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.

OP - and I don't mean to sound snarky - but I do suggest doing some reading about WW2, including about Dresden and Hiroshima. Historians strongly contest that the atomic bombs were dropped to end the war, but for a large range of other reasons as well, such as intimidating the Soviets. Fact is, military history is very complex with a number of dynamics at play, it's not a case of good vs bad.

And even if you can make a case for Hiroshima, it's a very long bow to use the same argument for Nagasaki.

I think killing any civilian is a war crime, frankly. But I appreciate that when Dresden happened the British thought they had no choice. Nevertheless what civilians deserve being cooked alive in their cellars?

Of course it was a war crime but at the time it seemed the best way to put a stop to a ghastly war in which many millions of truly innocent people had died. I'm sorry, but the millions of Germans living in Germany who voted in the Nazis and passively colluded in the atrocities committed by them were a lot less innocent than those millions of people exterminated and killed by the Nazis.

Totally agree it was unnecessary. I've never said otherwise. The reason I don't believe it was a war crime is because it was a war we didn't start or want and there were appalling things done on both sides.

I can't see how the Germans who did all they did can say the people they attacked in such an unprovoked way committed crimes against them when the allies believed the Dresden bombing might end the war sooner.

The Americans didn't want this type of blanket bombing as it was immoral to kill civilians so tried to hit their targets in daylight. The result was they lost about 25% of their bombers, so they eventually realised blanket bombing was the only thing that worked.

According to the international Red Cross a war crime involves
• extensive destruction or appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
I believe this makes the bombing of Dresden a war.

go and look it up op

it's a lot more nuanced than Germans Baddies Us Goodies

Alisvolatprofiis it does. More people died because of the extent of it. Carpet bombing happened elsewhere but managed to achieve it's aims (or some of them) without being as widespread, as damaging or inflicting as many casualties. So yes, more people dying does make it a war crime, because it went beyond the extent that was necessary to achieve military aims and went on into carnage for carnage's sake.

One of the aims was to destroy morale through carnage and it's questionable whether that is an acceptable aim: not bombing docks or factories, but bombing with the deliberate aim of killing on a mass scale.

That is just silly, children for example are innocent not matter which side they are on.

And Hitler was not voted in by a majority, he seized power by undemocratic means.

Amy deliberate targeting of civilians is to my mind a war crime.

This^

It's not a numbers game, or justified by motive or outcome.

The deliberate killing of civilians - even just one - is a war crime.

So as we attacked Iraq we should shut up about suicide bombings, beheadings etc in the UK as we went in there first? They can blanket bomb us or drop a nuke and we can't say anything?

I'm all for peace and reconciliation but a tiny part of me wants to say YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE BOMBED MY CITY YOU BASTARDS.

Saying Dresden was a war crime does not take an inch away from all the things that the Nazis did that were also war crimes. Neither does it offer an equivalence between what the Nazis did overall and what the Allies did overall.

Good people do bad things in war. This was one of them.

Victor Gregg was a British POW awaiting execution in Dresden at the time of the bombing. He says it was a war crime. I think he knows more than I do about it.

Of course it was a war-crime.

Agree 2 wrongs don't make a right, but it's not a war crime
Sorry OP, you're wrong. Civilians are protected under Geneva Convention IV - though they weren't at the time of the fire bombing of Dresden, so perhaps it wasn't a war crime at the time.

One of the major contributors to Just War Theory (a very influential way of thinking about war), Michael Walzer, has argued that there is a condition called 'supreme emergency' when states face an immediate and existential threat: i.e. a threat to the very existance of the population as a whole. Under those exceptional conditions, he says, states may be required to commit war crimes, though this doesn't remove the moral responsibility for committing them. He says that British bombing of German cities was justified under conditions of 'supreme emergency' before the USA joined WW2 because Britain was facing an immediate and existential threat from Germany. But once they joined the war and once the USSR had pushed back the Germans at Stalingrad), there was no such threat any longer and so bombings of this kind, including Dresden, reverted to being straightforward crimes.

Yes, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki too.

What about london, covetry.......

What about them? They're war crimes too. That doesn't affect whether Dresden was or not.

What a very pointless thread and, indeed, argument.
It's over. Direct your anger toward something that's happening today. There's enough going on.

Oh God, not this old chestnut again.

It absolutely was a war crime.

The fact that they were the main antagonists does not excuse targeting their civilians.

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

The hideousness or otherwise of these actions in no way justifies what the British did with cold calculation to the people of Dresden.

The day we become unable to reflect on our misjudgements is the day we lose the moral high ground over people like Hitler.

It was a war crime and it is crucially important that we acknowledge that and ensure it is one of the factors that colour future decisions made about military action in times of conflict.

We are all massively fortunate to have never lived through a war. If we had been Londoners in 1944 sheltering in underground shelters and someone said if we carpet bomb German cities it may end this horror sooner would we have said yes?

It's so easy for us to judge with hindsight and apply the rules of today. Much more different for those living through it.

I've lived in Germany and the majority of older Germans just don't discuss the war though one old army man told me the allies had killed the 'wrong pig' (some sort of German saying) meaning we should have fought the Russians who were all Cold War back then!

The people who lived through it were the people who created the current laws that would classify it as a war crime.