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.

what are you talking about? what 'ignorant' comments did I make? Please tell me.

The war hadn't ended.

And unless the allies had crystal balls they wouldn't know this in the face of hitlers 'fight to the last man' policy.

They also had rockets that could be launched onto the south of England. The allies did not know then the numbers or the full capabilities of these at the time. I'm sure if the allies had known how near collapse Germany had been they wouldn't have bombed Dresden, but there you go again. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

it was within sight of the end of the war, rjae even if the papers had not been signed. There is no need to be that rude to someone posting now is there?
My comments were not 'ignorant' thank you any more than yours are.
Actually I think the Allies might well have known how close the end was.
Please do not just shout that I am 'ignorant' as I am as entitled to an opinion as much as anyone is. And after all, that is all it is, opinion.

mathanxiety I think the psychology therefore couldn't be simpler on both sides. You appear to be influenced by your German aunt whereas I'm influenced by my Polish father who looked for good where he could even though he was no pushover. They came at the war from very different angles, obviously. I can see exactly why survivors might try to hang on to the good - and there clearly was plenty - whereas that wouldn't fit with your aunt's mind set of guilt. That's not painting a rosy picture of war, it's simply acknowledging the good in other human beings under the extreme circumstances of war.

I'm not 'fulminating', incidentally - that's not the appropriate word. Being highly critical is one thing, 'fulminating against' is another, and the word is hyperbolic.

Sorry, haven't read the thread but Op, YABU. In my opinion Dresden was a war crime and something we should be totally ashamed of. Just because we were at war does not justify the level of inhumanity shown.

Sorry, but it is very tiresome when someone makes inaccurate statements and can't be bothered to read the whole thread. There have been many counter arguments to your statement made which will inform you of the greater picture and the context of the bombings.

What you 'think' the allies knew is irrelevant. Only they knew what they knew. Only they could weigh up the risks of further death and destructions. You need to RTT to learn more.

Everyone is welcome to their opinion, but if you are offering one up it should be with full knowledge of the facts as presented by many other people before you.

if you think that you have 'full knowledge of the facts' Rjae, you are sadly deluded. You also seem to find it hard to be civil.

I love it when people say I haven't read the thread but ..........

And offer an opinion based on deep ignorance of the vast issues that have been discussed at length within the thread they can't be bothered to read.

When it starts going round in circles then I have work to do!

I have RTFT and still would say the same as happywanderingwithdog, as do other posters on the thread.

well I have studied WW2 at uni and school as much as the next person.
you still sound deluded btw, with your "I have work to do" - do get a grip dear.

He is the current president of Germany.

It doesn't make you sound very well informed to call him an elderly German.

Would you describe Obama as a black American?

Molio, I agree with you about how people sometimes do amazingly good things in terrible circumstances, and how people seem driven to remember those things: I have heard a lot of stories of 'the good Japanese' ('They brought us food... they warned us of troops on the rampage... he let me stay in Singapore where I was safe and did not send me back... he told my mother to hide us so we would not be raped.')

As for the whole 'rules of war' debate... Burke1 has now brought this up twice. I said the first time that there are rules which some combatants try to stick to. Other posters have said it this time. Even in the English Civil War there were 'rules of war' (the use of 'scrap' bullets, for example, was regarded as a breach of them: such bullets exploded on impact like dumdum bullets do).

Oh FFS, this thread is...

XKCD: Duty Calls

...in excelsis...

I give up.

Dresden was NOT a war crime in 1945.

Not posting any more.

SlaggyIsland of course it opens the way for slaughter of civilians, rapes, holocausts etc. That's what war is, or at least has the potential to be. By going to war you've basically moved past resolving a problem any other way, you've said that "Might is right" and you're now going to use all of your might to impose your will upon another country. If you then start talking about "rules" while declaring your intent to kill other people until they do as you say, it's rather silly. Pick one. Going to war means you've said that you are no longer capable of respecting rules - Like not killing other people, invading another country - If you are still following rules then you clearly aren't in a position where you need to go to war.

The Hague court is a complete farce, it's true purpose is simply to punish people who lost a war. If the Nazis had beaten us our people would've been punished for Nazi-defined "war crimes", we'd have been told it was wrong to murder civilians, to bomb Dresden etc, and people would have been imprisoned/shot for it. But war is a time and place where there aren't any rules. You're at the point where you see no other solution to a problem than to kill other people until they do as you say. At that point, you are not thinking about following rules. If you are, then the situation isn't as bad as you think.

Going to war means you've said that you are no longer capable of respecting rules
It might also mean that your country has been attacked and you don't want some evil dictatorship e.g. the Nazis to overrun your country. What else can you do but go to war? This will involve killing and injuring people. The hope is that you can minimise this, but the longer and nastier wars get, the vainer this hope becomes. Even so, if you abide by the 'rules', Burke, you don't use poison gas, you don't murder or starve POWs, you don't conquer a city and then let the troops loose on an orgy of raping and looting.

The 'rules' are why, as I said before, German (and Japanese) POWs had a very low death rate in British hands. Japanese surrendered personnel were even treated decently AFTER the Allies discovered the condition of British, Indian, etc POWs in Japanese hands - the Japanese did NOT play by those 'rules', hence the 25% death rate of POWs of the Japanese.

MehsMum of course it can just mean you don't want an evil dictatorship to overrun your country. But even if that's your reason for going to war, you must accept that things might get ugly. It's good if you can minimize the damage done and at first belligerents generally do try to stick to a "code of conduct" of sorts but sometimes it just won't work like that.

Islamic State maybe feel that we are violating their idea of the "rules of war" by fighting them from the air and not face to face on the ground. But that's our advantage over them and we'll definitely be using that. We feel that them targeting civilians is violating our idea of the "rules of war" but that's their advantage, it's easier to attack civilians than it is to attack a competent military that will fight back. It's no surprise that that enemies intent on destroying the other use tactics to their advantage that the other side doesn't think is fair. Sorry but talking about "rules" in war is naive and quite laughable. There are rules against killing people, against invading the territory of another country. When you go to war you are ignoring those rules, you're saying that you think this dispute can only be settled by force.

Yes, you are saying the dispute can only be settled force but you are placing limits upon that force. This should mean, and sometimes does mean, courts martial for soldiers accused of rape or looting or killing prisoners out of hand. It certainly means soldiers understanding that if, for example, a sniper is surrounded by children, they may not shoot that sniper. That is not a facile example: I talked once to a serving soldier who had been in exactly that position: he had the body of his comrade a few feet away and the sniper in his sights and he did not shoot because he knew 'the rules' told him he must not.

Talking of rules is not 'laughable'.

"unless the allies had crystal balls they wouldn't know this in the face of hitlers 'fight to the last man' policy."

"What you 'think' the allies knew is irrelevant. Only they knew what they knew."

I love that you see no conflict between these posts. It's almost endearing.

I agree with Burke to some extent. Also regarding our bombing of targets from the air or by drones etc. Civilians are often casualties but that seems to be ok if it's done nicely within the rules of engagement and its a nice clean hit from many miles away by plane or drone. A suicide bomber OTOH is beyond the pale for using their own primitive means of hitting their enemy. So to make it a fair fight do we send in a few troops on he ground in the same numbers as the enemy with the same scale and sophistication of weapons?

I think people here would have felt much differently about the rights and wrongs of warfare when it's your lived ones going off to do the fighting or your homes under threat of being bombed.

I want to see IS crushed and am disgusted by their horrible beheadings and killings but I don't understand the moral outrage when they killed two Japanese hostages (of course it was barbaric and cruel). I was under the impression that Japan had given 2 million dollars or such to fight Isis, to crush them, to kill them. - so is this ok.

I honestly find the whole war thing and who is justified and who is not confusing at times.

MehsMum those are self imposed rules that you either voluntarily stick to based on your own moral code, or you don't. If a sniper is surrounded by children, someone may very well conclude that those children unfortunately are in the wrong place and need to be sacrificed to take out the sniper. I don't like this at all, but I don't like any killings and that's what war is, and that's what we have to accept when we get into a war. Some soldiers might self limit what they do but others might not and it's not for us to say which is right.

Bambambini this is my point. Whatever advantage you have in a war you are going to use it. And the enemy won't like it and will try to claim that it's not "fair". It's not fair that Islamic State attack our civilians instead of our soldiers (because soldiers have sort of signed up to go in the firing line and civilians haven't) but it's unfair of us to attack Islamic State from the air because they don't have an air force to retaliate with. But war isn't fair.

It absolutely was a war crime, as has been seen very clearly by the rest of the world since, well, it happened. It's only in Britain that the bombing of Dresden has ever been seen as anything else.

Of course British people do seem to have something of an inability to see the British colonial presence as anything other than benign (witness the entire lack of interest in or knowledge of British torture camps in Kenya, for example).

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities

Burke1
You began by saying that there are no rules, and now you are saying you can have 'self imposed rules':
MehsMum those are self imposed rules that you either voluntarily stick to based on your own moral code, or you don't.
They are not self imposed; they are the rules in the Geneva Convention. The soldier I spoke to was not 'self-limiting'; iirc, he reckoned he could have got the sniper. But he had been taught that he must NEVER shoot when there was a risk of a civilian child being killed. So he didn't.

It was a bloody sobering conversation, I can tell you.

The choosing is done not by the individual soldier, but by the country that either signs up, or does not. Islamic State, for example, has clearly not signed up. But the rules are there, all the same.

MehsMum the rules in the Geneva Convention have no basis in reality. It's like they are trying to create a Utopian society where wars are fought according to pre arranged rules and conditions, a sort of "fair fight". But people don't fight wars for a fair fight, they fight to win and that means making very difficult decisions.

Rules are what you have in peacetime. By going to war you are already saying that the situation is so severe you are prepared to break the biggest rule we have: You're willing to kill people until they do what you tell them, that's clearly shown that the rules are off. If you're prepared to go to war then clearly the rules are already "off" in your eyes.

Most soldiers will have some kind of moral code but it depends on their culture, what they've been taught, and how desperate they are. The more desperate you get the more extreme lengths you'll be willing to go to. That soldier might well have decided that it was required to sacrifice the civilian children to take out a sniper. That's a very sad thought, but war is sad. That's why we shouldn't be getting involved in it on a regular basis like we seem to be.

Folk have mentioned about not lowering your side to the other sides level and keeping by the rules etc.

I doubt if i was burying my children, my loved ones, was starving, had my house bombed and been invaded and conquered I would be thinking, "well at least, we played fair and kept to the rules and never lowered ourselves to their level".

Best if we just try and not go to war. Once you open up that can of worms you don't know how far (or low) you would be prepared to go.