pr00ne
Though is has to be pointed out that it is partly disingenuous to describe the civilian population of a city as "the workforce" and therefore legitimate targets. Those 'civilians' certainly included the workforce, but they also consisted of millions upon millions of children, old age pensioners, the sick, the ill and the infirm and those many folk engaged on non warlike activities.
Correct
Thus, when it was raided in November 1940 the Luftwafe WAS aiming for individual industrial targets and used its elite target marking and pathfinder force to lead the raid.
The Coventry blitz was no indiscriminate raid, it was a precision raid, or as near as you could get to precision with 1940 technology.
Entirely accurate.
"Muddled thinking by bleeding heart modern liberals"
WHAT does that mean?
It's just a nice way of trashing those who disagree with him.
There was wide spread opposition to the mass bombing as early as 1943. It was raised in the House of Commons and it was raised in the House of Lords. It was raised by the Church of England and it was raised by certain Bomber Command crews.
I never knew there were Bomber Command aircrews that objected to the bombings…
I find it inconceivable that anyone can be proud of what they actually did.
Oh, and you'll be wrong…
Chugalug2
The announced policy of the USAAF Strategic Bombing Campaign of precision bombing flew in the face of what it actually did as exampled in the figures that you query, which appear on p321 of "The Bomber Offensive" by Anthony Verrier, pub Batsford 1968.
I never read that book, and until you just mentioned it, I didn't even know it existed.
You keep quoting the Hague Conventions of 1907 as though they restricted the conduct of war thereafter.
No, but I can state that violations of those conventions are war-crimes…
Supposing he had eased off in 1944, because " the war was obviously won", and Hitler had been able to get the V5 and even later vengeance weapons operational, not against the Allied Armies, or even England, but against the US East Coast cities which were their target?
That isn't what I said at all. If you actually read what I wrote, you'll note that I said once more accurate means of bombing and navigation came into existence they should have been used more liberally to help hit specific targets rather than to firebomb cities off the map.
There were various targets which Harris rejected as being of any value such as
- Oil-refineries
- Ball-bearing plants
- Dams
He also felt that there was no need for the D-Day landings
Surrey Towers
I seem to recall on the nights that we were being bombed that the Luftwaffe were intent on bombing large areas of London that included an immense amount of civilians.
And we recognize these acts as being wanton acts of mass-destruction, terrorist-acts, and war-crimes. Why is that?
Then they bombed Coventry which had NO strategic value
Wrong
This country was the subject of a battle which we alone had to defend, it was called the Battle of Britain, have you heard of that? Daily unprovoked attacks and our RAF defended England alone. It is true that several nationalities came to our aid, including Americans, but they were still RAF.
Yes, I've heard of the Battle of Britain
Dresden for example. It was the Germans that put up figures of civilians killed as a minimum of 60k but likely to have been 100k. That was just propaganda. After the war, long after, the true number given was 26k but even then it was changed to a lower figure much later.
Well, if I recall correctly the initial estimates were in the 20,000 figure, which the Germans inflated to 200,000 for propaganda purposes. Somewhere along the way there was a figure of 135,000 which I think came from the USAAF.
In the early 1980's a British author (Alexander McKee?) talked about the figures most likely being around 25,000 to 35,000, but speculated that it could easily be about twice that judging by the fact that the city had a lot of refugees in it.
What was Germany doing to us then?
We all agree that Germany committed war-crimes in it's bombing attacks on Germany -- that's obvious. We all know that.
Germany committed war crimes that amounted to millions NOT thousands.
Of course, there was the Holocaust; the Germans also systematically exterminated Russians as they plowed into the Soviet Union.
Harris was not a war criminal, and it is stupid to say he was.
No it's not. A war-criminal is a person who violates international laws which govern the conduct of war. He violated them, therefore he's a war-criminal. Now you can argue whether his actions were necessary, but he did violate the laws.
For example: would you have him not do any bombing?
Didn't say that
His thoughts of Germany reaping the 'whirlwind' was just what WE over here wanted. If you were to suffer the nighttime raids for 18 months you would not be wasting your time in trying to justify bombing.
I'd like to note that the justifications are kind of shifting around all over the place.
1.) It was the only way to strike at Germany: An argument which makes the act a necessity under the circumstances.
2.) It was revenge: That's a different scenario entirely -- it's one thing to protect yourself and stop an opponent -- revenge though is about making them feel the pain and suffering and terror that you experienced.
I'll just sit back and let you spin all over the place trying to justify the act. In the U.S. we had (probably still have) a major issue with torture apologists and
somebody even wrote a chart about it showing all the arguments that were made. The arguments were always made from a conclusion -- the person already had made up their mind they were right and were not interested in facts so the arguments basically formed descending denials.
It often flowed along these lines
1.) What we did was not torture
2.) Even if it was torture, it was legal
3.) Even if it was illegal, it was necessary
4.) Even if it was unnecessary, it wasn't our fault.
Danny42C
The only way found so far was to kill as many of their civilians as possible.
Which is a war-crime…
Of course it was official policy on both sides!
I can't argue with you there. The Luftwaffe did it pretty much from the get-go, the RAF did it after '42; and the United States is the first and only nation in history to drop a nuclear bomb on another country in anger.
True as regards Europe. But although it was not of his doing, his idea was vindicated at Hiroshima.
I should note that the policy under this logic only had a 50% success rate…
Emperor Hirohito threw in the towel ten days later, on 15th August 1945 - much to my relief and that of thousands of others!
Well, he did throw in the towel, but the whole idea of bombing enemies into submission didn't exactly work the way people like Douhet figured it would -- the civilians would rise-up, and overthrow their government and replace it with one who'd end the war.
That didn't happen -- Japan simply surrendered. Nuclear bombing didn't win by terrorizing the civilian population -- it won by causing so much destruction so quickly that it demoralized the enemy
government into surrender. Later on it would also be used to deter other nations from war by using the fear of utter annihilation to keep the leaders of the nations in line.
There is a difference.
Robert Cooper
Maybe you should read this page, and the few pages proceeding it -- I explained why it was not a legitimate target.
R.C.