70 years after the Dresden raids

[Vonz90]

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.

The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

I think Winston Churchill's reaction above is about right.

[First Shirt]

LeMay might have been a total whack-job, but when he said "If you kill enough of them, they'll stop fighting." he was quoting the gospel truth.

And I'm a little confused over why the firebombing of Dresden was a greater atrocity than the firebombing of Tokyo. IIRC, more civilians died in Tokyo.

[Vonz90]

LeMay might have been a total whack-job, but when he said "If you kill enough of them, they'll stop fighting." he was quoting the gospel truth.

And I'm a little confused over why the firebombing of Dresden was a greater atrocity than the firebombing of Tokyo. IIRC, more civilians died in Tokyo.

I don't consider attacking civilians intentionally to be a legitimate aim of war. If it happens tangentially during attacks on legitimate targets, then oh well.

I have not studied the Tokyo raids that closely but my general understanding is that there were a large a number of industrial targets that were targeted and destroyed. That was notreally the case in Dresden where the military targets were no where close to what we targeted and we're actually not touched by the raids.

[JAG2955]

LeMay might have been a total whack-job, but when he said "If you kill enough of them, they'll stop fighting." he was quoting the gospel truth.

And I'm a little confused over why the firebombing of Dresden was a greater atrocity than the firebombing of Tokyo. IIRC, more civilians died in Tokyo.

I don't consider attacking civilians intentionally to be a legitimate aim of war. If it happens tangentially during attacks on legitimate targets, then oh well.

I have not studied the Tokyo raids that closely but my general understanding is that there were a large a number of industrial targets that were targeted and destroyed. That was notreally the case in Dresden where the military targets were no where close to what we targeted and we're actually not touched by the raids.

IIRC, intel stated that a large number of aircraft parts were built in small, in-house shops, or in the near vicinity of their wooden-shack homes, so they were able to justify it.

[PawPaw]

I think Winston Churchill's reaction above is about right.

I don't. I think that the responsibility for war should rest on the citizenry. Let's take, for example, the example of Dresden. They elected Hitler. Sad as it sounds, he was elected under their laws at the time. They were responsible for him. If they died en masse because they elected a madman, that's too bad.

After the war and we found the horror of the holocaust, we certainly made the citizens responsible. Lots of German citizens helped clean up the mess, so that they couldn't say they didn't know.

If I had been President during 9/11 and we learned that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals, I would have told the house of Saud to bring me the heads of the terror leadership in a basket, or we'd immediately declare war on their country. I would have made Saudi Arabia produce bin Laden, or suffer the consequences for their countryman. Wars should be between nations, and if your nation starts it, you should pay the consequences.

Today, I'd be firebombing al-Baghdadi. After years of us training their miltary and other forces, they let ISIS in. Too bad on them. They should have fought like tigers to keep ISIS out. I have no sympathy for them.

But hey, I've been in the whiskey.

[randy]

Don't start a war if you can't take a joke

[First Shirt]

Don't start a war if you can't take a joke

Or as Yogi is fond of reminding us "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

[BDK]

A) I'm not sure you win a war that way.

There was a, quite size able, resistance to Hitler - admittedly some of that was aristocrats wanting to seize power again...

B) No issue w holding the Sauds accountable. The House of Saud are part of the enemy ideology.

C) Japan garnered no sympathy because:

Pearl Harbor
Not White
And they seemed to be much more cohesively at war. The NAZIs were, constantly, trying to find and kill various dissidents and resistance members, in all ranks, from nearly the beginning.

[randy]

A, more shall we say, reasoned response:

One reason we bombed cities, or at least large sections of cities, was because that was what we were able to do.

For all the hype about the Norden bomb sight and hitting pickle barrels from 20,000 feet, the fact is that under real world combat conditions it took massed formations dropping in saturation to get enough weapons onto the designated targets. Particularly in heavily defended areas.

The RAF had even less "precision" (which is a joke in this context) bombing capability. They did have specialized squadrons with basically prototype "beta-test" weapons that could take out specific high value targets in oneies and twosies. And those units took heavy losses.

I forget the actual percentage of weapons on aimpoints, but it was in the single digits IIRC.

IIRC, the Dresden raid was specifically requested by Stalin due to it being a marshaling area for forces opposing the Red Army advances. Such targets, particularly when you don't have control of the air over them, tend to be spread out and dispersed. Attacking them requires an equally dispersed lay down of weapons.

I'd have more sympathy for the German civilians that got caught in the middle. I would, that is, if the names Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry etc. didn't mean anything to me.

Not to mention Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka...

So we're back to my original statement

[First Shirt]

I'd have more sympathy for the German civilians that got caught in the middle. I would, that is, if the names Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry etc. didn't mean anything to me.

Not to mention Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka...

So we're back to my original statement

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my response as well. (Randy, are you sure you were an officer? That was a pretty intelligent response!)