If Iran wants nukes, should we send them some?

[Ecthy]

Lancer, the official way is everyone was bad but we were baddest by far, on a different level.

Look up Historikerstreit. Not about the war, but the holocaust. Still funny with levels and how you can be most baddest even if everyone else is bad.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Lancer
Was Dresden a war crime?

I would consider it such. The allies were already well on their way to winning the war in Germany by the time the city was bombed. Unlike the A-bombings the firebombing of Dresden did not considerably speed up the war or save Allied soldier lives. Really, it was the mostly about the British being pissed off about having been bombed by the Luftwaffe wanting a bit of payback. Pales in comparison to say, exterminating 6 million Jews, but still not something we should be keen to allow to happen again.

[Lancer]

I would guess the atrocities would have been a tough pill to swallow for the average German who had nothing to do with it.

[Ecthy]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
Really, it was the mostly about the British being pissed off about having been bombed by the Luftwaffe wanting a bit of payback.

Had they not already destroyed several cities years before that one? Much worse than the Luftwaffe did on them too?

[Lancer]

"not something we should be keen to allow to happen again"

I agree completely.

Regarding calling it a war crime however, it's difficult for one side to fight with gallantry when the other side does not. The nature of people. When your house gets bombed you want to bomb in return.

[Ecthy]

Lancer, the "bombing in return" had already exceeded the original by far.

[Lancer]

No doubt. Hitler however did bomb as hard as he could and so did the allies. If Hitler could have nuked London he would have. If the allies could have nuked Berlin they would have. It was all out. Nobody pulled punches. Saying 'you hit harder' as an accusation when both hit as hard as they could is kind of ...eh.

[Ecthy]

Hitler hit as hard as he could while the war was undecided, the Brits did up to the end, when saving their country and doing unto others as was done unto them were already matters past.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Ecthy


Had they not already destroyed several cities years before that one? Much worse than the Luftwaffe did on them too?

Yes, but there were differences:

1. Other cities were bombed much earlier, when the fighting wasn't quite as finished. By mid-Feb 1945, the Germans were in full retreat. Think their last real counter big counter attack was something like January.
2. Other cities had actual factories producing stuff for the war. Dresden's industry relevant to the war was mostly food processing.
3. Dresden was destroyed in one massive strike. 130,000 people died over the course of 2-3 days. In terms of destruction, it was bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki separately, though achieved by hundreds or a thousand or so planes instead of a single A-Bomb.

The nasty bit was most of the city was made of wood and burned really well, turning it into an inferno that killed a lot greater part of the population than sporadic bombings in other places. Many other cities were destroyed bit by bit. While the end result is similar for the buildings, it's a lot less harsh on the population if not everything is burning at once and there's places to flee away from the burning buildings, hospitals not overrun with the other people hurt and/or destroyed by the bombing. The city had been relatively untouched before because it hadn't been that important an objective. My theory is they bombed it once they realized there wasn't much else they could do to make the Germans retreat any faster than they already were. Earlier they were busy bombing stuff that mattered to the war effort.

Incidentally, some say the Luftwaffe lost the battle for Britain precisely because they shifted from bombing RAF airfields and other strategic targets and instead started bombing population centers, which quite frankly didn't hurt the war effort as much and didn't break the people's will to fight.

I used to know so much more about this stuff In 4-6th grade I read every book our school library had about WWII. Now, I barely remember this stuff

I used to have a small piece of rock from the Frauenkirche in Dresden that was too small to be used in the reconstruction. I had acquired it in exchange for a small donation to the reconstruction effort during my visit to Dresden. I used to keep it on my desk as a reminder that even the good guys can do bad things sometimes. I really must find it when I go back to the US.

[Victor Galis]

Well to be fair to the allies, I don't think we would have nuked Berlin. We didn't nuke Tokyo... we chose smaller cities to demonstrate the bombs on.

Hitler, given a nuke would have probably nuked Moscow. He had planned to raze it if German forces had captured it. Of course, given one nuke, he could have probably acquired more.

[Lancer]

Good point, maybe we would not have nuked Berlin.

I guess the best way to avoid getting ones cities bombed is to avoid invading the folks next door.

Also, I'm willing to add 'overbombing' to the long list of unfortunate things that happened in WW2.

[Ecthy]

Lancer is the master of understatement

In Germany you'd be looked at strangely for diminuating the holocaust without even mentioning it

[Lancer]

Well.

[Victor Galis]

Yeah, WWII was a very dark time in our history, let us hope we never again repeat it.

[Traianvs]

I don't know how you can ethically account for killing hundreds of thousands, and laying waste to the lands for ages to come in the process, to save a comparatively small amount of your own citizens. Especially when you're on the winning side it would be utterly pointless.

Also think of the post-war situation. You would have wasted large portions of land, so the country would not be able to recover from such devastation, and it would remain a source of unrest or instability for a long time and it would generate unfriendly feelings as well!
Just think of the fact that after war is done, it could become a valuable trading partner for example like Germany is now.

Nuking is, in my opinion, never justified. It doesn't really serve a purpose. Having nukes though is less of a problem, because everyone has them and it would be pointless to use them for that reason.