battles, Napoleon used to issue bulletins for publication in France. Even the French didn't believe that victor's version of events. "Lies like a bulletin" became a prosaic expression among the French.

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@Setanta,

And if it really was true, we wouldn't need/have any historians but just adulators, and history departments at universities would be transformed to institutes for embedded journalism.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Neither do i, O'George. There is also testimony to the effect, and the RAF web site makes this claim, too, that American P51 Mustangs shot up the road, which, by the morning of the raid, were full of refugees fleeing Dresden. One of the things which made the Dresden raid so horrifying, and an accurate count of the dead impossible was the tens of thousands of refugees from the Soviet advance who had found shelter in Dresden. That USAAF fighters shot up roads crowded with refugees qualifies as criminal in my mind, too. At any event, at least as criminal as the charge levelled against the RAF.

The thread title asks if the Allied bombing of Germany from January through April, 1945 was a war crime. My response is, that in general, it was not. But one can find specific cases. I consider Dresden to have been one of those cases.

I wouldn't argue with that. I believe the morality of an act is largely an individual thing in the sense that some of the actors in such an event can be acting immorally and others may not - it depends on the individual role and understanding.

The authors of the off again, on again bombing campaign in Vietnam in MacNamara's headquarters in the pentagon and White House were trying to apply carefully modulated terror to a population and a government in order to achieve certain political goals, and were playing with the lives of their own airmen, among others, in the process. They were the ones who instituted the gruesome body count ststistics and the bomb tonnage races that grotesquely applied a veneer of "science" to war. Sadly, many senior figures in the military went along with it all rather easily. I consider that immoral.

I'm not so sure I would say that of the RAF crews who watched the East End of London burn and later found themselves on a mission to Hamburg or Dresden.

In low level strafing it is pretty easy to identify your target - a truck or a train - but very hard to know what's in it.

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I'll agree with that, mostly. I wouldn't give Harris, Tedder and Churchill a pass, however, and i have my doubts about Spaatz. As for strafing, yes it's hard to know what's in a truck or a train, but it isn't hard to identify people feeling on foot, in civilian clothes, including women and children, pushing or pulling hand carts. German witnesses claim that the fighters shot up roads full of fleeing refugees of that description. It is the more credible, too, in that there was no civilian in Germany in 1945 who was going to get the fuel to operate a motor vehicle.

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@Setanta,

many wrote:

That is a canard i get tired of, and which others, apparently, never tire of peddling...or words very much to that effect

Chided by Setanta, Walter and George for my trademark glib comment and suitable chastened.
However you are not saying, I take it, that western-published history books, textbooks, news items, government statements, and periodicals are not slanted, even a little bit?
Of course the historian can get to the truth. But there are plenty of people engaged in trying to prevent this happening.

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Fair play to you, McT. There is indeed a world of difference between an historical study, and textbooks. More than that, is natural that historians write to their own biases. Certainly most of them (but by no means all) attempt to eliminate the bias in their analysis and synthesis--but any historian who attempted to claim that he or she had entirely succeeded would be a fool, and likely would not convince anyone but the most partisan. It would be entirely reasonable to say that a partisan view could come to dominate historical narrative and analysis, and the more recent the historical period, the more probable that were.

So, allow me to state that the historical record, in the aggregate, is not--and in fact cannot be--controlled by the partisan view of anyone. At the very least, time takes care of this, as partisans die off and subsequent generations have no stake in glorifying or protecting the reputations of individuals and nations.

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@McTag,

Well, HISTORY is NOT (re-) written.

History per se is ALWAYS the same.

Western-published history books, textbooks, news items, government statements, and periodicals say this and that, even before Gutenberg's time. Wink

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@Walter Hinteler,

Set said it better.

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

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