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.

Totally hideous I agree. No less hideous than bombing civilians in London in the blitzkrieg long before Dresden. Gassing Jews in concentration camps. Starving the citizens of Leningrad.

Agree 2 wrongs don't make a right, but it's not a war crime.

Wouldn't it be lovely if countries could go to war and no one gets killed and injured unless they signed up to join the army/navy/airforce and no civilians ever got caught up in the nastiness. Sadly, civilians get killed on both sides.

I think Hiroshima was a war crime.

windchime that's disgusting. I take it you're okay with an Iraqi killing you and yours then? Eye for an eye and all that....

I don't think the playground 'they started it' counts when you're talking war crimes.

Yes the holocaust and bombing of British civilians were war crimes. However, that doesn't take away the atrocity of firebombing a city, which is also a war crime.

Horrific things were done during ww2. By both sides, maybe more so by one than the other but both a guilty of terrible death and casualties of civilians.

Yep, Dresden was a war crime. Even Churchill thought they had gone too far.

35,000 civilians were killed and it was probably far more deadly than necessary.

I remember reading a British pilot who was involved talking about how distressing even some of the crews found it. He kept seeing what he thought were pieces of wood upright in the street burning like matchsticks.

After a while he realised they were people burning where they had died.

Having read On the Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald I would be inclined to agree with him.

25000 people died in Dresden, 28000 in London, 1.5 million in Leningrad. All horrific, all criminal, but I think that a line needs to drawn under it rather than engaging in bickering about who had the toughest time.

KittyandTea, when you're talking about 'horrific things happening on both sides'. Perhaps that might apply to Russia on 'our side', but Britain stuck by international laws and overwhelmingly behaved ourselves well. Which is part of the reason why Dresden sticks out as such a glaring mistake.

It was a mistake to attack so hard and kill so many civilians. We did what we had to in the war to defeat the Nazi's, but I don't think that stops us from admitting that we went to far with Dresden and made a mistake.

So. Hiroshima was also a war crime?

It ended the war.

It ultimately saved millions of lives of Japanese and allied groups and civilians.

It's an interesting philosophical argument. Kill x people to save xxx others?
Dresden didn't end the war and didn't break the spirit of the German people I know, but the people who ordered the bombing weren't to know this.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

But you need to educate yourself about what happened in Dresden. It was a war crime. Dresden wasn't flattened for military reasons but for revenge, killing 25000 civilians to prove a point.

It's not goodies versus baddies, you know? There were horrific crimes on both sides.

Churchill's response to pictures of the destruction was 'Are we beasts?'

Wouldn't it be lovely if countries could go to war and no one gets killed and injured unless they signed up to join the army/navy/airforce and no civilians ever got caught up in the nastiness. Sadly, civilians get killed on both sides.

A significant difference is the deliberate targeting of civilians, rather than military targets.

Which was the turn Allied bombing took towards the end of the war, emulating the Germans' efforts. Not just Dresden, either - Hamburg, Pforzheim and others.

YABU it was a war crime. Both sides of a war can commit war crimes, regardless of how the war came to be in the first place.

I agree that each of these atrocities should be viewed in isolation - saying "it was OK because what they did was worse" isn't valid.

I was just watching the Channel 4 news where they had a former bomber saying they had no idea at the time that the houses in Dresden were made from wood - Dresden is obviously something he's struggled to live with ever since.

Re Germans wholeheartedly supporting Hitler - at the last democratic election Hitler's party did not gain a majority.

isn't it all about semantics i.e. what is the technical classification for war crime? It is not registered as such but in any other arena it is a horrific crime - the barbaric murder of all those civilians, just because they happen to be the enemy, for little strategic gain. That is a crime.

In the attached www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/13 the UK essentially classifies it as a crime committed by Germany - But one has a feeling that had Germany won the definition might be a little different.

in your OP you describe the blitz as a war crime - I fail to see how you can class that as a war crime but not Dresden.

I think Churchill also described bit as an act of terror. So it was a war crime, but the difference was the British leadership immediately recognised it as wrong and didn't do it again. Which wasn't really an approach the Nazis took to anything.

It wasn't a war crime. It wasn't done for revenge, but for military reasons. Reasons which had become skewed and polluted during a war which saw carpet bombings of cities become the norm.

Either all instances of carpet bombing were war crimes or they were not. Dresden doesn't become a war crime because more people died.

Rjae, as far as Hiroshima goes, there is an extremely strong argument that it was necessary because the Japanese viewed their Emperor as an infallible God and as a result would never surrender as they did not believe they could lose. It needed something cataclysmic and apocalytic to get them to surrender. Otherwise the war could have been dragged out for decades in the Pacific.

But it's very difficult to argue that Dresden was necessary in the same way. We would probably have won the war without it and it probably didn't shorten the war significantly in a way which would have saved more lives in the long term. Hiroshimi did.

It was all bloody awful, on all sides.

It could have been prevented. Germany were not supposed to have the military means that they did due to agreements made in the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler could have been stopped before he got started if the League of Nations had done their job in the first place.

Genuine question. Do you believe all Germans were Nazis? That they all voted for Hitler?

Of course the British were the "goodies" in this war, doesn't mean they didn't make mistakes.

Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. Whichever side did it.