Worst War Crimes of WW2?

The targeting at times anyway went after specific industries and was based on intelligence as to where those industries were. Level of defences, criticality, range, etc. Would all play a part. Then there was the weather which could screw up plans to no end. To see the impact of that I remember my uncle (who was the lead navigator for his squadron) tellling me the following story: "There was an airbase (in France I believe) that they had never seen any fighter activity out of but had some very good AA gunners. Furthermore they seemed to get routed over the base on a very regular basis. One day they were on a mission and the pilot called back to my uncle and told him that the primary and secondary targets were obscured by weather and asked if he could find them a target of opertunity. The above airbase came to mind and he replied no problem. Some time later the pilot called again and asked if he was sure he knew where he was going. My uncle, who had taught nav school and was a very good navigator, responed: ' Yes, why?' The pilot replied something to the effect, because the whole 8th airforce is following us. They were at the end of the bomber stream that day so when they turned around they were at the front and everyones targets were socked in. Result was the whole bomber stream hit that one airport that day. Obviously it was hardly worth the effort if it had been planned that way. On the other hand they didn't get any more AA fire from that airport."

 

Reading the wiki page there's at least as much support for German industry and military being the ultimate target for the attacks. The moral effects were just one of the mechanisms. Furthermore I believe if you go to any specific raid you will find that there was a target of military value listed as the target for the day. Indeed the article makes the point of the quote you mention being used for political purposes.

 

Hi lwd,

sorry for the delay. Your right on the fighters and the AA guns. but with partially bombing they would stay at there. The rail net was back but only on some few main lines and some with huge detours and a lot of locomotives and waggons were destroyed. Ther was no chance to transport things with maximum power in only one direction. Don´t forget the East front. For the book support i´ll have to re read this in one of my books from the OKW but it will last a while for the rason that this chapter is going on more than 1000 pages. So i need a bit of time to find all.

Regards

Ulrich

 

It a sort of half full / half empty situation, if one of the aims was criminal does that make the thing a criminal act even if there also where non criminal aims? Most judges I know of would say it does.

I read the treaties as only alowing shelling (aerial bombing was not explicitly mentioned) in support of attacks on defended population centers, and that the reasoning for the only exception in them was to avoid "human shields". So immediate rear areas are "grey", production centers nowhere near the front are off limits, fortified towns in front of your troops are legittimate targets.

 

Yes like in the city of Pforzheim:

"Bomber’s Baedeker", the "Guide of Importance of German Towns and Cities",from August 1944, "almost every house in this city is a small workshop".
It has very well important goals, but not war decisive . Nevertheless, even the British Bomber Command and its commander Arthur T. Harris took into account that necessarily next to the industrial targets residential buildings would be taken. The posting orders of Bomber Command cited the intention of the attack, "to destroy built up area and associated industries and rail facilities."

The BC action report a few days after the bombing worte:

"The attack on the night of 23/24 FEB 1944 [wrong date at the original report] has reduced the buildings in the greater part of the town to hollow shells or heaps of rubble. Most of the identifiable factories, including seven of priority 3 rating, have been destroyed or severely damaged."

Report of the US troops after entering the city:

"The city of Pforzheim was severely damaged by aerial bombing, about 85% of the buildings in the Stadtkreis of Pforzheim were destroyed. Nothing had been done toward clearing the city except the removal of the rubble and debris from the main roads through the town. Housing facilities were very much overcrowded and in some instances unsanitary. The work of removing the cadavers from the destroyed sections of the city was in progress."

Was that worth to have an colleteral damage of 17.600 killed civilians?

Why not to use fighter bombers? Only a opinion!

All the best

Ulrich

 

What partial bombing? You mean tactical bombing near the front? That still allows them to shift at least some assets to the front.

But the longer it is left alone the more it will come back and it's not just the rails it the whole transport net.

Indeed that's where the additional fighters and AA/AT guns could do the most damage.

 

But are they judges in international law cases. I'm not at all sure that is indeed the case. Killing a civilian in warfare is against the conventions except where it is allowed by them. In this case the bombing of cities is allowed according to the conventions and that was indeed the rational that lead to the initial efforts. Furthermore as other wise noted their is the retaliation clause. Certainly if one side uses a tactic or weapon that looks like it gives them a significant edge one cannot expect the otherside not to retaliate. In the case of gas warfare this was I believe specfically allowed. Whether or not a case could be made of it being more generally allowed at the time is a matter of some debate but tradition certainly implies it was and tradition has a certain force in international law.

 

A lot depends on what they thought was there. There's also the question of whether or not they expected a fire storm. One source I read mentioned something about "gas works" which implies fuel was being made there and that it added to the effect. Note that it was hit several times prior to the one that created the firestorm.

Then there's the question of how many actually died. Note the change in the "official" numbers for Dresden.

!) They don't do well at night.
2) They are much more vulnerable than heavies especially if repeated attacks are made during the day.

 

there is no doubt this guy ordered to bomb cities and the targets weren´t the industries but the population.

A) Because there was not the technical capability to do something else

B) Because he told us.

The women and children killed in the cities weren´t human shields, they lived there. Plus the ancient people. And as we see above, they were the objectives.

And such a good part of this brutal effort was made for nothing. It didn´t matter if you broke the people´s morale there was the Gestapo to keep the factories working.

If the gaps of the Geneva Convention allowed him to do it... he wasn´t a war criminal. Really the Geneva Convention allowed to shot against women and children?

In the other hand, this was the only way GB was able to bleed the Nazis, those guys didn´t matter when the bombs fallen on London. And there was the Holocaust, the ocupation, the treatment of the Eastern prisoners ...

 

The retaliation clause would require an equivalent of bomber command to exist in Germany, it did not. You could make the retaliation excuse for the V weapons but not for BC.
Rotterdam and Warsaw more or less followed the requirements of the treaty, the first came close to not happening if comunications had been better. Bomber command, as soon as it was allowed , went for what it had trained for, a parallel war on cities that had nothing to do with land operations.


These are the Hague II texts, don't seem to me to allow indiscriminate bombing, and there is no mention of production facilities as legittimate targets. It's pretty obvious from the texts that "attacking force" is a surface force, after all it was written in 1899, and that by "defended" they mean resisting occupation by surface forces. Aircraft, that cannot occupy, are only legittimized if other forces that can are present.

Article 25
The attack or bombardment of towns, villages, habitations or buildings which are not defended, is prohibited.
Article 26
The Commander of an attacking force, before commencing a bombardment, except in the case of an assault, should do all he can to warn the authorities.
Article 27
In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as possible edifices devoted to religion, art, science, and charity, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not used at the same time for military purposes.
The besieged should indicate these buildings or places by some particular and visible signs, which should previously be notified to the assailants.
in international law.

 

Actually he said that the industries were indeed the target and one way of attacking them was to destroy the housing and lower the moral of the workers. Indeed in the beginning the attacks were aimed at physical destruction of the industries. As time other effects were included in the rational for the attacks.

It's not a matter of technical capability. Bombs could clearly destroy industires and Britain worked on ways to hit them more and more accurately throughout the war. That didn't stop them from hitting them as hard as they could with the tech available at any point in time. One can argue that it shouldn't have.

He said a number of things and you are taking one of them out of context.

Who said they were? What does their living their have to do with it by the way?

???

They were a partial intermediate objective or at least their moral and housing was.

Hardly nothing. Some industries were directly destroyed. Then workers that are injured, or have poor moral, or lack a place to sleep, or have to travel further to work, etc are simply not as efficient no matter what the Gestapo does.

No but it doesn't criminalise their deaths if they are collateral casualties that occur in the persute of legitimate targets. Which is the case here.

 

Help bombing the airbases and the german frontline with the additional free bombers.

Regards

Ulrich

Sorry lwd,forgot to multiquote. Answers are underlined

 

They weren´t colateral. They were the objetives, as Mr Harris said. It´s simply stupid "to bomb cities, to try to breakt the people´s morale by bombing the cities, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany" and and hope that the bombs did not fall on women and children living there.

There is a collateral damage when you order to bomb barracks but your men hit an orphanage.
There isn´t it when you send your men to bomb an orphanage but your men hit a church.

George Orwell was shocked by what he read in the press about the bombing of the RAF, "We will read... orphanage hitted, children in flames". AFIK.

War is hell, and Harris has his own seat there. For me, it's over, this is already a circular conversation.

 

You are taking one or two quotes out of context and interpreting them to support your position and ignoring all else. Believe what you want to it doesn't make it correct.

 

I am sceptical on the possibility for the air force to obtain (in 1945 !)accurate and reliable informations where the German war industries were situated:the information gathering means were very primitive .

 

Well after May of 45 it wouldn't have been much of a problem. Prior to that Humit is very primitive but it works but of course wouldn't be exact especially for factories built after the war started. The Germans had some pretty good deceptoin efforts. On the other hand I'm not sure how relevant that is to the issue at hand. For instance it's not a warcrime to attack a city you have good reason to believe is defended simlarly attacking a location where you have good reason to believe there is a factory isn't against the rules.

 

Daylight photo recon was very sophisticated in WW2 compared to any period before it, and Germany was (like it or not) awash in British Agents and Germans who were not pro-Nazi and more than willing to "pass on a tid-bit here and there". The photos the allies took all through the war still exist today, and it is apparent where the industrial centers are. There was really only one major German city which was never targeted, it held no industy nor rail-hub. It (Heidleberg) never was bombed, it was a university city only, and as such suffered no air-raids. The one bridge which was blown up was done by the Nazis themselves in order to "slow down" the allied advances. Didn't slow them up much.

 

Gentlemen have no place in war,they would not last long.
Btw:any exemple of a gentlemanly conducted war ?

 

I believe that Langsdorff's actions could generally be considered such. I could find more if you wish.

 

I am not passing judgement on the practice of killing that I am going to describe or any of the practices used to kill. There are accidental civilian deaths and intentional civilian deaths but as the quote goes "war is hell" deaths are committed by all sides in the war and what is "murder" and what isn't? Here is just one example of a practice in the war that can be questioned but never answered.

I have read many accounts by both Germans and Americans about the practice of Mustang and Thunderbolt pilots, when they did not have any German planes to fight, that they would proceed to attack things on the ground. Some things were of a military importance, like trains, locamotives, workshops of small factories etc. and some were not.

Many times they would also attack anyone they saw on the ground and this was a practice that was enforced by the lower level leadership. They would attack farmers in the field, people on the streets, children on bicycles, basically any german citizen seen on the ground was attacked, whether it be an old woman, old man or children and people of any age doing anything while out conducting their civilian lives, anyone seen on the ground was strafed. "the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi" Mother's will bear more Nazis, children will grow up to be Nazis etc, was the logic. Was this ethically and morally correct?

And yes towns and cities were targeted with the sole intent of killing the population, Bomber Harris has admitted this many times. Whether in retaliation or just as an intentional means to "destroy moral" or to bring an end to the war quickly.

Basically as a group I think that most countries believed in a certain amount of right and wrong but in practice individual soldiers and airmen did not always follow the ethics of their parent country. And sometimes the parent country used "terror" as a strategy.

I think all the participating countries in WWII wished to conduct themselves on some kind of moral and ethical code when it came to combatants and civilians however they all had problems with the actions of individual combatants not adhering to an ethical or moral standard. Whether German soldiers, Russian soldiers, British soldiers or American soldiers. It is hard to take the mental anguish and desire for revenge out of the combatant who has witnessed the loss of his comrades and close friends. Sometimes soldiers trying to surrender are shot, sometimes pilots in parachutes are shot, sometimes, especially from the air, innocent civilians are killed whether by bombing or by direct attack. Unfortunately these are part of the "casualties of War" and the right or the wrong of it will be debated forever.

The US nuked two Japanese cities and those people suffered from the affects of radiation poisoning for decades afterwards so not only did many die immediately but for decades to come civilians were still dying. Was it right to use the atom bombs on civilians to prevent further US soldiers deaths or not?

Who can say, consider if the Germans had managed to develop the atom bomb first and used it on England or another country, if the allies had still won the war, I am sure they would have considered the german use of an atom bomb to be a "war crime". Since the US and the allies won well it is justified. If the enemy had used it, it surely would not have been.

My point is the victors always get to decide what is the "war crime" and who conducted themselve in an ethical and moral manner. It is the victors who get to give out the punishment for their views of right and wrong. The losers are always subject to an analysis of how they conducted themselves in the war and have to suffer the judgements of this analysis even if the victors committed the same "crimes" themselves.

War crimes seem to be only committed by the loser and the victors hold themselves up to a more "saintly" image in their conduct of the war

ulitmately all sides in WWII committed atrocities and ethical and moral wrongs but "to the victor goes the spoils" and to the loser goes the judgements, the penalties and the admonishment.

I am only speaking of the casualties that occured in the conduct of the war itself not atrocities that were planned by the governments to intentionally kill the innocent, like the holocaust or many of the others mentioned in the poll.

We can debate which country was "holier than thou" forever but we all still know that war is hell and we all know deep inside that unconditional and unlimited war against the enemy is the only real way to win and save your own people from harm. Just ask General Sherman of the US civil war or many of the other generals who have promoted the same concept.

What is a "war crime"? anyway, when you have one nation fighting another at what point is it okay to prevent the deaths of your own people while killing as many of the other nations? and what does it matter how you justify it? Ultimately you have one country trying to kill the citizens of another country and does anyone think that the person killed cares if it was by, bombing, shooting, gassing, nuclear weapon, assassination, firing squad, accidental, intentional, from a plane, a rifle, a machine gun, a bomb, a bullet, gas, etc., whether on the field of battle, in a city or town, while at work in a factory, on the way to school, in a concentration camp, gulag, prisoner of war camp, or in your bed at night, to those who died the ethical and moral practices used or not used do not matter!

what is the worst war crime of WWII? in a war of so many crimes and ways to die is there really a "worst"