A question of numbers? (related to P47, P51, P38...the German view......)

[Charon]

If you want to hear the LW fighter pilots were all evil genocidal Nazis sure. I could say the same for all the bomber pilots they were evil Genocidal Maniacs with bombs and strafing houses of civilians I could say the same, and to some point it's the truth, I'd be call crazy of course because it's not compatible with the history written by the victors....

You named a couple of instances were the LW had to resort, to doing that sort of thing. Hmmm. Could it be Simply put they used it as last resort? However the allies,the good tacticians they were, decided to commit another type of genocide but with bombs but again they won so there of course will not be a tribunals to try these "heroes" of WW2, for bombing Frankfurt, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and kill thousands of civilians, war is hell in deed but look at how the "evil Germans" conducted war against the All "good" allies,...
Glasses

I have to stand up for the cowardly allied military personnel who unjustly waged such a terrible war against the misunderstood Nazis.

The “innocent” German civilians were actively supporting the German war effort, both directly and indirectly. They were very busy making the tanks, planes, U-Boats, food, torpedoes, bombs, bullets and Zyklon B used to wage a war of aggression and genocide on a scale never seen on the face of the Earth. Were they all hard core Nazi’s, no, but it is very clear that by 1939 Hitler was accorded extreme support by the masses of the population (numerous primary resources that support this). They had increasingly supported Hitler since 1933, and that support generally remained strong up to and even after 1945.

Did all Germans (civilian or military) buy into all Nazi dogma? No, but many certainly did. And many just chose to overlook disagreeable areas as long as Nazism kept them employed and away from the communist menace and the uncertainty of a Weimar democracy. They saw little wrong, as a whole (with some notable exceptions, such a Goering’s brother, Albert), to the tenants laid out in Mein Kampf, which clearly outlined where Hitler was headed. They didn’t know the untermensch were going to be exterminated in mass perhaps, but they had no problem with the vague “resettlement to the East” and didn’t ask too many questions.

In fact, more than a few Germans were lining up to get access to former Jewish businesses, land and personal property in both Germany and the occupied territories. As Hamburg Librarian Gertrude Seydelmann recalled (Seduced by Hitler), … ordinary Germans felt as if they had suddenly won the lottery. Ration cards were still being honored, there were no serious shortages, husbands were returning from the East laden with meat, wine, and clothes and luxury goods were offered at basement prices. “Simple housewives were suddenly wearing fur coats, dealing in coffee and jewelry, had fine old furniture,” recalls Seydelmann. “It was the stolen property of Dutch Jews who, as I found out after the war, were already on their way to the gas chambers. I didn’t want anything to do with it.” Perhaps 30% of all German households received stolen property during the war.

The German military itself, seems to have responded to Hitler with a mixture of self-interest (even when they found the little corporal disagreeable) to outright reverence after the early political and military successes. Czechoslovakia and Austria certainly won many over. It may be splitting hairs to call all of the military “Nazis,” (particularly in the higher ranks) but they were certainly willing tools of Nazi aggression 1939-1943, as well as “heroic” defenders of the Reich once the fury of the world caught up with them. From my perspective, the most heroic defenders of Germany were the members of the White Rose. Try stepping away from the fanboi books and grand apologies and read some of the following for a perspective on Hitler’s rise to power and life inside Nazi Germany:

The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933 - 1945 (Pierre Aycoberry) -- Very thorough, but a bit academic and dry. Some people stood up the Nazi regime and paid the price, while others saw an opportunity to improve their lot in life.

The Nazi Seizure of Power, The experience of a single German town 1930-1935 (William Sheridan Allen) -- The fear of the world-wide depression, and to some extent of the communists, leads to Hitler’s rise. The Treaty of Versailles hardly matters in a direct way, nor did any particular hatred of the Jews. However, the nazi’s were brilliant at focusing the particular message on the particular audience.

Seduced by Hitler, The choices of a nation and the ethics of survival (Adam LeBor/Roger Boyes) -- an interesting look at how some Germans could and did say no, and how many compromised with the regime out of self interest or a general lack of concern with what was going on. It also looks at the moral dynamics with the Jews who cooperated in the Warsaw Ghetto and the camp system, and neutral and occupied country collaboration with the holocaust, etc. Authors lived worked (as reporters from the West) under East German rule and provide personal history about living within a totalitarian system.

Mein Kampf -- no secrets here. If you were a German considering the ramifications of Nazi rule under Herr Hitler, well, it’ s spelled out in black and white (with a little gray) -- from the Jews to Barbarossa.

I don’t consider the life of a German citizen actively supporting the Nazi war effort any more significant, special or exempt than the life of an Allied soldier that wouldn’t have even been in uniform had it not been for the Nazis. The allied soldiers were not the aggressors here. Most really, and I mean REALLY, didn’t want to fight and die in Hitler’s war in the first place. But they had no choice. If the bombing shortened the war (and there is plenty of evidence that it did, though perhaps not as dramatically as expected) and ultimately saved allied lives, and the lives of those living under brutal Nazi occupation, then the actions undertook to defeat Nazi Germany were entirely justified. Terror bombing itself, which is the most morally debatable aspect of the air war, caused serious production disruptions in places like Hamburg, even if the population wasn’t scared out of the war. Of all the efforts, perhaps the only one that went beyond the pale was Dresden. But then, it had been a long, hard brutal war by 1945, and you can’t escape the fact that there would have been no Dresden in 1945 if there hadn’t been a Poland in 1939.

I won’t even comment on the fact that the concept of total war was developed by the Kondor legion in Spain (and the Japanese in Manchuria for that matter), and was born out in Poland and Rotterdam. Hard to see someone as a “Knight of the Air” when they are strafing a column of Polish civilians in their glorious Stukas. The US may have done the same later on, firing at anything that moved, but they had good mentors and the efforts were aimed at bringing the war to a close with the proper victor. Perhaps you feel that the war should have been longer, leading to more deaths among allied soldiers and the untermensch in the death camp machine? If not, just how would you have shortened the war without strategic bombing?

It is true the leadership, the nazi leadership is to blame for the blatant mistakes and judgement in strategy. In peace they were the strength and in war time they were the weakness that brought it down,simple as that.

Was Hitler's Nazi economy really great, or did it just benefit from a number of SPD public works programs that began to take hold about the time the Nazi’s came to power in 1933? Would Nazi economic success, based largely on public works and a rearmament program, still have been so profound by 1941 without a World War? Especially with the corrupt business environment that existed as part of the Nazi bureaucracy?

at least the "evil ones" had respect for the Genova convention,and behaved in foreign soil. Amazing, isn't it?

Yes, this statement is amazing.

Charon

[Glasses]

See the whole post or what I was trying to get across apparently Charon you have your mind made up that German=Evil in WW2 all of them and they indeed have to die. I won't make the whole discussion again we had a while back. Anyhow after 15 odd years of poverty,unnemployment and despair some Germans were just happy that they finally had a job and a renewed sense of pride after the allies imposed the sanctions in WW1.

For some reason apparently you only see that they all were fanatical  uber aryan  believing the Nazi rethoric was true. You  don't see that was their country  that's all, they knew their nation called them up to go to war just as the Americans did oh! and if you refused you would be imprisoned, if you committed mutiny you would be shot. What's that? the Americans also had that policy wow! I bet you forgot that little detail.

I'm not portraying the German military as Saints I'm really  not but, I'm not potraying them as evil as they were not, some of the allies did with their military far worse things the Germans did and vice- versa of course with narrow mind set of evil, evil, evil, evil they should be destroyed,murdered and their children raped(like the Russians did ) you will never understand.

You see and read so many instances of clemency in war by the German military,treating the enemy when they were wounded or rescuing or sending SOS signals to enemy boats so they rescued thier fellow crewmen when a U-Boat struck. I'm not apologizing or making excuses for the Genocide committed by the SS in Europe and the injustice made in the East by them at any one time that! is not excusable. But I'm sorry If I don't agree wholeheartedly with you because that simply is not the truth.

The western allies were the better of the 3 Main allied nations in Europe, even though they themselves did some terrible things to the enemy which the enemy had not done to them, they still at them end held the Russians from taking Germany for their own completely,even though they had some self interest in keeping the Russians  in the other half of Germany.

Yes Charon and partly the way the Americans rebuilt their economy was  because the war in Europe finally opened up jobs for the amis in the military manufacturing sector. So that of course goes both ways, leaving out details is a nice way to disinform.

[Wotan]

Charon posts the same stuff over and over do a search.

He excuses away the terror bombing of civilians or the murder of airmen in their chutes because "they were the bad guys". The allies rightfully tried and hung folks on the axis side for these very same things but the people on the Allied side responsible for the same crimes are touted as heros.

So what a bunch war refugees, mostly women and children were fire bombed for no miltary reason, so what if the war was all but over. Those bastard Nazi children were the devils spawn. A bunch future Hitlers.

I am surprised he makes no moral arguement on why the morganthau plan should have been the best thing for those surviving Nazi scum.

How dare you say different glasses. You goosestep through these threads failing to except what the victors tell you. You must be one of them. No wonder you fly Nazi planes.

[straffo]

Originally posted by Wotan
Those bastard Nazi children were the devils spawn. A bunch future Hitlers.

ouch ... you don't think they were educated/fanatised to support Hitler ?

[Tac]

Just be glad it was Goering who lead the LW and not Galland.


The german's only weakness throught the entire war was their high command (of morons). It was the brilliance of their field commanders that brought them victories. How do you think things wouldve gone if it was Galland in command of the LW and Rommel in charge of the Army and Doenitz in charge of the Kriegsmarine from the very start of the conflict?

[Glasses]

Exactly Tac.

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by Tac
How do you think things wouldve gone if it was Galland in command of the LW and Rommel in charge of the Army and Doenitz in charge of the Kriegsmarine from the very start of the conflict?

Probably radioactively after B-29s launched from Iceland or Greenland nuked the crap out of Germany.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Daff]

In most cases, allied fighters were outnumbered, even in late '44.
 First, in early '43, there were 3 P-47 FG's (4th, 56th & 78th) + a couple of of P-38 FG's.
Each group had 3 squadrons of 12 planes each, so 180 planes. ..but...in '43, there would rarely be more than 2 FG's escorting at anyone time...add to that, that the squadrons would also be spread out, the LW pretty much always had the initial advantage, as the LW would try to gather as many planes in one spot for the initial attack.
 It was not uncommon for 1 squadron (which later expanded to 16 planes) to face up to 100+ LW fighters. Of course they would call for help, but even so it would take time for the other squadrons and FG's to get there, if they could find the fight in the first place.
 Even later on, when the massive 500 bomber+ raids started, the escort coverage wasnt much different, as each FG would have a specific section to cover.
 Now, of course this is mainly dealing with the initial attack. I think where the LW really suffered from bad numbers, was on their subsequent sorties as they couldnt establish the same size groups and often ended up winging with pilots from other gruppen/JG's.

 There's a very good book which came out a couple of years ago...something like "8th AF Command in WW2", which describes the situation from the 8th AF side. It gives a good insight in the problems they faced and the solutions they came up with.

 Daff

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by Tac
Just be glad it was Goering who lead the LW and not Galland.


The german's only weakness throught the entire war was their high command (of morons). It was the brilliance of their field commanders that brought them victories. How do you think things wouldve gone if it was Galland in command of the LW and Rommel in charge of the Army and Doenitz in charge of the Kriegsmarine from the very start of the conflict?

Interesting questions.  Rommel would have surrendered early.  I doubt that Galland would have changed anything - no one has yet explained why he was such a failure as Inspector of Fighters.  Doenitz probably would have done better than Raeder, good point.  But what you're ignoring is that ALL sides had problem commanders.  What if Zhukov had been in charge in 1941?  What if Bradley had been in charge in 1940?  You don't get to pick a dream team, and the incompetence tends to balance out.  At bottom, the Nazis just bit off more than they could chew.

- oldman

[Charon]

My last comment on Glasses assertions in this forum at least, since it is off topic. However...

See the whole post or what I was trying to get across apparently Charon you have your mind made up that German=Evil in WW2 all of them and they indeed have to die. I won't make the whole discussion again we had a while back.

I don’t know, 39 million European war dead, mostly civilian and mostly non-Axis, directly related to a German war of territorial aggression might have something to do with that. You do remember that there was a happy time of aggressive German military conquest before  the “dark days” of 1944?

I, frankly, don’t think the German people of 1933-1945 are particularly more or less evil than, say, Americans who actively or passively allowed slavery to exist during the first 100 years of my great democracy. However, I believe that acknowledging events like Slavery (or the fact that founding fathers like Washington and Jefferson owned slaves), World War 2 (not only the genocide aspect but the war of conquest aspects), European colonialism, etc. provide an opportunity for humanity to move beyond its mistakes of the past. Modern Germany has done a tremendous in this regard, IMO. America could perhaps do a better job in some areas. The truth may be unpleasant at times, but to ignore it, whitewash it, or otherwise “revise and reshape” it to suit some modern fantasy is a disservice to both the past and the future. The only reason I have spent so much time studying the social aspects of Nazi Germany is to see how such an impossible thing could happen in a country of otherwise normal people.

As the Scottish philosopher David Hume once noted: “Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission with which men resigned their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”

Anyhow after 15 odd years of poverty,unnemployment and despair some Germans were just happy that they finally had a job and a renewed sense of pride after the allies imposed the sanctions in WW1.

After the First World War Germany suffered from inflation. In January, 1921, there were 64 marks to the dollar. By November, 1923 this had changed to 4,200,000,000,000 marks to the dollar.
Some politicians in the United States and Britain began to realize that the terms of the Versailles Treaty had been too harsh and in April 1924 Charles Dawes presented a report on German economic problems to the Allied Reparations Committee. The report proposed a plan for regulating annual payments of reparations and the reorganizing the German State Bank so as to stabilize the currency. Promises were also made to provide Germany with foreign loans.
These policies were successful and by the end of 1924 inflation had been brought under control and the economy began to improve. By 1928 unemployment had fallen to 8.4 per cent of the workforce. The German people gradually gained a new faith in their democratic system and began to find the extremist solutions proposed by people such as Adolf Hitler unattractive.
The fortunes of the National Socialist German Workers Party changed with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. Before the crash, 1.25 million people were unemployed in Germany. By the end of 1930 the figure had reached nearly 4 million, 15.3 per cent of the population. Even those in work suffered as many were only working part-time. With the drop in demand for labour, wages also fell and those with full-time work had to survive on lower incomes. Hitler, who was considered a fool in 1928 when he predicted economic disaster, was now seen in a different light. People began to say that if he was clever enough to predict the depression maybe he also knew how to solve it. Useful link: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERunemployment.htm

How about a US comparison? At the worst point of the Great Depression, in 1933, one in four Americans who wanted to work was unable to find a job. Further, it was not until 1941, when World War II was underway, that the official unemployment rate finally fell below 10%. This massive wave of unemployment hit before a food stamp program and unemployment insurance existed. Where was our Hitler?

For some reason apparently you only see that they all were fanatical uber aryan believing the Nazi rethoric was true. You don't see that was their country that's all, they knew their nation called them up to go to war just as the Americans did oh! and if you refused you would be imprisoned, if you committed mutiny you would be shot. What's that? the Americans also had that policy wow! I bet you forgot that little detail.

Their country didn’t just “call them to war” as the allies did in the face of Nazi aggression, it called them to war in order to slash out some living space in the East as part of a greater Aryan destiny. I believe there is a clear distinction. Some Germans objected, some risked their lives to help Jews and other outsiders, but a great many just went with the program, with seemingly few moral quandaries until the bombs started falling on their cities.

Hitler was leagally elected in 1932/33, his rule was confirmed by referendum  in 1936 (99% of the population voted, and 98% of those supported Hitler). There is no indication that fear played a major motivator in their support until perhaps 1944-45. If you were a former radical, then yes, you lived in fear. If you were a common person, then you just had to watch your mouth most of the time (but there was still leeway). Hitler made sure the economy stayed focused on consumer goods through the early years of the way to keep the citizens happy, not afraid. The size of the SA and Gestapo prevented a fear campaign without the full participation of the mainstream population. Records back up the fact that police officer #1 was likely your next door neighbor. Hitler realized that if the German people ever decided to overthrow him, they could. Even so, there are plenty of examples of Germans who said “NO”, and lived to tell about it. Look up the mass Rosenstrasse protest held in Berlin in 1943.

I'm not portraying the German military as Saints I'm really not but, I'm not potraying them as evil as they were not, some of the allies did with their military far worse things the Germans did and vice- versa of course with narrow mind set of evil, evil, evil, evil they should be destroyed, murdered and their children raped (like the Russians did ) you will never understand.

Please provide examples of the “far worse things” that a contemporary Ukrainian or Russian civilian might find sympathetic.

You see and read so many instances of clemency in war by the German military,treating the enemy when they were wounded or rescuing or sending SOS signals to enemy boats so they rescued thier fellow crewmen when a U-Boat struck. I'm not apologizing or making excuses for the Genocide committed by the SS in Europe and the injustice made in the East by them at any one time that! is not excusable. But I'm sorry If I don't agree wholeheartedly with you because that simply is not the truth.

Why were they in position to offer such mercies? Because they were waging an aggressive war to conquer large portions of Europe?

Also, Some disagree with the notion that there was a total distinction between the SS and the regular German military -- The Hamburg Institute for Social Research for example. Here is the outline of an exhibit they offer on the subject:
 
In 1945 at the end of World War II, shortly after the German Army's unconditional surrender, the Nuremberg trials clearly established that officers and members of the Army (the Wehrmacht) participated directly in the racial and genocidal terror that had characterized the Nazi project for a new world order. In spite of this, the defeated Germans began to construct a myth that became a central tenet of postwar West German society. That myth promoted the idea that the regular army had fought a "normal" war and was innocent of the genocide and mass murders carried out by the SS and the Gestapo.

Popular magazines, dime novels, and films presented the soldiers as "regular guys" – honorable and decent men doing their duty. Officers were portrayed as having been victimized by the orders of a mad dictator. Heroic images of men flying Stuka dive bombers and manning tank turrets and machine guns to hold back the invading barbarians from the East, helped to embed this image. These stories continued to distance the German Army from Hitler, the Nazi regime, and from the atrocities they perpetrated against Jews, other civilians, and prisoners of war.

The Hamburg Institute for Social Research, established in 1984 as an independent private foundation, created this extraordinary exhibition. It powerfully challenges the myth of the German Army's innocence, which has served as a core narrative of postwar German history. Graphic photographic evidence documents the Army's participation in atrocities in Eastern Europe. Harrowing photographs taken by German soldiers depict massacres, hangings, and torture. Official documents direct military units to exterminate Jewish communities. Private letters from soldiers to their families include eyewitness - and often boastful - accounts of war crimes. Military directives prove close collaboration between the SS and the regular army throughout the war…

Cont.

[Charon]

... The exhibition leaves no doubt that the plunder, the massacre of civilians, the killing of prisoners of war, and genocide were not just the work of the generals or a few fanatical Nazi officers. The exhibition's conclusion: millions of soldiers – men with familiar faces and names; men who enjoyed love and respect – participated. Clearly, these men were subjected to massive ideological indoctrination, and acted both on orders from their superiors and, in many cases, on their own initiative.
One result of the exhibition was an unanticipated outpouring of responses from former soldiers, their children, and their grandchildren. They sent letters. They telephoned. They sent in the notebooks and photo albums kept since the war ended. They offered memoirs the soldiers had written for their families. Some of these artifacts are now part of the exhibition.

The western allies were the better of the 3 Main allied nations in Europe, even though they themselves did some terrible things to the enemy which the enemy had not done to them, they still at them end held the Russians from taking Germany for their own completely, even though they had some self interest in keeping the Russians in the other half of Germany.

How heroic. Why were the Russians driving on Berlin again?

Yes Charon and partly the way the Americans rebuilt their economy was because the war in Europe finally opened up jobs for the amis in the military manufacturing sector. So that of course goes both ways, leaving out details is a nice way to disinform.

Nice way to show a basic ignorance of pre-war US policy. If it was such an opportunity to our economy, then why did it take the Japanese sinking most of the Pacific fleet and Hitler’s declaring war on the US to bring us into the war several years after the panzers rolled over Poland? I suppose the families of 500,000 US servicemen killed should thank the Germans for the job opportunities. And my grandfather should have thanked Hitler (and Tojo for that matter) for keeping him away from his wife and newborn daughter for the first five years of her life.

Charon

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by Wotan
at peak and on paper covering western Europe Norway and germany there were 820 planes mid war. Caldwell estimated 1300 or so but this is late war strength when geschwader numbers were :

Geschwader Stab 4 a/c
I. Gruppe + Stab = 64 + 4 a/c
II. Gruppe + Stab = 64 + 4 a/c
III. Gruppe + Stab = 64 + 4 a/c
IV. Gruppe + Stab = 64 + 4 a/c
Total of 276 a/c

I tried to find some figures, too.  Williamson Murray, in “Luftwaffe,” (Nautical & Aviation Pub. Co. 1985) says at p. 214:

Meanwhile, the air battles in July and August [1943] forced the Germans to adjust their air strategy.  They could no longer support the attrition of those months, while the American threat forced them to cut commitments in the Mediterranean and Russia.  Defense of the Reich became the top priority, and beginning in July the Luftwaffe transferred Gruppen from Russia to the west.  The process continued throughout late summer as the east and Mediterranean lost their fighter cover.  The situation was so critical that transferred units received no time to transition into the western defense system. ..... Fighter strength in German rapidly rose.  From barely 600 aircraft, fighter numbers rose to 800 by July and nearly 1,000 by early October.  In addition, substantial numbers of twin-engine fighters redeployed to the Reich so that by mid-October the Luftwaffe had nearly 200 of them available in Germany of which 50 percent were “in commission.”  Finally, German commanders still used night fighters during the day despite the heavy loss of aircraft, radar equipment, and skilled crewmembers.”

He cites the British Air Ministry’s “the Rise and Fall of the German Air Force”, at pages 289-90, and Golucke’s “Schweinfurt und der strategische Luftkrieg 1943", at page 198, to support these figures.  This seems to be consistent with the Groehler statistics found on Caldwell’s JG26 web site (http://www.butler98.freeserve.co.uk/thtrlosses.htm).  You will note on that site that average day fighter strength in Germany, in Sept-Dec, 1943, was 800+ as opposed to 368 in the Western Front (which I assume is Holland-Belgium-France).  This ratio became more lop-sided in the first half of 1944 (927 vs. 259).  

The Germans therefore had an average of 1200 day fighters in Germany (and  the West Front) from mid-1943 through mid-1944.  Allied escort strength in fully operational 8th AF tactical units was 274 in September, 1943, 426 in October, 478 in November, 565 in December, 707 in January 1944, 678 in February, 720 in March, 784 in April, 882 in May, and 906 in June (from Murray’s Table XLIX, page 224).  

So.  I really don’t see how one can claim that the Luftwaffe was overwhelmed by superior numbers.

- oldman

[Charon]

And the final for Wotan in this particular thread, who, by the way, I personally find to be a good guy who has helped me a few times in the past, but whom I do disagree with.

Charon posts the same stuff over and over do a search.

He excuses away the terror bombing of civilians or the murder of airmen in their chutes because "they were the bad guys". The allies rightfully tried and hung folks on the axis side for these very same things but the people on the Allied side responsible for the same crimes are touted as heros.

So what a bunch war refugees, mostly women and children were fire bombed for no miltary reason, so what if the war was all but over. Those bastard Nazi children were the devils spawn. A bunch future Hitlers.

I am surprised he makes no moral arguement on why the morganthau plan should have been the best thing for those surviving Nazi scum.

How dare you say different glasses. You goosestep through these threads failing to except what the victors tell you. You must be one of them. No wonder you fly Nazi planes.

Wow, where to begin with the inaccuracies. Much of my position has already been covered in the Glasses post, and would be clearly present in my past posts if the archive went back beyond September (I wonder what happened to that?)

I don’t excuse terror bombing of civilians unless the aim, and results shorten a war of aggression that is killing thousands of truly innocent lives each day - the people living under all those goosestepping Nazi jackboots. You can argue if Dresden was necessary. In fact, I would agree that it wasn’t, but there is still some room for legitmate argument. The rest of the bombing campaign is a different matter. Even terror bombing, or more specifically “dehousing” as primarily practiced by the British, had a measurable economic and production impact. I believe Nashwan [sp?] posted some clear examples of this in previous threads. And, for all anybody knew at the time, terror itself might have worked. It was still considered a valid military doctrine by Hitler, thus the ridiculous V-weapon programs.

In addition, there were numerous ancillary benefits. The bombing campaign drew resources away from the Eastern front (shortening the war); allowed the German fighter force to be decimated because they couldn’t ignore strategic bombing (like they had previously ignored ineffective rhubarbs, circuses, US fighter sweeps and unfavorable encounters over Russia); disrupted the civilian infrastructure creating a myriad of logistical and support issues; forced a diluted split-force defense concept through  “round the clock” bombing; forced a shift from offensive to defensive weapons systems; tied up anti-aircraft cannon that could have been used in an anti-armor role; diluted manpower (and womanpower) in general; and created new defensive burdens related to stopping the air campaign. To have not carried out strategic bombing means a longer war with much higher allied and occupied civilian casualties, and perhaps even a negotiated settlement. These results are unacceptable, at least in my opinion.

I will not exclude German civilians supporting their war effort in substantial and material ways from the target list, if the result has the AGRESSOR country defeated with minimal allied casualties. The life of an allied soldier, who wouldn’t be fighting the dammed war in the first place if it weren’t for Nazi aggression, is no more sacrificial than the life of an aggressor civilian working to prolong the war. As I have stated before, I would even be personally generous in the human cost/benefit equation where the non-aggressors - military or not - are concerned. If you, or your son or your father were sitting in a Sherman tank in 1944, I seriously doubt you would have had too many problems with anything that ultimately resulted in fewer Tiger tanks and less gasoline to run them.

As for shooting people in chutes, I don’t think I’ve ever commented on that. However, the difference might be that if a pilot is over his own territory he is not surrendering -- he is saving his life so that he can kill you and your buddies the next day. And perhaps, you just saw him kill a buddy, perhaps he just came within an inch of killing you just seconds before. Such things happen with all sides during the heat of battle. I don’t know of too many individual soldiers on any side that were tried for isolated actions that occurred in the heat of battle. Now, killing 50 adult Slavs as a reprisal for a partisan attack, or POWs from the Dieppe raid, is another thing.

As for the Morgenthau program, had it more impact than it did, even before the currency reforms of 1948 that made it totally irrelevant, then it might be more worthy of discussion. Saner and more future-looking heads prevailed, in a climate where punitive desires must have been tremendous.

But fundamental changes in the management of American foreign policy occurred after Harry Truman became President. While the President was still a Senator, he read in the newspapers about the Morgenthau Plan, and he didn't like it. Morgenthau wanted to come to Potsdam, threatening to resign if he was not made a member of the U.S. delegation. Truman promptly accepted his resignation.

Charon

[DeadDuck]

Originally posted by Oldman731

So.  I really don’t see how one can claim that the Luftwaffe was overwhelmed by superior numbers.

- oldman

He'll ignore you just like he ignored me.  Arguing with fanatics is fun tho isn't it?

DD

[Naudet]

Oedipus, did you notice that Major Howards targets were attacking the buffs or were in an inferior position?
From the text i can't see that he was actually hunted by those 30 LW planes, but that those LW jockeys tried to get the bombers.

I have similar accounts for british, japanese and german pilots. But they are not representative of what usually happened in the airwar.
Those encounters often charakterised by the fact that the outnumbered attacker managed to keep an advantage through the whole engagement.
In case of Major Howard it seems he managed to hold a certain altittude advantage that he used extremely well to protect the bombers from the attacking german fighters.


That shows he was an exellent stick choosing the right tactic at the right time, but i wonder if he would have survived if 20+ german fighters were chasing him all at the same time, to quote Major Howard himself "I never saw 30 fighters all at once the way the bomber people tell it. I’d see one, give him a squirt, and go up again. There were an awful lot of them around it was just a matter or shooting at them." To me it seems Major Howard didnt feel really hunted in that engagement nor does he give an account that an enemy ever got behind him.