German urban population in WW2

Hey,

some thoughts that come to my mind, while I´m reading "The Brand" by Jörg Friedrich. How can ordinary people, especially women, children and the old ones be able to cope with the bombings of their homes. You know, a soldier can dig in, run away, can shoot back, they are prepared for the war to deal with it, but those poor creatures could only wait in the bunkers. This might be the ultimative terror for them (since this thread is not used for the controversial aerial war against germany [right/wrong], the terror means just that what they experienced) if you hear the bombs exploding, the walls of the bunker shaked, the ultimative fear to get killed and this day by day. When you left the bunker you see your familiar enviroment lies in ruins, see bodies of your friends and so on. Guess everyone can imagine what it means to be there, however not forget the quest., how did women, children and the old ones be able to cope with this, without losing one´s nerve at this wearing down time ?

Regards,
Che.

 

Good question.

 

haha, informative answer

 

Well I guess they just dug good air raid shelters, did whatever they could to support the war effort, and prayed.

 

post subject

They probably thought the same as we did, said "German Bas*****" and stffened our resistance against them. Only they probably said "English Bas*****"! :roll:

 

In most cases the bombing did actually stiffen the morale of the civilians. It "allowed" them to share the hardships and "participate" directly in the war with the soldeirs. And they put up with it because they had no choice

Civilian morale was nowhere near as Bomber Harris liked to believe. most analysis showed it made civilians more supprotive ot he war and regime, due to shared danger and revenge motives. Only in special cases (Hamburg fire storm for example) and near the end did have an effect on morale.

A bigger detrimental effect was the lack of sleep. This had a direct effect on worker productivity and quality.

 

post subject

True, revenge came into it, I personly didn't give a toss what happened in Germany after Coventry and local bombing.

 

I like Air Marshal Harris's whirlwind speech - particularly the opening bit where he says something like "Germany came into this war with the naive idea that they were going to bomb everyone else and noone was going to bomb them ...".

Personally I think that any German complaining about what happened to them during the war has got a real cheek - no, I take that back - cheek isn't anywhere enough to describe it - it falls into the war crimes denial mind set - its the old "everyone committed war crimes - not just Germany" argument which is designed to water-down the fact that Nazi Germany was by far the greatest evil the world has ever seen and anything and everything that was done in the name of destroying it was justified.

The bombing campaign may have stiffened civilian resolve but there is plenty of evidence that it had an impact on the German war effort regardless.

 

Dont need to be bombed to raise morale of civs, but it does help. case in point America, was never bombed but kept great morale.

 

Re: post subject

Uhh, Tit for tat, eh, they kill innocent people, so we can do the same. Come on, use your brain merlin, it never can be allright to kill, bomb or whatever defenceless people. Pulverizing mom-and-pop stores, stations, schools, city halls and so on can not be a Liberation or at least a hard one.

This shows senselessness of bombing citys

You know, Harris was a fool, he should build up some cities destroyed in 1945. What he did, could even a butcher, that does´t show any military capabilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of ... rld_War_II

Where is the context between the own suffering and an attempt to relativize your guilt, these are two different things :roll:
If you say that german people suffered aswell, does it mean that there were less Jews murdered or that the Luftwaffe did not attacked engl. cities ?! German victims has the same right to complain, as those in Britain, Russia anywhere else, or aren´t they humans in your eyes, if not nice racial slur by you. xD

Regards,
Che.

 

Well in that case we can all thank Sir Hugh Trenchard for creating the theory of bombing a nation into submission in 1918 by attacking factories, warehouses, railways etc, and secondly the civilian population. :smok:

 

Damn it, I know that it would happen, before this thread is getting derailed;
If there is need to clarify or rebut the justification of the strategic bombings it should be split into another thread. This is just about the psychological component of the aerial war against germany and its population, that´s an interessting part aswell. And my question is how people can cope with such a mental strain, why didn´t they go mad and just did their business as usual. I took the german population coz they had to suffer (uh shit, sry, I should point out that Germany did not murderd the Jews when I put "Suffering" and "Germany" in context :roll: ) in an extremly way, if you compare the dimension of allied and german aerial attacks.

Regards,
Che.

 

Hmm, I dont see a problem with strategic bombing unless there is concerning proximity to civilians, like block housing connected to the factory, etc. Im also against it if you just plan to bomb civilians. For one, its just a no no, and it more or less raises the spirits.

Che, I dont mean to get derailed here, but I wonder what forum members think of bombing crews not getting a victory medal like the other services

 

Post subject

Don't you ever talk down to me Che!Don't you ever tell me to use my brain.
I never wrote that it was OK to bomb people, I wrote how we felt at the time, which is what you asked, we are talking over 60 years ago; and you, if you'd been around at the time would have been in the HJ and you have been singing about 'Marching against England' , so don't come all sanctimonious with me unless you've experienced it.

 

Re: post subject

Che - there's no "2 different things with ww2" - the Nazis were evil and had to be stopped and everything that was done in the name of doing that was justified. The suffering of the German people was a direct result of Nazi aggression and not something for which the allies should ever be expected to apologise.

..and don't accuse me of "racial slurs" for having the bad taste to suggest that the Nazis were the bad boys of WW2. That insults so many dead innocents it is unbelievable. You really have to wake up and smell the coffee.

 

Re: post subject

Remind me again what the "V" weapons were for. How many German civilians cheered the V weapon attacks on English cities and prayed for deliverance by secret and vengeance weapons from the Allies and Soviets. Now remind me of how many German civilians protested against the prior Luftwaffe terror bombing attacks.

Bottom line, after Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry (Ever asked a Pole how "liberating" the invasion of 1939 was? I work with a large number of Eastern Europeans and if I happen to mention that I lived in Germany things get somewhat cold. Or have you asked a Dutchman what their opinion was of the German liberation of 1940 vs the Allied liberation of 1945?), Germany as a whole hardly has any call to complain when the other side returned the favour on a war that began on every front with a German invasion.

That's the nature of starting a war where the best you can realistically hoep for is to drop a bomb within a few miles of the intended point of impact, when you start off with a couple of hundred bombers and the other guys end up with a couple of thousand and you're both doing the same thing the only difference is an order of magnitude.

Lay off insulting other posters, it really doesn't help.

Coventry.

No, the context is fairly straightforward, whilst the western allies may have made mistakes theres was a war against one of the most fundamentally evil regimes in history. It is not a matter of relativzing guilt, but saying that we did what we thought we had to at the time to defeat Nazi Germany, a regime responsible for 25 million Soviet dead and 6 million killed in the final solution. My A level history teacher summed it up quite neatly on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, the population had 12 years in which to protest against the Nazi government and in all that time they failed to make their voice heard, so in spite of everything they cannot claim to be entirely blaimless.

CSP, terror bombing was one of the ugly sides of WW2 and it was one that the RAF and the various commonwealth and free air forces participated in. It was mainly that Bomber command did not trust the bomber crews to hit a target less than city sized (And in more than a few cases early on they failed to do even that) so the best we could manage was to bomb the crap out of the area concerned (This manifested itself into a belief that the civilian populace could be bombed into submission or into revolution against the governing body in accordance with Douhet's largely accepted pre-war theories), there is a not insubstantial school of thought that the workforce was as important a part of the war machine as the actual production line and a valid target.

 

Re: Post subject

Merlin plz calm down, don´t take with a pinch of salt.

Of course the Nazis were evil and Germany started the war, however these facts did not justify the negligent killing of civilians in the name of stopping the german aggression. It is right that war is always tragic and to destroy the infrastructure it takes of course collateral casualties, course there is no other possibility. But where is sense of bombing cities, residential areas without military significance, like Pforzheim, Würzburg, Dresden and so on, in such a late stage of war.
"The suffering of the german people was a direct result of nazi agrression", with such an simple justification you can justify and explain everything bad, which happend in the name of the right. You can distract from the responsibility every military command has, coz it´s all the enemies own fault and we can behave like an axe in the wood.

lol, what´s this, you put words in sb.´s mouth and excite yourself, the "racial slurs" were used in an "if"-context with the suffering of german people and their right to complain, not with the suffering of the nazis and their right to complain.

Strange to say the Bomber Command didn´t know the exact figures of the Holocaust and the murdering of russian soldiers/civilians, probably that it even exist in such a vast extent. So this would be no justification for the total aerial war against germany. I must admit that I dislike Nazis like anyone else, that I feel sorry for so much pain and destruction caused by my country, but german people were victims aswell and it was negligent to kill women and children in senseless airraids day by day.

 

... what a loon - ban ?

 

WTF, no need to act up LW, I can not understand that you´re useing such nazi-methods, banning s.o, coz you neither (want) to understand his point of view, nor you´re able to rebut his arguments.

edit*

-Again this thread is for the psychological part of the aerial war and not for the justification/responsibility of the bombingraids.

-Nazis started the war, they were/are truely monsters ad there is nothing to hail them.

-Germany is responsible for the outbreak of the war, but that doesn´t mean that they didn´t have rights aswell.

-RAF BC pilots were truely brave soldiers, who just did their job like other services and paid a high price for their service.

 

post subject

This thread is getting out of hand, 'Che' asked how civilians coped with bombing and I who had experienced it answered him.
I did not expect to be insulted, I answered as I (and most others) felt at the time, most likely on both sides.
So, no more from me on this.
But I don't like the way the wind is blowing.