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.

Why fight street for street, house for house, room for room, at enormous human cost as at Stalingrad, Königsberg and Berlin?

Why not burn the city out, or obliterate it with high explosives, and move your forces to where the enemy is not expecting you to attack? This was done many times during 1944 and 1945, particularly at Kleve and Goch in the Ruhr.

No-one remembers those two towns, except me, it seems.

The allied commanders had only responsibility for the troops and aircrew at their command.

Why is it unacceptable to kill 25,000 people in one night, than to allow 25,000 soldiers to kill each other over a fortnight, or a month?

Those soldiers had lives, and families, and mothers and fathers who would have to bury them, too.

BadLad, Hitler was not elected chancellor in a free election.

YABU - Germany's war crimes does not preclude it having suffered one itself. Or are you seriously suggesting the holocaust made the murder of German civilians on the scale of Dresden fair game? How very sad

I will never understand why so many people in this country think that we Brits and infaliable and have never commited any wrongs throughout history

1. Dresden was destroyed jointly by the British and American bombers. Where are the the Americans queuing up to collectively, retrospectively blame themselves?

1. Has anyone ever said the British are 'infallible'? Or 'never commited any wrongs'?

Maybe they have. I do not agree with them.

The other book that is really worth reading is Len Deighton's BOMBER, which details minute-by-minute the full horror of a bombing raid on both the very young men in the bomber and the civilians on the ground. It is fiction, but meticulously researched both here and in Germany. Bomber crews had atrocious survival records and many of those killed were very young. When I finished BOMBER I just wanted to weep for humanity, really.

Incidentally it has always seemed to me that it was the Americans who first experienced and created industrialised war--in the American Civil War, and mainly on the part of the North. Many historians regarded what happened then as a taster of what would be happening in WW1.

Hitler was never elected chancellor at all. He was appointed by the president in a mistaken effort to try to keep the Nazis in check. The Nazi party never got more than 37% of the vote before taking power.

And no I'm not minimising German support for the Nazis, just correcting historical inaccuracy.

Cat, you can indeed make an ethical argument that killing soldiers is no more justifiable than killing civilians (the pacifist argument). But the way warfare has evolved practically and legally over the centuries means that we accept it as two military forces confronting each other and civilians are supposed to be off limits. You need this distinction between military and civilians because otherwise you do get total war, with everyone involved. It's a way of limiting the effects of war.

It may seem crazy that you can kill 100,000 soldiers and it's not a war crime but the principle of distinction that you need to only target military targets is there for a reason.

I do fully respect the pacifist argument, I just think it has little chance of becoming the dominant worldview, unfortunately.

Why is it unacceptable to kill 25,000 people in one night, than to allow 25,000 soldiers to kill each other over a fortnight, or a month?

Because it is a soldier's job to fight and if necessary die. That is not the job of a child, an elderly person, a refugee etc etc.

Abraid -- that's very true. One also has to consider the impact of the colonies and the colonial wars (I think Penelope mentioned upthread the first modern concentration camps in the Boer war).

Hitler was never elected chancellor at all. He was appointed by the president in a mistaken effort to try to keep the Nazis in check. The Nazi party never got more than 37% of the vote before taking power.

I admit "elected " was the wrong word, but you haven't actually said what was unlawful about it. I was contradicting a poster who said that he "seized power".

Dresden was ghastly. But ghastly things happen at war.

Exactly the same happened to Hamburg - firestorm, people suffocating, exploding and being burnt to death - in 1943. Hamburg might have been a great port, but its civilians were civilians just the same but nobody seems to care about them. But Dresden was a big city, had major rail links and it was also about showing the Soviets a bit of firepower. I'm not sure if the Allies knew there are lots of refugees there but they were German refugees and so they sadly wouldn't have cared. I don't think they were deliberately targeted but were considered fair game.

Those who were in Dresden at the time say it was hell which I am sure it was. But those who were incarcerated as POWs etc were relieved as they thought it was the beginning of the end for them.

War crime? Well if we'd lost the war it would have been. History is written by the victors.

The same arguments are trotted out about the atomic bombs on Japan. My father says that the bombings in Japan saved many thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of Allied troops' lives who would have died in a land offensive on Japan.

In 1945 people were fighting for their lives. We weren't there and we really can't have an opinion based on anything but hindsight.

If you can stomach it, read this book: www.amazon.co.uk/Inferno-The-Devastation-Hamburg-1943/dp/0241964245

Soldiers are not human beings then? Weren't most of them called up from civilian occupations to serve in the army? So were 'civilians' only women and children and the elderly and therefore the only ones entitled to live?

Soldiers in war are just civilians in uniform.

Another point not being mentioned here is that the bombings of London and the Uk occurred around 1940 and the bombing raids to German towns in 1944/45. 4 long years of murder and destruction by the Germans and a policy to kill civilians in their millions, which they did, had I am sure provoked a mentality of throwing everything at Germany to make it concede by the allies.

40,000 civilians killed in London alone and many more in Coventry and Southampton who had the misfortune to live in docklands or industrial areas. Does living next to a factory make you a legitimate target?

The majority or Germans did vote for the national socialist party. They participated in cristalnacht and in denouncing Jews and dissenting Germans. Does this make them guilty of the ensuing destruction? No. They could not forsee Hitlers madness at the time, and they no more deserved to die than anyone civilian or soldier.

Britain has form for being the apologist of the whole world for things that occurred before we were born and to single out Dresden for special treatment is to ignore the dead of London.

Dresden was not expected to burn the way it did and the fact that the buildings had high wood content added to the high loss of life.

I've said and I will repeat, it was horrific and probably unnecessary but not a war crime. It wasn't tried as such and if a trial had been organised would they have found guilty Churchill and Harris ? Of course not. at the time is the operative phrase, and we cannot look back from our safe and secure lives and judge people who were in the situation as it then was.

Another point not being mentioned here is that the bombings of London and the Uk occurred around 1940 and the bombing raids to German towns in 1944/45. 4 long years of murder and destruction by the Germans and a policy to kill civilians in their millions, which they did

Much as I agree with your general idea on this thread , this is very inaccurate. Read up about the Blitz.

Of course it was a war crime. It doesn't matter what else happened to us or anyone else and comparing it to any other suffering elsewhere does not change the fact it was a crime. You can't justify bombing civilians, young and old by bringing up other atrocities.
As for Germans voting Hitler in, you have to understand the events leading up to the rise of the National Socialist party and why he was able to gain that support. Germany was a demoralised Country and Hitler was able to use that to be seen as their saviour.

to single out Dresden for special treatment is to ignore the dead of London

No, that's ridiculous. Can we never talk about any other atrocity? Is anyone saying Dresden was a war crime and the Blitz wasn't? No. I could understand your annoyance if people were saying 'Oh the Blitz was no big deal but Dresden was awful'. But no one is saying that.

Churchill wasn't put on trial because we won. That doesn't mean it wasn't a war crime. Stalin wasn't put on trial either, are you saying the Soviets didn't commit any war crimes either?

Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 20 to 30 million people, he's one of history's greatest mass murderers. The fact he was never put on trial for it doesn't diminish what the did.

Sabrina, Coventry was a target because of the munitions factories etc that were located in the city.

Dresden was considered a valid target in that it was a large city within Nazi Germany, an important communications hub for the Third Reich, a railway interchange, it also had numerous factories working for the German War effort.

I think some of us are forgetting the sheer desperation of our struggle to win WWII. We had spent years thinking we were going to lose, years of our cities being bombed out, years fearing an invasion by Hitler.

BadLad -- Hitler's path to being appointed chancellor was more or less lawful (although his political power was facilitated by a great deal of violence and intimidation and propaganda) but the means he used to transform this position into a one-man dictatorship were not lawful, so I think 'seized power' is more or less right. He transformed Germany from a democracy (however weak) into a totalitarian state.

so I think 'seized power' is more or less right.

I disagree - to me it implies that he took power in a military coup, and ignores the popularity of the Nazis before he became chancellor. I agree that it isn't very relevant.

I agree Hitler 'seized power', but it was helped by his sheer popularity with the German people. Who was it that said 'fascism does come into power wearing jackboots' ?

There's a haunting photo in the book 'Nazis a Warning from History' of Hitler, having been made chancellor, in a car with von Hinderberg, who looks like a broken man. It's like he knew.

Hitler looks like the cat that got the cream.

I've found that picture online:

www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks4/the-nazification-of-germany/#.VN9ZLrCsUYd

Fascism doesn't come into power wearing jackboots.

I agree it's a tangent but yes, the Nazis were popular, in the last election before January 1933 they got 33% but the social democrats and communists got 36%, so basically just as popular. Hitler became chancellor due to some really bad political considerations on the part of Germany's leaders. Sabrina is right, he didn't run on a platform of world war and totalitarianism. I would consider demolishing the democratic system and imprisoning or killing tens of thousands of opposition members to be seizing power. I admit it's a semantic issue though, sorry for the tangent.

My grampy got bombed in Birmingham (once his little neighbour friend died) and it fucked him up. He still has this compulsion to run outside and look up to see what plane is coming past. Luckily he doesn't live in a flight path. I've lived in Coventry. I've always wanted to go to Dresden. Of course it's a war crime. Targeting civilians is wrong. War is wrong anyway but targeting civilians is always worst. When they bombed Coventry they wanted the factories. It destroyed so much and it caused such terror and suffering. We bombed Dresden for REVENGE and so many died so horribly. That's evil. It doesn't matter what Germany did, you don't get a free pass for being evil against evil people, it doesn't work like that...

Dresden was not expected to burn the way it did

Rjae - you don't understand what Dresden was.

It was an experiment in mass murder.

It was " well, on paper, it looks like it might be possible to suffocate an entire city in one bombing raid, if we coordinate and plan it just right"

It was " lets choose somewhere where the results will be easy to assess and analyse"

It might even have been " lets do this quickly now, before we lose the excuse to run this experiment, we will never be allowed if Germany surrender first"

Saying Dresden was not expected to burn the way it did is like Osama ben laden saying the twin towers were not expected to fall so completely.

It was mass murder.

It was a brutal war crime.

Nothing you say is going to change that.

Nobody comes out of WW2 covered in glory. What the Germans did, goes without saying. The Russians raped and murdered their way across Germany, but we don't talk about that because they were on our side. The Americans bombed Hiroshima, not because it would bring an end to war because nothing would have made the Japanese surrender unless the safety of the emperor was assured - they did it because they had a new toy which needed testing!

Of course Dresden was a war crime - deliberately murdering children can't ever be anything but a war crime!