The Allied Bomber Offensive

And now my sensible reply.

Yes, I agree that the war effort as a whole could have been helped more by a diversion of heavy bombers to ASW work.
However.
Britain in 1940/41 was not a place of high morale. No victories, plenty of defeats, the BoB was simply a question of survival. So the public needed a 'we're getting back at Jerry' morale-booster. The RAF had spent the 30's crowing about bombing. So here was a ready-made morale-booster & weapon ready to hand.
Plus, what you must remember, is that all the theoretical studies made in the 1930s concluded that sustained bombing of civilians would cause loss of morale / will to continue, followed by capitulation. The Blitz kinda disproved this, but then, bad as it was, it never rivalled a 1,000 bomber raid.

As to specifically targetting oil, or electricity generating stations, or whatever...
The only way to guarentee hitting such precise targets is by day. Not an option without escort fighters, as was repeatedly discovered during the war. Remember that in the early years of the war (until radar, pathfinders, etc were introduced), RAF night bombers were very lucky or very talented to achieve a hit within 5 miles of the target.
So, do you go after a nice, big, wide target where 5 miles either side makes no appreciable difference, and your bombing will cause the mass of the population to want to end the war (in the minds of the planners).
Or a smaller yet vital target, which about one in 500 bombers will hit?

When did we start raiding cities?

 

So you regard the RAF and USAAF bomber crews as being war criminals then, Izaak?

 

Know what, corpcasselbury? It´s not fair. Of course, it´s easy to sit on one´s as* and ponder and judge and be wise ex posteriore. That´s a luxury, which we are very lucky to enjoy.
Instead of getting rotten in some stinking, muddy trenches.
Or having just gotten an order to fly there and there and drop some bombs, while you was playing a Russian roulette with your life.
I have known an old Jew, who was a pilot in one of those bombers, who survived and has never been shot. He had problems with his conscience till the end of his days. He knew precisely what kind of "enemy targets" they were setting on fire. And I liked the guy a lot. He was both wise and good-natured, or simply, a good man. As good as one can get.

How could I blame HIM? Could he say: "no, thank you"? I don´t know if he could. It wouldn´t have been cheap. He might possibly get retrained to fighter force, but such a training is not free and I doubt if it was doable in real life. Maybe, if he tried hard, he would have been transferred to coastal command or whatever else. I asked him if had ever tried to get transferred, because he told me about his moral scrouples. He said no. No, because he had had no idea, he said, how great the bombing force on "Allied" side was and, he wanted to. He had just seen newsreels from Germany before war, with Hitler and extatic millions of Germans and an appropriate footage (he was from USA). Then, he knew, that members of his family who stayed in Poland were murdered. Than, everybody who was his cousin and stayed in Poland seemed to be murdered. Scores of people. How could he NOT have hated the Germans, young as he was?

And here again, you have the terrible distance between yourself and your victim. I can´t imagine Aaron spray litres of gasoline of hundreds - housands of Germans and throw lit matches at them. He was one of the best persons I´ve ever known. He would never have done such a thing. But he did it, without seeing it. By pushing a button, or whatever.

You tell me if he was to blame for these innocent German victims. I can´t say. I don´t think so. I do not think of him and his colleagues from that time as criminals. It´s very difficult and paradoxical.

Was bomber Harris to blame then, or Churchill? Or Roosevelt? I would say - maybe less so than many German decision-makers. But the difference doesn´t seem to me that great. It´s a long story. They knew exactly what they were doing, sending thousands of airplans filled with incendiary and explosive bombs over the heads of civilian Germans, including children. Knownig that such a strategy doesn´t seem to be a particularly effective option.

 

One of the reasons involed by allied strategists for the Dresden bombings was that it would create chaos among the evacuation of german civilians from the east.
Altough those civilians clearely did not contribute to the german war effort, they were considered legitimate targets simply because the chaos caused by the attacks on them might obstruct german troop reinforcements to the eastern front.

That is the same kind of reasoning that made the germans attack innocent civilians with Stukas in Belgium/France in 1940.

I have always condemmed(rightfully I think)the germans for doing so, but then I cannot blame them and simply accept when the allies do the same.

 

Why did Europe throw away the more or less civilized forms of warfare, acquired or learned and accepted through centuries? In XX century when Europe considered itself oh, so humane and civilized?
This is very difficult to understand. For me, at least.
You come from, one could say, the heart of European civilization, Castelot. Do you understand?

 

Honestly, no, I do not really understand.

After the devastations of the 30 years war in 1648, european nations more or less realised that they needed some kind of codification in wartime, which stated that civilians were not a legitimate target.
This lasted with some exceptions for some 250 years till WW1.

Some elements that appeared in the 19th century are responsible for this change:
Nationalism/racism, propaganda, industrialisation
Wars ceased to be monarch vs monarch and turned into people vs people, the ennemy was not the foreign king or emperor anymore, but the foreign people in general and thus, every means became legitimate to defeat the ennemy people.

WW1 was also a very important factor in further reducing moral principles.
No doubt that after the massacres of Verdun or the Somme, western civilization in general wasn't the same anymore.

 

And one would think that it should have been otherwise - after the butchery - a return to civilization. Alas.....

I think, you´ve touched something important: propaganda and industrialization. The first made possible by the second. And the need (and possibility ot equip mass armies, for which mass propaganda was necessary to keep spirits high). Plus - the sometimes great distance between the killer and the killed. It makes mass slaughters less morally impossible. Not to see one´s victim.

 

Plus the 'ideals' factor. Especially seen out East, the idea that they were 'evil Comunists' or 'Fascist pigs' (or 'agents of world Jewry', or 'Capitalist lackeys', or whatever) makes an 'enemy' easier to kill indiscriminately than the idea that they are simply civilian people just like your family back home.

 

Yeah, sure.
But I think some ideas, even some ugly ones have always been around. The problem was to spread the ideas quickly enough to make an organized force out of an idea. It became possible with mass media (press, radio, newsreel in a local movie theater). When time factor was not so crucial, you could also use ideas before : the Crusades, fighting the Cathars...

 

Oh yes, dehumanising of enemies has been a standard proceedure for a long time.
It s just that WW2 was (arguably) the first mass use of political difference not religious difference.

Anyway, it was simply a side-note

 

Why does our General blush like a maid?
Maybe he realized that there was a huge (ab)use of religious (besides "racial") differences also during WW2 ?

Whatever, please, don´t let us dwell on this. IMHO this is not the right place...

 

Agreed.

 

Know what?
I´m only happy the ultimate disaster hasn´t happened. The (il)logical development towards modern barbarianism (!).
Not because there too few possible triggers and there was an unbelievable tension throughout the Cold War.
Maybe some people needed the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thinking this way - at least in this respect, the bombs were not thrown in vain. G-d bless the dead victims.

Sorry, I´m a little pathetic today. :roll:

 

in many ways the US civil war may have been the start of it. it was about the first war where an army targeted a system of production instead of the products. shermans march to the sea had no other reason than to destroy the support for the southern armies and the war. sherdian in the valley had the same targets, to destroy the farms that fed lee. WWII was a total war and since almost every person in every country did something that aided his country's war program they became military targets. is there much difference between a guy working in his paper home making 50 MG parts a day on his pump drill and the gunner that shoots the MG. both are taking part in the war and the thought at the time was there was no difference except that it might be easier to kill the guy in his paper house that the gunner in his buncker. looking back from 60 years later it looks wrong to us but then it wasn't our fathers killed at pearl or our sisters sent to the camps.

 

Well, most of my family was sent to camps or killed, btw, so it still looks ugly to me. But, not trying to be saint, I am just sorry the development in civilized direction stopped and turned round. It doesn´t matter to me: German or Japanese or French or Icelandic or Jewish.
Efforts and sufferings of centuries seemed to lead to something better.
To be sure, I understand the reasons, but I pity the results. Apparently, human nature is not that good, after all. Anything goes, if possible.

 

Sadly, that would seem to be pretty much it. :cry:
(feeling pessimistic today :x )

 

history

history tends to show over and over that behavior becomes worse the longer a war continues and the harder it is fought. one bad act leads to a slightly worse one and then another and so on until you get carpet bombing and bodies hanging from lamp poles. WWII was war to the knife and that to the hilt. a dark time in our history.

 

If WW2 was so bloody to the very end, then Roosevelt springs to mind. It was his splendid idea to demand unconditional surrender, much to the astonishment of Churchill and (undoubtedly) very much to Stalin´s liking.
I don´t know why I don´t seem to be very attracted to Roosevelt. Despite all his good works.

 

the allied countries accuse germany of being ruthless and evil , explain Dresden. :angry:

 

A lot of bombs dropped, fire storm killed thousands.
:lol: