Allied Terror bombing of Germany

I thought that was the whole point of Harris and the night time bombings, to level the cities, demoralize the population, relieve it of its will to fight, and kill all civilians in the cities...especially those who worked for the war effort. How could you pick out a 40 year old machinist from a 6 year old at night, from a plane.
It is kind of ironic, that at war's beginning, Roosevelt implored all sides to refrain from "inhumane barbarism"....to avoid bombing defenseless civilians.
Later, he would result to just that.....area bombing of all major cities of Germany and Japan.
I can see where the average citizen would not have cared much about who died in Germany or Japan. They wanted to do whatever would end the war...if that meant killing ever man, woman, and child... what can you say.?
It probably seemed that was just about what it would take to "make them quit".

 

That is understandable. But then one shouldn't try to pretend to be morally superior than your enemy, since that was exactly the same as what the Germans did by bombing the British cities.

 

No:that's a wrong POV : The Axis was morally inferior to the Allies because of Auschwitz,not because of the bombings of cities:the bombings of cities was a military tactic,as the use of tanks,the use of poison gaz,the use of U Boats,etc ....

 

God is always on "your" side. That's propaganda, and has nothing to do with strategic considerations.

The simple fact of the matter is that American daylight strategic bombing was aimed at factories, transportation hubs, military targets. Bombing was a "hit or miss" affair, but even a miss tied up an entire city for a day, and used up valuable German resources. British night time bombing is slightly more problematic, but even here they were eating into the resources of the Reich in a big way. Every medical supply and professional, every scrap of food and clothing, every transportation delay, every man diverted to create shelters, every drop of gas used to transport displaced civilians is something that was not feeding the wehrmacht.

I don't know what percentage of industry was destroyed or diverted to civilian use by bombing, but even if it was only 10% (I think it was much higher than that), that would be 10% less for the wehrmacht and less thus casualties to advancing allied forces. Now, I'm just pulling that 10% figure out of my behind to make a point, but a quick wiki check says there were as many as 30 million military casualties in the war. So, even with a very low 10% estimate, the bombing might have saved 3 million soldiers. And that is without considering how much it might have shortened the war. If the bombing shortened the war by 3 months, how many lives (both axis and allied) would that be? If it shortened it by six months, how many would that be?

When you take the emotion out of it, you are left with the cold calculation of trading enemy civilian lives for allied soldiers lives. I'll make that trade any time.

 

Would you consider making the Versailles peace treaty 1919 different and thus stop Hitler from getting to power? In 1943 the Allied decided to make Germany into one huge potato field in order to stop the Germans from starting another world war ( more human action than 1919 ). Three years later it was the wrong pig that got killed...

 

Yes, of course. Wilson made that very argument and was overruled.

We're getting off topic, but compare Versailles to the end of the Napoleonic wars. Britain and the Continental powers did not "punish" France for the war and thus France became a prosperous and friendly nation.

 

Absolutely. The Treaty was clearly flawed. Of course, we have hindsight on our side.

 

It was meant to be a party with two pigs but the other pig grew too big.
The 2nd war ended properly -- with the Happy End.

 

I agree. I believe that there were 440 clauses in the treaty and 414 of them were dedicated to punishing Germany. In no way did it have a positive effect for Germany or for peace, although those who signed it felt differently. It was very flawed.

 

But the punishment administered to Germany at Postdam was much harsher -- and much more efficient.

 

True that. But how is it that the punishment at Potsdam was more effective than at Versailles? This might be an idea for a new topic maybe.

 

I always thought the USSR was one of the Allies - with GULAG, mass murders and mass deportations. The Nazies also got some know-how in gassing of people from the soviets. It's extremely difficult to see any "moral superiority" there...

Bombing of cities would have been (kind of) acceptable military tactics if it wasn't stated by mr. Harris, that the civilians (all of them) were the actual targets too.

 

There were a couple of huge differences on the impact due to the differing situations. When the armistace was agreed on at the end of WWI the Germans thought they had a decent handle on what the treaty terms would be. The actual terms came as something of a shock but the situation was such that they could no longer refuse them. Then there was the fact that German armies were still very much in the field and fighting when the armistace was declared. Indeed they were still on French soil. When they returned home they did so with their weapons and to parades. In the case of the run up to Potsdam there was no doubt in anyones mind that the Wehrmacht had been decisivly defeated and unconditional surrender meant that the Germans accepted any terms offered. The longer occupation and rebuilding also likely had considerable impact.

That's one reason I usually try to make the distinction between the allies and the axis powers. Especially given the Soviet part in the start of the war.

Actually it's been made quite clear from his statements in this thread that that is not correct.

 

I'm glad we can agree on something!

Are you referring to this one?


"The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany [is the goal]. ... It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombingare accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories." -- "Air Marshal Arthur Harris, Commander in Chief, Bomber Commander, British Royal Air Force, October 25, 1943 quoted in Tami Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 220.

If so, I understand his statement of "workers" as only one part of the task. The hole task being the total "destruction of German cities" and "lives" - i.e. everybody, not just the workers.

 

What Stalin did in the SU can not be used as an argument for the Allies not being morally superior .

Civilians were no targets,because you can't target civilians by aircraft . To target civilians,you need rifles and machine-guns .

 

No, this one, the opening sentence of the paragraph that you only quoted a bit piece from. The one that is conveniently left out or forgotten about, because it directly disproves their point.

Of course, if you are killing "all" the German civilians, how are you creating a "refugee problem of unprecedented scale"?

 

1)This was the opinion of Harris, not of the Allied governments

2)It can be argued that the policy Harris was proposing was a humane one : if after Dresden,Germany had capitulated,a lot of German lives would have been spared,Harris should have a lot of statues in Germany and should have been made a duke :if you are saving hundrerds of thousands of lives by killing 25000 people,your policy is human .

3)The attacking of civilians in war time is an old tactic:in 1914,Germany started the attacks on British cities:if because of these attacks,Britain had given up,millions of lives would have been spared .

4)In 1945,the US used2 nucleair bombs to force Japan to surrender : the use of this boms saved the lives of American soldiers and of Japanese soldiers and civilians (although this was of lesser importance).There was no difference between Dresden and Hiroshima .

 

That's certainly one, I think there were others as well. A study on the evolution of the British bombing campaign would point the same way from what I've read.

 

He did the same elsewhere too. And since the USSR was one the Allies my argument stands.

Also the bombing campaings of the Western Allies were similar in nature as the bombings of the Germans, which are most of the time (rightfully) criticized in the West.

One certainly can. If you carpet bomb the hole city you definitely are targetting the civilians, "succesfully" so.

Which still leaves out the millions of ordinary civilians, who are not working for the military industry, e.g. school teachers, shop assistants, artists etc..

Naturally one cannot kill "all", but trying to do so surely creates a "refugee problem of unprecedented scale" - as well as lots of ordinary civilian casualties.

He was the commander of the RAF Bomber Command and implemented the approved strategy. His opinion was hardly much/any different than that of Churchill's.

But he was killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, which still did not make Germany to capitulate. Can't see much humanity there.

The fact that the others did it too hardly makes it morally just - or more effective.

Hiroshima can be justified, but I see Dresden as equivalent of Nagasaki. Both were unnecessary and therefor only terror. Nowadays the correct term would be "war crime" or "crime against humanity".

By Dresden Germany was already lost. The soviets declared war on Japan on 8th August 1945. That ultimately convinced the Japanese that the unconditional surrender was the only option, since the possibility of soviet rule - and the loss of the Emperor - was unthinkable. Within few days the Japanese would have surrendered anyway.