Today marks the anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden by the British Air Force.
Like a lot of people in the Anglosphere – more than will likely admit it – I first learned of it by reading ‘Slaughterhouse 5’ in high school.
The short version is that British strategic bombers used a combination of high explosives – to create kindling – and phosphorus – to ignite it- to create firestorm that killed half a million German civilians.
The direct military role of Dresden (and Cologne and Hamburg, which were equally treated) was limited, and the question of why Air Marshal Harris and Churchill chose to do this remains a significant issue for historians.
And for us, as we consider the issues around the ‘scope’ of warfare in the modern age.A long time ago, I wrote a paper about the interplay between social forms, the level and cost of technology that was generated by and could support those social norms, and forms of warfare. I pointed out that most societies seemed to cluster in scale at the level that optimally supported their then-preferred means of warfighting.
And that we tended to oscillate between a tribal mode of war, in which wars were typically either symbolic or total, and a ‘Westphalian’ form in which the wars engaged only the military and political leadership and explicitly tried (with varying degrees of success) to leave the peasants alone.
I think that we idealize the Westphalian style of war; we imagine it to be boundable in law and custom, and somehow able to keep the rage and fear that are inextricable from war out of the picture.
But I do think we are slowly moving – for a variety of reasons and with a variety of impulses – toward a system which at least makes some effort to manage what war is. We haven’t come very far.
That’s why General Mattis’ comments made me wince so deeply. I’ve met Gen. Mattis, shaken his hand and sat with him and discussed what he hoped to do when the 1st MEF returned to Iraq. And it was clear to me that he ‘got it’; that he was going to stop the bad guys and defend the good guys – who included the brutalized Iraqi people.
I had no doubt that he was a warrior, and all warriors have some germ of Genghis Khan in them, some desire to see their enemies trampled underfoot, their cities brought down amid tears.
But he knew, I felt then, how to place that impulse in context, and I continue to believe, based on the performance of his Marines, that he knew how to place that context into action, even when faced with a brutal enemy.
I think he slipped when he spoke, and while I disagree with Patterico and don’t believe an official reprimand was remotely called for, I do believe that a general officer ought to know better.
And the reason for that is worth remembering today, on the anniversary of Dresden.
We need to look at it and not see some lesson about the moral culpability of the West and how we’re as bad as the Nazis, or any other brutal regime – as opposed to some idealized nation which has never existed. Instead we should see the lesson of what total war looks like, and what we need to struggle hard to avoid.
We need to be reminded of what we’re capable of and what we need to sacrifice to avoid being driven to do. We should be ashamed of Dresden. We have dirty hands because of it, and an obligation to use those dirty hands to do better.
AL, you might want to make a slight correction there: 50,000 does not equal half a million. I assume you just misread it. Even so, 50,000 is the absolute low end of the estimates I’ve seen.
You should also make clear that it was not just the British air force which engaged in the bombing; as the article you link notes, the US followed up with a day of bombing – apparently to take care of whatever war-critical china shops and farmers’ markets hadn’t been eliminated by the Brits. I agree with your overall sentiment, though: this cannot, to say the least, be considered one of the prouder moments in US/British military history.
Dresden is an important thing to remember, in a time when Ward Churchill’s CU students are on television insisting that “America is founded on genocide.”
Refusing to recognize evil when you see it is itself evil. Calling everything evil(as Ward Churchill and his numerous ilk do) is likewise evil.
>>We have dirty hands because of it, and an obligation to use those dirty hands to do better.
What’s this WE nonsense? How old were you in 1945? What position of authority in U.S. or RAF bomber command did you hold?
I’m not responsible for the actions of that murderous bastard Churchill or any of the other vile monsters in the RAF or USAF who tried to pass as human. And neither are you.
We are responsible for the predictable consequences of our actions, individually as individuals.
>>I had no doubt that he was a warrior, and all warriors have some germ of Genghis Khan in them, some desire to see their enemies trampled underfoot, their cities brought down amid tears.
“If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war.”
Why commemorate the English bombing of Dresden but not the German bombings of Coventry and Rotterdam? If you will recall, the Germans were first to bomb cities. (In case of another historical faux pas, I’ll remind that Pearl Harbor preceded Hiroshima.)
whoa whoa whao. WRONG!
Half a million? the number is way way off base. Even the first commentor who said the estimate of 50,00 is the absolute low end” is incorrect. The low is actually is 25,000.
Indeed to quote wikopedia:
“and historians now view around 25,000-35,000 as the likely range, with the latest research by a German historian pointing toward the lower part of this range.”
Please do not repeat outright propaganda and insane numbers created by Nazis, neo-nazis and the Soviets!
Even Geobbels NAZI propaganda claim was “between 60,000 to 100,000.
The Dresden bombings were the subject of MASSIVE Soviet disinformation in the 1960’s and 70’s in trying to isolate/alienate Germany from the US. A lot of really outrageous figures were cooked and that is were the above 100,000 numbers are coming from.
This is of course ironic becasue thoes who have studied know that the Russians themselves were consulted. The Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex, was a specific request of Stalin and Antonov, and the marshalling yards were at Dresden were the US target. Also at Dresden – poison gas manufacture facilites.
Here is a good source, it is heavily footnoted as are many other peer reviewed studies that come in at about 50,000:
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
The over 100,000 estimates come from three sources:
1) Soviet disinformations campaigg aiming to alienate germany from the US during the cold war, and deflect the decimation that occured in East Germany by the USSR AFTER World War Two was over.
2) Neo fascist revisionists in Germany seeking to rewrite history.
3) David Irving. do you know the name? David Irving’s first famous “studies” were of the Dresden bombing. He later went on to beocme the most well known Holocaust denier and apoligist for Hitler.
http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evans005.asp#5.2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
Lastly dresden as a cultural center is often brought up. OK, but that is not ALL it was. It was also a large munitions producing area, a key governmentnet center, and most imporatanly a large rail marshalling area which ultra intercepts declassified rently show US and UK war planners now was to be used to carry 500,000 Nazi troops to the eastern front against the Russians if it wasn’t bombed.
bq. most imporatanly a large rail marshalling area which ultra intercepts declassified rently show US and UK war planners now was to be used to carry 500,000 Nazi troops to the eastern front against the Russians if it wasn’t bombed
Which is why the Soviets requested that we bomb it.
bq. We need to be reminded of what we’re capable of and what we need to sacrifice to avoid being driven to do.
What we need to sacrifice? Once you’re at war, isn’t the main aim to win it? Half a million troops sent to the eastern front would mean sacrificing a lot of Russian lives (though surely not changing the course of the war).
I would suggest reading Richard Rhodes _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_. The book discusses the “firestorm” of Dresden and Hamburg, and the March 1945 “conflagration” created when Tokyo was bombed.
Rhodes asserts – based partly on the Strategic Bombing Survery and on eyewitness accounts – that the weather was a key factor in creating these horrific bombings. In fact, the Army Air Force and Bomber Command were only able to create these Hiroshima-level events due to a confluence of events, including the weather.
The terms “firestorm” and “conflagration” in this context are technical terms.
Sorry, folks – amixture of unclear writing and too-quick research on my part re the 500,000 number.
I meant it to be Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne combined. And assumed they were of roughly equal size, and that the midpoint of the credible estimates for casualties in Dresden – which range from 50,000 to 200,000 was about right. But 125,000 x 3 != 500,000, so I even got that wrong…
Re the “we” stuff, T.J., the fact is that you and I enjoy the fruits of that action, whatever they may be. (We’ll likely never agree on this, but I flatly think you’re wrong here- you received a patrimony when you were born American, or European, or whatever, and you owe something for it.)
And Jim, as to the “they did it first” theory, well, we agree that the Nazis were war criminals in any number of dimensions. I’m really not interested in judging my behavior against theirs – are you?
A.L.
A.L.
_*Re the “we” stuff, T.J., the fact is that you and I enjoy the fruits of that action, whatever they may be. (We’ll likely never agree on this, but I flatly think you’re wrong here- you received a patrimony when you were born American, or European, or whatever, and you owe something for it.)*_
Sorry A.L. I agree with T.J. on this one. The actions taken by our forefathers regardless of savoring the fruits has absolutely no bearing. Those actions were actions taken without representation on my part. Here’s a better example. Because I travel so much I was made to pay state taxes in California, Ohio, New York, Virginia, and Colorado all in one year. Simply because I spent more than one month in each location. Forget the fact the travel and work was a requirement on behalf of my employer. Forget the fact that my home of record is in Virginia. Needless to say I voiced my complaints with my senators, congressman, and governor of our fine state of Virginia. No one wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole. I got no response from out Federal GVT what so ever. The governor did however put me in touch with our great states taxation department and the answer that came back was basically tough noogies this is reciprocal with all states. Now my question to you. Should I not be able to vote in all these states? Taxation without representation. Didn’t we fight this war at the inception of the U.S.?
The argument presented by our taxation department is I enjoyed the benefits of these other glorious states. My reply – I didn’t use public transportation – I rented a car. I didn’t stay in a permanent residence – I rented a hotel room. I didn’t use the fire department or ambulance services. I didn’t call 911. I paid state taxes on gasoline – I paid state taxes on most everything I bought while I was in those fine states. How much more do you want?
Sorry A.L. your analogy doesn’t hold water with me.
I think the purpose was to spread panic and horror among the people to let their support for the Nazi regime down.
Moreover, I think that is just neo nazist propaganda now.
_Khash_
I think you’re getting closer to the reasoning. Bottom line is regardless of innocence the civilian populace advocates the atrocity if actions on their part to stop it are not taken. Does this not make everyone fair game? Certainly it does. Militarily we look at the points of attack and target rich environments before we look to take much more drastic measures. It is not an argument of one side did it so the other has the same right.
One could equally say how wicked of the germans to bomb those cheeky cheerful cockney costermongers.The fact is the germans bombed every major British city from 1939 t0 1945,the V2s were slowly decreasing by 1945. London was every bit as historic as Dresden the damage was just as severe
aero: Lastly dresden as a cultural center is often brought up. OK, but that is not ALL it was.
This is a worthwhile point, especially to those who’ve read Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut overstates the innocence of Dresden somewhat – he makes it sound like a miniature Switzerland in the middle of Nazidom.
But the bombing of Dresden was questioned at the time, both before and after it happened. It had never been considered an important target like Essen, Hamburg, or Cologne, which were all bombed repeatedly. Its rail capacity is beside the point, since we could have precision bombed the marshalling yards (which the Germans would have rebuilt within days) and killed a few hundred people at most.
The Soviets pushed us to bomb it, and afterwards made propaganda out of the fact that we’d listened to them. It was a mistake, and never should have been carried out.
_PeterUK_
The reasoning of tit for tat or an eye for an eye my hold some merit as long as it gets the populace to respond. The bigger question is why is the populace at large a target and fair game?
The answer is fairly simple since it is the populace that mobilizes the forces of arms. In a free society the populace may be more tolerant and reluctant at first but once the reality of self destruction sets in they become the driving forces of mobilization and ultimately the warriors that wield and use the weapons at their disposal.
The advantage of the aggressor is they have already attained that level of mobilization and willingness to use force. They understand that it is the populace at large that will drive the mobilization of any force they may encounter. Rather than risk that potential logic dictates that it be mitigated and controlled. Elimination of the enemies populace is always on the board regardless of psychological overtones or societal status.
The governance of the populace matters not in how the mobilization occurs. Mobilization can occur in free societies just as easily as they can in despotic ones.
Dresden was an act of savagery but hardly a singular one. As AL pointed out, were it not for “Slaughterhouse Five,” the name Dresden would be lost among nearly a decade of savagery. Anyone even remotely aware of the history of WWII can rattle off a list of at least 10 cities or populations which were the subject of the mass killing of civilians at the same or greater scale.
Were we able to choose the type of enemies who make war on us. We would probably have chosen someone other than the Nazis. Were we able to choose the means by which the war was fought we might have chosen to avoid Normandy and strategic bombing. Guess what we didn’t have the choice. That we employ the means of the enemy does not make us the moral equivalent of the enemy. What it made us was victorious.
What makes us different from the Nazis? How’s this … we pulled back from barbarism. As a free societies we we have firmly rejected the scorched earth approach to warfare. We have demanded limits on “Collateral Damage” in each conflict which would have rightly been deemed strategically unworkable in the last. Does anyone really believe that a victorious Nazi regime or Imperial Japan would have put aside the tactics of atrocity? What is more likely, would technological advance have produced non-explosive concrete smart bombs or more efficient varieties of Zyklon B? The difference between the bombing of Dresden and London Blitz is that had the Nazis won we would not be commemorating the deaths of anyone.
Don’t minimize Dresden or any of her sisters in atrocity. Acknowledge that yes when one wrestles with pigs one gets covered in mud. To strain the metaphor, that simply comes of living in a world with mud in it. If you are going to get some personal mileage out of it go ahead and feel guilty and maybe even a little remorse, but in the same breath acknowledge that our grand parents did what they had to do to put Nazism in it grave. We and they have nothing to be ashamed of.
All the hand wringing and mea culpas are quite entertaining. What do you do for an encore on the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Tit for tat as a strategy works! No moral calculus, it simply works. If there is no cost to an atrocity such as Pearl Harbor, the bombing of London, or 9/11/02, then there is no downside to committing atrocities.
The american response to terrorism throughout the 90s is an excellent example of taking the “moral high ground” by declining to utilize tit for tat. Someone who holds himself to mythical standards of restraint must be proud of Clinton’s performance. Al Qaida certainly was.
Sorry, Bill, no handwringing necessary.
If you want to understand Hiroshima, you have to understand Okinawa. Imagine that battle writ large, and the use of the shock tactic of the atomic bomb makes complete sense.
Germany, OTOH, was starting to collapse when we bombed Dresden, and it’s not clear to me that it made very much difference in the outcome of the war (of the battles the Societs faced in the next 90 days, yes).
A.L.
Am I the only one to think the comparison drawn in the original post is a stretch? Regardless of what you think of the emotion of enjoying shooting an enemy when you know he’s an abuser of women (or whether it’s a good idea to say it’s fun in public), shooting a single enemy doesn’t strike me as comparable to firebombing a city.
Matthis didn’t suggest that a massive action, of the kind that inevitably kills civilians, is fun – much less that something equivalent to the destruction of Dresden would be fun.
>>Re the “we” stuff, T.J., the fact is that you and I enjoy the fruits of that action, whatever they may be. (We’ll likely never agree on this, but I flatly think you’re wrong here- you received a patrimony when you were born American, or European, or whatever, and you owe something for it.)
I see. So if an East Timorese, or a resident of Hiroshima, or a resident of Laos comes up to me one day and empties a clip into my face while screaming, “Your military killed my entire family, now eat lead” that would be just, right? Because I’ve inherited the sins of my ancestors’ neighbors?
Holding me responsible for the actions of others I do not (and could not possibly) control is the logic of the terrorists. It’s absurd and immoral for exactly the same reason that Mr. Atta and Mr. bin Laden are absurd and immoral.
We could build a land bridge to Cuba with the bodies of those killed by notions like “collective responsibility.” Is that what you want?
This notion is so important that it’s in the Constitution: “no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.”
>>If there is no cost to an atrocity such as Pearl Harbor, the bombing of London, or 9/11/02, then there is no downside to committing atrocities.
But the vicitims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t commit those atrocities. That’s why Hiroshima and Dresden are immoral — they’re examples of BAD TARGETING.
I don’t know how to interpret large-scale indiscriminately targeted bombings of cities as anything but war crimes. The reasons that cities were targetted in WW2 (by both Germans and British/US) had more to do with lousy navigation technologies, especially at night, than with military significance of the targets. Still war crimes though, they just weren’t prosecuted by the winners/perpetrators.
The reasons that cities were targetted in WW2 (by both Germans and British/US) had more to do with lousy navigation technologies, especially at night, than with military significance of the targets.
Would that it were so. Or, better, would that it were merely this. The British from 1939-40 tried precision daylight bombing; their slow and unescorted bombers were hacked from the skies by the Luftwaffe. The Battle of Britain started out rather similarly for the Germans, especially after Hitler declared war on East London and took the Luftwaffe away from RAF bases and aircraft factories.
From 1942 onward the British consciously attacked German civilians at night, so as to do damage to Germany while preserving as many bombers and crews as possible. After the campaign began Arthur Harris et al came up with the theory of “de-housing” to justify the otherwise pointless campaign. They were aiming at German cities at night, using what lights they could see, and at best pretending to hit war industry.
Why? Because they had little choice, if they were to keep up morale in the UK. But this doesn’t make it a) militarily useful, or b) moral. Remember that the German military machine reached its high point in production in 1944, at the height of the US/UK bombing campaign.
More importantly, look at the USAAF Bombing Survey and review how effective the overall campaign really was. Dresden, seen militarily, was a waste of resources (as well as a cultural, political, and moral disaster). Long story short: ball-bearing and synthetic-gasoline raids? Very effective. Bombing cities? Unified the Nazi regime and populace, thus not so useful.
Some of these insights might be useful to keep in mind as we contemplate a little shock-and-awe campaign in Persia.
As I recall the CEP in WW2 was 3 miles. I imagine that was for your average bomber team as opposed to a highly trained one like the Hiroshima boys who had a CEP of around 500 or 1,000 ft. The Nagasaki guys did worse. Bad weather.
With such a low probability of putting your bomb on even a large target fire bombing makes sense.
Precision weapons reduce casualties.
CEP is Circular Error Probable. A CEP of 3 miles means that 1/2 the bombs dropped will be within 3 miles of the target.
The thinking probably was that if you are going to bomb cities to get a rail yard might as well make the targeting intentional and get the job done.
The sooner the war is finished the fewer lives lost.
The problem always is in war: no one knows what is on the other side of the curtain.
In 1937 France was unwilling to expend thousands of lives to eliminate German ambitions. Too costly for a people still weary of WW2. Had they only known what was on the other side of the curtain.
Should be WW1 in the above.
Simon
In 1937 France was unwilling to expend thousands of lives to eliminate German ambitions. Too costly for a people still weary of WW1. Had they only known what was on the other side of the curtain.
The other WW2s are OK?
T.J., stickler, et al.
Good targeting in WW2 meant droping 1/2 the bombs within 3 miles of the target point. The other 1/2 were of course farther away.
Doesn’t that make all bombing in WW2 (except for exceptionally trained crews) war crimes according to your definition?
You fellers suffer from anacronistic thinking.
BTW the effectiveness of the bombing was not well established until after the war.
What you are expecting is for people to be able to predict the future and perfectly analyze the present given incomplete information.
By that standard why are you not criticizing French failure to act in 1937?
So there you have it.
I blame the French for the bombing of Dresden.
>>Doesn’t that make all bombing in WW2 (except for exceptionally trained crews) war crimes according to your definition?
Tactical bombing was largely ok. Some bombing of bridges was reasonable, and a few industrial targets could be hit without significant loss of life. The problem was that nobody cared what happened to Axis civilians, the primary victims of the evil governments.
>>BTW the effectiveness of the bombing was not well established until after the war.
The immorality of it was obvious from the start. Funny how things which are immoral later turn out to have been ineffective/unwise. It’s almost as if we lived in a rational universe.
>>The Battle of Britain started out rather similarly for the Germans, especially after Hitler declared war on East London and took the Luftwaffe away from RAF bases and aircraft factories.
Note that if Hitler has acted more ethically, and focused on breaking the RAF rather than on terrorism, he might have won the Battle of Britain. (And if he had liberated rather than raped the Ukraine he would likely have won the whole damn war.) Virtue pays.
>>The sooner the war is finished the fewer lives lost.
Often, yes. For example the Japanese were interested in a negotiated surrender as early as March 1945, with the condition that they would be allowed to keep their Emperor — a condition that was eventually granted.
Everyone who died after that point died because of USG institutional madness.
Perhaps this link might bring into perspective what it is everyone keeps dancing around. Which is mainly the morality of it all and “trying to treat the aggression of government sponsored forces as though they are individuals”:http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_america_at_war_morality_and_civilian_casualties who deserve a day in a court of law.
Was there an acceptable moral case to be made for targeting civilians in WWII?
If so, it would look something like this: Deliberately killing civilians was justified to the extent that it was necessary to destroy Axis war-fighting cabability in a reasonable amount of time – keeping in mind that the longer the struggle, the higher the incremental death toll will be, and the more people that will die under Nazi or Japanese occupation.
If 50,000 dead Germans prevents the death of one million non-German European civilians, or if a 100,000 Japanese dead can save two million Chinese, don’t you have to make the trade?
The guilt or innocence of the civilians in question is totally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if everybody in Dresden was a Nazi, or if nobody was. It doesn’t matter to what degree the German public was propping up Hitler; all that matters is that their death brings the Wehrmacht down, and prevents a greater number of deaths.
You can argue that civilians are responsible (to a greater or lesser degree) for the actions of their government. Justifying their deaths on that ground, though, is always wrong. Collective Guilt, and killing helpless people because you think they have it coming, is the ideology of terrorism.
If the civilian has to die, it can only be because it is necessary to save a greater number of lives, not because the civilian is “guilty” of something.
If this is a good case, we never really made it during the war. We never quite stepped up to and acknowledged all of the things we were doing during WWII. If we were trading dead Germans for a greater good, we weren’t always doing it as judiciously as we ought to have done. The fact that Germany and Japan behaved with unprecendented brutality doesn’t give us license to respond in kind, but it does show what was at stake in that struggle.
TJ Madison: The immorality of it was obvious from the start.
I disagree. The architects of American Air Power in WWII did not envision things like Dresden.
What they envisioned was strategic bombing that would cripple a nation’s war-fighting capability by knocking out a few key industries, with a very low toll of lives. Training and technology would make the bombing very precise, and the bombers would supposedly fly at too high an altitude to be seriously affected by flak, and their massed defensive armament would make them immune to enemy aircraft.
If a nation went to war with us, they thought, we could knock them out fast with a few well-placed karate blows. No endless battlefield carnage (avoiding another WWI was a major consideration for both Allied and Axis planners in WWII), no mass civilian casualties, and no cities reduced to rubble.
It didn’t work out that way. But it’s wrong to say that their project was “immoral” from the start.
>>If 50,000 dead Germans prevents the death of one million non-German European civilians, or if a 100,000 Japanese dead can save two million Chinese, don’t you have to make the trade?
Yes. The problem here was that essentially none of the decision makers were thinking along those lines, ESPECIALLY Arthur Harris.
This same logic demands that one sacrifice 50,000 US soldiers to avoid killing 100,000 German civilians. It also demands that one sacrifice 50,000 US civilians to avoid killing 100,000 German soldiers. Absolutely no one in authority ever thinks this way.
>>I disagree. The architects of American Air Power in WWII did not envision things like Dresden.
Perhaps not at first. The architects of British Air Power most certainly did envision things like Dresden, however:
“The Arab and the Kurd now know what real bombing means – within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape…”
(That’s Arthur Harris again.)
>>Perhaps this link might bring into perspective what it is everyone keeps dancing around. Which is mainly the morality of it all and trying to treat the aggression of government sponsored forces as though they are individuals who deserve a day in a court of law.
Ayn Rand seems to be saying that the population of a nation should be held accountable for the actions of it’s leaders. Let’s assume that’s reasonable. That means that the Laotians, the Timorese, certain Serbs, etc. have standing to come to the US and murder US civilians, right? And if that ever happens, you’ll shrug and go, “Well, they had it coming for failing to stop their evil government,” yes?
The notion that I’m responsible for the actions of my government is simply ludicrous. I have no real control over who gets elected and what they do. Civilians in totalitarian states have even less control.
TJ This same logic demands that one sacrifice 50,000 US soldiers to avoid killing 100,000 German civilians. It also demands that one sacrifice 50,000 US civilians to avoid killing 100,000 German soldiers.
Not at all. Dead US soldiers and civilians do not contribute to the collapse of Germany. Killing German soldiers did, and we did indeed sacrifice many of our own people to bring that about (to kill them, not to absurdly avoid killing them). The question is whether it was necessary to kill civilians also.
I don’t claim to have answered that question, BTW.
bq. _*”If, however, in waging war our government considers the deaths of civilians in terrorist states as a cost that must be weighed against the deaths of our own soldiers or civilians, or as a cost that must be weighed against achieving victory over the enemy, our government thereby violates its most basic function. It becomes not an agent for our self-defense, but theirs.”*_
I realize that people have issues with this logic however I will submit that all of the Op-Ed entries in the link of my previous post are absolutely relevant to Dresden as they are relevant to the situations we face today.
Civilians are an extension of their government. Those that object to their form of government will either rise up in arms against it to be victorious or perish. Their are those that will leave and strain the borders of adjoining areas to become refugees. There are those that will remain silent and complicit under the rule of the thumb. Their are those that will be imprisoned for their transgressions perceived or actual. When all is said and done those that remain are either with their form of government or against it. Those against would welcome the relief from oppression even if it means death.
TJ: The notion that I’m responsible for the actions of my government is simply ludicrous. I have no real control over who gets elected and what they do.
I agree with you to the extent that it would not be right for someone to attack civilians on the grounds that they are responsible for the current actions of their government – still less for some past action that cannot be undone. Especially when the “crimes” you are killing people for are largely imaginary (like our imaginary “genocide” against the Third World, etc.)
It would not be right to make a Turkish civilian a military target because Turkey once slaughtered Armenians – even if that Turk enthusiastically approves of murdering Armenians. On the other hand, if we were fighting a heavily armed Turkey in a current war to prevent further genocide, it might be necessary for that Turk to die whether he approves of genocide or not.
If some innocent citizens of militant regimes do not (admittedly unjustly) pay the price, then very many innocent victims of militant regimes will. Getting your hands dirty fighting against acknowledged evil is not as bad as refusing to fight it, and allowing a much greater evil that you could have prevented. Any police officer in a crime-ridden city would understand that calculus.
USMC: “… our government thereby violates its most basic function. It becomes not an agent for our self-defense, but theirs.”
But remember that, unlike our jihadist foes, we do not wage war in order to destroy enemy nations. When we have to wage war it is with the goal of making the enemy our friend. At the end of WWII came the Marshall Plan, not subjugation.
This is not an abdication of our own self-interest – it furthers our self-interest, and helped to make us as powerful as we are. That’s why we will win and they will lose – not because our superior approach makes us “better” than they are, but because it has made us much stronger and more resilient than they are. As Shakespeare said, “the gentler gamester is the surest winner.”
Glen
I didn’t say anything about subjugation or putting anyone under our thumb. What I quoted deals with self defense. I am not advocating occupation. I am advocating the elimination of the enemy period.
TJ Madison does Bomber Harris a grave disservice.
Harris believed that Strategic Bombing would break the will of the enemy, dislocate key industries, and bring about a quicker victory. He was not trying just to kill people for fun, but get the war over and achieve victory.
He was wrong about breaking the will of the enemy, right about key industries, and sort of right about a quicker victory.
Strategic bombing, including both British and American efforts, drew German air defenses inside the Reich, and away from Western France. Giving the Allies air superiority over the D-Day invasion and the Allied armies thereafter. None of that would have been possible without strategic bombing.
As far as all the lives lost after March 1945 being the US’s fault, TJ is willfully ignorant of the actual history. It is true that the Japanese made feelers, but were unwilling to give up Manchuria or Indochina, and after Pearl Harbor only an unconditional surrender would do. The JAPANESE government bears the responsibility for fighting LONG after any hope of victory was lost. They did so in the hope that “enough” US casualties would allow them to keep most of the countries they conquered.
Two things happened to change the course of history: a. The Soviets just ROLLED over their gains in Manchuria and destroyed whole armies, threatening Soviet occupation of part or all of the Japanese Islands; and b. the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At first, the Cabinet did not believe the accounts of the devastation and it took several days for the pictures to arrive before they fully comprehended the nature of the new weapons. Even then many in the Cabinet wanted to fight on, with kamikaze attacks extended to the entire Japanese population in the hope of again inflicting so many deaths among the Americans that the invasion would be called off. There was even an abortive coup aimed at preventing the Emperor from surrendering and intrigue surrounding the recording he’d made, up to holding the Emperor hostage himself. In the end the coup was suppressed bloodily and the Emperor surrendered. However, it was a near thing and the projected death toll would have been around a million US dead/wounded and much more (by a factor of three to four) for the Japanese.
Back to Dresden. It held Rail marshalling yards. That made it a target. Harris didn’t have JDAM technology, the planes had to go in at night through flak and night fighters and hit the target in massive waves as best they could. Harris did the best he and his men could to get the war over as quickly as possible. I mean, was he supposed to play pattycake with Der Fuhrer?
>>Civilians are an extension of their government.
That’s got to be the most absurd collectivist/communist/fascist statement I’ve heard in a long time. And from someone who _just linked to Ayn Rand_.
_I_ am not an extension of the US government. I disapprove of most of what it does. I choose not to resist it violently because it _won’t help_.
There are other forms of resistance, however.
>>I am advocating the elimination of the enemy period.
There surely are people in this world who need killing. Surely we need wise and trained killers to perform this task. Perhaps someday we will have a force responsible and competent enough to _not kill tens of thousands of civilians and conscripts (battle slaves) in the process of assassinating the few evil leaders._
When this force comes into being (evolving out of the Marines, perhaps?) they won’t need to tax me at gunpoint to fund it. I’ll cough up freely.
>>and after Pearl Harbor only an unconditional surrender would do.
Why?
_What was the goal of the Pacfic War?_ The point was to neutralize the threat that the Japanese military posed to the US population. Once this is done, why not have a negotiated peace?
The Japanese couldn’t build any new aircraft. The Japanese Navy had been largely sunk. The entire population could have been mobilized to fight the Americans and it _wouldn’t matter_ because they _weren’t going anywhere_.
>>I mean, was he supposed to play pattycake with Der Fuhrer?
Der Fuhrer wasn’t in Dresden.
T.J.
bq. _”Perhaps someday we will have a force responsible and competent enough to not kill tens of thousands of civilians and conscripts (battle slaves) in the process of assassinating the few evil leaders.”_
Surely you don’t believe it is simply leaders at fault. Would it be that simple then certainly the deaths of the people surrounding the leader would be a simple and justifiable act. The fall of Sadam has not eliminated that threat. The fall of OBL will not eliminate the threat. I submit to you it is not just the leaders but the people who follow these leaders as well.
bq. _”That’s got to be the most absurd collectivist/communist/fascist statement I’ve heard in a long time. And from someone who just linked to Ayn Rand.”_
A civilian as an extension of government is not a collectivist/communist/fascist statement. Whether you choose to admit it or not you are an extension of some form of government. Would that you lived on an island all to yourself you would be the government of one. Whether you choose to believe in or follow that government is a different matter.
I agree with Adam Yoshida’s take on this one: Bomber Harris and his counterparts in the Pacific helped to win the Peace, and Dresden was part of that.
“Glen Wishard”:#c31: _Was there an acceptable moral case to be made for targeting civilians in WWII? If so, it would look something like this: Deliberately killing civilians was justified to the extent that it was necessary to destroy Axis war-fighting cabability in a reasonable amount of time_
Trying to justify Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki gets dicey. I think intentional targeting of civilians should always be considered morally wrong, or else terrorism becomes justifiable as long as your cause is just. And of course, everybody believes their cause is just.
I think we’re much better off taking A.L.’s tack and just admitting it was wrong and trying to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.
What people are perhaps missing here is the military reason the Brits did night time area bombing in the first place. The Avro Lancaster was made of aluminum magnesium and would burn readily if hit by flak or tracers. They could carry heavy bomb loads, perhaps 6 times that of the US bombers, but lacked defendability or bombing accuracy. They also lacked good fighter cover to target. They would have had heavy losses if they bombed low level during the day. This relegated the Brits to inaccurate night time bombing despite the development of “Gee radar”. (Later Loran C) Gee would put the pathfinders within 500 yards of a target at night, but it was hardly accurate enought to hit a factory. I knew pilots of Brit bombers from WWII and they told me that they were told by their superiors that they were baby-killers, there was no way of prettying it up. You don’t see that in the history books, but it’s true.
How many died in Dresden? Who the hell knows? Nobody counted the living bodies before let alone the dead ones after. One figure is as good as another. One thing is for sure, the stories about poison gas factories is pure hokum, as is the idea that they made bomb sights there. Poison gas? They Germans had no use for it. What they needed was ammunition and there were no facilities in Dresden for that. All the critical stuff would have been in the Harz Mts. were bombers could not get at it.
Bottom line is that that kind of bombing was high cost and not very effective, let alone cruel to non combatants. Daytime raids by US bombers on fuel facilities the Germans rated as very effective. In the end the military target is the best one. No army, no fight.
The Allies and Russians killed 30 to 40 times as many German civilians as the Germans did in the Battle of Britain. In addition an unpublished fact is the Allied and Russian Armies killed and additional 7 million German civilians and unarmed POWS in Western and Eastern Germany and the UKraine. The Allies themselves are credited by the German government (post war) for killing 2 million civilians in West Germany during its advance into that area.
Much of the Russian propaganda focusing on German war crimes, the scale of which has never been adequately documented, seems aimed at covering up the behaviour of the Red Army in the Ukraine and in Germany no to mention Stalin’s treatment of the Kulaks before the war.
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from “Halifax Squadron of World war 2”, by Jon Lake
“In retrospect, it would seem that the popular view of (RAF)Bomber Command is also based largely on misconception. This popular view is that Bomber Command’s night bombing campaign was little more than terror bombing, attacking area targets (German cities) with woeful inaccuracy, while the USAAF, by day, conducted precision bombing of pinpoint targets. This is a gross oversimplification.
Bomber Command’s reputation would seem to be based more on its performance early in the war, before the establishment of the Pathfinder Force (PFF) and before the widespread use of sophisticated navigation and bombing aids like Oboe and H2S. Bombing for ‘moral’ (psychological) effect was stressed by the RAF’s first commander, Lord Trenchard, who had previously commanded the Independent Force of semi-strategic bombers in World War I, and who embraced the concept of ‘moral’ effect partly because the material effect of early bombing raids was so puny!…
…In the earliest days of WW2, Bomber Command was limited to attacking ‘military’ targets in an effort to avoid escalation. However, German attacks on cities, and the ineffectiveness of early British bombing efforts, led to the Bombing Decree of St. Valentine’s Day 1942, which urged a switch to attacks on German cities, with the declared aim of undermining the morale and ‘breaking the spirit’ of the enemy civilian populace, and especially its factory workers.
When America finally joined the war, it tenaciously stuck to the strategy of daylight precision bombing. The B-17 was ill-suited to anything else, national pride and independence were at stake, and years of indoctrination were hard to shake – even as it became clear that daylight bombing in gin-clear conditions over Nevada or Arizona were a very different proposition to attempting to do the same thing in a European winter, in skies swarming with enemy fighters. Throughout the war, weather ensured that only about 50 per cent of the bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force were dropped visually, and in non-visual bombing, the Americans had an appalling record of inaccuracy. They were simply never as good as the RAF at radar-directed ‘blind bombing,’ The USAAF didn’t do ‘blind-bombing’, and never trained its radar operators as thoroughly as did the RAF. As if that were not serious enough, individual bombing runs soon gave way to pattern bombing, with a whole ‘combat box’ bombing on the leader’s command. Accuracy suffered as a result.
Heavy losses and poor weather soon forced a switch in USAAF bombing strategy, although this was never admitted. More and more, attacks were directed against targets described as railway marshalling yards – often a convenient euphemism for an area attack against an entire city! By contrast, Bomber Command continued to attack cities, but the introduction of PFF, target marking, and H2S increased accuracy until a nominally ‘area’ attack against a city would devastate its industrial area and railway yards, but would cause less destruction elsewhere.
In the latter part of the war, RAF Bomber Command was actually more successful at placing its bombs on target than was the Eighth Air Force. When Albert Speer compared USAAF daylight attacks and RAF night attacks against the oil industry, he concluded that:
‘The RAF night attacks are considerably more effective than the US daylight attacks, since heavier bombs are used, and an extraordinary accuracy in attacking the target is reported.’
Thus, although there continued to be a considerable difference between the British and American bomber offensives in theory, in practice not much separated them…So perhaps the precision versus terror bombing debate is of little more than academic interest. Like so many legends, the Bomber Command inaccuracy myth thus has some foundation in truth, but falls very far short of telling the true story.”