Allied Bombing campaign

[DaveBB]

It is true that U.S. fighters strafed civilians.  In Steven Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldier", there is a picture of two beautiful girls, sisters.  One is dead with bullet wounds and the other sister is holding her.  Very moving.  The caption claims that a P-47 strafed her.  

Chuck Yeager briefly mentions that stuff that he and his squadron did to civilians.  He said (I'm paraphrasing slightly) "We better win this war, because if they find out what we have done, we will all hang for it".

I can't remember what documentary I saw it on, but it said the main motive for bombing Dresden was to show the Soviets (who at that time had a massive ground army) that the British and Americans ruled the skies, and were completely capable of obliterating a city.  Germany and it's territories were already being divvied up.  Some may relegate this to a conspiracy theory.  But the Soviet invasion of Japanese territories during the last few weeks of the war show that everyone was going for land-grabs.

[GScholz]

I think the debate here is whether or not it was necessary.  It's easy to second guess decisions with the benefit of hindsight, in my opinion it was not.

There's not really a debate. My post was about giving an insight to the horrors of bombing, something the O.P. seemed to take lightly. I do not really want to debate any of the facts, but I realize others do. Personally I choose not to judge these acts except to say that I find them hard to justify.

[Ripsnort]

I did a research paper on the Strategic Bombing Campaign years ago.  Here are just some highlights of it:

Targets that were extremely vulnerable, like the electrical grid (especially in Berlin) were ignored because of lack of data on how vulnerable they actually were.

The bombing of bottleneck industries, such as German ball bearing plants, was ineffective.

The bombing of refineries was ineffective.  Only when the refineries were overrun by ground troops did fuel production stop for the Germans.

The manpower required by the Luftwaffe (which also had some 2 million ground troops) to defend against bombing was effective due to the fact that those soldiers could not be used as front line ground troops.

Even daylight bombing was extremely inaccurate.  I don't remember the exact figures, but it's something on the order of only 30% of bombs dropped fell within a 1 mile radius of the target.

The best defense a bomber had against enemy aircraft was speed.

The main quality for an escort fighter to be effective was having a higher speed than the enemy aircraft.

And bomber crews feared flak more than they did enemy fighters.

[Arlo]

There's not really a debate. My post was about giving an insight to the horrors of bombing, something the O.P. seemed to take lightly. I do not really want to debate any of the facts, but I realize other do. Personally I choose not to judge these acts except to say that I find them hard to justify.

Regrettably, the article you chose to illustrate such was designed to be more inciteful than insightful. I'm not saying that was your intent but you could have chosen better. 'A Single Column Of Flame' is indeed referenced on a lot of sights on the internet, most of them having a common theme:

http://www.federaljack.com/the-wwii-dresden-holocaust-a-single-column-of-flame/

(removed David Duke link since the browser says it's untrusted.)

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/02/the-wwii-dresden-holocaust-a-single-column-of-flame-2-2565132.html

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/the-dresden-holocaust-a-single-column-of-flame/

http://downloadpolitics.com/showthread.php?25471-The-Dresden-Holocaust-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%98A-Single-Column-Of-Flame%E2%80%99

http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-The_Dresden_Holocaust

http://northerntruthseeker.blogspot.com/2012/02/true-genocide-of-history-dresden.html

http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/topic/200346-65-years-ago-the-wwii-dresden-holocaust-a-single-column-of-flame/

http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/02/wwii-dresden-holocaust-single-column-of.html

~~~~

I'm not sure if you found it at one of those sources or someplace else but it's quite common to see inflated hyperbole shared by political blogs of this nature.

The facts do matter. Better sources exist and I know you're capable of finding them.  

[GScholz]

I found it (years ago) at rense.com

I wasn't interested in a documentary style, dry, unfeeling account of the events. For the purpose of this thread I wanted an article that focused on the human suffering and eyewitness accounts. Just disregard the numbers, inflated or not, and get a feel for the human tragedy that was the bombing of Dresden. Then realize that Dresden was only one of many cities that suffered such horrors.

This is not about blame.

[BreakingBad]

i tend to place less value on human compassion...it was necessary at the time. i can think of a few other locales that could use similar treatment right now.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, I think your trying to say you don't experience empathy for people.

It depends on what your definition of 'necessary' is.  

I don't believe it was necessary to achieve a military victory over Germany.  You might feel it was necessary to exact some form of retribution, or as a political statement.

To be honest we have to label the bombing of Dresden for what it was, which was the intentional and wholesale slaughter of non-combatants.  At the time they felt this was a necessary, and to some degree it would certainly have hampered the civilian war production efforts.  

Frankly at this point though everyone knew the war was lost for Germany, I'm not sure what burning little girls to death achieved.    

[GScholz]

[Arlo]

I found it (years ago) at rense.com

I wasn't interested in a documentary style, dry, unfeeling account of the events. For the purpose of this thread I wanted an article that focused on the human suffering and eyewitness accounts. Just disregard the numbers, inflated or not, and get a feel for the human tragedy that was the bombing of Dresden. Then realize that Dresden was only one of many cities that suffered such horrors.

This is not about blame.

I get (and have gotten) the feel for this human tragedy (like you, years ago). I'm probably just more sensitive to seeing such human tragedy used for political ends no less despicable than the author claims were motive for the event.  

[GScholz]

 

[gyrene81]

I'm not sure what you mean by that, I think your trying to say you don't experience empathy for people.

It depends on what your definition of 'necessary' is.  

I don't believe it was necessary to achieve a military victory over Germany.  You might feel it was necessary to exact some form of retribution, or as a political statement.

To be honest we have to label the bombing of Dresden for what it was, which was the intentional and wholesale slaughter of non-combatants.  At the time they felt this was a necessary, and to some degree it would certainly have hampered the civilian war production efforts.  

Frankly at this point though everyone knew the war was lost for Germany, I'm not sure what burning little girls to death achieved.    

by the time the bombings occurred, the war had been raging in europe for nearly 6 years. the loss of life for both combatants and civilians was already too high. up until that time, i believe dresden was the largest city in germany that had not been bombed up to that point. the "intended" targets were industrial and logistical, however, as was somewhat typical of bombing efforts at the time, the "collateral damage" was far more devastating. it was necessary in the view of the people who planned the bombing attacks, and i for one don't disagree with their assessment all things considered.

try to imagine what the results would have been if allied command had known what they knew after buchenwald had been discovered. and i had relatives that were part of the problem in germany at the time.

[zack1234]

The Nazi party were responsible for all the deaths of WWII

[Ack-Ack]

Too bad some seem to forget cities like Coventry and Guernica, cities where the Germans practiced their terror bombing.





War is Hell.

ack-ack

[BreakingBad]

Too bad some seem to forget cities like Coventry and Guernica, cities where the Germans practiced their terror bombing.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I think I read somewhere it was actually the English that started bombing civilians first.  

If I recall correctly, the author described the Battle of Britain in chronologic order, with first the Germans bombing RAF airfields, then the RAF bombing German cities, then the Germans switching from RAF airfields to English cities as retribution.

edit:  The Guernica bombing would have predated the Battle of Britain.

[Ack-Ack]

I'm not sure if this is true, but I think I read somewhere it was actually the English that started bombing civilians first.  

That would be incorrect. 

Rotterdam is an example.


Then there is the whole mess of Germans strafing civilian refugee columns during the their Blitzkrieg across Europe.

ack-ack

[Rich46yo]

February 13/14 1945: Holocaust over Dresden, known as the Florence of the North. Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city.

Nonsense. Dresden was a legitimate military target. It was a major transportation hub for moving troops and materials to the eastern front. It also had at least 100 military related factories, production including poison gas, aircraft parts, and artillery. It was the last of Germany's major cities that hadnt been bombed. What were we supposed to do?  let it go just because it had some nice architecture ?

It was the Germans who decided to militarize the city, including putting in a major Wehrmacht command center. Which our bombs destroyed.

I get tired of hearing it was just a terror bombing.