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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

By an Elderly German saying Dresden was a war crime.

763 replies

Rjae · 13/02/2015 19:48

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.

OP posts:
TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 16:58

I think you are being inhuman.

I'm only inhuman to those who have already proved their own inhumanity, without a shadow of a doubt.

I admire the German people. I have lived there for a short time (in Berlin, in fact). I speak a bit of German, still...

I like them now...but then?...No

The Germans wanted to be the most powerful nation on Earth, lead by the greatest military genius of all time.

They craved an annihilatory war to achieve this

They got the latter. But they didn't get the former.

pinkrocker · 14/02/2015 17:01

Quite what I said. I got a bit upset, as I'm a lot older than the other students, and I can remember ruins of streets in Sheffield left by the bombings.

FromSeaToShining · 14/02/2015 17:01

You aren't allowed to teach about WWII in a history lesson? What the actual? Sounds like a loony policy. What could the rationale for it possibly be?

Davsmum · 14/02/2015 17:05

I agree with you hijk I think Cat is being inhuman.

TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 17:10

I'm sure I'll get over it...

Yep, already have.

SabrinaMulhollandJjones1984 · 14/02/2015 17:12

yanbu, pinrocker. I can't believe that. Stupid Gove.

That article is interesting. From it:

Elka Schrijver from Holland. At the time of the raids she was one of 4,000 political prisoners in a jail near Dresden where male inmates were digging a huge hole in the ground.

“After our liberation,” she said, “documents found by the Red Cross showed that this was meant to be a mass grave and that orders from Dresden had been received to shoot all of us.

Also this:

The argument that Dresden was an “innocent city” and hence the victim of a war crime began to take hold.

Yet the city boasted it was “one of the foremost industrial locations in the Reich” and 127 factories had secretly been switched to war work, making bomb-aiming apparatus, searchlights and parts for V-1 flying bombs to name but a few.

So it was a legitimate military target without a doubt.

Hovis2001 · 14/02/2015 17:16

pinkrocker

As far as I can tell it's still there (as a non-compulsory option) for the secondary History curriculum, and the Holocaust is compulsory. So they'll get WWII as context to the Holocaust and teachers can still choose to teach it as a topic in its own right - which they probably will, as there's a lot of material on it and it seems a fairly vital element of 20th century history to choose.

Is WWI still on the primary curriculum? Or did Gove stick with his utterly ridiculous "we must teach history in chronological order" plan? Because if the former, I can kind of see the argument for holding WWII off until secondary - as this thread shows, it was an extraordinary complex and horrific event - but if the latter, that's more Gove being an utter idiot about understanding how history should be taught than him consciously banning the world wars from primary education.

SugarPlumTree · 14/02/2015 17:18

So are you saying TheCat at all adult Germans in Germany during the War were inhuman ?

pinkrocker · 14/02/2015 17:19

Hovis yes, as non-compulsory in Primary.
I'll be teaching 5-11 and I do think it should be taught to Primary as well as Secondary (but that is just my opinion)

lem73 · 14/02/2015 17:27

For the record I do agree that the bombing of Dresden was a crime but so was the bombing of civilians in the UK during the Blitz. My grandparents, uncles and aunts had to live with nightly air raids. They saw buildings near them damaged or destroyed. They did not live near any strategic targets. Apparently after bombing the factories and shipyards the German planes would indiscriminately bomb civilian targets on their way back. This is surely a war crime too but I'm not aware your average German is too bothered about it.

TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 17:27

So are you saying TheCat at all adult Germans in Germany during the War were inhuman?

The ones that carried on fighting, right to the bitter end, and those that supplied moral and material support to those that fought...Yes.

The last victims of the holocaust, the Aktion T4 medical killings, were killed after VE Day.

SlaggyIsland · 14/02/2015 17:27

TheCat I assume you include all the babies and children killed in Dresden in your lack of sympathy?
I also think you're being inhuman.

Hovis2001 · 14/02/2015 17:28

pinkrocker

I do agree it should probably be taught late in KS2 (I think looking back on my own schooling WWI was a bit easier to 'grasp' as a KS1-er; the poppies, the trenches, the whole 'started by a sandwich' thing r.e. the assassination of the Archduke), but I think it's almost entirely the fault of Gove's assumption that 'older' history is innately more appropriate for younger students, rather than him deliberately excluding WWI, IYSWIM?

I'm just taking a look at the main curriculum document on the gov.uk website, and could it be taught as a "study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils' chronological knowledge beyond 1066"?

I'm not a teacher, but I did very almost start teacher training a couple of years ago, so did a lot of reading on the proposed curriculum changes back then - disappointed to see that for History most of them went through, in spite of a lot of protest.

Coyoacan · 14/02/2015 17:29

Shocked at people justifying the wholesale slaughter of a civilian population albeit to win a war.

As for Cat, my mother also lived through the war and lost loved ones. She was not some offbeat radical in believing it was a war crime, it was a matter of great shame.

lem73 · 14/02/2015 17:36

Surely WW2 is a brilliant topic to get kids into history. It has had a direct impact on their lives. What is deemed acceptable for primary school?

TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 17:38

I assume you include all the babies and children killed in Dresden in your lack of sympathy?

Why do you think I should single them out for special consideration?

Among all the other children that were murdered?

Too wrongs may not make a right, but a least one wrong stopped a greater, and more insidious wrong.

hijk · 14/02/2015 17:40

so you agree the children of Dresden were murdered, and you presumably agree murder is a crime!

ChristyMooreRocks · 14/02/2015 17:40

Of course Dresden was a war crime. Just like the numerous other war crimes that were committed at that time. They were all horrific.

But given the context within which Dresden took place, doesn't it feel a bit, I don't know, futile to now be arguing about whether it was strictly 'a war crime' or not?

Surely energies would be better put into preserving the memories of all the innocents on all sides who died in WW2, and working towards ensuring that that kind of shit never happens again?

SlaggyIsland · 14/02/2015 17:42

TheCat I'm not asking you to single them out for special consideration. Compassion and an acknowledgement that killing them was a wrong and criminal act will do.

TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 17:46

No I believe the children murdered by the Nazis were murdered, as they were defenceless. Click the link in my previous post.

The women and children at Dresden were defended, and protected by the Third Reich - and it did them no good at all.

Why had Germany not surrendered? If these children were so important?

springlamb · 14/02/2015 17:48

My mother spent the war in Bermondsey, aged 9-15. She was there when the docks were bombed and told horrific tales of them all running for their lives. She never slept with her feet inside the bed again, always hanging out the side ready to jump up and run, for the next 49 years till she died.
All her life she had severe misgivings over Dresden and what had been done there. She used to cringe if it was discussed.

hijk · 14/02/2015 17:51

Thecat, you make about as much sense as ISIS

TheCatAteMyTaxReturn · 14/02/2015 17:59

hijk

Just think about what I said.

Why had Germany not surrendered? If these children, and all the other fragile, vulnerable human beings in Dresden and all over Germany, all over Europe were so important?

What was so much more important to the Germans than these children's lives?

So much they were prepared put them in harms way?

lem73 · 14/02/2015 18:01

Christy that is spot on and another reason why WW2 should be taught in schools.

SugarPlumTree · 14/02/2015 18:09

Thank you for clarifying that TheCat. Sorry for asking but it did sound as if you were talking about the entire population rather than a minority as you later explained.