Allied Terror bombing of Germany

Nürnberg trials were not staged, as you suggest. The Alied justice was not arbitrary. The Nazi judges like the notorious Roland Freisler did what you want to imply.
However, the Luftwaffe was found gilty for crimes: the war civilians or prisoners were used as human guinea pigs in testing Luftwaffe equipment and human experimentation in military aviation.

 

Wasn't at least one U-boat commander convicted of killing civilians as well?

 

At least one Japanese I-Boat skipper as well.

 

Well in this case you needed to convict thousands of people, any guard of Japanese POW camps or German POw camps also with Russian prisoners. As well teh Russian guards of some of the siberian POW camps probably. The list would be huge and impossible to get all these people. But guess some of the worse ones, where taken to make an example.


@ Tamino: I did not imply they were staged.

 

Well, in the case of the Japanese I-Boat captains, most of the good ones and the bad ones had already been killed in action.

 

Germans too. So the sub case solved itself so to speak..........

 

I've read that several USN sub skippers testified at Nuremburg that they used the same tactics in the PTO that Doenitz employed during the war in the Atlantic. Not sure if they did so voluntarily, but in effect their testimony was in Doenitz's defence as they were called to testify by the defense. Regardless, we did to the Japanese what the Germans did to the Allies. It was an extremely effective and valuable offensive naval tactic.

 

While following orders is not an excuse it is a mitigating factor. Captains of naval vessels have a lot of autonomy and thus bear the full guilt if they order murder.

 

Actually there were very few cases in which uboat commanders ordered the murder of civilians or ship wrecked personel. Indeed there were more cases of them refusing orders to do so by a significant margin from what I've read.

 

I have read numerous accounts of civil treatment by uboat crews of enemy combat5.

 

Dr. Chris Harmon(*) <Source>:

"Dresden was on another list at Bomber Command - a short list of early 1945 targets that should be flattened to aid the Russian offensive. Churchill had frequently pressed Harris to use his bombers to aid the Russians, but they never talked about Dresden particularly, to my knowledge. It was one of several towns at the right time and place whose bombing would help the Red Army's advance in that sector. Also, John Colville's memoirs record, there had been a report that Axis armor was moving through the town. In short, Dresden was not a vengeance target, but a military one, and one more 'built up area' that was to be destroyed like the others in Germany."

(*)Dr. Chris Harmon, a CC academic adviser and professor at the Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia, author of the 1991 monograph "Are We Beasts?" Churchill on the Moral Question of World War II "Area Bombing."

 

That's not what Arthur Harris said. He specifically stated, that the civilians were the real targets too.

 

He specifically stated that the civilian workers were real targets. The others, he specifically stated that they were not...

Perhaps there is an ulterior motive that the Harris quote from your post #137 is incomplete...shall we say "cherry-picked."

In your haste to prove your point, you left out a very important sentence(well, several, but let's not quibble)...

 

That's of course possible (that the Harris quote from post #137 is incomplete), since I'm not familiar with everything he said.

However I haven't yet seen, that he specifically meant only civilian workers. There are other civilians (non-military workers) too besides the children, invalids and old people.

 

Actually, Takao's quote from Harris does seem to indicate a separation between the validity of attacking those civilian workers involved in war related employment and those who where not, and the waste of effort targeting them entailed.

Further it should be stressed that Allied planners had to expect Germany to take the same precautions they had early in the war to remove as many civilians useless for war related work as possible while providing shelters for those who must remain or can not be moved. Protection of a civilian population is ultimately the responsibility of the defender, not the attacker. Granted, gratuitous efforts by a attacker should be avoided, but their ultimate responsibility rested in winning as quickly as possible while keeping their war losses as low as possible.

What is being missed here, it seems to me at least, was the steady deterioration of the German home front due to reverses on the battle field, loss of able-bodied young men to replace those battle losses, attrition of air defenses, hunger due to poor foodstuff production and of course the ever increasing severity of Allied bombing. What was a nuisance in 1940, '41 and '42 became a critical mass in 1943 '44 and '45. Allied bombing was doing what it intended to do, unravel Germany's ability to effectively resist.

We have become too caught up in pre war strategic expectations for the employment of strategic air power. Very few such expectations about how the war was to be fought survived contact with the enemy by either side.

 

We've come full circle. Actually, we've done that several times. During the US Civil War, Sherman justified his destruction of civilian infrastructure (and at times civilians who tried to defend that infrastructure) for the same reasons.

To me, the only germane argument is whether the saving of allied soldiers lives to fight a weakened enemy is balanced against the lives of enemy civilians. I think it is. You fight to win, not to display humanitarian principles. The bombing helped us win and saved allied lives. End of story.

 

Let's not forget, in this discussion about poor civilian suffering, that Nazi Germany "euthanised" many of its own civilians that were useless to the state. Never mind the Jews.

I'm talking about Franz Stangl's and others work for the Public Service Foundation for Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege).

The programme officially ran from September 1939, to August 1941, during which 70,273 people were killed at various extermination centres located at psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria. After the official termination of the programme physicians in German and Austrian facilities continued many of the practices that had been instituted under the program right up until the defeat of Germany in 1945. This "unofficial" continuation of the Action T4 policies led to more than 200,000 additional deaths.

 

From the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War):

The Civilians

A word should perhaps be added on the effect of the air war on the German civilian and on the civilian economy. Germany began the war after several years of full employment and after the civilian standard of living had reached its highest level in German history. In the early years of the war -- the soft war period for Germany -- civilian consumption remained high. Germans continued to try for both guns and butter. The German people entered the period of the air war well stocked with clothing and other consumer goods. Although most consumer goods became increasingly difficult to obtain, Survey studies show that fairly adequate supplies of clothing were available for those who had been bombed out until the last stages of disorganization. Food, though strictly rationed, was in nutritionally adequate supply throughout the war. The Germans' diet had about the same calories as the British.

German civilian defense was examined by Survey representatives familiar with U. S. and British defenses. The German system had been devised as protection against relatively small and isolated attacks. The organization had to be substantially revised when the attacks grew to saturation proportions. In particular, arrangements were made by which a heavily bombed community might call on the fire-fighting and other defensive resources of surrounding communities and, as a final resort, on mobile reserves deployed by the central government through the more vulnerable areas. In the attacks on German cities incendiary bombs, ton for ton, were found to have been between four and five times as destructive as high explosive. German fire defenses lacked adequate static and other water reserves replenished by mains independent of the more vulnerable central water supply. However, in the more serious fire raids, any fire-fighting equipment was found to have been of little avail. Fire storms occurred, the widespread fires generating a violent hurricane-like draft, which fed other fires and made all attempts at control hopeless.

German shelters, so far as they were available, were excellent. In England the policy was to build a large number of shelters which protected those taking refuge from bombs falling in the area and from falling and flying debris but which were not secure against a direct hit. The Germans, by contrast, built concrete bunkers, some of enormous size, both above and below ground, designed to protect those taking shelter even against a direct hit. One such shelter in Hamburg, named the "Holy Ghost" for its location on Holy Ghost Plaza, sheltered as many as 60,000 people. There were not, however, enough such shelters; at the close of the war shelter accommodation was available for only about eight million people. The remainder sheltered in basements, and casualties in these places of refuge were heavy. After raids the Germans did not attempt systematic recovery of all bodies or even of all trapped persons. Those that could not readily be removed were left.

Official German statistics place total casualties from air attack -- including German civilians, foreigners, and members of the armed forces in cities that were being attacked -- at 250,253 killed for the period from January 1, 1943, to January 31, 1945, and 305,455 wounded badly enough to require hospitalization, during the period from October 1, 1943, to January 31, 1945. A careful examination of these data, together with checks against the records of individual cities that were attacked, indicates that they are too low. A revised estimate prepared by the Survey (which is also a minimum) places total casualties for the entire period of the war at 305,000 killed and 780,000 wounded. More reliable statistics are available on damage to housing. According to these, 485,000 residential buildings were totally destroyed by air attack and 415,000 were heavily damaged, making a total of 20 percent of all dwelling units in Germany. In some 50 cities that were primary targets of the air attack, the proportion of destroyed or heavily damaged dwelling units is about 40 percent. The result of all these attacks was to render homeless some 7,500,000 German civilians.

It is interesting to note some of the effects of air attack upon medical care and military casualties during the war. The aerial warfare against Germany forced the German military and civilian authorities to recognize that national health and medical problems were a joint responsibility. The destruction of hospital equipment, pharmaceutical production, and medical supplies, incident to area raids, forced a dispersal of medical supply installations and the removal of hospitals from city to suburban and country sites. This program came in late 1943 at a time when air raids on cities were causing increased casualties among civilians and resulted in shortages in ether, plasters, serums, textiles, and other medical supplies. At the same time the increased tempo of tactical air action was having an effect on military casualty rates, and is reflected in the fact that, according to German reports, war casualties from aerial weapons moved from third place in 1942 to first place in late 1943, 1944, and 1945, followed in order by artillery fire and infantry weapons. The casualty effects of air action are shown by the fact that the proportion of wounded to killed shifted from a ratio of eight to one in 1940 and 1941 to a ratio of three to one in 1944 and 1945. Personnel wounded by air action suffered as a rule multiple wounds and shock, resulting in longer periods of hospitalization and convalescence, and in a decided reduction in the number of patients who could be returned to either full or limited military duty.

 

Why workers and cities are the emphasis? Personally I´d keep the main target engine factories, oil refineries and ball-bearing production etc. The rest can go to cities if wanted. The Germans got more work power from the concentration camps every day.


By May 1944, only 1.1% of Allied bombs had been used on oil targets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Campaign_chronology_of_World_War_II

May 1944

Daily output of aircraft fuel had dropped from 5,850 to 4,820 metric tonnes; but the reserve of 574,000 tonnes was expected to last 19 months. On "'May 12 ... the technological war was decided. ...with the attack ... upon several fuel plants ... a new era in the air war began. It meant the end of German armaments production" (Speer). "In my view the fuel, Buna rubber, and nitrogen plants represent a particularly sensitive point for the conduct of the war, since vital materials for armaments are being manufactured in a small number of plants… The enemy has struck us at one of our weakest points. If they persist at it this time, we will soon no longer have any fuel production worth mentioning" (Hitler).[36]:413 By May 28, fuel production had returned to the level prior to the May 12 raids.[36]:415 The "economic air raids [using] wise planning [by] the enemy began ... in the last half or three-quarters of a year" before December 1944. "Before that he was, at least from his standpoint, committing absurdities" (Speer, December 1, 1944.

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Less enemy planes, less flying enemy planes, less own plane losses, less enemy tanks... Why not? By 1944 the production figures were the highest so far for Germany.

 

No significant reduction in ball-bearing production occurred due to bombing, and had there been, Sweden would've produced yet more.

Oil and Electricity were the two largest vulnerabilities.

But at the time, no one knew, as there was no proper pre-war estimate, and during the war, there was little information forthcoming, strangely enough...

This is all mentioned in the "United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War)."