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.

Mol. That is appalling what happened within your own family and I am in awe of the bravery of your family and I agree with them that Dresden was an abhorrence, but not that it was a war crime. To be a crime you would need to prosecute the perpetrators. Would Churchill and Harris be in the dock? Dresden was part of a whole. It cannot be taken out of context. It was no more and no les abhorrent than the bombings of London, the holocaust, the death marches and shooting an innocent man in the back of the head. All those wrongs don't make any rights and most importantly it doesn't make one wrong stand out as worse than others.

If I choose to call it fucking war it's because all wars are to me personally so disgusting and inhumane, so evil and overwhelming, that 'fucking war' actually sums up the horror for me, as I don't actually swear often.

Dreamingbohemian:
it is simply delusional to say people don't know about what the Nazis did and only concentrate on the Russians. Holocaust education has hugely expanded in recent decades (I know because I used to work in it) and most of these efforts do include what the Nazis did to non-Jewish populations, especially the Poles. Your average person will know far more about Nazi genocides than about Soviet targeted killings and deportations in Poland.
You mention the Holocaust and the focus on Polish deaths, when I am talking about the murder of 17 million Soviet citizens by exposure and man made famine, all part of the German 'Hunger Plan'. To try to get a word in edgeways on the subject of Soviet civilian death is apparently a sign that I have fallen victim to RT 'propaganda'. In the popular consciousness on the subject of WW2 the fate of the millions of Soviet citizens at the hands of the Nazis gets glossed over, and if mentioned at all is usually contrasted favourably with the total of Soviet deaths attributable to Stalin. I am not talking about formal education here, or the 'establishment' version of history. I am talking about prejudice and how it affects popular perception of historical events.

to say that anyone talking about Soviet war crimes has some kind of hidden neo-con agenda is ridiculous and, quite frankly, the kind of thing they do say on RT
Get out there and google some 'leading' search terms such as Red Army crimes, rape of German women, eastern front May 1945, etc. I have already mentioned a website called germanvictims. There are many others of that ilk. There is nothing hidden about the neo-con agenda. What do you think animates the right wing parties and paramilitary groups currently flourishing in eastern Europe? Where do you think the myths about Allied experimentation on firestorms come from, and in whose interest is the promulgation of the lie that the RAF and USAF acted on the orders of Stalin?

The difference with the post-WW2 treaties is that they were signed by many more states and became customary law binding on everyone in the world, whether they sign the treaty or not, and also that they are embedded in a UN system with at least some capacity for enforcement.
Yes indeed, Botswana, Ireland, Ecuador, Liechtenstein, The Maldives, etc., etc., have all signed.. It makes no difference, and neither quite frankly does the UN. If a law isn't enforceable (and it is not) then it is not worth the paper it is written on. The laws on burglary are for the most part enforceable, or enforceable to an acceptable degree. (To the great shame of our society the laws on rape are not, as many women are aware.)

MoanCollins I think you'll find it's illegal under international law but not a war crime. Hence my point about language. But frankly arguing about semantics is completely beside the point.

hijk it's reassuring that people brought up by survivors like us can be decent in this face of this stuff, presumably because they were too.

SabrinaMulhollandJones:
Giving so much weight to Dresden, and not seeing it in the context of all the other atrocities of the war is dangerous - it does give rise to revisionist historians like the ghastly David Irving, who use it to say the allies were worse than the Nazis and such like.

YYY to this.

Rjae, you are doing it again, you are saying it was not a crime because all these other things happened too.

Whatever else happened is irrelevant, a crime is a crime, is a crime, whether it happened in isolation, or is one of many.

You just try that one on a judge. I'm not guilty m'lord, because actually quite a few other people around me have also committed assault and battery, so I was thought I could too.

It wouldn't work.

in the face of , not in this face - typing too fast, but some of the comments are grim.

I guess your last post OP, shows how we all have a tendency to read things how we want them to be.

My feelings after reading the thread is that the majority of posts are saying YABU, the opposite to how you feel about the thread.

I think there's a lesson in that for all of us.

hijk, your posts ARE utterly inhuman. On a par with the drivel we get from ISIS. Both equally psychopathic.

Just can't stop yourself, can you?

Hijk. I just wonder if your grandmother were here to answer this question ....if Dresden had stopped the war and forced the surrender of the Germans and ended the war sooner (which was the intention) thousands of Jews in the death camps would have been saved because (as I'm sure you know) the killing machine went into overdrive to get rid of as much as the evidence of their crimes in the last weeks of the war......would she have supported the bombing?

Since when was agreeing with a majority position a sign of being right?

Sabrina I'm simply being precise. War crime is very specific. How trivial though, arguing about definition. Jeez. You're lucky to have the privilege.

Churchill obviously can't go in the dock as he's dead. If he was alive then yes, maybe he should. You don't get to break laws just because someone else did something worse or equally bad. Why would something that you say is so abhorrent not be a crime just because Churchill was one of the perpetrators? What is so amazing about Churchill that he couldn't possibly be put in the dock for the unnecessary killing of thousands of children. All too often western leaders get away with their war crimes (Blair etc.) but they shouldn't.

Molio, this whole thread is an attempt to redefine an event that was never officially designated a war crime.

Rjae, if sinking Australia would have saved the famine victims in Ethiopia in the 80s..... if ,if, if, if,

Dresden wasn't ever going to stop the war

Dresden wasn't ever going to force the surrender of the Germans

Dresden wasn't ever going to save anyone in the death camps

Committing mass murder against innocent civilians is never going to be supported by anyone civilised anywhere.

Well, I wouldn't say your argument is based on "far superior logic and reasoning." Nor have you proven that YANBU. Rather the opposite, IMO.

My outrage was a German citizen saying in the same breath, we started the war (which killed millions) but I'll sling a bit of mud at the people who defeated us as part of a revisionist campaign which will deflect attention from the horrors we perpetrated on Europe.

Is that what happened? I haven't heard this particular individual's interview. If that was his intention, then shame on him. However, if he was simply pointing out that the Dresden bombing was an atrocity, he's completely right.

It does not minimise the sufferings of the victims of the Nazis to acknowledge that the Allies also committed war crimes. Of course, as I stated above, it is important to recognise the differences in scale and degree of the atrocities committed on all sides. I certainly do not believe in any kind of moral equivalency between the Axis powers and the Allies. But it is historically inaccurate and IMO morally repellent to pretend that the Allies always behaved with the purest of motives and the best of intentions. War brings out the beast in all of us. And that, obviously, is one reason we should avoid waging war whenever possible. If we can't even learn the lessons of our own past actions, we may be doomed to repeat them over and over again (as the last decade or so has, alas, shown all too clearly).

Can I also point out to moli that you really need to read a whole thread to comment on it with any real understanding of the arguments made. You lose a lot of credibility unfortunately. I've not read and certainly not put anywhere that the people of Dresden deserved to die. That's appalling and I disagree if anyone has put such a thing.

All the acts of wars are terrible. I just don't think you can pull something up that was no worse than others and call it a war crime after such a long time.

Nothing is being redefined, and official designation does not define what is and isn't a war crime.

A murder is a murder, whether or not the perpetrator gets away with it.

Moli, no of course you don't and no of course you haven't lost any credibility. That is just a cheap, meaningless shot from someone who really has no other shots left.

you are as entitled to comment of the op as anyone else, and I can tell you, you have not missed anything by missing out the intervening 17 pages.

math this whole thread is an attempt to redefine an event that was never officially designated a war crime

And Nazi/Italian/Japanese bombing of helpless civilians wasn't designated a war crime, either.

Revisionism, it's called. The opposite side of the coin to Holocaust denialism.

'We were just as bad as they were!'

No. No, we weren't

OFGS- Molio, why not look it up?

Germany's annexation and invasions are listed as War crimes by the Hague You know, the ones who define such things. If that's not a war crime, then I don't know what is. Dresden is not there.

Like I said, I consider all bombings of civilians morally war crimes - but I don't see why Dresden should be singled out. Yes it was horrific - the war was horrific. It only is singled out due to the ramblings of Nazi apologists and revisionist historians with very dubious agendas.

Hijk.

How do you know that? It was the intention, but didn't succeed.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the same intention and did.

Do you seriously believe that war planning and operation is some fine art where 2+2 = 4 and is never wrong?

I've continually say Dresden was a tragedy and an atrocity but not a crime because we can't rewrite history. War absolutely brings out the worst in people but also the best in people. To condemn men who thought they were doing their part to end a horrendous war that was not of their making is unfair.

because of the people I've met, the studying I've done, the places I've travelled to, the history I have read, the sources I have investigated. I told you, I met some of the people involved, back in the 80s when I was a sixthformer. They used to take teenagers on tours and exchanges, teens from Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc included. (You are wrong, by the way, to lump Hiroshima and Nagasaki together)

Dresden was never going to be of any significance militarily. The bombing was intended to suffocate families in their shelters. Nothing else, that is what is was for.

I will read the thread when I can OP, but it's long and moving quickly. My comment stood on its own, since I wasn't responding. I don't understand your thing about people deserving to die. That's not anything generated by me.

I guess my view is just leave the old man alone and understand that he might be using hyperbole because he was directly affected? It's just so offensive for our generation not to allow for that, when they've not been affected. People like myself and hijk seem far more empathetic than those totally divorced, even though we're second generation, and even though undeniably a shadow is passed down.

The enduring myth of Dresden is the final victory in the only war the Nazis ever won.

The propaganda war.

The men I met certainly did not think they were doing their part to put an end t a horrendous war

They thought they were taking part in an experiment to see if it was possible to suffocate a whole city.