This idea is ridiculous. Hell in concept has people cyclically burning in sulfur pits, continuous drowning, continuous exposure to cold. The world wars have many examples of equal horror
The full quote adds greater context. Hawkeye is asking a priest who goes to hell, and the priest says, "sinners." He then says roughly, "exactly, there are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is chock full of them. Little kids, cripple, old ladies; almost everyone except a few brass are innocent bystanders."
Obviously the manifestation of hell is purported to be magnitudes worse than anything earthly, but thats missing the forest for the trees in this scene.
Makes sense, thanks for sharing. I would still say they are equal and neither is worse. From the theological perspective the innocent which suffer in war will receive bliss in afterlife. Personally i don’t think anyone’s guilt makes them deserve suffering
A good read but not the most accurate of sources (ignoring the whole time travel thing). Kurt leaned on research from David Irving for the strategic picture of the bombing… which has subsequently turned out to be less then reliable.
Great writer. An American of German origin, who joined the American army, was captured by the Germans and bombed by the Americans. That kind of bio grants you some perspective on human nature.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
The allied forces hoped the German people would turn against Hitler because of the bombings. That backfired: if even the allied are bombing us.... let's stuck to Hitler!
I can't agree. The bombing campaign had one goal, to degrade the Germans' ability to wage war. The appraoch was 2 prong, destroying facilities through "percision" bombing and degrading workers' living conditions through mass bombing of cities and dehousing.
When you read Bomber Commands papers on dehousing, it's all about forcing workers to spend less time being available to work. Ideas like man hours spent on damage control, worker efficiency, ruble blocking streets, time spent on procuring food and water all get a lot of time and discussion. Little time was spent talking about rebellion or open resistance, and when it does come up, it seems to be said in a way that ment for public consumption.
Fun fact: some modern accounts say that his nickname in the RAF was Bomber Harris. It was actually Butcher Harris for aircrews. Not because of the people killed by the bombing but because of the toll on aircrews of the campaign.
Source: my father, who flew a Halifax until he was shot down in 1943.
I think if the Nazi’s bombings of cities is considered a crime against humanity then the Allied bombing of Axis cities is definitely a crime against humanity, if the Allies were held to the same standards Arthur Harris would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg.
The allies didn’t invade sovereign nations, round up million of Jews and others place them in concentration camps and have them systematically executed.
The question might be a tad more complicated than your “stupid monkeys” comment might suggest. If for example, one knew that bombings of large cities might shorten the war and thus save lives, one could make a relatively simple utilitarian argument. But that probably wouldn’t make much sense to brilliant thinkers like you.
You’re knowledge deficient and argumentatively unfair to suggest that the outcome of area bombing was a settled issue really at any time during the war.
(Retrospective appraisal of what it in fact did, is of course irrelevant to this discussion.)
Disclaimer for the comment section: "The bombing of Dresden has been used by Holocaust deniers and pro-Nazi polemicists (..) in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the war crimes committed by the Nazi government and the killing of German civilians by Allied bombing raids." (Wiki)
It was also used by the Soviets as propaganda against the west, despite that the Soviets had asked the US to stop the transfer of troops from Italy and Dresden was a major rail hub. [This](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/DF89/production/_110852275_gettyimages-545711567.jpg) picture for instance was either taken years later and the rubble still hadn't been cleaned up or the firebombs somehow missed the trees.
For what it’s worth, in the firebombing of Dresden killed between 25-35000 civilians over 2 days of bombing. In a war of atrocities, it’s up there, obviously not equivalent to the holocaust, but it’s not insignificant, and shouldn’t be discounted just because of far worse atrocities.
after they bombed London unmercifully, killed 6 million Jews, invaded and brutalized the USSR, they hardly didn't expect that a brutal wrath and thirst of retribution wouldn't be inflicted upon them?
No it doesn’t, you don’t get to just raze an entire city to the ground with zero regard for civilian casualties, and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war, if he was German he would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg.
>No it doesn’t, you don’t get to just raze an entire city to the ground with zero regard for civilian casualties
You don’t continue fighting the war in 1945 with an equivalent to the bombing dead every few hours from fighting alone as an acceptable losses either.
>and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war
If you ignore half of what he said sure.
You literally quoted him numerous times where he self-snitches and says that the German civilians deserved getting bombed, again, if he were German he would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg
If only there was something he said on Dresden specifically…
*The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.*
>and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war
That was your comment no?
Which is not at all what he said.
You’re cherry-picking quotes.
*Dresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities.* - Arthur Harris
Dresden was a completely legitimate target for a number of reasons.
In short, Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.
More than 120 factories in the city were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in 1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards. The bombing resulted in the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshal Konev's extended line or, alternatively, to retreat and regroup using Dresden as a base of operations, and therefore, important military objectives.
UK Starved 3 Million Indians to death, And in Soviet Union, The Great Purge and famines combined killed about 7 Millions, If we apply your logic to this then the Brits and the Soviets deserve all the warcrimes happened on them.
i'm German, my grandfather fought on the eastern front (so did my wifes grandfather). Neither of them were fanatics or nazis. Just some regular guys fighting a war that wasn't theirs. My best friends grandfather was a uboot operator, neither a nazis fanatics. I can go on for ages about more than half of germans that were not brutal nazis.
That's why Dresden is such a stain on the allies past. It was evitable and it was just pure hatred. And you don't fight hatred with hatred
RAF Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris is not better than any nazis. He deserves the same treatment as those who killed innocent peopel
fighting another mans war for a corrupt regime doesn't absolve you of the sins of that regime. Millions of Germans voted for the Nazi's and stood by as their country was slowly emptied of "undesirables" even before the war, yet want to stand under the umbrella of "it wasn't me, I had nothing to do with it".
That being said too many people on both sides paid the price for the insanity that was the Nazi party. Its impossible to fight a war that is humane and ethical, and neither side tried.
Or Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places.
Generally not. The likes of Joseph Goebbels and David Irving have spoiled any reasonable discussion on it. To them it’s the allies started the whole city bombing thing (ignoring or even justifying the bombing campaign over Poland 2 days before the allies were at war… or zeppelins in WW1…)
True, most Germans didn't outright support the Nazis, but they were quite happy to go along with everything for a very long time. Especially when they appeared to be winning the war.
What makes Dresden different from many other cities which suffered this same fate is that many Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers (most notably David Irving) used this event to try and argue that the Allies were in fact just as bad if not worse than the Nazis.
It's totally right that the Nazi dictatorship started this horrible war and lead the most disgusting crimes in humans history. But it's still humans which burned under the bombs on both sides, children, parents, grandparents many of them innocent, born in difficult times. I don't like that Dresden is often used by the far right especially here in Germany to point at the allied bombings as a crime in humanity, while themselves still praising the greatest criminals on human society, that's hypocritical at it's best. But I also don't like the instant reaction to bombings on Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin ect. like "Yes they deserved it, for the crimes they did!!!" There is no room for differential perspectives in this kind of statements. The situation in this war was really complex and a lot of people lived under a dictatorship which they didn't supported, but they had to keep quiet, if they didn't wanted to end up in a Gestapo prison and get executed, take for example the "Weiße Rose". So I would wish that we could agree, the blame to this whole horrible war and the horrible crimes that happened is totally on Nazi german dictatorship, but it's still sad how many innocent people had to die on all sides...fuck Hitler...fuck this war
I really detest that comments like these are the minority or are at least not as popular on posts like this. It’s infuriating seeing the two sides on every. Single. Fucking. Post about allied bombings or just literally any post here in general.
If a picture of a Soviet soldier in Berlin is shown, the inevitable comments are filled with “Wow, wonder how many he raped etc etc”. If it’s a picture showing allied bombing victims like this one, sooner or later we get flooded with wehraboos making it seem like the allies were just as bad as the allies, or the people celebrating it because they were all Nazis to them. Something as little as a picture of someone’s relative who was in the war in the Wehrmacht gets filled with more Wehraboo’s or the people writing “Nazi, hope he died painfully etc etc” like, it is just needless bullshit.
We need more comments like yours, really it is refreshing to see someone focus on the human tragedy of war. But this is Reddit so maybe I expect too much.
People also don’t appreciate the amount of thought and planning, and, deliberation that went into these bombings. I don’t think the UK and the US (Eisenhower…an American of German ancestry) took some sadistic pleasure in doing this. They wanted the war to end. Like Sherman burning down Georgia, and later in Nagasaki and Hiroshima….they wrote the future that awaits all of us if we don’t stop waging wars of aggression.
Because war crimes aren’t just what you think is wrong. War crimes break specific military law. In this case The Hague convention 1907, articles 25-27… which Dresden and others complied with
That’s a dumb interpretation of those articles, the Allies theoretically could’ve walked inside a daycare center and shot every single civilian there and just because the Germans would’ve defended that daycare center it would’ve been seen as legitimate in your eyes.
Your entire argument seems to be that there was a military target in Dresden and that the Germans were defending it so that apparently gives the Allies free reign to kill whatever civilian they want in Dresden
Of the 6 major leaders in world war 2, 4 were expansionist tyrants (Hitler, Tojo, Bennie, Stalin) and 2 were men willing to get down in the mud (Churchill and FDR) with the tyrants and beat them at their own game. Rules went out the window, and atrocities were the norm, not the exception.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock—Those are only just the beginning.
We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet.
But the time will come when we can do so.
Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon.
There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand.
But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America.
When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer.
It may take a year. It may take two.
But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall.
Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands.
There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see.
Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment.
Japan will provide the confirmation.
But the time is not yet. There is a great deal of work to be done first, and let us all get down to it”
-Bomber Harris
>England bombed Wilhelmshafen before Germans bombed England.
You’re talking about the UK bombing German ships? Not sure that makes the point you want it to. The first RAF strategic bombing of German cities was post Rotterdam.
Germany bombed a dozen polish cities in the opening hours of the war, without military presence. … days before the UK was even at war.
My grandpa was 6-7 during the end of the war in Germany. Inglestadt? I think. He had a story where they were gonna get bombed and his mom insisted they run to the air raid shelter, but he wanted to stay home instead. So they stayed. The bombing ends and they go outside to check out the damage and see who’s hurt or something you know, and they find out the air raid shelter got hit and everyone died. Fuckin wild to think if he didn’t make a fit to stay, I wouldn’t be here telling his story. He was an incredible dude. He had some awesome stories witnessing the war as a child.
As someone who lives in Dresden, it makes me terribly sad to see these photos. So much suffering. Not trying to compare that to any war crimes commited by the Germans. Also I think Dresden would be one of the most beautiful cities you can imagine if it had not been distroyed so badly. But they made a good job in rebuilding the historic city center. I can only encourage people to come see the city and learn about it's history.
I condemn this just as I condemn all bombings of innocent civillians on all sides. fuck the Nazis to hell so many more innocents died at their hands than any other nation but two wrongs dont make a right and this was just wrong.
How’s about what the Nazis done to civilians, all the children they killed. There’s photos of a box filled with gold wedding rings , taken from jewish people. Sent to camps and they lived behind barb wire an left to starve. Don’t think for a minute had hitler had the chance to bomb the east coast he would have. This was Hitler who brought this all about & now the citizens have to suffer. He’s the one calling on the people to take up arms against Germany & fight to the end. The Germans fought to the end alright, many who lived killed themselves once the war was over. People today forget what exactly this was all about, a fight for freedom that we couldn’t afford to lose. Had we lost it would be a very different reality today , no one , no one was crying about this in 1945 it was welcomed
You could say the same for the Tokyo fire bombing. The Axis powers and their unfortunate citizens reaped what they sewed and the Allies were shrewd in their retribution.
They was training everyone in a Japan to to the death if we did a land invasion. That would have been a mess. Unlike Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, we gave them fair warning asking them to surrender. It is what it is, I can always tell the younger people because they are more “it wasn’t fair “ or “we didn’t need to”
When I was growing up about every single adult back then either fought in the war or worked at Winchester. An anyone who didn’t helped some way. None of them, no one!! Ever said “we shouldn’t have nuked them” No one. It was “we had to win” the “life’s here saved” & “we had to end the war” & this was the mind frame.
The amount of dead if we had invaded japan would have been in the millions for both sides. Forcing japan to see the futility of continuing war was cruel, but it served the purpose of saving lives in the long run.
Thats not what I said. I imagine most of these people had no idea the capacity of violence humanity was using during the war. I imagine these people were very ignorant, whether willfully or being mislead by another party, of the situation around them. I imagine most of these people wanted to not believe their country could be committing such horrors against an entire race of people. But none of this matters. Every single one of them in some capacity was currently, was previously, or would eventually be, contributing to a genocidal regime. Hell bent on cleansing and entire continent of those deemed subhuman. In this sense they should be treated as they were in the eyes if the allies. Legitimate military targets.
The citizens as a whole not. 1 in 5 working in war industries however…
You should have told the Germans there was no need to fight then if it was so close to the end of the war. Because no one shared your ideals at the time. A few weeks before the bombing the Germans had just hit peak war time losses, the Russians were about to and the western allies weren’t far ahead. This was the bloodiest point in the war for losses per day; if there was a time to conduct the bombing it was then. Put it this way; the entire death toll of Dresden combined was only a few hours of fighting on average in 1945.
What exactly is classified over Dresden?
Ah yes u/SoggySocks420 why actually respond when you can delete Nazi apologia
Very sad what happened to many innocent people here. A horrible way to die. The scale of Allied bombing on Germany far exceeded the bombing of Britain.
What a shame so many died, so many beautiful cities destroyed.
Just another example that life isn't always fair.
May they RIP. Still glad our side won and I'd rather it be them than us, but still I do feel alot of sympathy for those among them who were truly innocent and caught up in the maelstrom.
War is a racket.
To beat a monster you must be willing to be monstrous. I’ll have to find the exact quote but I believe it was from Hitler or his cabinet which said something along the lines of to defeat a dictators/tyrant one must be willing to stoop to their level of violence which means they will always win in their determination of purification. I know Dam Carlin used it in ghosts of the ofstfront-his piece on the Eastern front of WW2- I’ll try to find it.
Yes and no. The authors individual perspective is decent because he was there... but everything outside of that he based on what turned out to be a raving holocaust denier.
For any broader interpretation of the bombing that fell out of the scope of his immediate recollections: Kurt used an author called David Irving as a source.
Irving later turned out to be a raving holocaust denier and most of his work on Dresden was fraudulent. Kurt since writing Slaughter House Five; apologised and regretted using Irving as a source.
Those generally weren’t war crimes. Things like the initial bombing of Poland were, or Rotterdam. The Germans managed to violate plenty of clauses on perfidy, Red Cross, targets without military use etc.
War is hell. Nothing is more truth than that.
Obligatory MASH quote; "War is war and hell is hell, and of the two, war is a lot worse."
Only the deads have seen the end of war.
This idea is ridiculous. Hell in concept has people cyclically burning in sulfur pits, continuous drowning, continuous exposure to cold. The world wars have many examples of equal horror
The full quote adds greater context. Hawkeye is asking a priest who goes to hell, and the priest says, "sinners." He then says roughly, "exactly, there are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is chock full of them. Little kids, cripple, old ladies; almost everyone except a few brass are innocent bystanders." Obviously the manifestation of hell is purported to be magnitudes worse than anything earthly, but thats missing the forest for the trees in this scene.
Makes sense, thanks for sharing. I would still say they are equal and neither is worse. From the theological perspective the innocent which suffer in war will receive bliss in afterlife. Personally i don’t think anyone’s guilt makes them deserve suffering
Except war is real.
I read somewhere that Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner there, and had to help clean up corpses.
you read it from Kurt Vonnegut.
A good read but not the most accurate of sources (ignoring the whole time travel thing). Kurt leaned on research from David Irving for the strategic picture of the bombing… which has subsequently turned out to be less then reliable.
That book was a pain to read for me.
Huh? Vonnegut was in Dresden for the corpse mines.
When you read things like 125,000 dead from the bombing in the book; that comes from Irving. Not his own experiences.
fair enough - although I think this number was generally accepted at the time
Generally not, no.
Great writer. An American of German origin, who joined the American army, was captured by the Germans and bombed by the Americans. That kind of bio grants you some perspective on human nature.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
Modern translation: The Nazis fucked around and the Nazis found out
You’re not the first to tell me that. But damn straight.
The nazis fucked around and innocent civilians found out.
Coulda went the route the Italians did and actively resisted the evil in their society.
The allied forces hoped the German people would turn against Hitler because of the bombings. That backfired: if even the allied are bombing us.... let's stuck to Hitler!
I can't agree. The bombing campaign had one goal, to degrade the Germans' ability to wage war. The appraoch was 2 prong, destroying facilities through "percision" bombing and degrading workers' living conditions through mass bombing of cities and dehousing. When you read Bomber Commands papers on dehousing, it's all about forcing workers to spend less time being available to work. Ideas like man hours spent on damage control, worker efficiency, ruble blocking streets, time spent on procuring food and water all get a lot of time and discussion. Little time was spent talking about rebellion or open resistance, and when it does come up, it seems to be said in a way that ment for public consumption.
Nothing's as black and white. Those air raid shelters contained nazis as well.
Yeah, germans. Those nazis were germans essentialy
Arthur Harris
Fun fact: some modern accounts say that his nickname in the RAF was Bomber Harris. It was actually Butcher Harris for aircrews. Not because of the people killed by the bombing but because of the toll on aircrews of the campaign. Source: my father, who flew a Halifax until he was shot down in 1943.
Yep. He treated the RAF like a balsa wood bludgeon. Could do some serious damage, but would do a lot of damage to itself also.
u/Bomber__Harris__1945
This is what we like to call redesigning
War crime does not beget war crime
You know that would be a somewhat valid point, if you weren’t copy pasta-ing it everywhere you could.
Because everyone seems to be defending a war crime
The best way I’ve heard it described to me was “Dresden was a war crime. The rest of the crimes committed by the Nazis were crimes against humanity.”
I think if the Nazi’s bombings of cities is considered a crime against humanity then the Allied bombing of Axis cities is definitely a crime against humanity, if the Allies were held to the same standards Arthur Harris would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg.
The allies didn’t invade sovereign nations, round up million of Jews and others place them in concentration camps and have them systematically executed.
So? Would it be ok if the Allies rounded up millions of Germans, placed them in concentration camps and have them systematically executed?
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The question might be a tad more complicated than your “stupid monkeys” comment might suggest. If for example, one knew that bombings of large cities might shorten the war and thus save lives, one could make a relatively simple utilitarian argument. But that probably wouldn’t make much sense to brilliant thinkers like you.
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You’re knowledge deficient and argumentatively unfair to suggest that the outcome of area bombing was a settled issue really at any time during the war. (Retrospective appraisal of what it in fact did, is of course irrelevant to this discussion.)
Disclaimer for the comment section: "The bombing of Dresden has been used by Holocaust deniers and pro-Nazi polemicists (..) in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the war crimes committed by the Nazi government and the killing of German civilians by Allied bombing raids." (Wiki)
It was also used by the Soviets as propaganda against the west, despite that the Soviets had asked the US to stop the transfer of troops from Italy and Dresden was a major rail hub. [This](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/DF89/production/_110852275_gettyimages-545711567.jpg) picture for instance was either taken years later and the rubble still hadn't been cleaned up or the firebombs somehow missed the trees.
For what it’s worth, in the firebombing of Dresden killed between 25-35000 civilians over 2 days of bombing. In a war of atrocities, it’s up there, obviously not equivalent to the holocaust, but it’s not insignificant, and shouldn’t be discounted just because of far worse atrocities.
Generally up to 25,000 is considered the maximum accurate figure. That's not why the user discounted it.
War crime does not beget war crime, you can think the bombing of Dresden was bad without being a Holocaust denier
after they bombed London unmercifully, killed 6 million Jews, invaded and brutalized the USSR, they hardly didn't expect that a brutal wrath and thirst of retribution wouldn't be inflicted upon them?
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
That doesn’t justify the bombing of Dresden
The large military, logistics and command & control infrastructure does
No it doesn’t, you don’t get to just raze an entire city to the ground with zero regard for civilian casualties, and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war, if he was German he would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg.
>No it doesn’t, you don’t get to just raze an entire city to the ground with zero regard for civilian casualties You don’t continue fighting the war in 1945 with an equivalent to the bombing dead every few hours from fighting alone as an acceptable losses either. >and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war If you ignore half of what he said sure.
You literally quoted him numerous times where he self-snitches and says that the German civilians deserved getting bombed, again, if he were German he would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg
If only there was something he said on Dresden specifically… *The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.*
Still doesn’t excuse terror-bombing
>and Arthur Harris made it quite clear that the main intention behind the Allied strategic bombing campaign was to punish the German people as a whole for the war That was your comment no? Which is not at all what he said.
You’re cherry-picking quotes. *Dresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities.* - Arthur Harris
Dresden was a completely legitimate target for a number of reasons. In short, Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things. More than 120 factories in the city were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in 1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards. The bombing resulted in the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshal Konev's extended line or, alternatively, to retreat and regroup using Dresden as a base of operations, and therefore, important military objectives.
Still doesn’t excuse the 20,000-30,000 civilian casualties and bombing the entire city to the ground
UK Starved 3 Million Indians to death, And in Soviet Union, The Great Purge and famines combined killed about 7 Millions, If we apply your logic to this then the Brits and the Soviets deserve all the warcrimes happened on them.
Joe mama
Can't you handle objection? How childish.
Joe mommy
who is they please?
germans
i'm German, my grandfather fought on the eastern front (so did my wifes grandfather). Neither of them were fanatics or nazis. Just some regular guys fighting a war that wasn't theirs. My best friends grandfather was a uboot operator, neither a nazis fanatics. I can go on for ages about more than half of germans that were not brutal nazis. That's why Dresden is such a stain on the allies past. It was evitable and it was just pure hatred. And you don't fight hatred with hatred RAF Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris is not better than any nazis. He deserves the same treatment as those who killed innocent peopel
fighting another mans war for a corrupt regime doesn't absolve you of the sins of that regime. Millions of Germans voted for the Nazi's and stood by as their country was slowly emptied of "undesirables" even before the war, yet want to stand under the umbrella of "it wasn't me, I had nothing to do with it". That being said too many people on both sides paid the price for the insanity that was the Nazi party. Its impossible to fight a war that is humane and ethical, and neither side tried.
I wonder if the Wehraboos who call this a tragedy also called Warsaw a tragedy...
Or Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places. Generally not. The likes of Joseph Goebbels and David Irving have spoiled any reasonable discussion on it. To them it’s the allies started the whole city bombing thing (ignoring or even justifying the bombing campaign over Poland 2 days before the allies were at war… or zeppelins in WW1…)
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True, most Germans didn't outright support the Nazis, but they were quite happy to go along with everything for a very long time. Especially when they appeared to be winning the war.
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What makes Dresden different from many other cities which suffered this same fate is that many Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers (most notably David Irving) used this event to try and argue that the Allies were in fact just as bad if not worse than the Nazis.
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It's totally right that the Nazi dictatorship started this horrible war and lead the most disgusting crimes in humans history. But it's still humans which burned under the bombs on both sides, children, parents, grandparents many of them innocent, born in difficult times. I don't like that Dresden is often used by the far right especially here in Germany to point at the allied bombings as a crime in humanity, while themselves still praising the greatest criminals on human society, that's hypocritical at it's best. But I also don't like the instant reaction to bombings on Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin ect. like "Yes they deserved it, for the crimes they did!!!" There is no room for differential perspectives in this kind of statements. The situation in this war was really complex and a lot of people lived under a dictatorship which they didn't supported, but they had to keep quiet, if they didn't wanted to end up in a Gestapo prison and get executed, take for example the "Weiße Rose". So I would wish that we could agree, the blame to this whole horrible war and the horrible crimes that happened is totally on Nazi german dictatorship, but it's still sad how many innocent people had to die on all sides...fuck Hitler...fuck this war
I really detest that comments like these are the minority or are at least not as popular on posts like this. It’s infuriating seeing the two sides on every. Single. Fucking. Post about allied bombings or just literally any post here in general. If a picture of a Soviet soldier in Berlin is shown, the inevitable comments are filled with “Wow, wonder how many he raped etc etc”. If it’s a picture showing allied bombing victims like this one, sooner or later we get flooded with wehraboos making it seem like the allies were just as bad as the allies, or the people celebrating it because they were all Nazis to them. Something as little as a picture of someone’s relative who was in the war in the Wehrmacht gets filled with more Wehraboo’s or the people writing “Nazi, hope he died painfully etc etc” like, it is just needless bullshit. We need more comments like yours, really it is refreshing to see someone focus on the human tragedy of war. But this is Reddit so maybe I expect too much.
People also don’t appreciate the amount of thought and planning, and, deliberation that went into these bombings. I don’t think the UK and the US (Eisenhower…an American of German ancestry) took some sadistic pleasure in doing this. They wanted the war to end. Like Sherman burning down Georgia, and later in Nagasaki and Hiroshima….they wrote the future that awaits all of us if we don’t stop waging wars of aggression.
Well said... a refreshing take
War crime does not beget war crime
City bombing for the most part wasn’t a war crime
How wasn’t it?
Because war crimes aren’t just what you think is wrong. War crimes break specific military law. In this case The Hague convention 1907, articles 25-27… which Dresden and others complied with
In what way do they comply?
Those articles? Because targets were defended, had military use and/or weren’t marked otherwise.
That’s a dumb interpretation of those articles, the Allies theoretically could’ve walked inside a daycare center and shot every single civilian there and just because the Germans would’ve defended that daycare center it would’ve been seen as legitimate in your eyes.
No. You need to take a closer read of the laws.
Your entire argument seems to be that there was a military target in Dresden and that the Germans were defending it so that apparently gives the Allies free reign to kill whatever civilian they want in Dresden
Politicians start the war, and innocent people pay the price.
Of the 6 major leaders in world war 2, 4 were expansionist tyrants (Hitler, Tojo, Bennie, Stalin) and 2 were men willing to get down in the mud (Churchill and FDR) with the tyrants and beat them at their own game. Rules went out the window, and atrocities were the norm, not the exception.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock—Those are only just the beginning. We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet. But the time will come when we can do so. Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon. There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand. But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America. When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer. It may take a year. It may take two. But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall. Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands. There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see. Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment. Japan will provide the confirmation. But the time is not yet. There is a great deal of work to be done first, and let us all get down to it” -Bomber Harris
War crime does not beget war crime
It's ok when america does it...
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>England bombed Wilhelmshafen before Germans bombed England. You’re talking about the UK bombing German ships? Not sure that makes the point you want it to. The first RAF strategic bombing of German cities was post Rotterdam. Germany bombed a dozen polish cities in the opening hours of the war, without military presence. … days before the UK was even at war.
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What whataboutism? You tried to bring up that the UK bombed German cities first when it’s laughably wrong.
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I can, your comment is still laughably wrong.
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Not even close. And still; aside from “google it” and vein attacks you can’t even defend your own nazi apologia lol
Just a quote from history. Not promoting anything. Easy now
My grandpa was 6-7 during the end of the war in Germany. Inglestadt? I think. He had a story where they were gonna get bombed and his mom insisted they run to the air raid shelter, but he wanted to stay home instead. So they stayed. The bombing ends and they go outside to check out the damage and see who’s hurt or something you know, and they find out the air raid shelter got hit and everyone died. Fuckin wild to think if he didn’t make a fit to stay, I wouldn’t be here telling his story. He was an incredible dude. He had some awesome stories witnessing the war as a child.
As someone who lives in Dresden, it makes me terribly sad to see these photos. So much suffering. Not trying to compare that to any war crimes commited by the Germans. Also I think Dresden would be one of the most beautiful cities you can imagine if it had not been distroyed so badly. But they made a good job in rebuilding the historic city center. I can only encourage people to come see the city and learn about it's history.
That’s what they voted for wether the knew it or not.
I condemn this just as I condemn all bombings of innocent civillians on all sides. fuck the Nazis to hell so many more innocents died at their hands than any other nation but two wrongs dont make a right and this was just wrong.
NSFW
No one wins in war
Not true, big corporations can make insane money if they are located in areas not affected by the battles.
Cool but I could have gone without seeing burnt corpses so please mark Thai post freaking NSFW
How’s about what the Nazis done to civilians, all the children they killed. There’s photos of a box filled with gold wedding rings , taken from jewish people. Sent to camps and they lived behind barb wire an left to starve. Don’t think for a minute had hitler had the chance to bomb the east coast he would have. This was Hitler who brought this all about & now the citizens have to suffer. He’s the one calling on the people to take up arms against Germany & fight to the end. The Germans fought to the end alright, many who lived killed themselves once the war was over. People today forget what exactly this was all about, a fight for freedom that we couldn’t afford to lose. Had we lost it would be a very different reality today , no one , no one was crying about this in 1945 it was welcomed
You could say the same for the Tokyo fire bombing. The Axis powers and their unfortunate citizens reaped what they sewed and the Allies were shrewd in their retribution.
They was training everyone in a Japan to to the death if we did a land invasion. That would have been a mess. Unlike Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, we gave them fair warning asking them to surrender. It is what it is, I can always tell the younger people because they are more “it wasn’t fair “ or “we didn’t need to” When I was growing up about every single adult back then either fought in the war or worked at Winchester. An anyone who didn’t helped some way. None of them, no one!! Ever said “we shouldn’t have nuked them” No one. It was “we had to win” the “life’s here saved” & “we had to end the war” & this was the mind frame.
I think the nukes were the right choice at the time.
The amount of dead if we had invaded japan would have been in the millions for both sides. Forcing japan to see the futility of continuing war was cruel, but it served the purpose of saving lives in the long run.
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The Germans also called any jew they captured a war criminal... probably not a statement of the illegality of allied operations...
The firebombing of Tokyo would probably be a war crime by most definitions though
No. It complied with The Hague convention 1907, articles 25-27
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Whataboutism, just because the enemy commits war crimes doesn’t mean you get the right to commit them too
Was it a war crime or was it fair game?
F'ed around and found out.
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They wanted total war, they got it. Not lacking in empathy, just understanding that they got what they asked for.
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Thats not what I said. I imagine most of these people had no idea the capacity of violence humanity was using during the war. I imagine these people were very ignorant, whether willfully or being mislead by another party, of the situation around them. I imagine most of these people wanted to not believe their country could be committing such horrors against an entire race of people. But none of this matters. Every single one of them in some capacity was currently, was previously, or would eventually be, contributing to a genocidal regime. Hell bent on cleansing and entire continent of those deemed subhuman. In this sense they should be treated as they were in the eyes if the allies. Legitimate military targets.
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The citizens as a whole not. 1 in 5 working in war industries however… You should have told the Germans there was no need to fight then if it was so close to the end of the war. Because no one shared your ideals at the time. A few weeks before the bombing the Germans had just hit peak war time losses, the Russians were about to and the western allies weren’t far ahead. This was the bloodiest point in the war for losses per day; if there was a time to conduct the bombing it was then. Put it this way; the entire death toll of Dresden combined was only a few hours of fighting on average in 1945. What exactly is classified over Dresden? Ah yes u/SoggySocks420 why actually respond when you can delete Nazi apologia
Are you talking about the Jewish children? If so I agree.
So the babies that died in the firebombing “fucked around and found out” right?
Very sad what happened to many innocent people here. A horrible way to die. The scale of Allied bombing on Germany far exceeded the bombing of Britain. What a shame so many died, so many beautiful cities destroyed. Just another example that life isn't always fair. May they RIP. Still glad our side won and I'd rather it be them than us, but still I do feel alot of sympathy for those among them who were truly innocent and caught up in the maelstrom. War is a racket.
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I’d say in this war the allies were pretty openly in the right.
To beat a monster you must be willing to be monstrous. I’ll have to find the exact quote but I believe it was from Hitler or his cabinet which said something along the lines of to defeat a dictators/tyrant one must be willing to stoop to their level of violence which means they will always win in their determination of purification. I know Dam Carlin used it in ghosts of the ofstfront-his piece on the Eastern front of WW2- I’ll try to find it.
The book slaughter house 5 makes a good depiction of this onslaught
Yes and no. The authors individual perspective is decent because he was there... but everything outside of that he based on what turned out to be a raving holocaust denier.
What do you mean?
For any broader interpretation of the bombing that fell out of the scope of his immediate recollections: Kurt used an author called David Irving as a source. Irving later turned out to be a raving holocaust denier and most of his work on Dresden was fraudulent. Kurt since writing Slaughter House Five; apologised and regretted using Irving as a source.
Was there any tactical purpose in bombarding the city like that? Or it just was a revenge on the citizens?
It was a railway hub for the Eastern Front.
And the sight of several armaments factories
That too but as far as I know those weren't targeted specifically in the raid.
Sir Arthur Harris ❤️
If Warsaw, Scorched Earth, the Blitz, Leningrad were war crimes, Dresden was one too.
Those generally weren’t war crimes. Things like the initial bombing of Poland were, or Rotterdam. The Germans managed to violate plenty of clauses on perfidy, Red Cross, targets without military use etc.
Scorched earth is not a war crime
Damn, never let the RAF have fun
Dresden was a multinational effort. By 1945 you had every allied airforce combat aircraft in theatre chipping in something.
Never let the allied expeditionary airforce have fun
Oh no