By an Elderly German saying Dresden was a war crime.

[Rjae]

He said, yes, Germany started the war but the bombing of Dresden was a war crime.

AIBU to be outraged by this.

Exterminating Jews, gipsies, and prisoners of war was a war crime.
Invading half a dozen European countries and murdering it's citizens was a war crime.
Bombing Londoners and other british cities long before Dresden was a war crime
Starting the fucking war was a war crime.

Dresden was horrific of course, but not a war crime, unless you consider everything a war crime. It shouldn't have happened, but neither should the war. I'm sorry so many people were killed and a beautiful city destroyed. They were civilians but they supported Hitler wholeheartedly.

No doubt it didn't do much except kill civilians in the long wrong, but that still doesn't make it a war crime.

UncleT it's not relevant at all, legally. People here can think whatever they want, it doesn't invalidate the law.

Of course Dresden was a war crime. My mother lived through the war and a brother of hers died in it, but she still knew that Dresden was a shameful war crime.

And cat, my rather clumsily made point is that it does matter how we see history, especially quite recent history (living memory and all that) as it sets a precendent for how we view the events of today. If we can justify the historical murder of civilians because this somehow contributed to the war effort and made the world safe for democracy and anyway most of them deserved it, then we can do the same today.

so how the hell is it relevant to what constitutes a war crime in legal terms

Deciding what is a war crime, and what is not, is an entirely political decision, and not a judicial one.

How many British or American political leaders have been charged with

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace?
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace?
3. War crimes, or Crimes against humanity?

Cat

Just to clarify - I think that defining something as a "war crime" in this context is not about seeking punishment for the perpetrators or justice for the victims in the sense of an 'ordinary' crime - as you say it makes no difference to people personally involved. But, as uglyswan says, it's about making a declaration about what kind of behaviours should be avoided in future wars. Saying Dresden is a war crime isn't about saying it was better, worse, or equal to other war crimes. It's about saying "and here is another example of the the sort of thing we should try to avoid in future wars". Whether it was defined as a war crime at the time is irrelevant.

By 'participated with their own hands' I mean Kristallnacht, I mean occupying stolen homes, cheering the SA as they marched Jews off to camps in the 1930s, with parades through German towns, and I mean the erection of signs proclaiming that such and such a town is 'Judenrein', and the willingness to refuse to patronise Jewish businesses. The Nazis killed targets, beginning in a small way and gradually more and more, whom they knew would not be mourned by the average German -- Jews, gypsies, freemasons, gays, Jehovah's witnesses, political opponents on the left, trade unionists, even the SA, who were denounced. I also mean using slave labour on family farms and in factories.

Angela Merkel and the establishment and official pronouncements by the establishment are not the problem when it comes to the popular revision of history and stories the media adopts and the proliferation of the internet. It is the popular image of German history and of Russia that counts, as well as the effect of a sense of grievance about unacknowledged German suffering in WW2 and the subsequent division of Germany that went underground in the period after WW2, during the deNazification in West Germany and Communism in the GDR. And so we see the appearance of Pegida, and voters with sentiments similar to UKIP, and the rise of the right elsewhere, perhaps most visibly in Hungary and Ukraine. These are not establishment elements.

The problem is stories the media adopts and the proliferation of the internet..

Defining war crimes makes absolutely no difference to the conduct of future wars. The Balkan war demonstrated that, and the Rwanda genocide, and the genocide in Cambodia, and the conduct of the Vietnam War, and so on ad nauseum.

Prosecuting a person for a war crime, I agree, is a largely political decision.

Determining whether a specific act is a war crime according to established legal criteria is something else. Many have found specific acts committed during the Iraq war to be war crimes, regardless of whether their specific perpetrators can be identified or charged.

The ICC is not yet set up to handle the crime of aggression. Bush and Blair may yet get hauled in front of a court someday, look at what happened to Pinochet.

I think it's really dangerous to look at this whole question of war crimes as just a political issue or a matter of personal opinion. The laws of war are important, if we just treat them as irrelevant, it will be us who suffer too some day.

In the olden days, the women used to wave the men goodbye, they used to say 'either come back with your shield, or come back on it'
ie, either come back with glory and loot, or come back dead.

The women were separate, and mostly protected from the horrors. Then the British (as usual) in the age of industrialisation, invented the concept of 'total war'

In a total war, everyone, including women kids , the old, the infirm, all the industry, EVERYTHING, is used to help to win that war. You are in the front line, no matter who you are.

This has had an interesting side effect, half the population now don't look forward to getting the booty, they now say war is bad. which it is. good.

As to whether the fire-bombing is a war crime. well it's true that a fire storm kills ten times more than a nuclear bomb, but when you are in a total war an enemy life is worth nothing compared to one of our own.
The enemy felt the same way. If they could have nuked us, and got away with it, they would have

none of us have clean hands in this

uglyswan If we can justify the historical murder of civilians because this somehow contributed to the war effort then we can do the same today

If the last fourteen years have taught us anything, if innocent human beings get in the way of political and military objectives, they will be killed.

No amount of politically motivated handringing about Dhofar, Bosnia, Kosovo, the war in Rwanda/Burundi/Congo, the Iran-Iraq war, the Arab-Israeli wars, Kampuchea, Vietnam, East Timor, the Cultural Revolution, the Gulags, the Bengal Famine, the Combined Bomber Offensive in World War Two or the Shoah has made any difference.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not make Britain or the US shy away from allying with the USSR, and the discovery of the Katyn massacre was deliberately hushed up by the USSR's western allies for practical reasons. It gets dragged out when it suits the neo Cons still fighting the Cold War and hoping to keep Poland onside, while the massacre of about 16,000 of the Polish intelligentsia of Pomerania in the Piasnica forest by German invaders and ethnic German neighbours is not very well known.

Perhaps all this should alert us to the futility of proclaiming any act done in the course of war a 'war crime'? And perhaps also the hypocrisy.

Dodged, yes indeed, the Boer War is largely forgotten, by the British anyway.

'The laws of war are important, if we just treat them as irrelevant, it will be us who suffer too some day.'

It may be us some day whether we think the laws of war are relevant or not.

I guess the reference to the Boer war is a reference to concentration camps (invented by the British)

To be honest, I don't care. The British might have been first there, but that just proves how smart we are, as a country and a society.
Once we show how horrible all this stuff can get, and how far we will go to protect our own
the sooner people will leave us alone.

Of course, this means that (if I am right) any war of aggression must be a 'total war', and that would then be a war crime. Because at that point you would be explicitly targeting women, kids, the old and the infirm

If you think about it abstractly, it was industrialisation that changed everything. killing is now an industry

math, but all that happened before the war (setting aside the question of what percentage of Germans participated) It has no bearing on their status as civilians during the war

You bemoan the fact that the laws of war haven't prevented genocides but you want to disregard them yourself.

It was after WW2 that they established the UN, wrote the Geneva Conventions, the genocide convention, put all sorts of customs into formal law -- exactly because they had just seen what happens when states conduct unrestricted warfare. And now we should just forget all that?

Yes, terrible things still happen, but it's not because there are no laws, it's because states don't enforce them. We shouldn't abandon the laws, we should encourage states to abide by them. That's not going to happen if we start saying killing civilians is okay if they were bad people.

@mathanxiety

There is no point in wringing your hands at a lack of law.
Burgling is against the law, but people get burgled. The law might catch up with them later. MIGHT.

The same with war crimes law. It wont stop war crimes, but the perps might get caught later. MIGHT.

there is only one sure fire way to protect yourself against war crimes, and that is to talk softly, but carry a big stick

math, seriously, are you some kind of RT fan?

I'm Polish myself and I can assure you that Katyn does not just get dragged up by neo-cons

The last I heard, it was 50/50 whether Katyn was the Germans or the Soviets

do you have more info, Dreamingbohemian ??

Rjae you are a moron, an ignorant moron.

My great uncle was sent to serve the SS, he was stationed at the railway. That night he was allowed to go home as he lived in Dresden and told to report back in the morning (he was 16). All that stayed at the railway station died.

My uncle lived. My great grandmother made him burn his shirt and say that he was 15, a crime that would have got them both shot.

I am more connected to this than you are you vile person Rjae. I suggest engaging brain before opening your mouth to speak utter shit.

Dodged -- last you heard, really?

Russia admitted it was responsible for Katyn 25 years ago

MightyMightyTorus

People lose their shirts all the time. my Uncle lost his shirt on Shergar

now THAT was a warcrime

apologies dreamingbohemian
I have updated my files

Soviets murdered 25k Polish nationalists in 1939