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.

ARoomWithoutAView it is that simple. War isn't a civilized game that people play. It's hell and it should be the very last option we ever consider. It's the option we chose when every single other option is incapable of working. And it means that anything is allowed. If you feel that targeting civilians will assist your war effort, then that's fair enough. That's what war means. And if you don't like it, then don't go to war. Targeting civilians is a completely valid tactic in war. War is hell, not some civilized game with rules. People who think there are rules in war are to be admired for their principles but ultimately they are naive and have no concept of reality.

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.

I know, I do agree. The unfortunate flip side to that story was the number of Nazi War criminals that got away with it - and went on to live normal lives. Of which there were many - some have been caught as old men. Such was the chaos of the end of the war.

I remember having a discussion with my Dad about this - a newspaper headline was 'man of 88 accused of nazi war crimes" and a discussion on whether he should be tried at that age, or some such. Dad said - absolutely he should be tried. I want these people t know that eventually their crimes will catch with up with them. Sadly so many of them got away with it Mengele for eaxample

Dad said also, I hope it stands as a warning to all those that might commit such crimes - it will catch up with you.

He was a good man, my dad.

dont be ridiculous Burke1

I don't think that Burke said something ridiculous. I was in the WRNS and it's drummed into you what you are expected, and absolutely must do if you have to engage in a conflict.
It was a long time ago - over 30 years but I think it is the same now.
You do as you are told.
The Services would be pointless otherwise.

I wonder if you watch too many gung-ho war films Burke.
There are billions of people collectively signed up to the Geneva Convention, and whilst it may not stop all wars, it most certainly is a tangible set of rules that apply in different circumstances and which bind nations and their individual men and women to specific behaviour in times of war. You do a discredit to service personnel who honour those rules in times of great stress. If you had been involved in a conflict you would know those rules inside out before leaving these shores. Rules get broken, really they do, but to suggest that any action is fair in war, such as the deliberate targeting of civilians as a tactic suggests to me considerable naivety. It is because certain actions are not fair that we have these rules. Whether they are respected and followed is a completely different point, but you don't seem to understand the distinction. I would not want you to fight a war on my behalf.

mathanxiety I disagree to an extent. I think there may be some very complicated psychology regarding your husband's aunt, her view of her brothers, your view of her and them. But I don't think anyone rational could accept an all good or all bad interpretation. Nothing about the human condition is going to be that simple.

I think you're minimising the humanity shown across groups when you use the phrase 'off the wall extraordinary'. The new Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw has archives with multiple stories of those who risked their lives in helping Jews. There were also Jewish people who risked their own lives purely altruistically. I can't believe it was 'off the wall extraordinary' when I've read so many accounts of help given for no personal gain, and of mutual help. When the Russians invaded from the east my grandfather was hidden by a Jewish couple, which undoubtedly saved his life. When the Germans invaded from the west, he in turn hid the Jewish couple and later smuggled their children from Poland. These stories are everywhere, if you look for them and are receptive. Surely it's important to look for the redeeming stories in war, not just the blanket condemnations?

[url]www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/dresden-bombing-70-years-on-a-survivor-recalls-the-horror-he-witnessed-in-the-german-city-10042770.html[/url]

I haven't read through the whole thread yet, but I think this British rifleman who was there, would say YABU, he says it's a war crime as do I.

I can't click on your link, ChemicalMummy - but I would totally understand anyone there thinking it was a war crime, just as anyone who had experienced the London Blitz, or anyone else experiencing civilian area bombings, thinking that was a war crime.

We either say all civilian bombing (ie. bombing cities of your enemy) is a war crime or we don't. We can't single out civilian bombings as some are not ok, some are not.

Indeed SabrinaMulholland, and some western governments were quick to hail the overthrow of an unpopular but nevertheless elected government in Ukraine by groups including Right Sector. (Note insignia).

'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?'
Molio, my German aunt was a nurse and arrived in Ireland with a group of German refugee children right after the war. She grew up in Dusseldorf, joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and thought Hitler was what Germany needed. During the war she completed her nursing studies and started work in a hospital.

Her brothers came home on leave from their service from time to time, first from France and then from the east. They were in uniform from at least 1940 to the bitter end in 1945, suffering the odd injury, getting patched up and returning. Despite hearing from them some of what war entailed, she and her family had hoped for German victory. Once final defeat came and the full scale of the horrors was revealed, she did a lot of soul searching and accepted the proposition that those who contributed were responsible, herself included, as an adult German citizen. She felt that the calamity that befell Germany as well as the horrors visited upon the rest of Europe were the responsibility of her generation and her parents' generation, and much as she loved her family and uncomfortable though it made her feel, that included herself and her own parents and her brothers and their friends and comrades. For her, it wasn't a matter of 'the Germans' in the abstract waging war.

She was also honest enough to acknowledge that if Germany had won, she would not have done the soul searching or felt the guilt she felt. I had a lot of respect for my aunt and her honesty. I also share her feeling that Germans as 'individuals that made up a collective entity' were responsible.

I think the only complicated psychology here is the idea that it is important to emphasise the tiny examples of goodness that we know of. I think doing so paints a far rosier picture of what went on, and I wonder why anyone feels the need to do this while at the same time fulminating against the bombing of Dresden.

Six million Jews that we know were killed in camps received no help from anybody, and there were maybe two million more murdered in the USSR in cities, towns and villages. A tiny few by comparison, a drop in the ocean, were saved. The stories are pitifully few and far between, not 'everywhere'.

I see no point in kidding ourselves that there were people of good will around every corner. It only reinforces the false idea that 'the Nazis' were a 'regime' of 'other people'.

ARoomWithoutAView I think YOU are the one who has been watching too many films and it has clearly distorted your view of reality. You have been deluded into thinking that war is a game with a red team, a blue team, and a referee to decide on fair play. It isn't, war is simply the word we use to describe the point where we are willing to do anything and everything to ensure the destruction of the other person. That includes targeting civilians. If you aren't willing to go to those lengths, then you do not need to declare war.

I always find it funny when people who have no idea what they are talking about discuss "rules" of war. There are no rules. If you declare war, you are telling the enemy that there are no rules, and that you are going to use physical force to impose your will upon them. If everyone who voted in favour of war was required to fight in the war they voted for we would have had peace since WW2. The fact that morons who never need to put themselves in harms way, but who have the power to put the military to war are the reason we've had so much conflict. They have no clue about what war is, and talking about "rules" of war emphasizes how completely stupid they are.

Sabrina, my parents were of the same idea wrt war crimes and the continued efforts to bring criminals to justice -- the people they killed are still dead, was their reasoning.

ARoomWithAView, if Germany had won, then Churchill would have been tried as a war criminal and there would have been nobody around to remember the victims whose murderers were tried at Nuremberg. Nuremberg and other trials in the immediate postwar period only saw some of the most egregious actors tried and sentenced, with some escaping. As our understanding of the Holocaust has deepened, we now see people such as Oskar Groening, 93, the 'accountant of Auschwitz' facing trial this year for his role.

This is not to say that right vs wrong or the idea of justice are subjective, but rather to point out that the concept of eventual recourse to justice that is implicit in the idea of rules of war depends completely on the right side winning. In other words, it is really important to win wars.

Burke1 what's your take on the Geneva Convention then? Or the fact that people can and do get prosecuted in the Hague for war crimes?
Saying basically that all bets are off in war is a hideous thought. That opens the way to mass slaughter of civilians, mass rapes, another Holocaust... think about it.

We are only able to have lofty ideals and talk of rules of war in the abstract because none of use a have lived through a war of savagery and attrition which was World War Two.

Dresden seen in isolation was horrific, but seen as a tiny part of the picture, invasion of many countries, murder of the civilian population, thousands starved to death in Leningrad, millions in concentration camps, bombing of british cities etc it has no major significance.

It was done to destroy morale, to destroy factories and to end the war quicker. Whether it succeeded or not is debatable but the people making this decision were acting from desperation and exhaustion. Britain was crippled financially waging this war, a debt finally paid off just 15 years ago.

If the Germans had been able to manufacture more V1 and 2 rockets and use them the war could have dragged on far longer and thousands more civilians killed in this country and Europe.

I agree that in war the rules become less important and I doubt very much if Londoners awaiting the next V1 falling on them would have regarded Dresden a war crime. We can't judge yesterday by the standards of today. We can learn from history and not repeat it but we can't rewrite it.

Slaggyisland. What you are describing mass slaughter of civilians, mass rapes, another Holocaust. is what the Germans did.

Can you seriously say that one 'team' doesn't have to play by the rules and the other 'team' does?

The allies tried initially to play by the rules, but not the Germans who were bombing british cities in 1940. It took the allies 4 long years to decide to throw away the rule book and fight dirty.

Two wrongs don't make a right, certainly, but the allies at least tried for a long time to do the right thing. Dresden occurred because they saw blanket bombing as one way of putting an end to 6 years of horror. Dresden and the like was the gloves coming off and maybe the sights seen in the concentration camps affected this decision.

Can you seriously say that one 'team' doesn't have to play by the rules and the other 'team' does?

If you descend to the level of your enemy then you are in danger of becoming as bad as them.

Area bombing was approved in 1942. Radar and night bombing missions made this possible. Technology was the only barrier to the policy and as soon as problems were overcome, night raids on cities were accomplished.

Something of the horrors of the camps was known long before the liberation of Auschwitz, at least to governments. Soldiers were stunned, but the US government knew of Auschwitz because the Polish resistance smuggled out information, and other camps were known too, and what went on in them.

The gloves had been off since the introduction of mustard gas back in WW1.

A lot of high horses here. The combined allied forces (including the Russians who paid the highest death toll by far) defeated the Nazi force. However, the Nazis power posed an obvious threat to them that needed to be stopped, certainly to the European powers. The British were not so averse to Fascism itself. They helped the Fascists who had worked with the Nazis in Greece. Imagine if the British had helped the German collaborators and the Petain Government to decimate the Resistance in France after the war so they could take power. This is exactly what they did in Greece. They had arrived after the Greek resistance had successfully liberated their own county.

"In France or Italy, if you fought the Nazis, you were respected in society after the war, regardless of ideology. In Greece, you found yourself fighting – or imprisoned and tortured by – the people who had collaborated with the Nazis, on British orders. There has never been a reckoning with that crime, and much of what is happening in Greece now is the result of not coming to terms with the past.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret

It is interesting how many posters seem to equivocate about the right and wrong of the indiscriminate mass killings involved in Dresden and insinuate they were deserving of it by attributing a collective guilt to them for Germany's military crimes, so tough really. Would you really want that right back at you?

Of course, some views seem to be that is all is fair in war. In that case, tell it like it is as the indiscriminate killing of men, women, children and babies and don't try to dress it up as noble. I take the point about the Nazi atrocities being horrific. However, is a baby killed by the bombing of Dresden somehow less worthy of being regarded as a victim of a war crime?

Yes, we need to have rules and should strive to abide by them but when the shit hits the fan - I'd imagine all rules are off. This is war and survival. If your enemy is playing dirty - would people really rather lose but say they played fairly?

Afterwards in the cold light of day is a different matter.

Dresden was horrible, the rape of women in Berlin by the Russians was horrible. My sympathies for those in concentration camps and invaded and destroyed countries does come higher up in the horror scale.

If you think the bombing of Dresden was a legitimate act of war and had value as it hastened the end of the war then I respect your argument, even though I disagree with it.

However, if you think bombing Dresden was okay as the German people had it coming or they started it then you are on very dangerous moral ground.

What crimes as a British person might we be held accountable for?

To the OP: Yes, YABU to be outraged at someone having the opinion that Dresden was a war crime. Horrible things happen in any war, and some of those things do stray into war crime territory. On all sides.

If you descend to the level of your enemy then you are in danger of becoming as bad as them

Can you seriously believe anyone in living history behaved as badly as Germany in WW2 on the scale and horror it perpetrated on civilians ?

No one has to the best of my knowledge dressed Dresden up a 'noble'. It was a horrifying act of war.

I think the German people were swept along on a tide of national socialism and followed a charismatic leader over the edge of a precipice. That doesn't make them responsible but it does make them complicit. The persecution of the Jews came long before the war and the writing was on the wall. They should have turned back then but they didn't. Collective madness?

As for my outrage. I think the fact that a German voiced this belief for me showed denial of their guilt. If we choose to believe its a war crime that's our prerogative but the perpetrators of the War have no right to single one act out of 6 years of their barbarism and expect apologies from a country who lost thousands of their citizens fighting them.

of course Dresden was a 'war crime' but then the whole thing was fucking criminal.
The war was over and there were women and children screaming and burning to death in cellars.

Every time I read the thread title I can't get over the German president being described as an Elderly German

Sunny RTFT before you make ignorant comments.

The ex president is old + German = elderly German

I was actually unaware he was the ex president which makes it even more shameful that he uttered this comment.