German atrocities in WWII, systematic or just like everyone else?

[molly bloom]

From Wikipedia, again:

'One popular charge against the bombing is that the city was not a military target. However, other evidence suggests otherwise; The city contained the Zeiss-Ikon optical factory and the Siemens glass factory (both of which were entirely devoted to manufacturing military gunsights). The immediate suburbs contained factories building components of radars and electronics, and fuses for anti-aircraft shells. Other factories produced gas masks, engines for Junkers aircraft and cockpit parts for Messerschmitt fighters. After the attack, Germany was to claim that Dresden's industry was only making civil goods, a notion which much of the world accepted, and still accepts, as true. '

Oh, by the way, Ned, when you were saying only Europeans went in for this kind of mass killing, you overlooked a few things- the slaughter of Hindus by Muslims, Muslims by Hindus, Sikhs by both parties, and vice versa, and the extermination of the nomadic Zunghar tribes by the Chinese in the late 1750s, for instance.

Oh, and the martyrdom of Japanese Catholics (almost as gruesome as Roman martyrdoms), Chinese Catholics, Chinese Muslims, and so on, and so on.

Would you like some more examples, like the Zulus, or the repression of the black slave Zanj revolts in Islam, or the American Indian Wars?

If all Britons bear responsibility for area bombing, do all Americans bear responsibility for the mass murder, relocation and starvation of American Indians? Or the hundreds of thousands of dead Filipinos, killed so that English and root beer might flourish in the Thousand Isles of the Phillippines?

Everybody's done it, Ned- welcome to the (in)human race.

[Ned]

Molly, it would be nice if you or, for that matter any Brit, would simply accept responsibility for Britain's actions rather than trying to justify it by pointing to similar actions by others.

The thing that gives me pause here is that Germany certainly did attack Britain's civilian areas. Perhaps this did justify retaliatory attacks on German civilians in response in a effort to get Germany to stop and perhaps for revenge.

I know how I felt when we were attacked on 9/11, so I can understand Britains emotional reaction to Germany's bombing raids.

Perhaps Pearl Harbor also explains why we may have deliberately targeted Japanese civilians -- although, in fairness to the Japanese, they did not attack civilians in that raid AFAIK.

As to the April 1944 decision to bomb Japan, I am not at all certain that that decision included any directive to attack civilian areas of cities. The reason I say this is that our initial targets were factories and the like. The reason we switched tactics to low-level, night raids ala the Brit air campaign against Germany was because these raids from such altitude as the B29 flew were totally ineffective.

As to firebombing a Japanese occuppied Chinese port, I have no idea what this has to do with targeting Japanese civilians.

[Ned]

Although I cannot provide a link, I am aware that US bomber crews over Germany were forbidden to drop their bomb loads on German cities if they could not drop their loads on target.

As to the targets in Dresden being infastructure and the like, I have read that many time, including in researching materials in response to this thread.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned
Molly, it would be nice if you or, for that matter any Brit, would simply accept responsibility for Britain's actions rather than trying to justify it by pointing to similar actions by others.

Well, I'd sure like to, but as I wasn't born then, I fail to see why I should. Hey, perhaps we could ask my father, if while he was being bombed in Coventry, he was of the opinion that really, Great Britain shouldn't be beastly to the Germans, and should send its bomber crews to their death in chivalrous daylight raids on industrial targets?

And then just wait for America to enter the war a year later, after Great Britain, depleted of an air force, has been occupied by the Germans and seen its Jewish communities sent off to be turned into human soot and hair for mattresses.

Get a grip Ned- this wasn't knights jousting or some kind of honourable war- the Germans had bombed and strafed civilian refugees in France- what do you think the British response should have been?

I hardly feel that Churchill (half American, by the way- perhaps it was that American part that was responsible forthe mass bombing, d'ya think?) looked at Nazi occupied Europe and thought, well, I won't kill any German civilians, I don't value the lives of my British, Commonwealth and Allied crews that highly.

Oh and by the way- just in case you think that somehow attacking 'industrial' targets means not killing civilians, think again- one of the areas most heavily bombed in Coventry were the working class houses surrounding the Alvis plant in Hillfields- where my father lived. Same with the London Docks, same with Liverpool, and plenty of other British cities. So spare me the high moral righteous tone- its very easy for you living somewhere that hasn't seen its major cities destroyed by bombing to pontificate about how awful Europeans are.

Which Indian's tribe land are you living on, by the way?

[Ned]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Which Indian's tribe land are you living on, by the way?

My deed goes back to a patent granted by the King of Spain.

[Patroklos]

Tingkai,

I understand that when you are wrong it is a good tactic to avoid addressing your critics and to continue ranting, but everyone here has called you out on it, especially your SS comment.

You MISQUOTED the WSSOB, egregiously, were caught and then LIED about it when confronted. It was your quote that stated the SS were "sometimes chivilrous," not mine. So thanks for quoting the sight for me, even if it was you original intention to manipulate the language. In college and every other academic circle that is known cheating, not a big fan of academic honesty are we? I also quoted about 30 lines of statisical data from the WSSOB concerning foreign nationals serving in the SS. So the next move is yours, to find your own source that says the opposite.

Quoted a very nice statistical paragraph form Feldgrau concerning totals of people serving in the Waffen SS. Very plainly highlighted in the blue that this site provides for such things. Didn't see it? Perhaps because you are not reading the whole thread.

Quoted from "Death by Govrnment," but as has been said some grain of self preservation must still exist in your head as you stopped attacking it. Like I said this wins the main arguement, this SS topic is your doing.

I could very easily qote from Beevor's book, but I feel no need to untill you provide SOMETHING, anything to back up your claim. That the SS is evil to the corps, to include every individual in it. No exceptions, good luck! I don't need to hunt for sources all day when the ones quoted already are clear as day and unreproachable, at least by you, a whining child of a historian.

But as I have said, having been absolutely destroyed in the original debate you have resorted to the pathetic but predicatable tactic of attacking sources. Too bad they are all good. But you have every right to attack them, well that is if you had any of your own to compare them to. But of course you don't.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned
Although I cannot provide a link, I am aware that US bomber crews over Germany were forbidden to drop their bomb loads on German cities if they could not drop their loads on target.

I think you just make this stuff up to convince yourself that Americans somehow wouldn't kill civilians. Provide a quote, post a link, otherwise don't bother with fantasies.

Better yet, read something like the chapter 'Mass Bombing' in 'Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War' by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard. Better yet- talk to a pilot. The Germans regularly ditched their bombs if they couldn't hit a target, and the Allies did the same. Bombs are heavy, in case you hadn't noticed Ned, and if you're going to fly back across Germany through flak and fighters, you aren't going to want too many high explosive bombs or incendiary devices in your aeroplane.

[Verto]

All sides involved used indiscriminate bombing. Doctrine called for using overwhelming destructive force against the enemy, in an effort to crush their ability to militarily wage war, their industrial capabilities of supplying their war machine, and totally demoralizing the civilian populace. The Allied powers believed that they had to completely and utterly destroy the Axis Powers, instead of ending it like they did with the Great War.

It is easy to criticize the decisions made in the past, but those fighting the war didn't have the information, perspective or objectiveness that we have today.

[Ned]

As I said, the Brits may have been justified, at least initially, in retaliating to the German Blitz - primarily to get the Germans to cease and decist.

I can also understand why the bombing campaign was continued in the manner it was. Daylight "precision" bombing was not effective, but it was murderous to bomber crews. Britain could not have sustained its war effort for very long if it conducted daylight bombing over Germany.

It is a wonder that we continued to send crews over Germany taking the losses we suffered. I don't remember the stats, but we lost approximately 100,000 KIA. That is a significant given that our total losses were on the order of $500,000.

But, asked why they lost the war, the German command repeatedly cited air raid destruction of oil fields, synthetic oil factories, ball bearing factories and transportation facilities.

Most, if not all, of this was the result of the US daylight bombing effort.

[Ned]

Originally posted by molly bloom



I think you just make this stuff up to convince yourself that Americans somehow wouldn't kill civilians. Provide a quote, post a link, otherwise don't bother with fantasies.

Better yet, read something like the chapter 'Mass Bombing' in 'Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War' by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard. Better yet- talk to a pilot. The Germans regularly ditched their bombs if they couldn't hit a target, and the Allies did the same. Bombs are heavy, in case you hadn't noticed Ned, and if you're going to fly back across Germany through flak and fighters, you aren't going to want too many high explosive bombs or incendiary devices in your aeroplane.

I didn't say they did not ditch their bombs, did I?

[Patroklos]

Having given you the benefit of the doubt, which you don't deserve, went back through all your posts in this thread and its predicessor and found two quotes only. Both are concerning prisoners of war and have no relevance to your point. One puts all the blame for POW killings on the German Army, and the other show that the Germans were acting in the say way, and in the context of those quotes at the same level, of every other belligerant of the war. Congrats, you have produced nuetral accounts from a book focused on one battle, from one front, involving only two players to paint a label on a group of people that were fighting everywhere.

Should I assume that because the Americans were the allies of Russia that they were mass murderers too, or the British for that mater? No.

Should I assume becasue some SS units in Stalingrad showed the same ruthlessness of their Soviet counterparts (though they did start it) that every SS unit was the exact same? Or even that those same units at different times did not act "sometimes chivilrous?" No.

Your problem Tingkai is that you are trying to paint with a wide brush to show that EVERY act of EVERY unit of EVERY individual during EVERY event the SS participated in was wrong. I only have to prove that "sometimes...."
Books like Beevor's don't help you.

So actually you should be more interested in sources like WSSOB and Feldgrua because they deal with the war comprehensively, only they don't say what you want. No source does.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


I didn't say they did not ditch their bombs, did I?

Right.

They'd spend time, in between dodging flak and German fighters looking for a convenient field to drop them in. Or a nice river, making sure first of course, that no pleasure boats were on it.

Now if you're going to talk about the destruction of specific German targets, such as the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt, you'd better post facts- not rely as you've done nearly all the way through this thread on assertion.

Here's a quote from 'Total War':

'The Americans entered the battle with the conviction that area bombing was useless and precision bombing possible. The B-17s were badly mauled by the German fighters and the American commanders drew the conclusion that effective precison bombing of the German economy as a whole must be preceded by the destruction of German fighter production- by precision bombing. (Because of severe losses)....the conclusion was drawn at this time (late 1943) was impossible without going all the way with fighter escorts.'

We've already exploded the myth of precision bombing earlier in this thread- German fighter production increased in the last four months of 1945 to 5 000 a month. The aircraft industry was producing a total of between 1 000 and 2000 aircraft a month at war's end.'

Must have been real precise, that bombing of fighter manufacturing, eh?

Try finding what Albert Speer said about the raid on Hamburg and its effect on German morale and production too- quite enlightening, I think you'll find.

[Mr. Harley]

Molly, you've given me a reference I've missed in the past, "...black slave Zanj revolts in Islam". Can you give me any sources on that, my historical background on Africa is weak, and on the internal history of Islam between the caliphates and the Ottomans almost non-existant, except for Spain.

Okay, I'd avoided posting this because I was trying to keep my posts down, but I'm enjoying this thread way too much. Dr. Strangelove, thanks for the reference to Dr. Pinkus, I couldn't remember his name when I was posting. Just for your info, you have the airframe loss down, but the Luftwaffe was able to save over half of the aircrews from fighters that were shot down. However, even at that level they could not sustain those losses and fight the Soviet Union.

The two biggest regularly documented effects of the strategic bombing campaign against Germany are already well documented here, oil production and diversion of resources. As a quick aside, not only was it the AA-guns, personnel, and other ground resources not going to the eastern front, but the aircrews.

The Luftwaffe quickly discovered that green fighter pilots died against American fighters (when there were escorts). They diverted a larger proportion of their good/experienced pilots to the western anti-bombing campaign, and sent a larger proportion of their green pilots to the eastern front, where they at least had some survival potential, though that was rapidly becoming a death sentence. If the Luftwaffe had been able to totally commit the aircrews (and to a lesser extant, aircraft) to the eastern front, while I doubt it would have changed the outcome, I do suspect the first atomic devices would have been used against the Nazis. As Alexander's Horse states, it played a critical part in the reversal of fortunes of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front in 1943.

As a less documented effect, killing workers was taking it's toll against the Nazis. By 1944 or 1945 Speer was at loggerheads with the SS/Gestapo. He was critically short of skilled workers, and he wanted them to stop sticking ANY of them in camps. Of course the biggest drain by far was the eastern front and Hitler's no retreat orders, which means that ANY additional loss was critical. It would make an interesting study, looking at the respective affects on the skilled workforce on induction into the ground forces, concentration camps (especially rough on the medical profession which had a very high proportion of Jews, this impact is well documented), and the bombing raids. Of course this is all moot, nobody on the allied side had any idea the Nazis were having this problem.

It may well turn out the the civilian casualties we are all arguing about are legitimate targets in that in a modern industrial economy the death of skilled workers has a definite impact. One interesting datum not shown in the increasing Nazi war production late in the war is a result of the dispersal of production, and the loss of these skilled workers. Many if not most battle damaged aircraft were NOT being repaired by 1944, but just recycled back to production facilities, if that. It turns out that the satellite/dispersed factory system was having definite problems with keeping parts interchangable, which again was exacerbated by the shortage of skilled workers. Interesting thought. In Japan the dispersal produced something close to paralysis, with in some cases over 50% of new aircraft production unable to fly (especially the Kawinishe N1K2 - George, upgraded production variant).

Molly, if you compare America's history of genocide and discrimination, it is definitely a second class citizen to England. Some of my ancestors are Irish. Thrown in the Scots, Welsh, Australia (both aboriginal peoples and the "colonists"), New Zealand (see Australia), various Caribean and Pacific islands, India, China, portions of Africa, North American prior to the colonial insurrection (French-Indian war, for example), the concentration camps full of Boers, etc. and while the US has many things in its history to be ashamed of - Native Americans, the Phillipines, the continuation of slavery, and the treatment of Mexicansin the areas conquered after the Mexican-American war, to name the primary ones, we just don't have the numbers.

In modern times, with the US support of murderous regimes during the cold war, including Saddam, I will accept the US has done more damage. However, on a historical basis, even if you just start counting from the 19th century, the Brits have a pretty shameful history.

The difference between the fire-bombing of Japanese city and Dresden is very simple, intent. Air Marshall Harris's intent has been documented, a terror raid pure and simple. The attacks on Japan were the result of a largely failed doctrine with an infrastructure that, in the context of total war, desperately needed productive employment. So nighttime area raids took the place of the daytime "precision" raids.

I don't think you will find any "smoking gun" for the US incendiary raids against the Japanese. There were too many factors, including poor intelligence (the US simply did not have the intelligence assets against Japan that they had against the Nazis) as to what their potential was, outdated strategy (destroy the enemy forces in head on confrontation, from the Civil War), and a rapidly changing assessment as to the efficacy of the US bombing effort. If you want to argue over BAD (best available data) decisions, I won't disagree. The data was available to show how effective our submarine campaign had been, and how taking out the little remaining energy infrastructure would have been.

In today's information economy we tend to forget how much TIME all that took, and that while the data was there much of the interpetation simply had not occured, yet. I cannot remember who said it, but it was to the effect that the (US) military is always ready to fight the last war, versus the next. It a systems issue that all militaries suffer, and in fact most businesses do to.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Molly, you've given me a reference I've missed in the past, "...black slave Zanj revolts in Islam". Can you give me any sources on that, my historical background on Africa is weak, and on the internal history of Islam between the caliphates and the Ottomans almost non-existant, except for Spain.

Molly, if you compare America's history of genocide and discrimination, it is definitely a second class citizen to England. Some of my ancestors are Irish.

The difference between the fire-bombing of Japanese city and Dresden is very simple, intent. Air Marshall Harris's intent has been documented, a terror raid pure and simple.

Shawnmmcc- the best reference I have for the Zanj revolts is in Ronald Segal’s book ‘Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora’ publ. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2001.

The Zanj were African slaves living and working mainly in southern Iraq but also in parts of Western Iran. They first rebelled in 694, then again in 868-69, year 255 of the Islamic era. They combined with the urban poor and disaffected, took control of Ahwaz and captured and pillaged Basra. They created a stronghold in the Shatt-al-Arab marshes. They formed a virtually independent Zanj state, and were massing to march on Baghdad.
The Caliph’s commander, Muwaffaq defeated them in ingenious amphibious campaigns, and many of the defeated were slaughtered, with the remainder being sold back into slavery.

I should point out that both my parents are Irish, and although I have British nationality I am by no means a ‘Little Englander’. I don't think we can equate the Angevin Empire with Victoria's British Empire either- they're simply different cultural and political entities that happen to have some of the same territory in common.

I’m well aware of Great Britain’s contributions to world depopulation, and given its much longer history, I think we can safely say it might as a power have killed more people than the United States, but that was not the point.

The point that Ned persistently refused to acknowledge was that, yes, well, Americans might just have knowingly killed civilians, as if somehow this horror of horrors would have been something new in American history in 1944.

As for the raid on Tokyo- there had already been incendiary raids on Hankow (two months previously) and other Japanese cities before Tokyo, so I think it’s a certainty that Americans knew precisely what the effect of napalm incendiaries would be- they had after all designed and tested them in Utah. Also, if you look at Secretary of State Hull’s quote in one of my previous posts, you’ll note that they knew precisely what the effect of incendiaries on populated areas would be through American coverage of Japan’s war in China- they had published photographs in American newspapers of the damage.

Was Dresden just a terror raid? I don’t think so- I think that David Irving’s book had a self-serving purpose, and he is not the most reliable historian of the Second World War. The East Germans and the Russians both had good reasons to describe it as a war crime and conceal any military or industrial activity in Dresden- a useful stick with which to beat the democratic West, especially when concealing Katyn, for instance.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Verto
All sides involved used indiscriminate bombing. Doctrine called for using overwhelming destructive force against the enemy, in an effort to crush their ability to militarily wage war, their industrial capabilities of supplying their war machine, and totally demoralizing the civilian populace. The Allied powers believed that they had to completely and utterly destroy the Axis Powers, instead of ending it like they did with the Great War.

It is easy to criticize the decisions made in the past, but those fighting the war didn't have the information, perspective or objectiveness that we have today.

Read that quote carefully, Ned. That is the critical bit.

There were critics of area bombing in Britain, just as in the US. There was uneasiness about just what we were doing in the name of victory, on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the voices that proposed area bombing as a practical way of ending the war, sooner, and with fewer casualties for the US, Britain, and the Commonwealth won the debate.

Answer your own question, Ned. Why were vast resources poured into strategic bombing? Because it was felt that strategic bombing would be an effective contribution to winning the war should be the answer. It was effective in certain ways, but how ineffective in others was not known until after the war was over.

It was the case of the RAF in Germany, and the USAAF in Japan that area bombing with incendiaries was selected as a tactic of strategic bombing. Both our guys and your guys did it. The RAF did have Bomber Harris, that is the only destinction I can see.