Was the Allied bombing of German cities a war crime?
 

No, argues this columnist, because the phrase "war crime" has no objective meaning - but it was still morally wrong.

PETER HITCHENS: The heroes of Bomber Command deserve their memorial... unlike the butcher who led them | Mail Online

A little off topic, but fascinating none the less. These statues (called the Tell Halaf Statues) were destroyed during the allied bombings of Germany. At the time, whatever fragments they could find were kept and in 2003, a group of archaeologists decided to try and piece everything back together with only photographs of the intact statues to go by. It ended up taking them 9 years to to sort through thousands of fragments and fit them back together. It still blows my mind that they were able to do it

https://digitalcosmonaut.com/wp-conte...2/DSCF0048.jpg

https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6128/5...3b6504e3_z.jpg

https://digitalcosmonaut.com/wp-conte...55-600x400.jpg

And a shot of the warehouse where they pieced everything back together

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image..._bright224.jpg

I'm not sure what his point is - there are a number of possible indictments under the broad umbrella of war crimes (the phrase usually being used by the media and journalists, not lawyers or judges), such as, for example, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of wars, and various violations of the Geneva convention, which in fairness were not enacted until after WW2. And these types of violations do have their legal/objective definitions.

What rules of war were followed before the Geneva Conventions? Was it not a sort of war-to-war set of agreements between warring factions? Was anything in place during the second World War? It's funny, I had never considered the bombings of cities in WW2 could be seen as war crimes. It seemed to me in a time of all out war, before any internationally agreed upon rules, the destruction of civilian infrastructure was just the nature of the beast. Certainly none of the big players were innocent of that.

Peter Hitchens is an irregular traditional conservative. By which I mean he takes at times unpredictable stances on issues, but they are usually reasonably logically argued from a set of core traditional conservative principles, as opposed to anything deriving from neo-conservatism/neo-liberalism.

Having some familarity with Hitchen's writings, I would guess he views phrases like "war crimes" or for that matter "hate crimes" as smacking of internationalism or unnecessary legal interventionism. I would guess that his view is more or less that assigning a legal definition to "war crimes" does not ascribe it a moral definition. Or alternatively he is critiquing over-use of the phrase by the media for sensationalist value, as you've alluded to.

But really I only picked out that quote to hang a point on the article, which I think is rather good overall.

Ah, cool - thanks for the context. I have to admit I am not really familiar with him (aside from the obvious family connection).

I would imagine the bombing of German cities would be no more or less a war crime than the use of the atomic bomb on Japan.

That's pretty much what I was getting at ;)

I have seen the exhibition. It's a huge collection. Some pieces they had to use fake parts, but most are pretty much complete. They also had a couple more large scale pictures of the reconstruction process. Quite impressive how they could piece together those torn apart statues, especially when all the parts were mixed with a bunch of other parts or debris from the storehouse they were found in.

^ I'm jealous. I can't wrap my head around the patience it would have taken. It's sad that they were destroyed in the first place, but now they have another interesting layer of history that adds to the interest is a way.

Is the museum that they're in the one that was also destroyed in the war, but when they rebuilt it, they kept many of the bullet ridden concrete pillars and walls? That in itself is an amazing building

Yes, pretty much. It was in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Museum, which is one of the museums on the Museum Island. The museum was partly destroyed and you can still see the bullet holes, but they have started to cover them up which I think is pretty sad. You can still see as those patches are darker than the stones, but nonetheless, it had this sense of living history when it was still without any patches. But there are still a great many buildings with bullet holes, where you can sort of imagine how in '45 a soldier or another person might have stood in the corner and taking the bullets. I think it's important to keep it like this in some places.

I agree about the bullet holes. They're a part of history. We can't only be privy to the positive history of places, we need to know about the horrors that occurred there, too.

That is really cool about the statues, though. I'm glad people were able to salvage them and took the time to try and restore them.

As for the bombings, well, it's true that the idea of rules in war is kind of pointless, because war by its very nature isn't a "play nice and fair" action. It's dirty, it's cruel, it's deadly. I know why people in WW2 did what they did by destroying countries at large and everything.

However, I will always maintain that killing innocent people as punishment for the evil actions of some is never justifiable. Destroying entire swaths of countries doesn't solve anything. It's not worth stooping to the level of your enemies.

Bombing of german cities did not occur as a sadistic punishment, unlike what the Axis Powers did many times to their enemies and to the Allied forces. It occured as a demonstration of force and as one of the attempts for Germany to finally surrender.

Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided.

~Kirk


We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes.

~Kirk, persuading Anan 7 to make peace

That seems like a very biased opinion. You don't think the Germans had similar objectives as the allies had? Granted, they were the aggressors, but it's way oversimplified to say they had no military motivation in mind and were just in it to punish. The idea that some people have that the Germans were all just evil war mongers is a very shallow one

Especially because even pretty much every American or British involved, as well as most historians etc. have said that the bombardements of Hamburg (Operation Gomorrha) and Dresden (in February 45) did not have any military relevance nor justification. As was said in the quoted piece, from a military perspective a targeted campaign on relevant industrial targets would have been at least as successful. It was mainly a revenge for Coventry and London.

The US wanted to attack only specific places like factories, military bases and so, but the UK wanted to disarm Germany by attacking certain strategic cities.

Germany was controlling the whole Europe, from North to the Mediterranean and North Africa, from the East to west France. Spain was a "neutral collaborator" and Portugal collaborated with both parts.
The Allies had to choose to attack german cities with those purposes. There weren't many choices. Germany was attacking the UK as well as if you remember.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Little_boy.jpg
They also liked to test out their new toys

Essentially every historically or culturally significant building or location in Japan was targeted specifically for bombing during WW2. It's incredibly embarrassing as an American to visit ancient temples and historical sites and realize you're actually looking at the 1950's version, not the original.

It blows, but it's how war was waged at the time. The idea that any side was morally superior than another during the period is beyond ridiculous.

This. I'm not specifically coming down on the Americans, just pointing out that there were shitty moves on both sides of the fence as well as strategic ones. It's just how it was

Saying this is forgetting or not knowing the History of Europe, specially in the XIX century, specially of the pre/during/post WWI and, most of all, what led to WWII... And also the post-war Europe. It is basically not knowing Europe's contemporary History at all.

Yes, there was one side that was morally superior to the other. And present events shows that it still is.

Please, enlighten us with your lesson on the all encompassing history of Europe. You've made nothing but broad, unsubstantiated comments thus far

Where do you want to start?
On the fact that Germany invaded/occupied/destroyed foreign territories twice and seven decades later it acts as the biggest moral entity of Europe, forgetting what was forgiven, morally and economically?
On the fact that territories where fascist/proto-fascist regimes existed are regressing now and territories that accepted well german occupation are now seeing birth of neo-dictatorial or proto-fascist regimes?
Do you prefer to move to the Balcains or do you prefer to talk about the intentional distortion of the original purposes of the EU project that, in fact, is a mere evidence of the essence of Europe and of those who compose it?
Do you want to talk about the concept of living space in Europe and in the History of Europe?

I'd like you to somehow relate all that back to what we were actually talking about. Feel free to start wherever you'd like

It was vengeful in large part, but one has to remember the climate of the time. When Nazi Germany was finally beaten into submission, as I recall reading, there was serious talk in some quarters of deindustrialising the nation. This was no ordinary war.

The real tragedy is that one of the plots among the old imperial general staff holdovers, against Hitler, didn't succeed - maybe some kind of negotiated surrender could have forestalled some of this.

The idea that the Allies specifically targeted women, children, and civilian men is crazy. If this was some sort of goal, it would have continued as the US military entered both Germany and Japan. The fact of the matter is that targeting transportation networks and factories back then usually required nearly 1 thousand bombing sorties before the target was even hit. US firebombing in Japan eventually destroyed area's where Japan was attempting to build its own Atomic Bomb to use against US forces, or even the United States with some unusual delivery methods. Without the firebombing of Japan, you would of had US forces trying to invade the island in 1946 and possibly being exposed to the Japanese use of their own Atom Bomb or at least a dirty bomb.

Allied strategic bombing overall ended the war earlier and saved far more lives than it took. To let what happen on Okinawa happen all over the Japan would have ended Japan forever. Thats what you would have seen with an invasion of the islands. In Germany, without strategic bombing, every city in Germany would have been defended to the degree that Berlin was leading to millions more deaths and casualties.

Oh, and on the question of moral superiority, lets not forget who did what.

Germany, Japan and Italy were the aggressors. Both launched regional wars of aggression that eventually resulted in the deaths of over 60 million people. Germany targeted and exterminated over 6 million people simply because of their Religion. The Japanese military raped most of the women in China and the Pacific Islands that they occuipied, as well as engaging in extermination of any town that resisted their occupation. How about the treatment of US and allied prisoners of War by the Japanese.

Unfortunately, one of the Allies was not much better in its treatment of prisoners and innocent civilians. The Russian military raped nearly every women in Poland west of the vistula river going all the way to the Elbe River in Germany during their advance on the German capital of Berlin in 1945. Yes, several million Polish and German women were brutally gang raped by Soviet soldiers. The Soviets then occupied and installed puppet governments all through eastern Europe enslaving over 80 million people for the next half century.

The United States on the other hand liberated the countries it went through and gave them democracy as opposed to communist dictatorship. In stark contrast to the Soviet military behavior, the US hung or shot by firing squad its own soldiers who were found guilty of rape. An interesting contrast between the Soviet Atheist Regime, the most power and influence any atheist has ever had in history, and the United States which has freedom of religion.

What does atheism have to do with anything? If you're going to condemn the Russians for acting in the name of atheism (which no one has ever done), are you going to condemn Hitler for acting in the name of Christianity?

Also, do you not find it convenient that our enemies (and our ally that would soon become our enemy) seem to be completely overrun with evil rapists and murderers while we were all squeaky clean? History is truly written by the victors. Things are never so black and white and when they are presented as such, you should start to question them

The idea that Japan was planning to use a nuclear bomb is a sketchy one at best


(and it's "hanged". I'm sorry, it's just a pet peeve of mine. Sorry to be that guy)

It was just something I noticed that I found interesting. The difference in behavior of the Russian and American military forces in their march across Europe. The difference in what they did in their occupation zones. The way they treated people.

I know a hallmark of liberalism is to suggest moral equivalency everywhere, but in this case it doesn't fly, not by a mile. The above are hard facts. The United States didn't cook 6 million people to death in concentration camps. The Germans did. Just ask the Poles about what the Russians did to them in their sweep across the country towards Germany. Hell, look at what Russia did in 1939 to Poland with Germany. Look at what the Russians did to Polish prisoners of war. A recent President of Poland as well as several other top officials recently died in a plane crash on the way to visit a memorial to thousands of Polish prisoners massacred by the Russians during the War.

The above are all facts, and if it looks black and white then so be it, because that is what the facts show.

Japan was trying to develop an atomic bomb of its own, but were behind the United States in the development process. Their work on developing a bomb was destroyed during the fire bombing of Japanese cities.

This isn't debate or argument, it's just propaganda. Even the elements of it that are true, are, I'm afraid, deployed purely for propagandising purposes, because they fit your narrative, much as there may have been factually true statements inserted within the propagandist pronouncements of the Soviets you detest - but their overall narrative could not be trusted.

I really don't want to get into addressing each of your specific points, as I know it would end up like wrestling a pig, but the US soliders unfortunately raped many women in Vietnam (according to your own filmmakers, at least), so adopting the "we're the good guys 'cos we don't commit rapes even in war, they're the bad guys 'cos they do, and what's more, they're filthy atheists and God hates them" is not a good argument for you to adopt.

STING2's latest alter, I take it?

Fair enough then. We can blame Christianity for what Hitler did. It's just something I noticed.
(and do you really think Christianity doesn't have any blood on its hands? Its hands might be the bloodiest)

I'm not a liberal, so your blanketing opening statement isn't going to fly either. If you don't think there's an bias with the way the facts are presented, then there is no discussing it with you. You don't find it strange that the more access the media had in subsequent wars, the less innocent the actions of the troops became?

You can start with a simple wiki search and go from there
Allied war crimes during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know it's heart warming to think the allies were all heroic and law abiding (many were), but it's not reality

Again, trying to develop an atomic bomb and being anywhere close to possessing one are completely different. The idea that the US dropped theirs just in time to save themselves from the same fate is a huge stretch and revisionist history

I really have no idea what's more ridiculous. The insinuation that Germans are still Nazis, or the statement that all bad comes from the Atheists.
I'm both. I'm afraid I may not sit next to anyone on a plane anymore.

I'll add to this that the idea that all German soldiers were Jew hating murderers is ridiculous too. The majority were just young men fighting for their country just like every other soldier in the war was

That, plus the kind of black and white thinking that Sting2/Bethere requires us to bring to bear against the great enemy of "moral equivalency", is, I think, incredibly dangerous, inherently. Actually, taken to extremes, it ultimately trends to the Nazism/Sovietism that Bethere/Sting2 claims to detest.

Maybe the US soldiers who raped Vietnamese women were victims of this black-and-white thinking. Or maybe they were secretly atheistic Nazis or Commies, or, almost as bad, deviant liberals and backsliding moral equivalators.

Or maybe they just weren't true Scotsmen American Christians

You were questioning the morality or absense of it from both parts. I replied saying that one part has unquestionably moral or higher moral than the other. The rethoric-questions I put are the answer and the justification.

Your rhetorical questions made no sense in relation to what we were talking about.

As someone who has only been reading so far, Aygo, you appeared to be trying to make points about present day Europe in a discussion about World War II, which is sort of weird.

Do you know why?
Because today's european generations are not very different from european generations of the early XX century.
We may have internet, iPhones, education, health systems, and many other things, but... Expectations, but most of all, the national (and "intranational") identities are the exact same.
Today's events in Europe are the perfect mirror or what Europe is, of Europe's essence. If there's one thing that the present crisis is proving is that it all has emerged again, it was just hidden all this time under the surface. Nothing has really changed in fact. We've only made a break.
So, to me, talking about today's Europe is talking about Europe during the WWI or the WWII.

Ok. So, instead of answering you, I will put you another question that, for me gives the answer it self.

Why did the UK and France declare war to Germany in September 1939?

Why did Germany invade Poland?

Has anyone made a Fawlty Towers reference yet?

Well this thread ruined my night.

Yeesh.

Indiana Jones is on. I'm starting to reconsider. Maybe all Germans were evil

Dont mention the war, cobbler!

I wanted to give regular posters amble time to respond to this comment.

How sad that only one European poster could be bothered to testify to the clear moral superiority of the "side" that liberated Europe over the "side" that occupied and enslaved your continent.

How confusing that all the posters that can so easily discern homophobia and hate in a chicken sandwich won't take a minute to come to the defense of the moral superiority of the Allied Forces that, at great cost, defeated the regime that imprisoned, tortured and killed tens of thousands of homosexuals during the war.

How troubling that all our bright students, with history lessons still fresh in their minds, wouldn't remind us of the horrific statistics of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and 10 million civilians on the Eastern Front dead at the hand of Nazi Germany. 30 million Filipinos, Burmese, Cambodians and Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese. Maybe history books no long contain details of the Bataan Death March, Joseph Mengele, Mussolini and all the other atrocities that make it impossible for a knowledgeable, objective person to say, "The idea that any side was morally superior than another during the period is beyond ridiculous."

This is from Ronald Reagan's Normandy Speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day.

Ronald Reagan isn't speaking for conservatives or even Americans. He is speaking for ALL free people. In the history of the world it is tyranny, not liberty, that is the rule. War is ugly, tragic, appalling and filled with bad choices and the lesser-of-two-evils choices. But you are wrong U2popmofo, there is a profound, moral difference between those that use force for liberation and those that use force for conquest.

Maybe you should have used that ample time to look into the context of that person's statement.

war is murky territory in any shape or form...

the village i live in is still very much scarred by WW2 - it is right on the demarcation line separating occupied France from "free" France, and the local Nazi headquarters were in the house across the street from my present home

it's been fascinating talking to some of the old folk here over the years and hearing their stories... some pretty hair-raising tales too... i remember a few years ago going to see the school play, written and performed by the kids, with the help of a professional local theatre company, based purely on the children's grandparents' and great-grandparents' memories of that time - the play opened with a narrative of how the German soldiers came and shot the schoolteacher dead at 9am in front of the whole class, how their parents told them not to take sweets from the soldiers because they would be poisoned, how their fathers and grandfathers (those too old or ill to fight) were kept hidden with the livestock and in farm carts because those who were found were executed... it was shocking to the core, and very moving, and very far removed from the usual Teddy Bears Picnic type school plays i'd been used to in the past...

not far from here is a village called Maille, where nearly every inhabitant was massacred by German soldiers passing through - the village has been preserved as it was on the day of the massacre as a kind of haunting memorial...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maill%C3%A9_massacre

what i'm saying is, memories of the war are incredibly vivid here, nothing like in the UK which wasn't occupied, and those memories still live on here today, in everyday life... i very much doubt that any of my elderly neighbours would claim that the allied bombing was a war crime, as they lived through crimes of war perpetrated by the Nazis here in their village... there is still so much division, so many feuds which go back to the war, who collaborated, who was in the Resistance... the wounds are still very fresh it seems... that's my limited experience of living here anyway, it's been incredible hearing first-hand accounts about that time though...

eta- i understand what Aygo is saying too - this whole Euro crisis has brought a lot of unpleasant memories to the fore again in some parts of Europe... hell, here where i live, whenever things get twitchy, the old ladies, from the WW2 generation, literally dash to the local supermarket and fill their trolleys with bags of sugar and it is the norm here among that generation to stockpile at least a month's supply of food in their larders - just in case - i've seen that! that generation lived through such scarcity and suffering during and in the aftermath of the war, when people were left with nothing and were starving here in the countryside, and those fears still linger... i can't completely comprehend it myself personally, but it's there...

an interesting thing i learned recently, here in France during WW2, the French Gendarmes, in areas which were occupied by the Germans, had to differentiate between French Jews and non-French Jews living in France - i will have to double check which way round it was, but i think the Gendarmes were instructed to round up "French Jews" and basically handed over "non-French Jews" to the Germans - this status was actually printed on their ID papers - i don't know if they met a different fate in the end, but i find the whole thing pretty astonishing... so yeah, the whole antisemitism thing was in fact pretty deep-rooted and incredibly well organised and officially enforced by the Germans and French Gendarmes!

While one side (obviously) was morally superior to the other side in WW II (either WW really), it doesn't mean that all actions from that side therefore were morally just.
I know that's being very obvious, but there you go.

This. Like Salome said, it's not about justifying what the allies did too. It's about understanding that some of those options were, in those precise moments, needed, whether for strategic reasons, whether to try to put a term of something horrific. It was about choosing a (yet horrific) lesser evil to try to stop a much bigger one.

Were, for instance, the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagazaki war crimes? Well, on the other hand, it's seems pretty obvious that Japan would never stop if that option wasn't chosen.

Yes, there's a superior moral side.
Yes, the all cracks are still there, although the EU tried, well intentioned, to fix it. It only did put make up over it.
If there's one thing this crisis shows is that everything's in its right place, where it always was: the tensions, the nationalisms, the intra-nationalisms and separatism, the mutual hatred, the ambition of unconsciously anhilate or stepping up on others considered weaker/inferior, the colossal cultural differences, the preconceived ideas about others, etc. Everything's there. Ready to be reactivated (if it's not already reactivated) and ready to explode again within some years or decades.

I understand that some people may not understand this. I understand that an outsider (of Europe) may not understand exactly what this really means. I understand that today's generation has shown a huge and scary lack of collective historical memory (which also explains Europe's present situation). And so, I accept why some users could not relate why I was talking about moral, about the past, then talking about the present, then relating it with the past and why they could not understand that.
But cannot accept the affirmation that there's not a superior moral side. Because there was, there is, and it seems by what's happening now, that there always will be one.