In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944

[Michael Emrys]

Another aspect in the questioning of morality in bombing of civilian population centrers during the war is the bombers were not attacking defenceless civilians, in that the combat was not between the bombers & civilians, it was between the bombers & German defensive forces, Ie, German fighters & AA guns. This is something rarely brought up in these discussions.

That line of argument strikes me as either irrelevant or disingenuous. The bombs were falling on civilian population areas and civilians were dying. The justification or lack of it for the policy must lie elsewhere.

Michael

[PzKpfw 1]

That line of argument strikes me as either irrelevant or disingenuous. The bombs were falling on civilian population areas and civilians were dying. The justification or lack of it for the policy must lie elsewhere.

Michael

Yes they were Michael, and thats terrible. & at the same time Allied air crew were dying as well the civilian population was being defended. the RAF paid a huge toll in AC & crew to carry out the directives goals, as did the 8th AF & Luftwaffe.

Area bombing would not have occured if their had been an alternative the Germans pushed it to where it went after the RAF daylight losses, as did Stalins demands for a 2nd front. It also would have helped if the Germans had not built their war industry in major population centers. Their are no easy moral answers here even with all the hindsight we have now .

Is it irrelevant or disengenious, i belive that would depend on a persons POV to me it is relevative & i was not trying to disengenous.

Regards, John Waters

[Michael Emrys]

It also would have helped if the Germans had not built their war industry in major population centers.

Er, everybody built just about all their manufacturing industries in moderate to large population centers. Such industries were labor intensive and cities were where the labor was. Some other kinds of industries, like mining, had to be where they were regardless of whether an existing city was nearby or not, but in such cases, a town to house the workers would soon spring up nearby. It took a deliberate—and expensive—effort to disperse industries outside of major urban areas, but then workers either had to commute or new housing and service centers would spring up nearby. Or in the case of the Germans who by this time were using massive amounts of slave labor, the workers lived and slept by their machines. Until they died, that is.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Yes they were Michael, and thats terrible. & at the same time Allied air crew were dying as well the civilian population was being defended. the RAF paid a huge toll in AC & crew to carry out the directives goals, as did the 8th AF & Luftwaffe.

True, but I don't see how this impacts the issue of whether bombing of cities for the purpose of killing and inconveniencing the civilian population was moral or not. If anything, it would just seem to throw more weight into the argument that the whole thing was hugely immoral.

Michael

[PzKpfw 1]

True, but I don't see how this impacts the issue of whether bombing of cities for the purpose of killing and inconveniencing the civilian population was moral or not. If anything, it would just seem to throw more weight into the argument that the whole thing was hugely immoral.

Michael

Which goes back to my comment on moveing factories out of population centers. Their was no way to avoid civilian casualties in industrialized war. Then theirs the fact that citizens in a country in a declared war are the enemy, they supply the troops, to replace losses at the front, they supply the labor to build the tanks, aircraft, etc, needed to prosecute the war in that way my comment was relavent as the bombing terrible as it was, did affect the German war effort & the morale of the citizen workforce.

the Germans had to heavily rely on slave labour in 1944 due to bombing ie, in 1944 the Germans suffered a 25% absenteeism, rate, in the workforce in the Rhur alone, for all of 1944. The BMW plant in Munich had an absenteeism of 1/5th of the workforce in the summer of 1944. Needless to say this had a huge impact on German war production, yes it peaked in 44, but it would have even been higher without the bombing effects on the workforce.

Moraly i dont like what happened, but at the same time, i understand why it happened, i have served my country. War is the most terrible thing humans can do to one another & hopefully one day mankind will understand this & find other peaceful ways to settle disputes unfortently its usualy only the servicemen, familys, & victims who remember what war truely is.

Regards, John Waters

[LongLeftFlank]

Certainly true, but platitudes like "war is hell and all warriors to some extent become war criminals" get used to support the noxious revisionist agendas of certain people along the lines of "well yes, Hitler was evil and a madman (he lost) but frankly we Germans have had enough of this collective guilt thing because (a) the scale of Nazi crimes has been greatly exaggerated ("denialism") and ( we Germans didn't do anything the Allied powers wouldn't have done in our place, and © here's some distorted made up allegations to support that like shelling German towns into ruins for a single sniper, depriving Germans of food postwar (delaying the Marshall Plan), systematic looting, torturing and/or executing prisoners or starving them to death en masse, starving the entire population of Bengal in 1944, Nisei concentration camps, lynching black soldiers, blah blah blah. Oh, and that whole thing we've been discussing around "Terror Bombing"

Which is why anyone who cares about history or our shared civilization and humanity, regardless of what uniform his ancestors wore, must speak out and say, no it wasn't the same at all. A great civilization (Germany) simply went mad in the 20th century, and it needs to be a cautionary tale to all of us, but especially to them. To quote Martin Amis, that is what the Holocaust demands of us.

[Michael Emrys]

A great civilization (Germany) simply went mad in the 20th century, and it needs to be a cautionary tale to all of us, but especially to them. To quote Martin Amis, that is what the Holocaust demands of us.

This is pretty much what I was telling one of my neighbors at lunch today. She had been to Berlin a few years ago and was mildly vexed at the ubiquity of plaques and memorials recording various horrors and atrocities committed there at one time or another. My comment was that maybe they thought they needed those reminders. If so, I agreed with them. But I also think that it is not only the Germans who need such reminders. Who knows where the next great evil will pop up?

Michael

[Sublime]

Well, in my opinion, I SERIOUSLY doubt a victorious Japan, Germany, or Soviet Union (purely hypothetical thrown in for good measure) would do what we did as occupiers of Japan and Germany post war. Which was rebuild them and make them some of our closest allies. You can point to German policies in the Ost or the Japanese 'co prosperity sphere' as examples of the Axis powers conquering and raping areas for all they were worth. Hell, I shouldn't even really have to point to any specific area. Of course I know that many were just following orders, and serving there country. They had no real choice, and no reasonable person would have gone against the system. However, as far as committing atrocities, or choosing to become an SA or SS sturm trupper. Thats different I feel. And I also feel very strongly that most if not all of the adult german population knew they were committing some very awful atrocities against civilians. maybe not the exact scale, but to pretend otherwise is silly. however I will not call the joint US/British firebombing of Dresden anything but a war crime. I have mixed feelings about the fire bombings against japan and the nukings but ultimately I feel the US did the right thing. We were in a war and did what we had to do to avoid concluding it with conventional weapons and subjecting even more of us and the Japanese to death and destruction. and noone needs to argue whether at the same time the Soviet Union was committing atrocities whether against poles in katyn, german p.o.w.s (just as the germans did to them however!) and even their own citizens. all I can really say for certain is that I really cant say because I wasnt alive then, and Ive never been in combat. luckily ive been fortunate enough to be born in the times and circumstances I have, as an American where I can freely express this opinion.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Another aspect in the questioning of morality in bombing of civilian population centrers during the war is the bombers were not attacking defenceless civilians, in that the combat was not between the bombers & civilians, it was between the bombers & German defensive forces, Ie, German fighters & AA guns. This is something rarely brought up in these discussions.

Regards, John Waters

I imagine it's rarely brought up because to do so would justify Germany's bombing of London and other English population centres. Not something one would wish to do I would think.

Regards

KR

[JonS]

justify Germany's bombing of London and other English population centres. Not something one would wish to do I would think.

Why ever not?

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Because it raises the inevitable comparison of the oft portrayed barbarian Germans for targeting population centres in the Battle of Britain compared with the responsible, 'refined' Allies.

Regards

KR

[JonS]

Oh, the Germans were quite barbarous enough, even without adding things like Rotterdam and Belgrade.

[PzKpfw 1]

Because it raises the inevitable comparison of the oft portrayed barbarian Germans for targeting population centres in the Battle of Britain compared with the responsible, 'refined' Allies.

Regards

KR

Which the Master race brought on themselves. Got to agree with Jon Nazi Germany didn't need any help in the portayal of barbarism dept, they already had the Oscar in the bag.

Regards, John Waters

[Michael Emrys]

All this is drifting off the point which JW was trying to make, which was that BC raids were morally okay because they were opposed. Well, guess what? German raids during the Blitz were also opposed.

Now don't take me as either an apologist for the Germans nor condemning the BC, I am neither. I just feel obliged to point out that a particular line of argument collapses entirely under scrutiny.

Michael

[JonS]

Were the raids on Rotterdam and Belgrade opposed?

[Michael Emrys]

I am confident that someone somewhere must have shaken his fist in protest and cursed the incoming bombers.

Michael

[JonS]

haha - too true

[Cranky]

Got to agree here with the many experts who've taken time out from their normally breathless discussions of Which Things Can Penetrate Which Other Things to signify their approval of the necessity for the deliberate targetting of enemy non-combatants.

The simple fact of the matter is that the millions of German and Japanese civilians who were shredded, burned and maimed en masse brought it upon themselves by stubbornly refusing to rise up against the brutal totalitarian regimes that ruled them by terror.

Nor did these people take the obvious and logical step of simply leaving the evil nations that they were foolishly resident in.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the fire.

[ArgusEye]

Were the raids on Rotterdam and Belgrade opposed?

Don't know about the one on Belgrade, but the one on Rotterdam was during a truce called by the Germans.

[LongLeftFlank]

If I recall my Cajus Bekker correctly (season to taste), there was a communications failure at multiple levels -- the two waves of bombers were supposed to have been called off.

That said, the centre of Rotterdam was very much a legitimate military target by the standards of the day, with active port facilities and key road and rail bridges. The fact that it had been isolated by the advance of German ground forces and that was now militarily untenable wasn't necessarily readily evident. The notoriety of the bombing was because it was the first time Western Europe had seen a city severely bombed, although Warsaw and Guernica had put everyone on alert for that. What everyone was really worried about was poison gas, of course.

Seem to recall a few Whitleys dumped some bombs into the center of Freiburg during the sitzkrieg period and Goebbels made a lot of froth about the "murdered children", swore revenge, etc. So the stage was set.

[ArgusEye]

True, but a truce was in effect, yet the bombing happened. That it was because of Luftwaffe incompetence doesn't make it any more right.

Bombing of military installations [rather: bombing of random water and quay next to military installations] had been taking place earlier, but this was a mass firebombing raid on the residential center. There was nothing military about the raid. It was planned and executed as a terror attack on the populace.

Recent research has come up with statements by Hitler to the effect that the bombing should be a reprisal, and should be carried out whether or not the Dutch capitulated.

[sburke]

Got to agree here with the many experts who've taken time out from their normally breathless discussions of Which Things Can Penetrate Which Other Things to signify their approval of the necessity for the deliberate targetting of enemy non-combatants.

This thread was worth reading just to see that. Kind of like the Monty Python society for placing things on top of other things.

[Michael Emrys]

...Which Things Can Penetrate Which Other Things...

Is it just me or have we now ventured into X-rated territory?

Michael

[Vanir Ausf B]

Just you, as usual.

[Sublime]

Is it just me or have we now ventured into X-rated territory?

Michael

I just thought he was describing social life at UMass