Was the Dresden Raid a war crime?
posted at 1:38 pm on February 22, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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When discussing war crimes during World War II, two events usually get thrown out as indictments of the Allies: dropping atomic weapons on the Japanese and the raid of Dresden, in which 25,000 people died mostly of the raging fire that swept the German city. Critics accuse the Allies of deliberately attacking a civilian population center with little military value as a payback for Nazi attacks on Britain. This perception gained a lot of credence through Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, his autobiographical tale inspired by his eyewitness experience at Dresden as a POW.
Interestingly, though, Germans apparently tend to view it differently, especially since one particular group has seized on Dresden as a means of rehabilitating Hitler. Der Spiegel interviewed historian Frederick Taylor and revealed the much more complicated role of Dresden in the war than the post-bombing spin credits, and still calls into question the Allied strategy in its bombing campaign late in the war:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, there was certainly more to the Dresden air raid than a desire to destroy civilian morale, wasn’t there?
Taylor: Certainly. The Dresden attack was directly linked to the conduct of the war elsewhere — in this case on the Eastern Front. In Feb. 1945, Dresden was a major transport and communication hub less than 120 miles from the advancing Russians. The aim of the bombing was quite deliberately to destroy the center of the city, thereby making the movement of German soldiers and civilians impossible.
Nor was Dresden uninvolved in war production:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The inflated casualty figures have proven quite resistant to academic research. The myth of Dresden as a victim of Allied aggression is one that refuses to go away. How innocent was Dresden really?
Taylor: Dresden was undeniably a beautiful city, a center of the arts and a symbol of all that was great about pre-Nazi German humanism. It was also quite strongly Nazi and a major industrial center. Its light industries, ranging from factories producing typewriters and cigarettes to furniture and candy, had overwhelmingly been converted to war use after 1939. Around 70,000 workers in the city are thought to have been involved in war-related work. Its regional railway directorate was heavily involved in the war effort on the eastern front and also in the transport of prisoners within the concentration camp system. The question therefore is not whether Dresden contained legitimate bombing targets, but whether the method and intensity of the February 1945 bombing was justifiable.
But in questioning the Allies’ strategy, who benefits now?
Taylor: The neo-Nazis use the anniversary in two ways. First, as a straight propaganda bludgeon against the victors of World War II, an exemple of the Allies’ allegedly criminal conduct of the war against Germany. Second, more subtly, as a tool to relativize Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust. They refer to a “bomb holocaust” of the Allies against the civilian inhabitants of German cities, wildly inflating the figures involved and, of course, underplaying the number of Jews, Sinti, Roma, homosexuals and political prisoners, and other millions of victims of the real Holocaust. It is this two-fold advantage of the Dresden anniversary protests that is especially attractive to the neo-Nazis and their associates. Plus, many otherwise respectable people in Dresden and elsewhere, many of whom grew up with the post-war myths, continue to believe in the inflated casualty figures and in the criminality of the Allied bombing campaign.
The methodology can certainly be criticized without making it an argument for “war crimes”. The Germans manufactured arms in Dresden, and by their own conduct of the war, made that a permissible target for Allied bombers. The use and intensity of incendiary bombs could certainly be questioned; the resultant firestorm literally sucked the oxygen out of the city and asphyxiated thousands, which Vonnegut saw first-hand.
But the use of incendiary bombs on factories and railheads was not a war crime, nor was particularly controversial during that war, as the Germans had been dropping them on London for years by that point. The Allies had a right to destroy the Nazi war production system, including in Dresden. They had a limited number of options for bombing targets, and the intensity can reasonably be assigned to an accuracy that had eluded the Allies on their night bombing runs for most of the war.
And let’s not forget that at the same time as the Allies raided Dresden, the Germans were launching rocket attacks with only marginal thoughts of accuracy against the British civilian centers. If Hitler had the ability to create a Dresden in London, he would not have hesitated to wreak it.
I give Der Spiegel credit for getting past the slogans and confronting history as it happened. Be sure to read the entire interview.
Update: Ed Driscoll took a lengthier look at the question in 2005 while reviewing Taylor’s book on the subject.
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A great read on the subject. Dresden was one of the most legitimate targets of the war. When war stops being terrible, people will stop trying to prevent them.
conservnut on February 22, 2009 at 7:42 PM
See what ya done started? See?
Sheesh…can’t take you anywhere!
coldwarrior on February 22, 2009 at 7:44 PM
Yeah, and I was in Chapel all evening for all the rough stuff. How smart am I?
hawkdriver on February 22, 2009 at 7:46 PM
I think I started off that discussion when I told people to stop acting as if the Geneva Conventions were serious documents – citing our rightful and correct firebombings in WWII.
progressoverpeace on February 22, 2009 at 7:49 PM
Guys, guys, let’s not get hung up over the mea culpa blame game…let’s do what the Libs do…blame Booosh!
coldwarrior on February 22, 2009 at 7:55 PM
It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee
conservnut on February 22, 2009 at 7:57 PM
What mea culpa? This is serious point that needs to be fleshed out, finally. I am sick and tired of our government worrying more about the lives of enemy civilians than of our our own, civilian or military. Our government’s job is to worry about us and our interests. Period.
progressoverpeace on February 22, 2009 at 7:58 PM
Did the world play that down the same way as they do when Hamas does it today?
And they want to compare Israel to the Nazis!
daledamos on February 22, 2009 at 8:00 PM
Peace at all costs appeasement mania attempting to erase context & re-write history – again.
In the U.S. of A., PBS peddles this ‘Dresden moral equivalent war crime’ crap on their ‘buy a DVD’ web site.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was an efficiency expert during the WW2, and he raised this nonsense in ‘The Fog of War’ documentary. McNamara spoke about how his own participation in maximizing the bomb-to-destruction ratio during bombing runs over Dresden might be ‘war crimes’.
An old man’s guilt, I guess.
Thank God for rational people like Frederick Taylor who see the cure for what it is - necessary - in the face of such monumental and unrelenting evil.
Besides, I never did like speaking German.
locomotivebreath1901 on February 22, 2009 at 8:01 PM
Make no mistake on that one…I am and have been and will be in total agreement with that sentiment.
Once television hit the battlefield, a la Vietnam…suddenly every American in uniform was a thug, a killer, murderer…and anything the enemy did was merely in near helpless self-defense. This was replayed in Somalia, Lebanon, the Gulf War (though to a more limited extent) and obviously the Afghan and Iraq wars, and the war on Islamic Facism as well.
This was how too many American kids, now adults, were
educatedindoctrinated, and apparently kids are still beingeducatedindoctrinated.We allow such at our own peril.
(BTW, “Patton” just started on AMC Channel.
Time to get a refill of the basic stuff.)
coldwarrior on February 22, 2009 at 8:05 PM
“pat
Left wing nuts and Nazi convergence. What next by the left? Antisemitism?/”
What ya mean next? Don’t ya mean currently?
DSchoen on February 22, 2009 at 8:16 PM
I’ve read your comments over the day and I have to agree with you….
This whole thing was your fault!
Seriously, I honestly believe most of the folks here (and on the other thread that had nothing to do with Dresden) were saying mostly the same damn thing just in different ways and to different degrees. The only folks that I completely disagree with were the ones who said it was a war-crime or another bunch that claimed there were no targets in Dresden. I just wished in any of those situations it would have been possible to do as much damage with HE and the non-combatants would have had at least a half a chance to take cover. But even that wouldn’t guarantee the city wouldn’t have caught fire. So in the end, who the hell knows huh? The alternative, losing the war, is much more distressing of a thought that what we could or should have done in Dresden.
hawkdriver on February 22, 2009 at 8:17 PM
I respectfully disagree. Of course, all alternate history is opinion in the end, but the fact remains that we had already driven Japan to its knees even before the two bombs. You are right about Truman — I keep forgetting that he actually prosecuted the last portion of the war. That said, I still believe that the FDR administration was racist in nature with respect to Asians, and Truman was part of that administration. He had yet to show any retraction of the words he had written to his wife-to-be 35 years earlier:
It would take the humanization of prejudice (the acts of lynching African-American servicemen returning from the war) to convert Truman — a process which took over a year.
The Germans treated American POWs better than the Confederates did. We lost about 30% of all our troops captured during the Civil war at Andersonville. Not that we were any better to the Confederates — about the same percentage of Confederates were lost at the Union POW camp located at Elmira, NY.
2% is quite a good number, given those statistics, and is much better than the 50% number quoted for POW losses at Japanese hands. We treated Axis prisoners very well during the war, as can be seen here, which covers Oklahoma POW camps If this ratio holds (75/200000), .04% of Axis POWs died in captivity in America.
Of course, dwarfing anything the Germans and Japanese did was what the Soviets did. Very few Germans captured by the Russians returned from captivity.
Who says they wouldn’t have seen it?
unclesmrgol on February 22, 2009 at 8:21 PM
We did demonstrate it and when that did not work, we demonstrated it again and we still almost had to invade Japan. You need to speak to some of the folks who fought against the Japanese, to see just how fanatical that they were.
Johan Klaus on February 22, 2009 at 8:36 PM
Yes, Germans and Italians were interned, but only enemy aliens, not United States Citizens as in the case of the Japanese Americans. Included in those interned citizens was one Harry Sumida, decorated Navy veteran of the Spanish American War. You are welcome to your “racist bah”, but it isn’t backed by the facts.
With regard to the attempted coup, it failed, not because the military was tired of war, but because it would have involved imprisoning the Emperor, who had the ultimate regard of the elite. Note that it was a very small group who attempted the coup, and they committed suicide after failing. As to whether the Emperor would have come to the same conclusion absent the atomic bombings, we’ll never know.
unclesmrgol on February 22, 2009 at 8:37 PM
We only had three bombs,,,they would have to be delivered and worked,,,,,,the dropping of those bombs saved a million plus lives, US and Japanese. The populace was trained to fight till the last person[women and kids,,sound familiar]. You talk to any WWII vet that was waiting on Okinawa or on the ships at sea,,,,they looked at Truman as their best friend,,,to a man,,they think he saved their life. Without the bombs, there would have had to be an invasion, and it would have been ugly.
retiredeagle on February 22, 2009 at 8:38 PM
You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
The Blitz came first.
V-2’s rained down on civilians in England until the last days of the war.
Stopping the Nazi terror required destroying their will.
It worked.
Letting neo-Nazis and their useful idiot allies create a revisionist history deserves contempt.
profitsbeard on February 22, 2009 at 8:38 PM
“said something about “Firebombing” in general. I didn’t know Dresden was even a hot topic of discussion right now with the left.”
Oops, uhm, well I made, uhm, a comment Jan 6th 09 that kinda sorta linked Gaza and Dresden
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oew-goldberg6-2009jan06-gb,0,6740055.graffitiboard?slice=4&limit=10
“deploying massive air power, dropping hundreds of bombs, and ultimately killing a grand total of 100 civilians or so in the “most crowded place on earth?””
Now that’s precision bombing!!
That shows just how much restraint Israel is using!
The Bombing of Dresden between 13 Feb and 15 Feb 1945, The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying 13 square miles (34 km2) of the city, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city centre. Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.
Submitted by: DSchoen
4:34 PM PST, January 6, 2009”
I hope I ticked em off!
DSchoen on February 22, 2009 at 8:41 PM
Given that the United States, government and people, were not about to settle for a “conditional surrender”/”Let’s just call it pretty much a tie and go on as we were”, and do it all over again in 20 years, it would probably have taken hundreds of thousands of American casualties, not to mention British and Australian casualties, to take and disarm Japan without the use of the Atom bombs. Likely far more Japanese causalities too. A lot of Americans who are alive today would not have even been born. Ditto British, Australian and Japanese (big time).
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 8:47 PM
“My German 501 teacher was Jewish, and told us that the argument, “Ja, aber Hitler hat die Autobahn gebaut” was often indicative of Nazi sympathies.”
NAW but driving a VW is!
DSchoen on February 22, 2009 at 8:50 PM
Two books to temper the discussion:
“The Scourge of the Swastika” and “Ghost Soldiers“.
Nazi Deutscheland and Imperial Japan, unveiled.
profitsbeard on February 22, 2009 at 8:53 PM
Little known story about the coup attempt in Japan. During the attempt, there was a B-29 raid heading north of tokoyo which caused the lights in tokoyo to go out,helping to defeat the coup. This was also the last bombing raid by B-29s into Japan.
retiredeagle on February 22, 2009 at 8:53 PM
My father was one of them; he was a machinists’ mate on the USS Celebes Island (a tender), and was part of the gunnery crew for one of numerous 5 inch 50’s mounted on the tender; these were used to provide anti-kamikaze screening; I have indeed heard. His ship was involved in the invasion of Iwo Jima (where his brother Gordon, a Marine PFC, was lost in April 1945). My dad hated the Japanese with a passion. That said, he had heard how badly the Navy was whupping Japanese shipping. He felt a few more months of ship sinkings and they would have had no choice. He didn’t think the bombs were needed. My Dad’s opinion is, again, just that, but again, at the rate we were sinking Japanese ships, coupled with their inability to resupply the petroleum and steel needed for their industries, they would have had no choice in short order but to surrender.
unclesmrgol on February 22, 2009 at 8:55 PM
That sums it up. What often makes something a war crime is who wins :) The people who justify Dresden are going back to the original revisionists.
Not that I take the lefts view. It’s more like “We f*cked up.” It happens in war.
hpnq420 on February 22, 2009 at 8:57 PM
I was a child in London when the Germans bombed us – too young to be evacuated. My mum told me that at the time she prayed for three things – that our house would not be bombed, that my dad (in the army) would survive the war and that one day the Germans would be bombed a hundredfold. As Churchill said at the time – Hitler has sown the wind, soon he will reap the whirlwind. Sorry, folks, but that is war…..
callingallcomets on February 22, 2009 at 9:01 PM
I didn’t mean to steal your thunder. Clearly, it was the long discussion we all had over there that prompted this, and it’s a discussion that we are going to see in public more and more, as the idiot messiah and his moron followers try to denigrate everything that America has ever done. I first got these inklings from the left when I saw them rushing back in history to replay the Viet Nam anti-war feeling for the Iraq War – even though there was nothing similar between the two. It was pathetically funny that it took the left a little while to even realize that their arguments against Viet Nam had, largely, been based on a draft army and had no applications to today. But, that’s the left for you.
It was apparent, though, that they were going to start trapsing back through history, pointing out how bad and evil our country has been, finally settling on the firebombing and nukings of WWII. I believe that Bush contributed to this, unwittingly, when he declared the War on Terror, trying to claim that the tactics used by Al Quaeda and the rest of the arab/persian/muslim enemies was the problem, instead of the plain fact that they were attacking us. I appreciate much of what Bush did after 9/11, but I always had problems with his mixing of morality with war.
Anyway, I am taking coldwarrior’s advice (whose post I totally agree with) and settling into a nice Sunday night viewing of Patton. I like Gen. Bradley’s take on the Patton story and never tire of it.
progressoverpeace on February 22, 2009 at 9:02 PM
My point is that a demonstration and patience might have worked as well, and with far fewer casualties. My dad was one of those people off Okinawa, and he thought the bombs were butchery. Of course, my dad was a Republican….
unclesmrgol on February 22, 2009 at 9:03 PM
lol, I was teasing, I wasn’t thunder hoarding. Your and Cold Warriors comments were great to read in both threads.
hawkdriver on February 22, 2009 at 9:05 PM
I remember, back in school, we learned that the raid killed ~60,000 people.
Germany today says that the raid killed 30,000 to 35,000 people.
In the night of the raid the city was crowded with refugees from the East. The numbers don’t add up. Germany is once again whitewashing history so that nobody call say “You’re nazis!” Germany does that all the time.
History in Germany is presented completely revisionist. In fact, German history in Germany is utterly reduced to the few years of the Nazi regime. There are German politicians who scream at people that fly the Black-Red-Gold, the modern German flag (which has its origin in the revolution of 1848). If you’re a German and you say you’re proud of Germany, there’s one of two things you’ll hear: “You Nazi!” or “Sure, be proud of the Nazis!” Germany always says that they worked up their past, but that’s a lie. They didn’t. If they had, then German leftists (commies, socialists and so called anti-fascists) wouldn’t have joined the muslim mob in January when it marched through the streets of German cities and screamed “Jews into the gas”.
Was Dresden a war crime?
Well. Moral bombing was a strategy that was deemed to be useful back then. Even though every evidence showed that moral bombing was pointless. Dresden didn’t shorten the war, not even for one second. The German resistance continued, just like the British dug in after Coventry and the raids on London.
By today’s standards it was a war crime. However, judging historic events by today’s standards is stupid.
As for the nukes… they didn’t end the war. That’s a fact (I don’t give a crap about what wikipedia says, read the original Japanese sources, wiki is the source of the uneducated.) After Nagasaki the Japanese military wanted to continue the fight (the army claimed to have several thousand planes ready for Special Attack Force raids against the invading Americans (”Kamikaze” is not the correct term).) What broke Hirohito’s spirit was the simple fact that the Soviets had entered the war and were steam rolling through Manchuria (Japanese civilians there were abandoned by the cowardly leaders of the Kwantung Army and had to survive on their own, what the Soviets did to Japanese women and girls on their flight towards the shores of Korea can only be compared with the Rape of Nanking.) Hirohito had placed high hopes on the Japanese ambassador in Moscow to get the Russians involved into negotiations on his behalf. However, Stalin had promised to enter the war against Japan on the side of the Allies. Hirohito shat a brick when he heard about the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
Honestly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two more cities to be destroyed by air raids. Hirohito was not moved by either of them. Definitely not. Remember, this man was in his palace in Tokyo when the big air raid hit the city. He saw fires, smelled the flesh of the women and children and did… nothing. He was worried about: the three sacred treasures and a possible Communist uprising (which, by that time, was impossible anyway, since the different police units had, effectively, destroyed such opposition.)
The surrender speech, the “famous” one with the “new and terrible weapon” was just one of several speeches (ironic fact: Hirohito’s Japanese was so old fashioned that many people had a hard time understanding what he was saying; also, if not for a handful of brave politicians and officers in and around the imperial palace, the surrender speeches would have never left the palace, since army officers had been determined to stop the recordings from being brought out of the palace grounds; the handful of “doves” successfully smuggled the recordings out of the compound.) The military heard a different one, which had no mention of any new weapon. Ultimately, Japan didn’t even surrender unconditionally. Hirohito remained emperor (which had been a condition all the time) and the whole imperial family was spared prosecution, even though at least two members were responsible for the war and outrageous warcrimes: Emperor Hirohito (surviving leading ace of the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force Sakai Saburo really went at Hirohito after the war blaming him for it, after all, Hirohito’s name was on all the orders) and prince Asaka (who was in charge of the army that took Nanking, the order to kill POWs came from his office, and the atrocities in Nanking all happened while he was in command of the army; after the war one of his staff officers claimed to have forged the order, but that story simply doesn’t add up -if that story was true, why wasn’t the officer punished, why was the order not taken back-; it should be noted that general Matsui was put on trial for Nanking and also executed for it, even though he wasn’t even present when it happened; Matsui came later and once he arrived in the city, the atrocities eventually stopped, he also referred to the massacres and the rapes as “great shame for the military”)
Penguin on February 22, 2009 at 9:05 PM
They would not have surrendered. You would have. I would have. They would not have.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 9:10 PM
Clinton “Don’t Blame Me For Dresden”
AP-Berlin
Former President Bill Clinton responded to questions about Dresden by saying that his Presidency should not be judged by the contriversial raid.
“I was doing my best to bring to the American people that guy Hitler. Were mistakes made by staffers in the heat of the moment? All I can say now in retrospect is that we did a great job and no matter what the Republicans say, I worked harder on that then anything I ever did.”
GunRunner on February 22, 2009 at 9:12 PM
I forgot:
Reasons for using the nukes were simple:
1) development cost ~2 billion USD (value back then)
2) the weapon was there, and it worked, it would have been suicidal for Truman not to use it (imagine he would not have used them and US forces would have attempted to land, and then the American people would have found out about the existence of the bombs, it would have been suicide for Truman, literally.)
3) the most important one: tensions with the Soviets. Remember, there were already massive tensions between East and West as early as April/May. There was this little incident in Austria, when British forces and partisan troops under Tito both attempted to occupy the Austrian province of Carinthia. Churchill telegraphed the commanding general (Alexander) that the partisans had to leave the province, if necessary by force. Alexander wrote back that the British soldiers would have problems shooting at their allies, to which Churchill responded “They will warm up to it once the shooting starts.” Stalin eventually moved in and ordered Tito to pull out, after all, Stalin had a bigger price in sight than a puny Austrian province.
Penguin on February 22, 2009 at 9:15 PM
It was demonstrated once and they still did not give up. They almost didn’t give up after the second demonstration. Life is not a fairy tale.
One of my uncles was one of those people who invaded Okinawa. My dad was one of those headed to a French port to ship to the far east to be part of the invasion force.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 9:16 PM
The article you linked to contained this:
“We had had 100,000 people killed in Tokyo in one night of (conventional) bombs and it had seemingly no effect whatsoever.”
Is that your point?
pedestrian on February 22, 2009 at 9:16 PM
Somebody’s been watching The History Channel too much.
Tinian on February 22, 2009 at 9:18 PM
You did indeed, coldwarrior, my apologies. (Too busy tracking rumours of an updated Mac :) )
OldEnglish on February 22, 2009 at 9:22 PM
There is one especially gaping hole in your analysis – the Russians did not have much of a navy and Russians aren’t dolphins.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 9:24 PM
See Patton, you know the General George S. Patton (I don’t think that he ever wrote for wikipedia), and what he said, at the contemporary time, about the fighting ability of American troops versus Russian troops, unless you think that he was uneducated in such matters, of course.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 9:29 PM
In my opinion, the American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because, while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms, whereas we excel in all three of these.
- George S. Patton
The very idea that the Japanese were more afraid of the Russians than the Americans and British and Austrailians, particularly since after we dropped the second bomb they feared that we had a lot more, is absurd on it’s face. It’s just Russianophile propaganda.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 9:38 PM
We Russians did win world war two. We defeated the Germans and we defeated the Japanese too. We did it all while you Americans and British just goofed off. We could have gone all the way to Georgia and Alabama if we had wanted too. We also invented the internet, not that Al Gore.
PootyPoot on February 22, 2009 at 9:46 PM
Hopefully this will be my last post on this, but I feel the need to at least clarify my position.
I never intended to imply that Dresden did not have legitimate military targets, nor that the allies committed a war crime by bombing it. Dresden was a major transportation and communications hub which made it a viable target.
The problem with Dresden (IMO) is that in the immediate post war period, estimates of the civilian casualties ran as high as 250,000. This has since been corrected, and without going back to look, I think most estimates now run in the 25,000-40,000 range. But, at the time the idea of a 1/4 million civilian deaths from a single bombing raid had people on both sides asking what was so important in Dresden to justify this. So you had a slew of post raid theories (interdiction of the 6th SS/bombing of industry, etc). But in reality, at least in my opinion the bombing of Dresden was no different than scores of other german cities targeted for night raids, other than the initial inflated casualty figures.
Bomber Harris himself argued that the main objectives of night-time blanket bombing of urban areas was to undermine the morale of the civilian population.
BTW
I’ve got the book the gentleman was referencing earlier, and I was messing with him a bit, but his argument still holds no validity with me.
The list of military related facilities in Dresden was compiled years after the fact and the 104 targets were scattered over the entire Dresden area. Some were high priority (optics) others rather mundane and of little importance. The mission planners at the time didn’t have that information. Even if they had, Dresden was not unlike just about every other mid sized and bigger german city. Speer had been dispersing his manufacturing capability for years, making parts in small shops and then bringing them together for final assembly.
husker3000 on February 22, 2009 at 9:51 PM
A fairly decent study on the Soviets at war with the Japanese can be found over at the Global Security library. Was published in 1986. One of the telling lines comes in the opening of the summary “The Soviet offensive in Manchuria during August
1945 provides an excellent model of current Soviet Army
tactics for students of modern warfare.”
From 1945 to 1986…basically when it came to tactics the Soviets in 1986 were fighting WWII tactics, still. It was apparent as we worked the Afghan Problem at the time…they lost thousands to the Muj because they kept to the “book.” No real innovation other than the introduction of the Hind and the Frogfoot. But, their doctrine called for massive formations of troops whenever possible, and the logistics train for that in Afghanistan ended up with the Soviets having far far more logistics and support troops in Afghanistan than would be required by us, even moreso with the “brigadization” of the US Army today.
But, back to WWII, and the Soviets. They entered Manchuria on 9 August, just days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They moved troops from Europe to flesh out their Far Eastern Front…and did so with surprising efficiency and speed, leaving thousands of tons of equipment were it stopped in Europe and picking up what they needed as they arrived in the far East.
Was the Soviet entry into the Far East War in its final week really the final straw that broke the will of the Imperial Army? Would the Soviets have entered the war in Manchuria with such a massive body of troops had there been no A-bombs dropped successfully over Japan? Would the Soviets have been moving with such alacrity and mass had they believed that the US would carry out Olympic and Coronet, with the US slogging it through Kyushu and then Honshu and later Hokkaido in a protracted campaign?
Bushido was more than a fad…it was a way of life, it permeated the entire Japanese military, and led to, no, solidified a fanaticism, and a fatalism, that made it easy for many senior Japanese officers to accept their oncoming defeat, but to make it damn difficult and costly for the allies to achieve that defeat. It also led to the “young Turks” revolt/coup being formulated once it became apparent that the political leaders of Japan had gotten the ear of the Emperor. Had that coup been achieved, and the politicians prevented from audience with the Emperor…well, American strategic planning at the time had supplies and manpower, units designated, many in training, for a protracted war on and within the Japanese home islands, with 1948 being seen in many US military quarters as the projected year of defeat of Japan.
As mentioned much earlier, given the number of Americans designated to take part in the invasion and destruction of Japan, and the projected casualties of Olympic and Coronet, Truman and his entire War Department would have been lynched all up and down Constitution Avenue [and rightly so, from my perspective] had it become known that we had a means to force Japan’s surrender earlier and not used it, suffering instead Somme and Passchendaele casualties on an ongoing basis until the last Japanese soldier was rooted out from caves in the Japanese Akaishi mountains.
Hindsight is good…when used as a lessons-learned tool, to make future strategy and tactics more efficient, less costly, to achieve the same end…destruction of an enemy’s ability and will to fight. But hindsight is too often misused. When used as a tool to simply project blame, or try to place in current context events and circumstances existing 20 or 50 or 100 years ago as if nothing good was accomplished thus nothing good will ever come, hindsight can be both blinders and shackles for military and foreign policy.
Looking at the typical American, and typical Japanese and typical German in the period 1939-1945…they did the best they could with what they had available to them. The Axis lost. The Allies won. There were legitimate reasons for the Allies winning. And legitimate reasons for the Axis losing. One cannot take a bit or piece from here and there and ignore all the other pieces and bits. To selectively attempt to do so may be the stuff of “what if” analogies, but as a solid basis for developing more refined strategies and tactics, to include the involvement of the citizenry, well, it fails. It always will.
coldwarrior on February 22, 2009 at 10:24 PM
“The question therefore is not whether Dresden contained legitimate bombing targets, but whether the method and intensity of the February 1945 bombing was justifiable.”
This is exactly right and IMO the intensity was excessive & morally wrong as it was part of Harris’ admitted policy (to demoralize) of deliberately killing large numbers of civilians with bombing designed to create a fire storm. The German’s I’ve spoken to about this thought all the other firebombings were justifiable, even as partly vengeance, but Dresden was too much. Large numbers of women & children fleeing the advancing Russians took refuge there.
Anyway, here is a must see debate on the subject including the author Grayling of “Among The Dead Cites” and Christopher Hitchens no less.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=192374-1
Chessplayer on February 22, 2009 at 10:28 PM
“Because we NOW do not accept Total War as valid”
Uhm humor me,
If, like during WW2, we had enemies hell bent on killing or enslaving you,
What exactly would consider a valid response?
Do you know why Total War has not happened since 1945?
Hint its not magic mushrooms
DSchoen on February 22, 2009 at 10:29 PM
? Why would you want to burn those cities down today?
baldilocks on February 22, 2009 at 10:37 PM
Up until 1991, total war was not only valid, it was the center of our overall military strategy vis-a-vis the Soviets in Europe, and for almost all of the Cold War. We had state players involved, and after the mid-1950’s the prospect of total war made planners on both sides continue to plan for that total war but hope like hell it would never happen. Had a good conversation with a former senior Soviet officer a while back, and, according to him, there was a palpable fear that the US would make the first move throughout the Soviet military hierarchy. It lessened quite a bit under Nixon and, under Carter even more so. Reagan scared the bejezzus out of them. They spent billions in massive underground facilities that ringed Moscow and Leningrad, and a few other strategic cities, so they could hope to survive the first onslaught, reconstitute themselves and then carry the war to Europe and North America.
They believed total war was not only possible, it was probable, and in the long run, winnable.
Since the end of the Cold War, only China is presently looking at total war as a strategy, though they’d more than likely continue incramentalism until a tipping of the balance in their favor is achieved. There are no other nations, other than China and the United States, presently capable of total war…so the movement has been toward nickel and dime operations….terror, development of indigenous nuclear capability, destruction of strategic supplies –oil. That sort of thing. Add to that the non-state players who are willing to let their hosts lose everything, and while total war is no longer on the front burner, there are other things that can bring about the same result without massive armies, massive defense budgets and the latest high-tech tools.
Countering those sorts of threats…that’s the focus of the 21st Century.
Peace is a lot more than the absence of war. We are not at peace. Probably won’t be for decades to come, certainly not in my lifetime.
coldwarrior on February 22, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Far as I’m concerned, the true legacy of the Tausend Jahren Reich is that Fritz has no place making moral judgments, especially about what was done to it after it started making war, until 2945.
Liam on February 22, 2009 at 11:10 PM
No, in war there are only two rules:
1. Do what it takes to win, so that the enemy is totally defeated.
2. When in doubt about your actions, refer to rule #1.
This is our problem with modern war. We don’t kill enough. Had we killed say 333 million Muslims after 9/11, they’d think twice about messing with us. Not only that, but the environmentalists would be able to shut up for a few years about population growth. Win-Win.
Tim Burton on February 22, 2009 at 11:22 PM
Not a chance in hell. They would have drank even more Vodka and danced until they dropped.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 11:26 PM
Had that become known, and it would have, that day, not Pearl Harbor, would be remembered as “The Day that will live in Infamy”.
MB4 on February 22, 2009 at 11:32 PM
Reciprocity. Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam… so the Hun got some payback and are now whining like Palestinians who target children, hide behind their women and are outraged that their own cowardly war crimes result in civilian casualties.
T.S.
DANEgerus on February 23, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Firebombing Dresden and burning hundreds of thousands of Germans had the ironic effect of freeing the remaining Jews in the city. When the Gestapo and SS records of which Jews in the area lived where went up in flames (the day before the final deportation to the death camps was to take place), it allowed the Jews to take off their stars and blend in with the rest of the population, both in the city and in the surrounding countryside. Victor Klemperer talks about this in the secret diaries he kept during the war.
Burning Dresden=Righteous Event
rotorhead on February 23, 2009 at 12:35 AM
Liberals and their ilk (the left wing dolts that specialize in revisionism) cannot accept fact beyond their myopic view of any noteworthy historic event. Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. were events dictated by actions taken by the nations targeted (that would be Germany and Japan, respectively, for all you liberal idiots trolling this web page).
Given time, some liberal pinhead will attempt to spin Gettysburg or Antietam as a Union effort to slaughter their brothers attempting to reconcile a Constitutional dispute. Maybe the current president — the pandering racist and socialist from Illinois — will issue a decree condemning the Dresden raids and commission a select panel of “experts” to examine whether or not war crimes were committed.
badcat on February 23, 2009 at 12:49 AM
The bombing raids on Dresden were fully justified, as it was a marshaling area, communications center, and production area. But let us remember anything that shortened the war was bound to save German lives given that Hitler would have put toddlers in uniform before surrendering.
Moving on to the Japanese front the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki while critical to convincing Japan to surrender killed, and wounded fewer people, including radiation casualties, than the fire bombing of Tokyo. But the committee ruling Japan wouldn’t decide to surrender until one man on it changed his mind because he observed the last thousand plane raid, and decided that the American’s must really hate the Japanese to continue conventional bombing when they had the atom bomb, and the only way of saving anything of the Japanese people was to surrender, and voter to surrender at the next meeting.
darktood on February 23, 2009 at 3:36 AM
Up until 1991, total war was not only valid, it was the center of our overall military strategy vis-a-vis the Soviets in Europe,
Ya, I know, that was when I was in the Navy. I was just trying to point out that
“we NOW do not accept Total War as valid” is a naive believe,
Do you know why Total War has not happened since 1945?
Hint its not magic mushrooms
It is nukes
DSchoen on February 23, 2009 at 4:25 AM
We lived through the “Carter years” because in Vietnam we proved our B-52s could fly over soviet air defense systems with sustainable losses.
darktood on February 23, 2009 at 6:18 AM
Hear, hear!
So good, I had to let ya say it at least twice.
But not then, as you imply. The forgotten history. Too many Americans now have a warped, historically illiterate perspective that we’ve always been a top dog. Nothing could be further from the truth, and our preparedness for WWII shows how lowly we were militarily. 4 months into the war, Gen. Doolittle’s raid was sheer bravado, an act of desparation. WWII was a desparate, titanic, no holds barred struggle right through to the end, both in Germany and in Japan, revisionism be d*mned. That we came out of WWII a top dog is no fault of our own even though we went in with a small, poorly trained and poorly equipped military.
RickZ on February 23, 2009 at 7:00 AM
WWI raged for 3 years until the US entered the war. It was over in 18 months. We lost 117,000 Americans.
WWII saw the deaths of millions of Europeans until the US entered the war. In 4 1/2 years we lost 400,000 Americans and the war was won. Russia lost 23 million.
In both cases, the US had a greater effect with fewer losses than any other major participant. Sounds like a super power to me.
csdeven on February 23, 2009 at 7:54 AM
Besides attending History 101, you should be taking Statistics 101 as well.
Shy Guy on February 23, 2009 at 8:04 AM
90% of German soldiers in WWII were killed by the Russians; 80 % of those (German soldiers) were killed inside Russia
alwyr on February 23, 2009 at 8:15 AM
Who cares? It should have been 0%. And the 2% does not include the percentage that were starved but not to death, beaten, used as slave labor, denied medical treatment. That other countries treated our POWs worse does not give Germany a pass.
Or, it could have been an unmitigated disaster. Since, they had only tested one bomb and they had limited materials, and considered what would happen if the bomb didn’t explode, they made the best decision. Also, patience = the killing and the deaths by starvation continued.
Blake on February 23, 2009 at 8:38 AM
In WWI, we were the tipping point for the exhausted combatants. We were fresh, they were worn down. We were like Blucher at Waterloo, arriving in the nick of time to save the day. After WWI, we backslid militarily; the Depression didn’t help. Don’t forget the court-martial of then Col. Billy Mitchell, either. It always happens with us after a war. We always cut back too far militarily after a war. Always. Just look at Clinton’s ‘Peace Dividend’ from the end of the Cold War. Inside-the-box thinking every time. War’s over, no more military spending. And forget R&D money. There are government social programs to fund.
RickZ on February 23, 2009 at 8:46 AM
With the exception of the rape of up to 2 million German women (ages 8 – 80) by the barbaric Red Army – there were no war crimes in my opinion committed against the Nazi fuckers.
Hilts on February 23, 2009 at 8:57 AM
Have you and others considered that we had multiple goals? Demoralize the enemy and destroy it’s war industry and rail system? As far as “intensity was excessive” the percentage of killed was less than other bombings and the force used was no worse than that used in the raids on Hamburg, Cologne, and Frankfurt am Main. LINK Yet, people continue to whine about Dresden.
Wrong. Large numbers of refugees passed through Dresden and kept going. This is one of the reasons why the death toll was reported as being much higher than it really was.
Seriously, it’s 60 plus years after the fact and people are still spreading Nazi and communist propaganda and using it to bash their own country.
Blake on February 23, 2009 at 9:22 AM
The Nazis used Dresden as a propaganda prop during the war, and the East Bloc kept up the drumbeat after the war to show how horrible the West was, pretty much using the same language and lies the Nazis used.
We bombed French cities during and after Normandy for the same reason – to deny major highways to the Germans and make them go around the cities and get bogged down in the mud when retreating. Thousands of Frenchmen were killed in these raids. War is hell.
Akzed on February 23, 2009 at 9:37 AM
Boy, did we bomb Normandy! I saw some old declassified military film on the bombings. They targeted almost every bridge. My neighbor was also a 6 year old child living in Normandy at the time. The house next door to hers took a direct hit. On another raid, the concussion caused her to be thrown from where she was sitting, knocking her out.
Blake on February 23, 2009 at 9:45 AM
This is interesting.
So is this.
2% is far better than 60%
And way, way, way better than 100%, as appears to have been the case with regard to our adversaries in the War on Terror.
With respect to the Bomb, we will never know. But the fact that a significant number of people (some, like Teller and myself, quite patriotic) have questioned and continue to question the morality of using the Bombs, the United States has completely given up the grounds of moral superiority in this matter. The fact that we used the Bomb must have scared the Soviets shitless until they had one of their own. I think the use of the Bomb increased the tensions in the Cold War tremendously, since the Soviets had a record of the United States making First Use. It’s like watching a dog that has bit twice looking at you. One can understand the Iranian (and the Indians, and the Pakistanis, and the Chinese) desire to have a Bomb under these circumstances too.
unclesmrgol on February 23, 2009 at 10:07 AM
Agreed. I believe this is called the Rush Doctrine. The theory is that, until you defeat an opponent, you’re only extendign the conflict. See Israel as an example. As long as Israel lets Palestinians live on their borders, the Palestinians will plot their revenge, because there’s always a rabble-rouser around to use their ethnic identity to assist his rise to power.
Likewise the Cold War. Russia hasn’t given up on its plans to be the dominant world power, because they were never forced to face the military and economic superiority of their opponent (us).
hawksruleva on February 23, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Bombing then more bombing and then super saturation bombing and then nuking (had we had them in time) of the super saturation bombing of Nazi’s is always a good idea!
sabbott on February 23, 2009 at 10:50 AM
Warn the populace to oust their turd leaders/terrorists or suffer total obliteration….I can hear pussy liberals whining”oooo! who’s gonna play god and kill all those people? who’s gonna press that death button?” ME!! I can be reached here in OKC. I’ll press that bad boy and convert your country into a glass-covered parking lot..
As far as conscience goes, after the deed is done, I’d make a grilled cheese sandwhich then take a nap…no muss no fuss. Dresden a war crime? Hell no.
paulsmos on February 23, 2009 at 11:02 AM
Heard it all before. We (I do not speak for the French) did nothing wrong and Bacque is full of crap.
If you’re the moral relativist type of guy. I’m not.
Yes, we know. We know that if we used a bomb as a demo and it didn’t explode, it would have the opposite psychological effect. We know that if we used a bomb as a demo and it did explode and the Japanese didn’t surrender, which was the case when we did use it, we would have had only one bomb to left. While others were being produced, let me say for the nth time, any delay in ending the war meant people were continued to be killed, starved, and dying of disease. This we will never know crap is a ridiculous argument. We never know about anything, ya’ know? Again, we made the best decision on what we did know.
Teller may have regretted that the bomb was dropped on civilians – who doesn’t? But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do and resulted in less lives loss than a ground invasion or a blockade. His statement about a demo is irrelevant. The decision was considered and rejected. The significant number of people, as you put it, who object to the bombings, are insignificant compared to those who support it. “[G]iven up the grounds of moral superiority” my ass.
Blake on February 23, 2009 at 11:08 AM
If you really want to apply the concept “Do what it takes to win, so that the enemy is totally defeated” with no restraints then you are willing to do the following:
(1) Nuke, gas, and biological weapons
(2) Rape, torture, and maim children to get their parents to give up information
(3) Wipe out the entire population (genocide) whom you are fighting if you suspect they might rise up against you in future.
(4) Use human prisoners as test subjects for your weaponry. This helps you win faster, and saves money.
(5) Ignore your own citizens’ rights if those are interfering with your prosecution of the war. Kill, silence, imprison, torture, rape, whatever you have to do to Americans who oppose your efforts to win; make them stop by whatever means necessary.
All that’s required after this is done, is to change your name to “United States Soviet Republic”. But your citizens will be safe! Yep, good plan.
Now, I assume (optimistically) that most of the diehard “do what it takes” people on this board would not agree to the five consequences above; they just haven’t thought it through. Therefore we agree that not everything is justified to win a war. People have human dignity, including enemy civilians and even enemy soldiers. Reduction ad absurdum. QED.
Gaunilon on February 23, 2009 at 11:15 AM
“Was the Dresden Raid a war crime?” Hell no! The only reason why the German press is giving that nutjob attention is because they don’t like the outcome of WWII.
Cr4sh Dummy on February 23, 2009 at 11:19 AM
You clearly do not have a very good understanding of “moral relativism”. You do, however, demonstrate a good understanding of compulsive selfrighteous pontification.
MB4 on February 23, 2009 at 12:30 PM
Now on this matter I fully concur with you, except that where you used the word ridiculous I might have used, oh, something like selfrighteous pontification instead.
MB4 on February 23, 2009 at 12:42 PM
Gaunilon
I admire your ability to type through the tears.
BL@KBIRD on February 23, 2009 at 1:24 PM
Nor were they on the verge of surrender, contrary to liberal mythology. In fact, they didn’t even surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima. In the wake of that attack, Japan went through a neutral third party and offered the US this: They would cease hostilities, and in return the US had to allow Japan to keep its entire military, the emperor retained his sovereign power, and the US could never again set foot on Japanese soil. This is not a surrender and the US knew it. It was a chance for Japan to regroup and Pearl Harbor us again. The US replied by dropping another, different type of atom bomb on Nagasaki. Then, and only then, was Japan ready to surrender.
Crusty on February 23, 2009 at 2:05 PM
We should talk about whether the firebombing of Dresden was an American-British war crime right after the Germans explain why the Blitz was necessary (sustained fire-bombing of multiple British cities) and why the firebombing of Rotterdam was necessary, even after Holland had already capitulated…and then, there was the bombing of Poland, too.
Read the diaries of Victor Klemperer (Otto’s brother): he was actually saved by the bombing of Dresden!
Jenfidel on February 23, 2009 at 2:08 PM
Wonder how many people know that Otto is “Colonel Wilhelm Klink’s” father? ["Hogan's Heroes"] (Werner Klemperer was nonetheless a serious and good actor and a fine musician…must run in the family.)
coldwarrior on February 23, 2009 at 3:44 PM
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