Dresden deserves to be remembered

UK Telegraph ^ | 02/13/2013 | Tom Chivers

[Kid Shelleen]

It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.

[Sherman Logan]

the Soviets who had simultaneously invaded Poland.

Not exactly. Germany invaded on 1 September, USSR on 17 September, after Poland had more or less been defeated.

The Soviet rationale for their action was that they were acting to protect the (largely) Byelorissuan and Ukrainian population of eastern Poland against German aggression now that the Polish state had collapsed.

It was a pretty threadbare excuse, and if the Allies had been able to get there, they might have very well wound up at war with USSR when it invaded Finland.

[dfwgator]

I choose to remember Warsaw, thank you very much

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_0uie9cq4

[Houghton M.]

I never thought I’d see the day when so many FReepers would sign on a total rejection of everything the West, Christians, and Americans have ever said about ius in bello.

Not everything is justified in war. Those on this thread who are offering arguments from Dresden’s role as a rail nexus and industrial center are staying within the Christian and Western and American moral tradition.

Those arguing either (1) that anything, absolutely anything, goes in war or (2) the Germans did it first (Mommy, Mommy, he started it) have left behind any shred of traditional morality.

And those denouncing those standing up for ius in bello, for limits and rules about warfare as whiney bleeding hearts or even traitors (Hanoi Jane), they are the biggest cheap shotters of all.

Argue about whether the bombing of Dresden was justified by the rules of war or not but don’t assert that there are no rules, whatsoever. That reasoning is not only lazy but hellish.

[Iron Munro]

Our politicians no longer have the heart to fight to win.
They think they are to "civilized" to wage a real war.

Our enemies do not have that problem.

[MrEdd]

War is about armies fighting armies ~ or it’s supposed to be.

Hard to even contemplate how any human being can raise stupidity to the level of that statement. Here is a very short reading list.

Carl Von Clausewitz - On War
Sun Tsu - The Art Of War
Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince

Pretty much anyone with any military experience of any sort acknowledges the authority of the instruction found within these time tested works.

How about you read those books (instead of watching Hollywood bullsh!t) and show us where your loopy premise is ever presented.

[TheRhinelander]

Only war criminals target civilians.

[dfwgator]

War is about killing people and breaking their stuff, and that’s precisely what we did in Dresden.

[muawiyah]

Take it and stuff it ~ Sun Tsu advocated and carried out multiple genocides ~

[null and void]

Dorner was an Obama supporter if you forgot.

So burning him alive was an appropriate police response?

I won't disagree that it was an appropriate military response, but the military is never intended to maintain an enemy's civil order...

[allmendream]

Then the entire German military structure should have, by your criteria, been shot.

I guess we were far too merciful.

[allmendream]

Then the entire German military structure should have, by your criteria, been shot.

I guess we were far too merciful.

[muawiyah]

What someone does when he advocates on behalf of unrestricted warfare is place his own family, community, nation ~ every man woman and child in jeopardy someday.

[AzSteven]

Pretty much this. Germany's war production was inconvenienced but not terribly impacted until the huge city bombing campaigns kicked off at the end of 1944 to hit western infrastructure, and the Soviet offensive in the east took Silesia and other industrial regions out of Germany's hands.

Speer reported that German war material production was barely down at the end of Nov 44, but down 60%+ at the end of February. That is when the transport network really started to fall apart - food distribution became a nightmare, and moving supplies to factories and to the front became even harder. By April, production was pretty much at an end in Germany's remaining factories - raw material sources had either been seized by the Allies or the infrastructure to get them to the factories had been destroyed.

In some ways, maybe we should condemn Allied strategic planners for not going to the massive infrastructure targeting effort sooner, but I think the buildup of aircraft and supplies really took that long - 1,000-plane raids were common in 1945, but logistically impossible a year earlier.

Did innocent people die? I am sure they did. Were there those on the Allied side who were overly bloodthirsty or motivated by vengeance? Yes, and not only on the Soviet end of things. However, in the end, Germany had to fall, and it was either wait for the Soviets to take the whole thing (and the rest of continental Europe) or do our best to bring on the collapse that finally happened.

[cripplecreek]

“The senseless murder of the Jews was an act that was so shrouded in secrecy that the populace had no idea what was going on.”

Yet there were a lot of admissions from non combatants.

I was there. I breathed what was in the air. It affected all of us.

Third Reich - The Rise

[Sherman Logan]

Righto.

We believe we deserve to win because we’re the good guys. We’re the good guys because we try to follow certain rules, like not unnecessarily killing babies, that limit our options in war to some extent.

Those who reject any rules at all thereby toss overboard any reason why we should think of ourselves as still being the good guys. IOW, they abandon any reason why we should win, instead of the other side.

On what mostal basis do they denounce the concentration camps and slave labor of the Nazis? It was war. They were killing their enemies. Nothing to see here.

[null and void]

Not exactly. Germany invaded on 1 September, USSR on 17 September, after Poland had more or less been defeated.

Interesting that the Soviet Union didn't start fighting Imperial Japan until the US had nearly defeated her.

I sense a pattern here...

[Sherman Logan]

mostal = moral

Sorry.

[TADSLOS]

what did their first victim, Poland, get? They got the Marshall Stalin Plan for 40+ years.

Not to mention recent abandonment by Fuhrer Hussein. Poles have a healthy mistrust of the world for good reason.

[tlozo]

Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing.[94][100][101] On 28 March, in a memo sent by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, he wrote:

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.[10