Allied Terror bombing of Germany

Hey guys, been a while.

I was surfing the internet and found this interesting site regarding the allied Terror bombing of Germany, thought some of you might be interested.

Included is a list of the cities with pictures, stores and some interesting facts and figures for those number crunchers out there.

http://www.holocaustianity.com/bombing-germany.html

 

A wee little bit biased, don't you think.

 

is it.biased ifthe facts agree? i think it is an intersting view from the other side of the coin or is it acceptable because they were all nazis and the allies were the "good" guys? In the end i am simply interested in all facts and figures that portray the real ww2, not the one portrayed through movies, media or the history channel.

in terms of terror.missions executed by either side the allies did far worse to the axis, of course due to their clear air superiority or supremacy in some instances. just look at the cities tsrgeted by the allied bomber campaign and the atomic bombs dropped by the americans.

 

Your source is a 100% revisionist NAZI site, believe it if you want but do not expect to get valid responses in a discussion if you base yourself on that crap.

 

Tomcat

As a regular contributor you are well aware that we have discussed this subject many a time.

Other forum members may have recently joined and may not be aware of earlier postings on this subject.

I usually stay out of the discussion, simply because I feel that if we talk for the next fifty years opinions are by now so hardened that all sides tend to merely repeat themselves and are not prepared to re-consider the matter.

Having said that, I feel honour bound to repeat what I previously had to say on the subject:


Let me start by telling you where, in modern parlance, I come from.

I am a British Ex-Serviceman, now in his 91st year, Jewish by faith, who's lengthy family tree has numerous sections marked simply "Perished in the Holocaust".

I was one of five brothers who all served their country in HM Forces, one of whom was killed in the skies over Nuremberg whilst serving in Bomber Command.

I won't bore you with my own personal military record but I think it right to mention at this point that I was in London when the Blitz started and watched as bombs fell on "innocent women and children"

As others have pointed out Dresden is not a new topic on this forum.


I would ask you to go to this link and scroll down to posting No 38 where I first posted the item below:
World War 2 Talk - Powered by vBulletin <http://www.ww2talk.c...published.html>


Dresden ?

We have all been here before and in general, views are so entrenched on the rights and wrongs of bombing the city that I fear whatever is said today will do nothing to alter fixed viewpoints.

I would offer just one new item for you to consider.

My dear late brother Jack who was killed in the skies over Nuremberg on the 16th March '45 had as a crew-mate a lovely man by the name of Ted Hull.

In 1997, when I was belatedly researching Jack's death, I was in constant communication with Ted who had been the Flight Engineer on Jack's Lancaster.

Ted let me have a copy of his Log Book which, he assured me, would have been identical to Jack's log, regrettably no longer available.

Note the 5th op in which the crew took part. The date was the 13th of February, it was just another raid on just another German City and one from which they were lucky to return.

On the 16th of March, just over a month later, their luck finally ran out.
BBC - WW2 People's War - The night my father was killed in action
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/90/a8452190.shtml


Ron

 

But the facts don't agree...The website is perfectly fine with the German bombing of Coventry, but utterly revolted that the Allies would bomb Hamburg! Seriously! From this alone, the website is not arguing on "principle", but on "arithmetic." If the site wanted to argue on principle, they would have been revolted by both bombings.

IMHO, I prefer a balanced viewpoint, as opposed to those that "favor" one side or the other

Depends on whose "facts" you are using. Different facts support different views.

I think you left out "The Nazi Channel", because this article was written by one of it's Nazi fanboi viewers.

Of course the Allies did far worse to the Axis. The Allies(Britain & US) both had viable plans to conduct strategic warfare against Germany., and they had the production capacity and necessary heavy bombers to put their ideas of strategic warfare into action.

Indeed, one bombed city looks pretty much like another,
London


Coventry


Malta



Oh yes, those "poor helpless" German citizens, they would never hurt a fly, didn't have a bad bone in their body, they were all saints and fine upstanding members of their communities.

 

HI Ron,

I appreciate and fully acknolwedge the service you and many others provided during the war time please do not see this post as a sign saying otherwise. I am by my very nature analytical and od not take things on face value alone, was this article written by a neo nazi? Perhaps, I however am not interested in his views of the war and how he felt it should have gone, I am purely interested in the facts from the other side. So often we are censored and shielded from the truth and I want the truth of ww2 so I can better understand it from the good and the bad, from the British pilots in the sky, to the German civillian's on the ground and I hold no prejudice from one to the other.

As always I love your stories Ron they can be frightful yet at the sametime they can give us a realism that we can not simply get from a third source.

 

You are aware that I completely agree with you right?

As I said above, I am analytical by nature and will dive into anything offered as an alternate to the truth. The old quote 'History is written by the victor" rings true here, we are so often shown the war from the Allied side, the allied struggle, the allied losses and what the allies went through to achieve a worthy victory and that is fine. But you know what, once and a while I want to see the other side of the coin. I want to see what the Germans went through, how they fared, how their civilians struggled in war time. I want to see their loss and their victories. That is why I posted this, for anyone who thinks like I do, for open minded people ready to let go of their distain for anything German from ww2 and open their eyes to the other side as well, after all not all Germans were Nazi's. In fact I would even post something about Nazi propoganda if I felt it relevent to a discussion, not to deseminate nazism but to retell the story of ww2.

I am not interested in another moral argument over who did what to who and who was right and I do not appreciate your degrading comments toward german civillians of the time, it is unproductive to the discussion and meaningless and I have no interest in that, a German civillian is no different from a British one they were all just people trying to survive through a war.

From my experince in life I have come to learn that their are always two truths to a given situation, in this case ww2. The best way I have found to come to the truth is to look at both truths and meet them somewhere in the middle and you will have the actual truth based on each of the two sides facts and that is why I love this article for what it provides. Look past the possible neo nazi gibberish, or the insinuation of german importance.


"But the facts don't agree...The website is perfectly fine with the German bombing of Coventry, but utterly revolted that the Allies would bomb Hamburg! Seriously! From this alone, the website is not arguing on "principle", but on "arithmetic." If the site wanted to argue on principle, they would have been revolted by both bombings."

The website doesn't dispute the facts it offers more on a different subject and is it biased? Sure it is, but arn't basically all publications biased in some way or another. In this case the authur was discussing the view of the Allied air war against germany not about the German air war against Britain and I believe the bias is fine.

 

lol

No, well I don't think so, just thought I would stir the pot some more, oh how I missed a great debate.

 

I believe that we agree on the ends, but not necessarily the means.

Can't say that I ever agreed with that particular quote...I read to many books on the Civil War and too many books written by Germans to agree with it(both have written quite a bit concerning their "side")...But, I would agree that "History is written by the living." or at least to "History is taught by the victor." As a lot of what I have read was not taught in school - But then again, grade school is on a truncated teaching schedule and only so much can be crammed into one year.

I don't disdain anything German, but I do disdain blatantly pro-Nazi trash pieces, which regretfully, the article you posted is. After all, there is "open-minded", and then there is "out of touch with reality."

As to posting Nazi or Neo-Nazi propaganda, I just don't do it - for several reasons. 1.) It distracts from the subject of your posting, as most will focus on the Nazi bias, and ignore the crux of the matter. 2.) Several forums I am on have an outright ban on Neo-Nazi sites, and that is strictly enforced. 3.) The immediate distrust, right or wrong, of any information provided by such sites creates even more debate as to whether the data is correct or not, which again, detracts from the subject at hand. Posting that crap is just not worth the mess that follows, and given the plethora of material out there more suitable sources can always be found.

I am not arguing about morals. My comment about German civilians was a sarcastic response to your neo-nazi article.

There is only one truth, but it can have many sides.

Given the wealth of material out there on the subject matter, certainly you could have found one that was not so chock full of neo-nazi gibberish. I was laughing at some of the statements the article made...So much so, that I found it impossible to take this article seriously.

I mean come on, the beginning of the second paragraph

Now that is true comedy!

Certainly the website disputes facts...Heck, it makes up it's own "facts". For instance

Of course, not mentioning that the attacks on the Kiel Canal, Wilhelmshaven, and Helgoland were against naval targets only, although four errant bombs hit the Danish town of Esbjerg, some 110 miles away from Wilhelmshaven. Can't say I understand what an "intentional cultural attack" is, but the first intentional British bombing of a city, and not a military target in a city, was Mannhiem on December 16, 1940 - and it was a direct response to the German bombing of Coventry on November 14, 1940 - Not that the Neo-Nazi site even mentions this "fact".

Are all publications biased? Maybe, but precious few are as badly biased as this one.

The author's intent is somewhat confusing...At times he is on a rant about the Allied bombing of Germany, and at other times, he is giving an architectural history lesson on medieval Germany.

Is this bias fine? IMHO, no it is not...way too much BS to wade through to make his point.

 

Your absolutely correct. History is studied in hindsight with, at times, a watered down, psychological analysis based on a singular viewpoint. In many cases sheer numbers are used to generate and support theories. This is a mistake. There are numerous reasons an operation is carried out.

 

The Website is a pack of lies and nazipropaganda :

ONE exemple : there were NO civilians MURDERED at Hamburg .

 

Frampol, Rotterdam, Coventry, London.... weren't historic cities?

That's a first!

 

Just pay attention to the name of that web site: Holocaustianity. That site is a mouthpiece of the worst kind. If you really want to dig deeper to understand history, then dig somewher else, not at that pile of the worst antisemitic Holocaust Denial and Distortion BS.


The truth is: They sowed the wind, and deserved to reap the whirlwind.

 

Bombing was British and US air force basic doctrine, it was the very reason for the independent service's existence, the Luftwaffe, that had nothing to fear for it's independence as long as Goering was alive, never became obsessed with the concept of strategic bombing as a war winning strategy, the Regia Areonautica paid lip service to Douhet but was effectively incapable of any sustained offensive for lack of industrial base, the Soviets concentrated on tactical air power, as for the Japanese ..... well the Japanese had no independent airforce in the first place so no breeding ground for the strategic bombing theories. But for the British and US air forces strategic bombing was "the war winning concept"
From day one the RAF was chafing at the bit to bomb German industry and mostly incapable of cooperation with the army.
IIRC RAF bombers caused the first civilian casualties of the war when a plane got rid of it's bombs over neutral Denmark on it's way back after failing to find the German fleet. During the French campaign Bomber Command wasted it's meagre strength attacking industrial targets rather than supporting the crumbling front because that's all they were trained to do, the French, thanks to a misguided procurement policy, had no modern bomber force but nonetheless sent bombers against the Ruhr rather than attempting interdiction against the Panzers. The whole US strategy in the Pacific was geared at bringing the bombers into range of the Japanese mainland. When HE attacks proved insufficiently effective the air forces switched to incendiaries, and to measuring results by "hectares of city burned out", any pretence at precision bombing was abandoned, not that daylight bombing in WW2 can qualify as "precision" when there were multiple episodes of bombers bombing the wrong city (including some in neutral countries).

While that article has a very debatable selection of "facts" including some that look like not facts at all but flies, I still believe the allied bombing campaign was something different, and in the later stages explicitly targeting civilians by fire bombing and "shooting at anything that moves". The Germans with some exceptions restricted themselves to "operational" or "tactical" aims that saw the attacks on cities as part of an imminent invasion or ongoing ground operation..

 

Good to see you, TC; but that site:


Whois:

Wikipedia - Simon Sheppard
Coincidence? I think not.





Anyway...;



still has a certain validity for me:

 

Good investigation VP

 

Nice find VP, I salute you.

I agree with bascially everything you have all said, expecially some of the 'fact's quoted are not entirely accurrate or unbiased. I think though we are able to see past the gibberish without resorting to neo nazi name calling and the like. I have delt with my share of neo nazi, even thrown a few out of this forum to my great satisfaction. Understand that if for a second I believed that this article was promoting extremist nazi views I would ask it to be shut down and even though VP has found that it was Simon Sheppard's name affiliated with this article (which explains a bit) that doesn't instantly mean everything in this article is wrong and that is what I am interested in. Just because some one is labeled an extremist doesn't mean they arn't actually telling the truth, that is where our own research comes into play.

In terms of the author stating the MURDER of German civillians, I completely agree. Civillians losses are naturally unavoidable in war, expecially in a time where airborne bombing was still so new and lacked the sophistication of todays weaponary however any deliberate attempt to directly target civillian's should be considered murder whether they are German, British or Russian, hence the reason the western world considered targeting civillians against the rules of war although not offical at the time. The need to use inceneniaries or atomic weapons on civiliians is just not right I don't care of the reasoning and although clearly biased towards the German people in this article, if this was to have happened to Britain and ot the same extent as Germany, Britons would be saying the same thing.

"Of course, not mentioning that the attacks on the Kiel Canal, Wilhelmshaven, and Helgoland were against naval targets only, although four errant bombs hit the Danish town of Esbjerg, some 110 miles away from Wilhelmshaven. Can't say I understand what an "intentional cultural attack" is, but the first intentional British bombing of a city, and not a military target in a city, was Mannhiem on December 16, 1940 - and it was a direct response to the German bombing of Coventry on November 14, 1940 - Not that the Neo-Nazi site even mentions this "fact"."

All very true, but the article doesn't suggest that those initial targets were civillian targeted, yes I didn't understand the intention cultural attack comment either.

"Are all publications biased? Maybe, but precious few are as badly biased as this one.

The author's intent is somewhat confusing...At times he is on a rant about the Allied bombing of Germany, and at other times, he is giving an architectural history lesson on medieval Germany.

Is this bias fine? IMHO, no it is not...way too much BS to wade through to make his point."

Agreed that it could be taken as a rant by the author to an extent, I still find it interesting and leads me into other avenues of research to discover how much the author talks about is actual fact or fiction.