Malmedy Massacre

Probably because he felt that a demoralized civilian population was a more effective way to shorten the war than decreased industrial capacity. Sadly, that is wrong.

 

the luftwaffe did the same in spain and england, the allies called it terror bombing. but when the allies did it, they say that it was strategic bombing. what is the difference? (seems Goering was right with his quote)

 

The Allied bombing campaign was "strategic" in the sense that they accepted that they could not hit anything smaller than a medium-sized city when bombing by night. Thus they targeted only such things.

 

The Germans were also guilty of firebombing British and Soviet cities, long before the allies began... even so, i think the allied bombing of German cities was an unnecessary act of terrorism, which cannot be justified simply by saying that it was 'demoralising' and the Germans did it first.

Which prompts me to ask, which nation is guilty of killing the most civililans in WW2? I imagine it would be Germany first followed closely by Japan. But what of the allies? Who killed more civilians between the Allies and the Soviets? The Soviet advance was arguably more brutal and less disciplined, but they did not resort to firebombing cities with heavy bombers.

 

I would guess largely because they did not have the airforce to do so, I cannot imagine the Soviet Union shirking from such a concept given their condust in Eastern Europe and East Germany. Also, the Soviet Union spent much of the war that they fought reclaiming lost territory, rather than attacking the enemy's territory.

Let's clear things up though.

Area Bombing is not Strategic bombing. I often see this mixed up, Strategic bombing is attacking targets of Strategic value (i.e. Shipyards), Area Bombing is attacking a general area (i.e. Hamburg), sometimes the two can overlap, but Strategic bombing is not a warcrime. The attacks on the East End and Coventry were terror bombing, not strategic bombing, the attack on Dresden for example I have yet to see described as Strategic, so Quillin, I guess Goering was wrong in that instance.

The Allies did not on the whole bomb German cities to flatten them, Bomber Command did, but the 8th AAF did at least try to hit specific targets such as factories.

Bomber Command was forced into area bombing by the inadequacies of bomber defensive armament and the lack of available escort fighter in 1939/1940, when bombing by night the only practical option was saturation bombing.

With exceptions Bomber command did not necessarily bomb purely to kill civilians, they bombed cities because the only realistic chance of hitting the industries in those cities was by flattening the area, it was not unusual to find that the'd even attacked the wrong city or town (That should give you some idea of the inadequacies of navigation and bomb aiming).

Dresden was an abberation, however it is worth pointing out that one of the reasons Dresden happened was that Stalin did not feel that the Western Allies were pulling their weight.

Overall we will never know how many civilian deaths the SU were responsible for, my guess would put it somewhere close to Germany, but I think Japan would be the overall leaders given the attrocities in China and CBI.

 

thanks for clearing out the difference between strategic and area bombing, simon. i know that the 8th USAAF did tried to hit factories and so but i left them out because i only compared the RAF with the SS (as and example that, if you think narrow minded, they both killed innocents, a war crime, anyway, those post are over)

Japan the leader in killing the most people. well, they had millions of people to kill in china but when should we be counting, before 1941 or after? because after, the Japanese used most of there armies in other countries then china, thus less chinese victims. take before, they have a huge head start (damm, a couple million deaths and i talk about it like it is a statistic. i feel i should be ashamed)

 

i think pound for pound the waffen ss were some of the best troops of all time...murdering pow,s or civillians is a stain that wont wash out (they did have some sharp uniforms tho..) allied bombers did kill hundreds of thousands of civillians...no way arround it...fact is ,hitting a city was about the best they could do accuracy wise...often they couldnt even hit a city and traveled great distances to bomb open feilds or bodys of water...(us and aussie troops shot hundreds of jap pows late in the war...tho this was not officialy sanctioned) and victors do get to write history ,for the most part..

 

The Soviets did not have a strategic bomber force capable of bombing German cities. They did their killing/raping/brutalizing up close and personal. Nobody will ever know the actual number of civilians murdered by the Soviets as they pushed west to Berlin. I read one estimate of approximately 4 million German and East Europeans of German heritage vanished in 1945 in the path of the Red Army.

 

majorwoody:
I'm not aware of large-scale US or Australian atrocities against Japanese POWs. Could you share some details please?

In fact the term "Japanese POW" is something of an oxymoron. The Japanese fought to the death, and very few prisoners were ever taken. They even indoctrinated the natives on Okinawa to commit suicide rather than be captured. This very mindset contributed greatly to the "give no quarter" attitude of the Pacific campaigns.
The Japanese were well-known to execute prisoners as they thought surrender to be disgraceful. In one instance of Japanese war-crimes, the Japanese General commanding the garrison on Chi Chi Jima was known to be fond of eating the livers of any American-flyers taken prisoner.
Yeah, Geneva Convention my arse.

Tim

 

the terror of the soviet advance through the baltic and east prussia rivals anything done be the waffen ss or even the japanese in china...it would be to horrible to depict in a movie.....hoosier, no large scale actions...late war 2 here 4 there....an old mexican american marine drinkin pal of mine told me how he was threatened with courst marshal for killing numerous japanese who were attempting to surrender...he was 18 in 1945...but even as an old man in the early 80s he was unapologetic about these actions(he,s gone now...may he rest in peace...)...ive read in numerous accounts that aussie troops were especially hard hearted about jappers..takeing 6 or 8 at a time for a final truck ride deep into the jungle...

 

For the Germans it was truly terrible... for Eastern Europe it was a relief from Nazi terror, and for those in the concentration camps it was a blessing...
The Russians did not rape and pilliage Poland and Czechoslovakia on the scale that they did Germany; in Eastern Europe their advance was less fuelled by vengence, there was comparitively little rape and murder done by the Red Army in Eastern Europe... but once they got to Germany that changed

I don't know about that, but I did hear that a number like that was attached to one lesser know atrocity of WW2, perhaps this is what you are referring to? In 1945, the Western Allies and the USSR forced millions of ethinic Germans to leave Eastern Europe (particularily Poland) and return to Germany. The Exodus cost many more innocent lives, even after the tragedy of WW2, and some estimates rise to 2.5 million.

 

Forced? I heard they went voluntarily, fleeing ahead of the Russian advance. Shortly after the war the exodus continued, this time to escape Communism.

 

Nope, forced to leave I am sure of it. This is not during the Russian advance, this is after Berlin has been taken and Germany defeated. Poland was essentially shifted left, eating up a bit of Germany and losing some to Byelorussia; this was done to give the Poland and the USSR some 'compensatory' land. almost 20 million Ethnic Germans were forced to leave.

 

Although, if they had decided on a different set of priorities, they could have. They certainly had planes capable of this (and used them! They just did not build many), and IIRC launched a successful air raid on Berlin on the first day of Barbarossa.

 

I remeber seeing a documentary on this malmedy massacre... One explanation for why it happened was this: The Germans were in a hurry, they were trying to regroup with another division for a counter-offensive (or something) and could not afford to waste time babysitting a bunch of yankee POW's... so they shot them.

Nasty yes, but this kind of thing happened often during every offensie in WW2; Poland, France, the Japanese advance into China, the Germans in Russia, the Russians in Germany, the Yanks in Europe and the German conuteroffensive... Countless POW's were coldheartedly executed on all sides. The Americans are lucky that the Malmedy Massacre is the exception (and not the rule) due to the fact that the Americans were rarely on the defensive in Europe.

 

capt macdonald in his book about his own us army fifle company ,tells of ordering two of his men to escort a blinded german pow to the rear on a windy icey night in belgium or france...artillery was falling randomly ...the trio was gone about ten minutes then a shot...the g.i.s returned to report their prisoner had tried to escape and was shot dead....a blind man...capt macdonald knew it was murder..he turned a blind eye...he had other problems,,,

 

Stories like this are common in every army, US, Brit, Canada, Australia, USSR, Japan, and Germany (and not just in WWII). The differnece is that some of these men were actually punished for it in the western allied armies, in most cases it was "frowned" upon and in no cases I'm aware of was ever accepted or formally endorsed. I'm not sure the German record, especially SS, is that clean. Finding exceptions on the allied side does not excuse a policy on the German side.