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.

'The war was over and there were women and children screaming and burning to death in cellars.'

The war had not ended. The Nazis were determined to put up a fanatical resistance, a taste of which had already been seen in 'fortress' cities on the eastern front and in the west too, with the Hitler Youth and old men thrown into battle, with 'defeatism' among Germans punishable by public hanging by the SS -- Allied units in the west came upon many such spectacles. The Ardennes offensive and the Battle of the Bulge reinforced the impression that Germany would not go down easily. There were fears of a last ditch military resistance in SW Germany/Czechoslovakia/NW Austria.

(And even after the fall of Berlin, Himmler and others occupied themselves in organising continued resistance, bands of saboteurs and assassins).

Au contraire, CuntCourt, Goebbels merrily put it to use immediately as propaganda that he hoped would encourage fanatical resistance. It was only in Britain that the bombing of Dresden was recoiled from on (dubious) moral grounds, which is par for the course for British public opinion. Or rather, Churchill, having sanctioned area bombing right from the start, and sanctioned the technological developments that made it possible, and having overseen the promotion of Arthur Harris, and having strenuously urged the area bombing of Leipzig and/or Chemnitz and/or Dresden and/or Berlin, and having knowingly calculated the risk to refugees, chose to throw Harris and the RAF under the bus when public opinion seemed less than enthusiastic. Harris retired quietly to southern Africa.

If British bombers had been dropping bombs on columns of refugees trying to escape the city of Dresden that would have been a war crime. That is not what happened.

In fact they were dropping bombs on the military industrial complex of Germany which was situated in the heart of cities like Hamburg, Dresden and so on. The population that worked in the factories/ports was part of that military industrial complex.

If the British had followed a policy of not bombing industrial areas in German cities then Germany would have continued to produce the material of war in its factories without interruption and used the products of those factories to continue to bomb Coventry, Liverpool, Newcastle, London and that that would ultimately have led to a total destruction of all British factories/ports essential to producing war materials.

There was no choice. This was not a game of football. British bomber crews did not cross the channel night after night to 'kill civilians'. It was a deadly war of attrition and the allied powers won. Not only did it destroy the productive capacity of Germany but tie up huge amounts of military equipment defending German cities that could have used to attack Allied forces elsewhere The Luftwaffe bombers in the early years of the war were simply not as effective as the British bomber command and USAF bombers in the later years of the war.

Let it not be forgotten that bomber command lost more of its personnel than the number of people who died in Hamburg or Dresden. A bomber crew only had a 50% chance of surviving a 30 raid tour of duty. Losses of life were horrific on both sides. No one celebrates that.

I give up on you, Burke.
People do fight to win, and they do make difficult decisions, but sometimes they also try to stick to the GC: it ties in with the moral code they hope they've got and they try to live up to it.

Otherwise, how do you explain the survival rate of German and Japanese POWs in the hands of the Western Allies? Or that soldier not firing? He had just been fired upon, someone he knew pretty well was lying dead within a few feet of him, but he had ben trained to stick to those principles and he stuck to them: he did not return fire. Had he not been trained in those principles, he might well have shot at the sniper and the kids.

War is hideous. But you can go to war with the understanding that you will NOT do certain things. Those things will nonetheless happen sometimes, but they will happen more often in an army which does not abide by a strong set of principles than in one that does. Hence, as I have already explained, different POW death rates between POWs of the Western Allies and POWs of Japan. The Japanese government thought it was okay to work POWs to death. The Western Allies thought it wasn't. Both sides had signed the GC; one side played by the rules and the other did not.

Sorry, but I'm not wasting any more of my time on this one.

The rules regarding rape and looting and snipers making sure to avoid to the best of their ability collateral casualties are not there to safeguard the possible victims.

Rape and looting are normally prohibited because of the effect on morale of comrades and have nothing much to do with rights of civilians -- it is because soldiers are encouraged to feel they are morally superior to the enemy, and the moral inferiority of the enemy is held out as a reason the enemy can be killed.

My British Army engineer uncle whose war ended close to Bergen Belsen based his initial negative judgement of the German armed forces on the assessment that they had disgraced their uniform through involvement in the slaughter of prisoners in the camps the British came across in the Netherlands and northern Germany, and on what he knew of massacres of POWs on the western front.

Snipers are expected to be perfectionists, and are expected to hit their mark, first because a wasted shot could reveal their position and result in the sniper himself being taken out, and second because bad snipers bring down a vengeful enemy response on the units in the locality.

I do wonder why people want to bring up this subject now. The people who planned and carried out the Dresden raid can no longer be called to account. It is part of history and should not be forgotten, but arguments about whether or not it can be called a 'war crime' do seem rather pointless so long after the event.

And rape and looting in addition to being dangerous to morale signify a loss of command on the part of officers, a loss of respect for the uniform, and a break in the chain of authority.

Drill sergeants in the Irish Army where two of my other uncles served in WW2 used to castigate the parade form of raw recruits as 'like a crowd of f---ing people'.
Rape and looting are what 'people' do. Soldiers are not supposed to be 'people'.

I do wonder why people want to bring up this subject now.
Because it was the 70th anniversary and the German president gave a speech on it - www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/JoachimGauck/Reden/2015/150213-Gedenken-Dresden.html (I wonder if we would bother translating such speeches into at least 3 other languages?)

arguments about whether or not it can be called a 'war crime' do seem rather pointless so long after the event.
Well, better get on and sack all those historians in universities and everywhere, because that's pretty much written off their jobs.

That is not what historians do though..

The main interest in Dresden comes from right wing groups.

If British bombers had been dropping bombs on columns of refugees trying to escape the city of Dresden that would have been a war crime

Bur they knew the city was full of refugees and they targeted it anyway. It was an act of terror meant to demoralise the enemy and also revenge.

Churchill stated they were bombing German cities to "increase the terror"

Some people argue this was a legitimate act of war which was part of the greater good. Others think it was a step to far that was a war crime.

Dd's grandmother has a leg full of shrapnel which she got when she was shot at with all the other refugees she was with.

Math, what you say about rape and looting might well be the attitude in the British army, but it was not the attitude in the Japanese army in WWII. Rape was widespread, and little was done to stop it. Savagery against civilians was officially sanctioned (Nanking, the Sook Ching, numerous other massacres of 'only' 50 or 60 people). Authority in the Japanese army did not suffer as a consequence: the troops were known for being extraordinarily obedient to orders.

Agree with you about 'what historians do', though.

Bear You are deliberately twisting it.

I said it is part of history, and therefore exactly what historians should study and write about.
All this 'yes it was' 'no it wasn't' on public forums is pointless and sounds like playground taunts.

Having said that I'll leave you to continue your argument.

LumpySpacedPrincess bombing civilians to "increase the terror" is completely legitimate tactic. Everyone is in a war. I don't like that but that's what war is, you don't make your enemy cups of tea and biscuits and nurse their wounds.

An eye for an eye are you having a bubble bath? He murdered my Granny do I can murder his?

Step in short yes that's what war is. The reason there are no rules in war is simply because war ITSELF is a declaration that you are no longer following rules. You've declared that you won't follow rules about not killing other human beings, that you won't respect the sovereignty of your enemy. So it's a bit contradictory to say that in the process of ignoring some rules you MUST stick to following another set of rules. If you feel backed into a corner enough to justify breaking some rules then it's possible if you become desperate enough you'll decide it's justified to break every rule.

Most belligerents do try and keep unnecessary civilian casualties to a minimum but let's be absolutely clear there is NO actual requirement for them to do so, other than what their own moral compass allows them to carry out. In that story about an enemy sniper surrounded by children, some soldiers may have decided it was necessary to sacrifice the children to take out an enemy, and other soldiers might have felt that they couldn't bring themselves to do that. Neither is "wrong".

Oh Burke& ffs, we all surrender to your monotony. Hands up before you kill us all. If you read your posts they are so contradictory.

ARoom, agreed.
I've already explained why that soldier didn't shoot, and I'm not explaining again. It is a real and not a theoretical example.

The city had a couple of bridges spanning the Elbe. The city had an large influx of refugees. More refugees were approaching from the east. Refugees already there were moving to the west. The congestion on the existing roads was considerable. As a military target, knocking out the bridges and making roads impassible was perfectly reasonable, and using the fact that refugees would flee the city and jam the roads even more was also perfectly reasonable.

The railways through Dresden were also a highly significant military target, since troop trains passes through the city going east to fight the approaching 1st Ukrainian Front. Approximately 28 troop trains per day passed through the city heading east and the railways were of course also used for regrouping and redirecting retreating forces. The government and administrative offices of the city and its communications facilities were vital to the continued maintenance of the railways and military communication.

The refugees were of unknown origin. Since over a million Germans had stolen land from Poles who were themselves cast out to die from exposure and starvation, and since these Germans had much to fear from the remaining Poles and from the Red Army, it is reasonable to suppose that at least some of them had participated in the attempted genocide of the Polish people.

And even those who were not complicit or active participants in that were legitimate targets for aerial attack because as Burke points out, such was war. Prior to WW2 no law existed regarding aerial attacks on cities. Hence no prosecution for German or Japanese brass for the bombing of British cities, for Warsaw or Rotterdam, or for the bombing of Chinese cities. And no prosecution either for Allied brass responsible for the order to bomb cities in Europe or Japan.

British soldiers raped their fair share of women, and so did Americans, Canadians and Anzac troops, and looting was commonplace -- on the British side, Caen and Bayeux suffered, and Glucksberg Castle was looted and coffins desecrated. Rape was treated by some officers as a minor offence, and harshly by others. There were many documented cases from France, Germany and Italy, including premeditated gang rape in Germany, and women of all ages were victims. There were also cases of sexual assault and indecent acts committed against children in Belgium and the Netherlands by soldiers fraternising with families. There was lots of drunken lewdness, lots of troops helping themselves to local liquor and food.

The British conducted unrestricted submarine warfare in certain sea areas and in certain exigencies, notably the Skagerrak in contravention of the London Naval Treaty. The order to attack all non Allied shipping without warning was considered expedient.

And there were instances of POWs shot with their hands up in the western theatre, and groups deliberately executed. Yes, fewer POWs were mistreated in the west. But does the scale of death and mistreatment matter? Because if it does then the Holocaust and the civilian death toll in the USSR and Poland trump all other considerations.

Yep, Rules were broken.

There were no rules regarding aerial bombing of cities known to have civilians in them.

And subsequent rules on the matter have been broken.

Of course it wasn't a war crime. Nasty, yes, but people here who claim it was a war crime would be saying the opposite if they had been alive then and faced Germany winning. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing but you can't blame people then for not having it. I think the first duty of the allies was to win the war.

I think the whole thing about Dresden being a war crime is unfortunately very popular with the far right, as I just discovered when I tried to google the evidence. Feeling quite yuck at the kind of far right propaganda I've just read.

It wasn't as though the Germans were going to give up if they thought they had a chance. The idea we could have won by being nice is as ridiculous as people now who say Islamic militants won't cause any problems if we try to avoid offending them. You can't fight evil nutters politely. You fight them to win - because if you don't win, they will. Which is worse than bombing Dresden.

I'd rather have had 50 Dresdens than a German victory or a chance of one.

It is indeed yuck, and I for one come away from a brush with that sort of muck with a sense that we should not be complacent in the face of political victories by the right, anywhere. They are not necessarily going to fade away, and the good guys are not necessarily going to win in the end.

No indeed, math. The far right ideology has not gone anywhere. It may have lost the war, but it's still there.

Unfortunately, in this country, the Oxford Union invites Marine Le Pen over to address the students. For a 'giggle', I suspect.

The reality is that, when fighting fascists, you can't do it in half measures. They despise weakness and will take every advantage of it. We didn't ask the Germans to start the war, but once it was started we had no choice but to win it. Because to lose with all the repercussions that would have had for the future of the world would have been a much greater war crime.

I came into this AIBU on the rather simple basis of answering the question: was IBU to challenge an elderly German on a controversial subject concerning the war. I hadn't realised who this 'elderly German' was. I'd envisaged an elderly man who had seen stuff that none of us have. So my response to that was yes, entirely unreasonable for a person with no direct experience of the war to moralise to someone in that grisly position, regardless of 'side'. Essentially because we've all been cocooned, some more so than others. It seems hugely impertinent to me that a people with no direct experience of the terror would presume to do that. I realise now, of course, that this was something different but I think it does no harm to remember how sheltered all of us are. I doubt anyone on this thread experienced anything, so perhaps we should give some leeway to elderly people still living but haunted.