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.

Molio it wasn't personal towards your family member - it was a very general question about the war, as has been explained. I'm aware of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the populations it invaded/occupied. That's what the Allies were fighting against after all - the Nazis.

Just repeated for molio, as she seems to think I'm personally insulting her/her family. The allies were fighting precisely to stop that Nazi knock on the door that your family member got.

And once again for the question - not aimed at anyone personally - but about the reaction to the Nazi policy of expansionism in general:

I think it's a good question. It's a good question because it teases out difficult concepts for those (like me) who are against war - but if you're against war - what to do in the face of Hitler's actions? Do you, like France open your doors to occupation, and atrocities against your population - or do you fight, like Churchill?

Ok thanks Sabrina, it's fine. A few cross posts. When I take the students to Auschwitz I see the window of the room where the knock came, as it's opposite the place we stay, so it gets pretty close. Perhaps I over-reacted. Anyhow I don't want to hijack the thread. Let's move on.

It must have been an awful thing for your family to have experienced/lived through, molio.

For you, and your family that lived through the atrocities, molio

I think what I feel is summed up above tbh.

I think it's been enormously enlightening to start this thread. I've learned a huge amount. Maybe other people have. I don't know but I hope so. It's a very emotive subject and I think that's the problem. Emotions get in the way of logical thinking. Something Churchill didn't allow himself to experience most of the time, although he clearly did re Dresden even though it didn't deflect him.

No worse than so many non Jewish families there at the time and a lot less worse than many Jewish families I guess.

Some German POWs on the Eastern Front were not released until the mid 1950s.

Afaik, no German POWs were released until the 1950s. Many died in captivity in Russia. One who was released was a brother of my German aunt, and another of her brothers died.

And you know what, they deserved what they got.

German POWs were used in rebuilding the many utterly destroyed cities, railways, bridges and roads of Russia. This was necessary because of the extraordinarily high loss of men suffered by the Soviet Union (including 2.5-3m Soviet POWs killed in captivity) and because many parts of the USSR were left almost without a stone upon a stone.

But you could only say that if they as individuals did something properly culpable mathanxiety. Surely you can't hold them responsible purely as a collective thing? Where would your aunt fit in that?

The Pianist - the harrowing film of the story of Polish holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman was helped by a German Officer at the end of the war - he brought him food and kept him alive until liberation.

Despite Szpilman's attempts to find him after the war, and his saving a jew during the war may well have saved him, the German Officer died in a Russian concentration camp in 1952.

Harsh retributions.

Am I right that these are inlaws too mathanxiety? Otherwise surely one of your parents would be held in the same regard too? Your judgement on the face of it does sound incredibly harsh.

Mathanxiety, I agree.

It's a bit insulting to suggest that people with different opinions are blinkered or allowing emotion to get in the way of logical thinking. It is entirely possible to view the same evidence and reach different conclusions. Based on everything that I have read, the Dresden bombing did not achieve any significant military objectives and caused considerable (and avoidable) loss of innocent civilian lives. That is why I view it as a war crime.

It didn't achieve any significant military objectives on its own, but as part of an overall strategy, maybe did?

Also at the time it's was presumably hoped it would end the war sooner, therefore it might have achieved a significant military objective.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but not available when planning military strategies which were aimed at crushing the German war machine before they could play their final card and launch missiles (V1/2) on us. The allies after all did not know how many they had available or the tonnage of explosives.

Crystal balls and hindsight were in short supply in 1944.

I think what mathanxiety said earlier - about it becoming a war of attrition in just the same way as WWI is all too true. Sadly.

Totally agree. Although the allies 'won' the war, there were no winners.

Can anyone really answer this question? We would have to be in the minds of those who made the decision to know whether it was made within the constraints of what is permissible in war or not. Either way, a terrible, terrible thing. One certainty is that each side in a war will commit war crimes at some level.

The Japanese regard the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a crime against humanity. In all cities where is is massive bombing and a terrible loss of life is tragic. However the leaders of Germany and Japan are the real war criminals.

ARoomWithoutAView anything is permissible in war, there is no such thing as rules. Rules and regulations are for peacetime when you can talk diplomacy with the other person. War means I'm going to win and I'm going to do anything I consider necessary to achieve that. If you aren't prepared to wage all out savagery and war against your enemy then you shouldn't be at war. It is literally that simple.

I am tempted to say to people that say Dresden was a war crime (in isolation), that the allies were fighting the people that did Based on fact.

I know that's simplistic - but it is true. And they would have done that to the British jews, homosexuals, communists, intellectuals, political dissidents too. It's what they did to countries they occupied.

By the time Dresden was carried out - Auschwitz had already been liberated. We knew what the Nazis were doing. Greater good?

Meant to show this one:

Maybe the best thing we can all do is to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Burke1
No it is not that simple.
Even Hollywood has stopped that kind of portrayal.
There are Rules. They were created in peacetime to prevent atrocities in war time, and if those atrocities are carried out then the Rules serve as a framework to bring people to trial. Not that it is always possible to do that for many reasons. I find your post has more in common with a terrorists view than anything else.

Yes, that would be good. Except it already has happened again. Yugaslavia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Dhafur.

And we're about to vote UKIP in? (Hopefully not- but UKIP should not have a single vote, not a single look in to British politics).

Marine le Pen?

I don't think the example of one officer who helped a Jew means the rest of them were saints. The reason this officer and this story stands out is that it was off-the-wall extraordinary.

My German aunt was under no misapprehensions as to what her brothers in the Wehrmacht had done in the east. Up to fairly recently it was popularly believed that there were 'good' and 'bad' Germans on the eastern front, the honest, soldierly Wehrmacht and the brutal SS. My aunt did not share this misperception.

Very true that nobody knew how many rockets the Nazis had or the effect they would have on morale east or west. Even today the extent of German work on missiles and jets continues to be uncovered. An unknown and unsuspected underground missile factory, a part of the Gusen camp factory complex, was recently unearthed near Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria. It was connected to the facility where the first operational German jet fighter, the Messerschmitt 262, was manufactured (by slave labour under appalling conditions).

Bombing of ground level factories forced the German rocket and jet factories underground and slowed down manufacture of weapons that could have made a big difference.