Was the WWII bombing of Dresden and other German cities justified?

A new book of photos of the victims of the bombing of German cities is discussed in the article below. It's being discussed online here.

I also included an excerpt from a lengthy essay on the bombing of non-combatants. Worth reading the entire piece if you have the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1067232,00.html

German historian provokes row over war photos

A controversial German historian is at the centre of a row over his latest book which includes gruesome photos of German civilians killed by allied bombing during the second world war.

Jörg Friedrich defended the decision yesterday to publish the photographs showing the incinerated bodies of German women and children, most of them killed by British bombs. His book, Fire Sites, published at last week's Frankfurt Book Fair, argues that the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose. He claims that Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime.

"The bombing left an entire generation traumatised. But it was never discussed," he told the Guardian.

Mr Friedrich, whose previous book Der Brand or The Fire prompted a storm of publicity and sold 186,000 copies, said that about 600,000 civilians died during the allied bombing of German cities, including 72,000 children. Some 45,000 people died on one night during the immense firestorms that engulfed Hamburg in July 1943. But the German victims were over shadowed by the far greater evil of the Holocaust.

more...

http://www.cin.org/avatar/probcon9.html

Problems of Conscience--A brief digression: The Bombing of Noncombattants

<edit>

In light of the foregoing, it seems not at all unfair to
state that, at least in the abstract, moral blame most assuredly can
be attached to anyone who, in any way, cooperated with the destruction
of the German Jews, however minute the cooperation. Naturally enough,it would be also true that the level of guilt would be commensurate with the level of participation - i.e., that those who cooperated more completely and vigorously would be more worthy of blame, and of more blame, at that, than would those who did so under duress, or with notable reluctance.

It also seems somewhat fair to point out that a great many
of those who did cooperate seem to have been, or to be even now
unaware of, their guilt or of the depth of it. So far as the picture
can be reconstructed, it seems to be one of nearly total confusion of
conscience. Ordinary people who had previous to this been capable of
making accurate but ordinary moral judgments suddenly seemed incapable
of making them in situations where the morality ought to have been
terribly obvious. It almost seems as though people were overwhelmed
somehow, with moral problems with which they were quite unprepared to
meet. And as they hesitated, there built up enormous social pressures
to conform - great danger lies in temporizing over moral issues.
Under the conditions which ruled, it seems to have demanded an extra-
ordinary clear-headedness and determination and an heroic courage to
decide to resist. It is not altogether remarkable that few did so,
given the costs of heroic resistance.

In my estimation, it is this most glaring fact which is the
most astonishing and most disturbing fact which emerges from any
serious study of the fate of Jews, Slavs and other "subhumans" under
Hitler; that the citizens of a country, trained to cope with the moral
problems of a moral society, suddenly find themselves faced with one
which has crept upon them unawares as a para-moral society, or even an
immoral one - and because they are trained to cope with moral
societies, now find themselves unequipped to deal with the paramoral
and immoral.

<edit>

There is yet another dimension associated with the previous
chapter, though somewhat at a tangent. Not all the evil of that
period was perpetrated by the Germans. The Allies perpetrated their
own fair share of the evil and more, but less has been written about
it, and much of it has been 'justified' on the basis that war is an
ugly thing in and of itself, and of necessity, some of these things
HAD to be inflicted on the enemy in the interests of shortening the
war. That has all the familiar ring of those who, in response to St.
Paul's comment that "where sin abounds, there also does the grace of
God abound," rejoice at the notion that by increasing their sinful
behavior they are contributing as well to an increase in the sum total
of God's grace given to the world, it then becoming an act of
Christian Charity to sin.

<edit>

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

Unfortuanetly.


DDQM

on NPR a few weeks back discussing this. He mentioned that at one point, they couldn't keep up with burying the bodies and they ended up taking flamethrowers to them. How utterly horrible.

Vonnegut's classic, Slaughterhouse Five, which discusses the firebombing of Dresden and his experiences there in some detail. Of course, told only as Vonnegut can tell it!

av8rdave

If you missed the innterview you can do a search on the NPR site and hear it. It was on Morning Ediition about a month ago.

I will have to go to their site and look for that interview

Women and children, too?

Remind me to shed a tear.

Hiroshima

We've spent endless gigabytes of data arguing that one, too.

Its not too late to make ammends.

(David Irving, British 'historian' of WWII, apologist for Hitler.)

It does seem that the fire bombing of Dresden, when it was clear that Germany was defeated, was 'unnecessary.' (I heard on a tour of Dresden in 91 that there were no operating munition factories in Dresden and that the city was filled with refugees from the surrounding area.)

I believe Kurt Vonegut was a POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing and has written about his experience.

My basic response to the whole question is.....'If you don't want your cities bombed, you don't start wars and constantly bomb the capitol of your enemy.'

between them and us.

We blew the hell out of Bahdad, killing thousands of people whose only sin was having the bad judgement to live in a dictatorship possessed of too much oil.

'If you don't want your cities bombed, you don't start wars and constantly bomb the capitol of your enemy.'

..and, on edit, from Brian Sweat (below):

"If the Germans didn't want to get the crap bombed out of them, then they should have surrendered. Better yet, they shouldn't have started invading other countries and murdering millions of innocent people."

Are you arguing that any moral/ethical justification that existed for bombing Germany cities in WWII exists now, as regards bombing American cities? IE, are you arguing that America has committed acts as egregiously agressive, hostile, and morally repugnant as those of Germany in the WWII time-frame?

I ask because this is what I am drawing from your post, and if I am incorrect I would like to be corrected. Thanks.

in 1940-45. More like 1939, before the death camps were opened & just after the invasion of Poland on a false pretext.

Although, I'm sure if someone has photographs of ANY event in WWII one could make a case for doing the ENTIRE war differently.

But history is history. No sense in nitpicking the details now.

IMO, it was a war crime, designed to terrorize the civilian population.

People were mad. And I'm not talking slightly angry, I'm talking "those fuckers killed all my friends and dropped a bomb on my father" mad. When you start a war like that, as Germany did, you will get some people doing some awful things to you.

You see it's really easy for us to sit here now and judge those that fought in DEFENSE during WWII. But we'd all think differently had we seen the killing and felt the ground shake.

One of the twists of war crimes tribunals is that they are inherently apt to prosecute victor's justice since invariably the convening party or parties are the victors or the victors' allies.

3 of the 4 convened international tribunals from WW II to the present were convened by victorious powers: Nuremberg, Tokyo, and the ICTY. I do not think that the case for the ICTR being a case of victors' justice is clearly established on two levels; first, the convening powers and second the parallel national judicial prosecutions in Rwanda of the same people.

Technicalities aside, war termination and any instrument of justice coming afterwards has and will have strong components of victor's justice in them. That is, I believe, one of the unofficial, unspoken points of "winning" the war; you get to whip your vanquished opponent with the lash of justice and it is called righteousness instead of persecution.

I think discussion of this issue all too often quickly devolves into a diatribe of apologism instead of remaining a discussion about the fundamental problems about international law, war, and the indictment for and prosecution of war crimes. Most of the cases I have read about from Nuremberg to Tokyo to The Hague to Arusha have deservedly been prosecuted for some of the most disgusting displays of human cruelty imaginable. This question isn't about their presence, but rather can an international tribunal be empowered to indict victors for war crimes? If you believe they already are empowered to do so, then should they?

The paper and wood construction made for a highly volatile target once the flames started. Pretty horrible. The whole fucking war was horrible.

defeated & virtually helpless. There were close to 100,000 civilian deaths from the Tokyo firebombing, yet most Americans (ALL of whom know about Pearl Harbor and its 2000+ deaths) have never heard about Tokyo.

At a 4pm briefing, the bombing altitude was set at 5000 feet instead of the usual 25,000 feet, intelligence reported no knowledge of barrage balloons, weather was reported poor all the way requiring reliance on dead reckoning over 1500 miles of ocean, non-formation individual area bombing was ordered with no ammunition allowed in the (325) B-29 guns, and a full load of 7500 gallons of gas and tons of incendiaries were carried.

Sorry, no link. This comes from an obscure thing called a Military Book/Journal. Where people put words on a piece of paper. Strange, no?

I like to point this out to A-Bomb justifiers who say how the A-Bomb attacks on Japan "saved lives". 325 B-29's flew directly over Toyko at an altitude of 5,000 feet with no gunnery ammunition on March 10, 1945!! Only 12 of the B-29's were lost, and most of these were not lost to hostile fire.

March 10th was the first. After the 5th Fire Bombing of Japan (again in March 1945) all schools were ordered closed and EVERYONE over the age of 6 was required to work in (the remaining) factories. I like to point THIS out to people who compare Iraq to the Marshall Plan. We HAD to help Japan (and Germany) because they were literally wiped off the face of the planet.

Hyperbole doesn't help. Show me the population numbers before and after the war to support that statement.

which is why it was so hushed up and put off to a later future date to look back with the safe harbor of retrospection.

I have known about the bombing of Dresden since I was a teen-ager and that was a l-o-n-g time ago. I don't have the time to do the research of the newspapers at the time, but there would have been many daily reports from the many different fronts and campaigns. The bombing of Dresdend would have been a one line entry. Even if it did make headlines, everyone at the time would have been proud of the USAAF for hitting such heavy blow to the Hitlerites. Given the times, this is not something the military would have concealed. Besides - how do you conceal the destruction of an entire city?

were many people on the Allied side who clearly understood that the Dresden firebombing was criminal & insanely murderous, & not of any real military value. It's in the same category as Hiroshima, etc.

A few months ago, when we had the anniversaries of the nukings of Japan, there were many discussions here about whether or not those atrocities were justified. These discussions illuminated the depth of political confusion that exists among Americans who consider themselves Democrats. One saw that there were really quite a lot of nationalists & blind apologists for US military atrocities here, on this supposedly "liberal" website. They offered remarks like, "The Japs had it coming to them," & so forth. Kind of chilling, really...

It is frequently pointed out that at the beginning of WWII (before the US entry) FDR described the German bombing of civilians in Holland & Britain as terrific crimes. Then, only a few short years later, the US & Britain were doing just the same thing, on a much more massive scale than the Germans had ever attempted.

I was not involved in those discussions, but to attribute the difference in opinion to ignorance or confusion seems hubristic.

Maybe they know everything you know and have just reached a different conclusion.

I know that's painful, but it's possible.
The Professor

Given the state of the military art at the time, there really was very little else that could be done.

Even today, there remains no real way to injure a government without great impact on the body of its citizenry.

And it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Poor, poor, German civilians.

They suffered more than the Dutch and the British?

I bloody well hope so.

"criminal & insanely murderous, & not of any real military value."

Tell that to the millions of civilians murdered by the Germans. Tell that to the wives whose husbands came back alive because of the bombing. Tell it to the people of Coventry.......tell it to the Nazis who started a war, ya get what ya give!

Talk about evil, and its total defeat!

The number of civilians killed during the WW II :


URSS : 7 500 000 (total of kills - civilians + soldiers : 21 000 000)

Poland : 5 300 000 of which 3 million Jews (5 600 000)

Yugoslavia : 1 200 000 (1 500 000)

Germany : 3 000 000 (7 000 000)

Japan : 300 000 (3 000 000)

Italia : 100 000 (400 000)

France : 350 000 (600 000)

UK : 62 000 (388 000)

USA : 0 (300 000)

suffered through the horrors of a terrible war" in WWII. They don't realize that the US NOT ONLY paid the smallest price of ANY of the major combattants, it actually prospered economically beyond anyone's wildest dreams, for the next 25 years, directly because of the war.

IOW, WWII was one of the best things that ever happened to the United States, when regarded purely as an economic phenomenon. OTOH, its long-term effect was unimaginably destructive, since it converted the US into a military-industrial machine -- which it's never stopped being.

... for the after war prosterity of the USA

Were there civilians killed at Pearl Harbor? Or do we not count that since we weren't officially at war?

They weren't very numerous but you're right

all those people running material through the Uboat Gauntlet? wouldn't they be civilians?

...was probably closer to 40 to 50 million. Some 20 million died in the Soviet military alone, and a geographic area the size of the eastern U. S. was repeatedly pulverized for four years. Every Soviet city east of Moscow was razed to the ground. The German death squads also operated freely throughout the conquered territory.

My cousin Sonia was a child in that siege, Stalingrad or Leningrad, I never remember but it was the one where they didn't evacuate the civilian population. She died last year, which is a pretty good survival for what she endured, but her health was always a battle, because of the starvation when she was so young.

But revenge is uncivilized. And wrong. So wrong.

If the Germans didn't want to get the crap bombed out of them, then they should have surrendered. Better yet, they shouldn't have started invading other countries and murdering millions of innocent people.

funnier SNL routines.

You really think it was this simple, eh? That "the Germans" had it coming to them, because they "started invading other countries?"

"The Germans" had about as much influence over what Hitler did, as the American people had over what Bush did in Iraq. Do you think that civilians in American cities deserve to be bombed, because of what Bush did in Iraq?

And for that matter, weren't you one of the DUers who supported the Iraq war? I may not be remembering correctly, of course (& I apologize if that's the case). But if you supported the Iraq war, how can you write what you just did about the Germans?

Just curious.

You just assumed that I support the war, because I am not a pacifist, Green who will only vote for someone who passes my ideological purity test.

I don't think the Germans had it "coming to them," but that doesn't mean that the allies weren't justified in doing it. The Germans started the war. The vast majority of the German people supported the war. The allies did what they thought that they needed to to end it.

On Edit: Even if the Germans hadn't supported the war and had no control over Hitler, the allies had even less control over Hitler. If it comes down to the lives of American soldiers or German civilians, it is a no brainer. Even if the citizens of Dresden were not making munitions, they were still supporting the war effort.

You can call it macho posturing if you want, but I call it defending the world from the Nazi menace.


I don't think that civilians in American cities deserve to be bombed, but if Iraq had had the capability to bomb U.S. cities, I would not have blamed Iraq. I would have blamed Bush and the people that supported the war.

In you view, is it possible for war crimes to be committed by non-Americans?

To your last question, first: Sure, everything the Germans did was a war crime. I don't see that any differently than you see it.

To your other points:

"I don't think that civilians in American cities deserve to be bombed, but if Iraq had had the capability to bomb U.S. cities, I would not have blamed Iraq. I would have blamed Bush and the people that supported the war."
- To be consistent, then, you'd have to feel some sympathy for the civilians bombed in Dresden, Hiroshima, Tokyo, etc - even while blaming Hitler & the Japanese leadership for their military aggression?

"The Germans started the war. The vast majority of the German people supported the war..."
- The war had different stages, & support from the German public was different at each step. After the painless Anschluess & the takeover of Czechoslovakia, the German people were still pretty excited. They were still behind Hitler after Poland, & jubilant about the fall of France. But the attack on the USSR frightened them, and they hardly even knew what Hitler was doing when he declared war on the US. So it's not fair to say that Germans overwhelmingly supported the war. Rather, the further it progressed, the less they supported it.

In the big picture, when one considers whether the Allies' actions were justified: it's not just a question of Hitler. Part of the reason for WWII was the very unsatisfactory & unjust resolution of WWI (Treaty of Versailles) -- and Germans had a right to resent this. Essentially, WWI was a fight over whether or not Britain had the unquestioned right to dominate Europe economically. It's not clear that they really had this right. IOW, the overall question of justice has shades of grey to it.

Many of them were children far too young to even know what was going on. It is unfortunate that they have to suffer for the sins of their parents, but Germany was doing great evil at the time and needed to be stopped. It's all well and good to say the war was over, but we benefit greatly from hindsight. We thought the war was over on Dec. 15, 1944 too. We thought we would be able to start sending troops home by that Christmas. On Dec. 16, 1944 we found out how wrong we were. We were fighting a war started by the other side. Innocent people died on both sides. For the most part, everyone on our side was innocent. Their side was starting wars and murdering millions of people. We were trying to put a stop to it. We did things that were unnecessary and ineffectual. Dresden was unnecessary and ineffectual, but it was justified. With the knowledge that we have gained after the fact, it would be a crime to repeat those acts, but at the time, they thought that it would help to end the war and save allied lives.

The Germans supported the war when the victories were coming easy. The fact that their support waivered when the going got tough does not absolve them of this. Hitler started the war with the support of the vast majority of the German people. The Germans used every trick in the book to prosecute the war.
They bombed retreating civilians so that they would block the way of advancing columns of enemy soldiers.

They hid soldiers and a merchant ship, sailed it into a Norwegian port while the two countries were not at war. Then the soldiers popped out of the ship and took control of the port so more troops could be landed.

Even thought the war was "over", they continued to launch V1 rockets at London.

To turn around and complain about the way that the rest of the world responded to German agression is ridiculous.

WWI was not a fight over whether Britain had a right to dominate Europe economically. WWI was simply the result of a the fact that Europe was a powder keg. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were collapsing and the resulting Balkanization of the border area between the two empires created a tenderbox. When the tenderbox ignited, the military doctrines of the major powers on the continent made it impossible for a continent wide war not to occur. Germany was no more humiliated after WW1 than France was after the Franco-Prussian war. Instead of France bidding its time waiting for a chance to get even with Germany after the Franco-Prussian war, it was the Germans who established a standing plan to invade Russia and France.

The Germans may have a right to be a little pissed about the outcome of WWI, but that doesn't give them the right to start another war. The other European powers allowed Germany to remilitarize and occupy former lands. Germany was not content. To blame the Allies for Germany's behavior is silly.

a bunch of generals came very close to assassinating Hitler, although they only embarked on this endevour when they figured out they were going to get banged from both sides.

Anyone who is objective and unbiased will recognise that there is no
possible justification for the "collateral" death of a single child.

This objectivity may be provided by the passage of time (ten, sixty,
two hundred years ago), by distance (thousands of miles away) or by
philosophy (introspection, religion).

At the time and place that the raids were ordered, there was no
objectivity. The Germans had bombed the British cities (especially
London) for years. Everyone in that city knew someone who had been
killed in the Blitz. The "justification" was simple - revenge.
"They did it to us and now it's our turn."

My parents were in that war: my father fighting in North Africa and
Italy with the RAF (except for rare spells of home leave), my mother
working in the Air Ministry in London, living through the nightly
air-raids and, later, raising my sister (born 1943).

By the time I came along and could ask questions about the war, both
of them could see that the killing of civilians was wrong, no matter
who did it (i.e., no "we were right, they were wrong" rubbish) but
they both said that such clarity of vision came with time. At the
time, it was viewed simply as "us or them".

Here and now we have the luxury of debating the morality, the variety
of truths and the potential outcome of alternatives. In practice, it
happened the way it happened and no words can change it.

One correction to .0 : the "daylight precision bombing favored by
the Americans" was nothing of the sort. It was high altitude carpet
bombing during daylight to reduce "friendly fire" and collisions.
The USAF returned to large-scale daytime bombing raids when the Allies
regained air domination over Western Europe.

Nihil

I agree very much and couldn't have said it better. The stresses and unpredictibilities of war obscure objectivity. It is only human to react emotionally when you live in fear for your life and the lives of your family and friends. My question is, how do we ever prevent this kind of thing from happening? All the laws and churches in the world haven't been able to stop humans from being human.

Thank you.

> how do we ever prevent this kind of thing from happening?

Sadly, if you mean "ever" then the answer is that we cannot.

The best that "we" seem to manage is about twenty years between
major events. It may or may not be coincidence that this is close
to the average time between generations.

If you consider the time between minor events then the dominant
countries of any particular period rarely have a complete year of
true peace (i.e., without engaging in warfare directly or indirectly).

There appear to be two alternatives: either the human race dies out
as a result of its destructive nature or it evolves to a point where
exercising power (in any form - money, violence, whatever) is no
longer a driving force. I suspect that the latter is a different
animal altogether from the majority of humans alive today.

Nihil

There appear to be two alternatives: either the human race dies out
as a result of its destructive nature or it evolves to a point where
exercising power (in any form - money, violence, whatever) is no
longer a driving force. I suspect that the latter is a different
animal altogether from the majority of humans alive today.

I feel that you are completely correct here, but that still isn't going to stop me from transforming myself in order to try and bring about the second alternative at SOME point down the line....

to be more accurate... though i understand that we are all human :scared:

i wonder what the war 'games' say these days about our ODDS?


and so it goes...

peace

That was pretty low level flying. My uncle was on those missions over North Africa and Italy.

Daylight precision bombing was done by formations of heavy bombers using the Norden bombsight, which for its time was pretty accurate. the bombs were dropped from high altitude and had a 50% chance of landing within about 1,500 feet of the target. So you sent hundreds of bombers dropping lots of bombs and some of them would hit the intended target, the rest were collateral damage.

George McGovern was a WWII B-17 pilot and flew combat missions.

By skip bombing do you mean the RAF dam buster missions in the Ruhr?

I think most of those were flown at night with RAF Lancaster heavy bombers. Whoever dreamed up that concept was really thinking outside the box.

There was a different practice of skip-bombing in the Pacific. Some of the medium bomber pilots (mostly B-25s if memory serves me right) in General George Kinney's 10th Air Force figured out how to literally skip 250 and 500 lbs. bombs across the surface of a calm harbor and into the side of a ship. On at least three of their missions against the Japanese enclave harbor at Rabaul they severely damaged and sunk several Imperial Navy and "Maru" vessels.

It was a war crime. The History Channel has a great program about this but it rarely airs.

Read the account of the firebombing of Tokyo at the end of the Time-Life book "Japan at War."

I also once spoke with a survivor of the firebombing of Hamburg, a German-American woman who had gone back to Germany because her mother was dying and who had missed the American embassy's evacuation of American citizens because she didn't want to miss the funeral. So she stayed in Germany with her two children through the entire war. (She also had stories of the experiences of her American-born children in the Nazi-dominated school system.)

The stories she told gave me nightmares.

One prevalent view of these atrocities (and they were atrocities) is that the people of these countries brought it upon themselves by following Hitler or the Japanese imperial system.

Yet Hitler and the Japanese imperialists never had 100% support: by the time World War II started, the Nazis had 120,000 political prisoners, and that's just the people they caught. I haven't seen any specific figures for Japan, but they wouldn't have needed a secret police if everyone had been happy little subjects of the emperor.

The bombs and flames did not target the pro-Nazi or pro-Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere individuals. They targeted everybody.

Dresden had no military significance and was considered one of the great cultural centers of Europe, with splendid architecture. The part of Tokyo that was targeted in the massive firebombing of March 1945 was not the west side of the city, where the elites lived and where most of the government buildings and military industries were located. It was the east side, a working-class area that was considered the heart of local traditions, little changed from the old days with its all-wooden construction and narrow alleys. By the time the bombs fell, people were already starving, and all the men who could conceivably have served as soldiers were already gone.

More people died during that single bombing raid than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and survivors are a bit resentful of the fact that everyone remembers the two atomic bombings, but no one outside of Japan seems to acknowledge the horrors they endured.

She was a young girl at the time. She was safe enough, the night of the firebombing, in her location but was sent out the next morning to fetch water for her family. This entailed crossing a bridge over a canal, the canal and bridge both being choked with the dead.

This was not a good experience but she was philosophical about it, with the view that Japan should not have started the war. Of course, she had married an American serviceman during the occupation and had lived 40 years in the U.S. by the time I met her, so that probably colored her judgment.

You have to remember that this war was more brutal than every other one in history combined. 90% of the world's population and economies were being driven against each other in a full-on struggle for world domination, and it was full-on, not a punch was pulled until the very end. As much as those 100,000 people dying in the firebombing runs was horriffic, you have to remember that that's less than 0.2% of the people who died in that war, and all the bombing combined might have been 5%. If that stopped Hitler a month sooner, it saved lives, it did not cost them. That's a horrible price to pay, and I most cetrtainly would not want it on my conscience, but it was probably worthwhile, and it most certainly seemed to be at the time.

Now debate it's effectiveness if you will, but the sincere belief that it was an attempt to end the war faster and thereby save lives was there. Just think of how many would have died had Hitler won, and weigh them, because now Dresden is seeming prety light.

throughout the war. That might have been justification for nuking Japan,but it does not apply to the bombing of Dresden. There was no military target, no concentration camps, nothing.

Genghis Khan was not a nice guy, either.

Unless you're speaking of quantity as well.

And there was a Babylonian you wouldn't have liked. Also, Latin America before it was Latin liked to rip out still beating hearts...

Was it the Celts who collected piles of skulls?

Unless you preferred a victory by Hitler.

You think Dresden made the difference?

Not bombing Dresden = Hitler winning is the least thought out, least valid argument I've ever seen. Can you explain the logic behind that?

That is what the firebombing of Dresden was. As well as the blitz on London by the Germans, and the firebombing of Tokyo, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so on.

THAT is the essence of what war is. War is wanton death and destruction on a massive scale. War is a blunt club that sweeps clear all who have the misfortune of getting in its path, whether they be soldier, woman or child. War is the most pure expression of the capability for utter depravity that lies within each and every human being.

Such wanton acts of destruction are NEVER justified. War is never justified, if humans have any hope of evolving past their self-destructive nature. All attempts to explain it away as "justified" are just an attempt to rationalize the evil that lies within each of our own hearts, rather than seeking to confront and defeat it.

"The only battle for good and evil takes place in men's hearts, and that is where all future wars should be fought." -- Mohandas Gandhi

Remember that Hitler had to qualms about sending 12,000,000 people to the gas chambers for no crime at all. They were simply Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other "undessirables". He would not have lost a wink of sleep over killing a polital protester. The methods of Gandhi would have simply meants some more trains to the death camps.

Also look at the actions of the political left in WWII. They FOUGHT voluntarily in the armies of their respective nations to end Hitler's rule. And now we want to judge them because they may have been a bit rough on the Germans?

Innocent civilians? How did Hitler gain & keep power but by the support of the German populace?

It amazes me how when anyone presents a point of view that rejects the very act of warfare as senseless, the spectre of Hitler is always brought up as a means to justify war.

I find what Hitler did to be appalling. His actions and those of the Nazis at large represented the absolute worst capabilities of humankind -- the absolute evil that lies in the heart of each and every one of us.

As for how Hitler came to power and held on to it, it was hardly with "the popular support of the German people". He achieved power through a quirk in the German Republic (after the Nazis had only received around 30% of the vote in the last election). He solidified it through a campaign of terror and propaganda, meant to play at the worst characteristics of the populace (hatred, militarism, racial superiority, etc.).

I've read about it extensively in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. Your explanation is an oversimplified and extremely flawed one.

In any event, one would think that events like the ones I listed above would help people as a whole come to the realization that war is senseless death and destruction. But no, here we are continuing to make the same mistakes. I at least give credit to the people of Europe, some of whom still have the memory of living through a war etched in their consciousness, for rejecting this recent stab at conquest.

As for the actions of the "political left" in WWII -- many of the prominent people from "the left" who actually fought in WWII (Howard Zinn, Phil Berrigan, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller) drew upon their experiences to solidify their opposition to war.

If you feel comfortable in the justification of death and destruction as a necessary evil, that's up to you. Personally, I find it more necessary to reject it, out of fear that that evil will overcome my own heart.

Since you seem to be an absolute pacifist - What would you have done about Hitler?

Secondly, I would have attempted, following the fall of the German Kaiser and the establishment of the Weimar Republic, to create a sphere of economic cooperation in order to get Germany back on its feet as a partner, not an enemy.

Thirdly, should a Hitler have come to power under those circumstances, I simply would not have given into him diplomatically. Do you realize that, if the Munich agreement would never have taken place and Czechoslovakia partitioned, that the German Army at that point would have very likely been defeated by the Czechs? All of the Czech's formidable defenses were in the Sudetenland.

Now, I am certain that you are going to say, "But you're interjecting things into the discusssion that are not relevant." To that, I would reply, "Bullshit." When speaking of things in historical context, it is important to realize that nothing happens in a vacuum, and that events occur in chain reactions. If you're attempting to simply separate the entire Hitler phenomenon from the context in which it occurs, you're being intellectually dishonest.

Now, my counter-question to you is, what exactly did the bombing of Dresden help do to establish some sort of peace throughout Europe? Because that seemed to be more in line with the initial question -- not what I would or would not have done in the face of Hitler.

Of course, you didn't answer the question, did you?

What was the appropriate response to HITLER's actions, not the Kaiser's, sweetie.

whether or not the original bombing of Dresden was justified. And if you'll look above, you'll see that was the question I addressed. It was Silverhair who turned it into a referendum on stopping Hitler.

For what it's worth, I don't pretend that my views are the most popular with regards to militarism and war. I see them as the ultimate failure of humanity, the prime example of what happens when human beings embrace hatred in their hearts. I also have come to realize that hatred is a force that is never satisfied, that it will only serve to eat you up inside in the end.

I read your post about losing many members of your family during WWII. I would not wish that on anyone, and I only lost one family member -- a great uncle whom I never met. But I also read in your post the hatred that still lies within your heart over this issue.

Does that hatred help you resolve it? Does it make you feel any more positive about yourself or those in your life? Or does it serve only to feed upon itself, and feed upon you in the process?

If your hatred comforts you, then by all means embrace it. I have just found that the acceptance of militarism and embrace of hatred only results in more militarism and hatred, and it's a circle that, knowing what I know now from growing up in the world in which I did, I have made every effort to refuse to embrace.

If you want to go back to WWI, then why not go back before that to it's causes and so on? You have to start somewhere. The question picks up with the situation as it is, not as you wish it could have been.

Asking what you would have done in the face of Hitler is appropriate because you seem to an absolute pacifist, arguing that war is always futile.

To your other question. Any action taken that harms an enemy in war is a step toward victory. Could the resourses used in the attack have been put to better use against another target? Maybe. From the comfort of a chair in an air-conditioned home, I am not going to second guess 60 years after the fact.

About peace in Europe. To some measure that military action brought Germany a little bit closer to defeat, and then to rebuilding. Today, a war between Germany and its neighbors is unthinkable. It just won't happen. Those countries are now building a union. I think a general European war will never happen again.

About peace in Europe. To some measure that military action brought Germany a little bit closer to defeat, and then to rebuilding. Today, a war between Germany and its neighbors is unthinkable. It just won't happen. Those countries are now building a union. I think a general European war will never happen again.

And this is the perspective in which I grew up. I am only 30, so I learned of the utter destruction during WWII, along with the result of using military force to try and subjugate others from Vietnam. While I didn't experience any of these directly, I have done a great deal to study on my own the causes and effects of these conflicts.

My end conclusion -- war is the ultimate waste of human potential. That is the conclusion that I have come to, based on the frame of reference that I have developed through the years.

To answer the question regarding Hitler -- if I had grown up during the Depression and been alive then, would I have thought the same way? Probably not. But then again, I can't go back and live through that time, can I? I'm stuck with the frame of reference that I have, and while I can try to place myself in that situation, I will never be successful because it will be tainted by what I know and believe NOW.

I spent nine years in the service. Four as an enlisted man and five as an officer. I resigned my commission. (That means I quit. Officers are allowed to do that.)I have been in war. (Vietnam)I believe it was Ike that said that the soldier prays from peace for it is he that must bear the burden of war above all others. War is indeed a horrible waste of human potential. Our difference is that I do not view it as the greatest waste, the greatest horror. The greatest waste is what can happen when a Hitler, or a Pol Pot, or an Idi Amin is allowed to run rampant. Hitler, since he came to power of a major industrialized nation, could have done global damage if he had not been stopped, and the only way to stop him was WAR. Can you imagine if he had been allowed to have his way in Europe and Russia? After a few years to consolidate his gains, (And develop nukes) it is reasonable to predict that he would have gone on another rampage of expansion, until he had conquered the globe. Imagine Hitler as Global Furher. To prevent that idea, all the horrors of WWII was not too small a price to pay.

I am not a militarist. But I do believe that there are some things that are worse than war, and those are the things that some wars can prevent.

... will we be able to finally stop the appeal of those like Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Hitler. And why is it that we have refused to learn from those horrors of WWII the complete inhumanity of war?

BTW, I'm well aware of the military angle. I've been an officer in the Army Reserve for the past 7 years and applied as a CO about a year ago. But my opposition is based on the development of my moral and religious beliefs over time, so I'm afraid that this is an issue that we'll just never be able to see eye-to-eye on. :shrug:

On this post I will end my participation in this part of this thread as we have reached a point of basic disagreement. However, I want to hold out long term hope for the end of war. Read "Non-Zero, The logic of Human Destiny." He predicted the war on terror, (Not in those exact words)before 9-11. He takes a super long view of history, 50K+ years and shows how we are ending armed conflict, although we also lose some freedom at each step also. The next step is unions of nation-states, and that is beginning to happen. Just barely beginning, but it is happening. I don't think it will be via the UN however.

His book requires a working knowledge of evolutionary biology.

You say that you are tired of the spectre of Hitler always being brought up in discussions of war. May I remind you that this thread is about wartime actions against Hitler? If we are going to talk about the bombing of Dresden, then talking about Hitler is extremely appropriate.

That seems to be the question at hand, no matter how much you try to twist it into one about "Hitler".

The heavy bombing of civilian populations in WWII was a mistake based on a false theory and two rationalizations. The idea was that "terror bombing" would break enemy morale. That was the German theory from the outset. The Allies eventually came to act on the same notion. However the reality, demonstrated repeatedly on both sides, was that bombing of civilians had the opposite effect.

On the Allied side, two rationalizations were also important. First and foremost, the Germans started the terror bombing -- in Warsaw and Rotterdam even before London. And the bombing, of course, was only one of a long list of Nazi war crimes. The Allied bombing could be rationalized as payback.

The same moral calculus held for the Japanese, whose treatment of civilians and prisoners was horrific going way back to the invasion of China. Read sometime about using Chinese prisoners for casual bayonet practice, or the "sporting" decapitation contests among Japanese officers. At least twice as many Chinese were butchered by sword and bayonet in Nanking alone -- after the city's surrender -- as died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The notorious Japanese refusal to surrender during the island battles -- suicide in the caves, Banzai attacks, etc. -- reinforced this. When an enemy makes it perfectly clear he intends to fight to the last man, bombing the hell out of him seems less problematic.

The second rationalization for Allied bombing had to do with the technological limitations of aerial bombing itself. Initially the U.S. Army in particular (the British were a bit more bloody minded) wanted to do precisely targeted strategic bombing of military targets, including war-related industrial sites. The equipment, unfortunately, was simply not up to the task. Even "targeted" bombing was wildly inaccurate; in practice, the only way to flatten a tank factory was to flatten the whole surrounding area. It was, therefore, an easy jump to unrestricted area-wide bombing.

The best historical judgment on all this, however, is that the WWII bombing excesses have never been repeated. At least since Korea, the USA in particular has bent over backwards to minimize civilian casualties. Collateral damage remains an issue, but it has been reduced by orders of magnitude by the steadily increasing accuracy of munitions. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese used to place anti-aircraft batteries next to dikes, schools, and hospitals, confident that the U.S. would rarely if ever bomb them. Saddam did the same.

In sum, I think all the belligerents took a lesson from WWII and took several steps back from the abyss. I worry that those lessons will tend to fade with time, or may never have been learned by some of the newly emerging third world powers that have never seen modern war in full fury. I wonder if the diehard Baathists, for example, or their cohorts in crime in certain adjoining countries, STILL have any realistic idea what could happen (in purely non-nuclear ways) if the U.S. really got mad. States that continue to sponsor terrorist attacks on civilian targets are truly playing with forces orders of magnitude greater than anything they have seen to date.

P.S. The bombing of Dreden, even more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is morally problematic. But even here, remember that the war was far from over. The Russians alone were still going to pay over a million casualties just for Berlin. It is very easy to sit in a comfortable chair nearly 60 years later and denounce Arthur Harris and Bomber Command. But I would imagine the Russian infantrymen who had to take Berlin crater by crater felt about Dresden the same way U.S. soldiers and Marines slated for Kyushu felt about the A-bombs.

If you are referring to the deliberate bombing of population centers in a "terror attack", you may well be right.

However, if you are referring to the use of extremely inaccurate carpet bombing (which has the capability of EASILY hitting residential areas), then you would be highly incorrect. Even in the first Gulf War, somewhere around 90% of the munitions dropped were carpet bombs.

And as for Vietnam, I would consider the liberal use of napalm to be just as inhumane as carpet bombing. Possibly even more so.

The Germans intentionally targeted civilians during the their invasions, in Britian and with their V1 and V2 missiles. In return, the allies intentionally targeted German cities. Not just to hamper production, but because they thought that it would demoralize the country and end the war. They were wrong, but it wasn't until after the war that they were able to collect the data that showed the fallacy of this theory.

by bombing or shooting of allies

Cambodia ... Laos? Once more, based off a false theory.

You may be referring to the "free fire zones" sometimes used in Vietnam. In these instances, however, the civilian population was warned and ordered/assisted/forced to evacuate. The area typically would also be periodically leafleted. It would then be announced that, after such precautions, anything moving through the area would be deemed hostile.

That is a far cry from the deliberate targeting of civilians.

There was also very heavy bombing along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia, which must have been unpleasant for any civilians lingering in the vicinity. But that also is not the same thing as deliberately targeting civilians.

Granted, plenty of civilians got killed in Vietnam, primarily because the VC and North Vietnamese deliberately used them for cover and frequently operated themselves in civilian dress. That is another story.

Granted, plenty of civilians got killed in Vietnam, primarily because the VC and North Vietnamese deliberately used them for cover and frequently operated themselves in civilian dress. That is another story.

The reason that these civilians got killed is because the United States could not stand for self-determination in Vietnam. Woodrow Wilson refused to meet with Ho Chi Minh following WWI, when Ho was seeking democratic self-determination. Then, following WWII in which the Vietnamese actively resisted the Japanese occupation, Truman urged the French to re-establish their colonial presence in Indochina rather than allow self-determination. Following the French defeat at Dienbienphu (sp?), the US stepped up an increasingly active role to stop Vietnamese self-determination, as soon as it was realized that such self-determination would result in the establishment of an independent Marxist state.

Those civilians would not have been killed, had the US not been so hell-bent on maintaining a neocolonial state in Southeast Asia, and instead living up to the oft-cited values of democracy and self-determination rather than the oft-followed ones of market and resource access.

See: Jus Ad Bellem vs. Jus In Bello. The rightness of a cause is one thing, and is a subject about which people can endlessly disagree. The legitimate conduct of hostilities once war is joined is a separate matter.

Although when you blame virtually any disaster on Woodrow Wilson, in whole or in part, I am more than halfway home to agreeing with you.:)

The VN War did see the deliberate targeting of civilians by US bombers. Quite often, villages in territory considered "hostile" were "pacified" by destroying them.

And I don't think the bombing of Laos and Cambodia were preceded by warnings. IIRC, those bombings were illegal and secret.

And while we may have done much in the way of bombing civilians in order to break their morale, we have engaged in, or encouraged allies of our to engage in, the deliberate targetting of civilians in areas where rebels were getting support from the local inhabitants. Latin America is one are where this was not uncommon. Denying guerilla forces support by destroying the countryside has been going on for literally thousands of years.

Let's talk about "military targets." The phrase is so loose that President Truman, after the nuclear bomb obliterated the population of Hiroshima, could say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." - h. zinn

...

Indeed, in both World War II and in Vietnam, the historical record shows that there was a deliberate decision to target civilians in order to destroy the morale of the enemy--hence the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, the B-52s over Hanoi, the jet bombers over peaceful villages in the Vietnam countryside. When some argue that we can engage in "limited military action" without "an excessive use of force," they are ignoring the history of bombing. The momentum of war rides roughshod over limits.

more...
It Seems to Me Howard Zinn

A Just Cause, Not a Just War
http://www.progressive.org/0901/zinn1101.html

we are so lucky to have his voice, experiance, and wisdom :bounce:

peace

n/t

aren't made referring to the tactics employed to win wars.

Targeting civilians IS ALWAYS a component of war in an effort to break moral or achieve strategic aims.

Recently I heard a Bishop speaking about the history of US involvement in Iraq and he quoted some gov official or general as saying, "We will bomb them back to the stoneage". This was in 1991, and people forget that Iraq had a high standard of living and an educated, literate population prior to Western aggression. Now we are led to believe we are doing the good and decent work of America by building them a Democracy, when all their primitive existence is due to our destruction to begin with. Worse yet Iraq is expected to pay with their own wealth for the privilige of unasked for aggression being visited upon them.

It is no oversight that civilian casualties are never a consideration in US estimations of human suffering.

James Baker told Iraqi Minister Tarique Aziz, "We will bomb you back to the stone age,"

and lets not forget...

Leslie Stahl: We have heard that half a million children have died . I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?
Then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it.

more...
http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe58-19991031-05.html

peace

I had to look it up.

Was it right? No. It was a mistake.

Was it legal? No real legal system existed or exists for making such decisions. So I am not sure that is a meaningful question?

Was it reasonable? Given the circumstances, yes.

BMA

Or so I think. The US wanted to keep the Soviets from reaching Berlin first. The Soviets would have used Dresden as the staging area for their push towards the capital. The bombings in Dresden were designed to keep The Soviets at bay, not unlike the second atom bomb dropped in Japan.

Incidentally, I'm ina band called Sorry About Dresden. Go fig.

I the idea in the Dresden bombing was to stop the Soviets from taking Berlin, why did Ike stop the American/British troops and let the Soviets take Berlin. Answer: Ike is on the record as saying that he wanted to save the 50,000 lives of our soldiers and let the Soviets pay for Berlin.

What good Nazi could object to civilians being bombed to stop Communism?

I'm appreciating the irony. You?

what the bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and yes, even London and Guernica, was to tell people, going forward, that War was no longer a remote action taken by soldiers. There was a time, as late as the Spanish American War, when people would picnic and watch battles. That time is over. War comes to the people now, and the US demonstrated an ability to kill huge numbers of them. It shocked many people into the new reality of life. If your government starts a war, YOU WILL DIE. not some soldiers on a remote battlefield, but YOU. your children, your mother and your aunt Betty. There was a time, before WWI when war might have been seen as a 'civilized' thing, played under a Marquis of Queensbury type system. But as of 1945, that was no longer. Here is a bomb landing in your front yard. still think War is a good idea? didn't think so.

Without the massive civilian casualties of WWII, Mutual Assured Desruction would have been much less likely to succeed in preventing an escalating exhange of nuclear devices. Both sides had demonstrated their willingness to kill civilians, en masse. Without that demonstration, would the Soviets have really thought Truman would bomb Moscow? Would Kruschev have thought Kennedy would launch missiles? would Kennedy have thought Kruschev would bomb Miami? no one believes it can happen until it has happened. THe people of Dresden paid for our 60 years of peace in Western Europe. As did the people of Paris, London and every other city and town. Think you that it is a coincidence that the countries who have seen war first hand are the ones most opposed to it again?

wwII wasn't the first time battles were faught amonst civilians but you certainly do make a good point in describing the odds of surviving another ww between nations with wmds.

wether we use nukes next time or not everyone knows it will be BRUTAL.

but no one ever thinks that it will come to that, it will go according to plan, we will work around the small problems that may crop up, we aren't like that, we are smarter than that, etc...

what would we do if we actually invented a missle shield? we'd put ourselves out of bidness :shrug:

peace

ths difference is, in previous wars, only the losers got raped, pillaged and plundered. Now the winners aren't safe either.

For a short (Historically speaking) period of time, European wars were actually fought "civilized". There was even a code of honor of sorts that allowed a defending general to honorable surrender at a certain point. Sort of like toppling your king in chess to avoid a boring endgame. During that period, civilians were safe. Part of the reason for that was that you wanted the economic base of the losing country intact so they could pay tribute to the winner. Part was from the moral code of the times. In any case, there really was a period when civilians were safe. That was when armies marched into battle in brightly colored uniforms in tight formations on open fields.

I had never thought of it from that aspect. I believe that you are correct. It is certainly true that at in the American Civil War, civilian went on picnics to watch the First Battle of Bull Run, like we do football games. War was indeed considered a great sport.

Per DU rules, please do not post more than four paragraphs of copyrighted material.

Thank you
AnnabelLee
DU Moderator

Whoops, I forgot. Everything is justified as long as it's wrapped in a red, white and blue flag.

Golly. How civilized of you to see that. Now what should have been the appropriate response to Germany's attempt to dominate and enslave the world, or do you believe they took over those countries just to bring them beer and pretzels?

Perhaps we should have given them a tea party. Played pat-a-cake?

Now me, I lost every relative I had on the border between Russia and Poland. My grandmother lost her father, her step-mother, every brother and sister. Their families. Not one survived.

And you want me to weep for innocent German civilians.

Did they die in hunger, terror, agony? Damn shame. I'll try to pity them but first I have to stop laughing.

I shall not forgive...


And pretty soon the whole world is maimed and blind.

Carry on. Blow the whole world... I sit back disgusted...

You're not the only person who's lost family.

was a bad decision, but I understand how it was made.

It's difficult in war to know when it's over before it's over.

When Dresden was bombed the war was over. The German military was broken up beyond repair, and was just fighting for its life and trying to shield civilians while they ran from the Russians. The transportation system had completely broken down. The armaments factories had pretty much been overrun or had stopped producing from lack of materials. It was time for the Allies to pull the plug on bombing civilians especially.

However, I realize it's hard for generals who are fighting to win the wear with overwhelming power to all of the sudden notice that the other side isn't hitting back any more.

Think of a boxing match. How many times have you seen a fight where the ref lets it go one or two big punches too many?

I give General Grant much credit for ending the Civil War. He knew the Confedeartes were about done and let his generals know he was not looking for one more big battle.

Yet even he had Saylor's Creek a few days before Appomattox when he might have just herded the ANV ahead until its inevitable surrounding. I certainly don't blame him for it though. I think he did the best he could, and I give both him and General Lee great credit for eding the war well.

Germany was NOT yet defeated. Hitler was STILL ALIVE AND IN CONTROL. In a general war like WWII victory is defined as the total surrender of the enemy. The only - THE ONLY - way to end Nazism was to totally, absolutely, completely defeat every bit of the German government and COMPLETELY take over and root out the remains of Nazism. There is no such think as a kind way to fight such a war, or for that matter, any war.

Japan was still in the fight. The militarists were still in total control.

Had they stopped massacring jews? Shooting our men on the beaches? Were they still resisting the inevitable?

War is hell. They deserved it. Lets move on now.

I can't decide, if it was justified, but the worst thing about it is that the Nazis and the leaders of the german army simply didn't surrender. THEY would rather have seen the last german child die. My father was traumatized for his live, surviving the bombing of Hamburg as a 12 year old boy.
But there's a bad aftertaste, whenever discussions like this start. I went to a bookstore in Hamburg today and saw about 60 books on a shelve, most of them new or newly published, all about the bombing of german cities at the end of WW2. The more right-wing of our official tv-channels seems to show a new documentary about this, whenever I switch on the TV.
It fits very well to the discussion about an european center for exile and in a way it is misused as a tool to one more time try to transform the Ausschwitz-Trauma into just one "evil" among others humans commit against other humans. It's an attempt for relativization. And the germans were often really professionals in turning themselves into victims, when they were the perpetrators.
I was really touched by one guy, who was about 7 or 8 when the bombings took place and he could still remember, how his mother, who was a communist while his father was in a concentration camp, tried to explain to him during the boms were falling that these - the guys in the planes above the city - are our friends.
Dirk
P.S. But I still think it was a big mistake to kill so many civilians and let so many Nazis survive...

It's hard to say that, but 35 to 40% of the 350 000 French civilians killed during the WWII have been killed by the allies (bombing and shooting)

#1... Do you have a link to that?

#2... So should we have let the Nazis stay in France?

This statistic is very known.

The destructions in France was made by allies. Simply because "The French Campaign" has been very long and hard. Never French people felt anything against the allies troops (except very very few of them, but it's unavoidable).

Almost all our villages and towns between Normandy and East French border has been razed.

The Nazi destructions has been very low but it is not a reason to think they was welcomed !!!!

But then, so many in America's government and upper class thought they were the good guys. Like Prescott Bush and the Harrimans.

After all, the Nazis were anti-Communist.

In this type of war the aim is either the submission or the destruction.

For example, each year since 1945, we destroy 500 tons of munitions (included chemical and gas) no-exploded in the north of France. At this pace, we'll have finished in 400 years !
These ammunitions are discovered by the farmers, the inhabitants or the
builders almost each week.

At the end of the article, there's a link to an essay by Alan Forbes that describes the bombing of Dresden and other wartime atrocities (Auschwitz and Nagasaki). I'm guessing some who've posted to this thread would agree with Forbes, while others would strongly disagree. Worth a look anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

The bombing of Dresden in World War II by the Allies remains controversial after more than 50 years. Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, was fire-bombed by Allied air forces (the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) over three days (February 13-15, 1945) near the end of World War II. Air Marshall Arthur Harris, inventor of area bombing, ordered the action. He was never held accountable for this alleged war crime.

Dresden was widely considered a city of little war-related industrial or strategic importance, though, after the fact, in his memoirs Winston Churchill described it as a "centre of communications of Germany's Eastern Front." Dresden itself was most noted as a cultural centre, with noted architecture in the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House and its historic churches. It was also called "Elbflorenz", i.e. Florence of the Elb, due to its stunning beauty. It has been claimed that the bombing was at the request of Russia, to attack a German armoured division in transit through the city. However, RAF briefing notes indicate that one of the motives was to show "the Russians when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do" (that is, to intimidate the Russians).

At the time, the town was cramped full of refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army. Dresden, having been spared from previous attacks, was considered to be very safe. Bomber Command was ordered to attack Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and other east German cities to "cause confusion in the evacuation from the east" and "hamper the movements of troops from the west". This directive led to the raid on Dresden and marked the erosion of one last moral restriction in the bombing war: the term "evacuation from the east" did not refer to retreating troops but to the civilian refugees fleeing from the advancing Russians. Although these refugees clearly did not contribute to the German war effort, they were considered legitimate targets simply because the chaos caused by attacks on them might obstruct German troop reinforcements to the Eastern Front. There are reports that even civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing Dresden in February 1945 were strafed by British and American aircraft.

The fire-bombing consisted of dropping large amounts of high-explosive to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary devices (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high-explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. This eventually created a self-sustaining 'fire storm' with temperatures peaking at over 1500 degrees C. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1068437,00.html

<edit>

It was only in the summer of 1943 that Britain's air marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris was able to respond. At first, RAF bombers were sent out in daylight to attack military targets, but a loss of aircraft forced a change in tactics.

The RAF began to bomb German cities during the night, an indiscriminate strategy causing huge civilian casualties. The attack on Hamburg, however terrible, could be justified on the grounds that the city was the centre of German submarine production, Friedrich concedes.

But, he argues, other raids on smaller, provincial towns could not. On February 16 1945, British bombers attacked the tiny town of Pforzheim, killing one-third of its 63,000 inhabitants.

In the official British history of the air war, Pforzheim merits only a footnote, despite the epic scale of the slaughter. "The RAF had run out of targets. The raid was most cruel," Friedrich says.

more...

Now that we are some sixty years removed from that time we can all have the luxuries of our opinions but unfortunately those were trying times and when you have to make a decision....you make a decision for better or for worse.

When Hitler knowingly bombed London killing civilians no one has second guessed him because he was a monster....we expect monsters to do depraved things like murder millions of Jews, slavs, gypsies, and the handicapped..etc

However when the "good guys" do something that in hindsight may have not been a great idea...well we second guess them....

I can't say whether it was right or wrong in this case because I wasn't walking in the footsteps of the Allied commanders.

The key thing is to learn from our mistakes... sometimes we do and sometimes we don't.

rather than justifying it everytime.

That sets up the precedent for the future that every war crime revealed in the futture will be glossed over or excused in hindsight - as if time removes the taint by dismissing it all as past history.

Hindsight should not be a buffer from horror because of preference to avoid feeling responsible of guilty.

Depends on which cities. Did they have large troop concentrations or military industrial targets? Were targets selected to avoid civilian losses while knocking out the military capability?

We had to end the war. We had the Bomb,what if they got it before the war ended?