# Dresden Firestorm



## big bad john

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Dresden Firestorm.  From "The Scotsman":

The Dresden Firestorm 

By Caroline Gammell, PA Deputy Chief Reporter 

On the evening of February 13, 1945, hundreds of RAF bombers set out for the eastern German city of Dresden.

Upon the instruction of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allies were ordered to carry out a firebomb attack.

Dresden, a city of 1.2 million people, was known for its culture and beautiful buildings and the Germans considered it to be out of reach of Allied attack.

As a result it was poorly defended and the damage wrought by the Bomber Command was catastrophic and sparked a controversy over the rights and wrongs of the raid.

The weather was fine as the bombers passed over the city just after 9.30pm, unleashing their deadly load on the city below.

The following day, yet more misery was brought when US bombers swooped in for a second attack.

Around 35,000 people are thought to have died, but some estimates put the figure into the several hundreds of thousands.

The city was laid to waste, fires raged for several days and piles of corpses lay in the streets.

Film footage showed buildings ablaze and people running for their lives. Tens of thousands of people were buried in the rubble.

The attack took place just 12 weeks before the end of the war, causing many to ask if the brutality and scale of the raid was justified.

It was claimed that Dresden was not a military target â â€œ it had not been attacked before that point in the war.

But British historian Frederick Taylor recently argued it was a strategic communications centre, providing aid to those German troops fighting the Soviets in the east.

â Å“Dresden was a Nazi stronghold even before Hitler took power,â ? he wrote in his book Dresden.

Indeed, the request to bomb Dresden initially came from the Soviet Union and was approved by the Allies.

Although the end of the war was so near, for those still fighting there was no real idea of how close the end really was.

With the Allied forces yet to cross the Rhine and the Germans still bombing London with V2 rockets, the British thought the war was anything but over by February 13, 1945.


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## big bad john

This is from the "Ottawa Citizen"   today:

Ashes to Ashes: Sixty years ago today, Allied bombers delivered a Lenten surprise to Dresden -- a firestorm that laid waste the cultural heart of Europe
   
Bill Twatio 

The air offensive against Germany was born of desperation. In the summer of 1940, her armies driven from the Continent at Dunkirk, Britain stood alone and impotent, threatened by imminent invasion. A strategic review concluded that if it was to survive the present danger, the British army would have to reach a maximum strength of 60 divisions by 1942, but it would still be no match for the might of the Wehrmacht and a German war economy drawing on the resources of all of Europe.

A three-part strategy was drawn up to compensate for this military inferiority, consisting of a naval blockade, subversion, and a bombing campaign to destroy the German industrial base and the morale of the civilian population. Survival and stalemate were the best that Britain could hope for.

"When I look around to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Beaverbrook at the ministry of aircraft production on July 8, 1940. "We have no Continental army which can defeat the German military power. The blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him.

"But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm him by this means, without which I do not see a way through."

Expanding on the theme, he told the War Cabinet at the height of the Battle of Britain that "the Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the air. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory."

Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, was convinced that Germany could be defeated by a massive bombing campaign. Following America's entry into the war in December 1941, he recommended around-the-clock bombing by a combined force of at least 4,000 heavy, four-engined bombers. He calculated that such a campaign would render 25 million Germans homeless, breaking civilian morale and bringing war production to a complete halt.

Portal also believed an invasion of the continent would be unnecessary and that ground troops would only be required as an occupation force. "It is imperative," he informed Churchill, "if we hope to win the war, to abandon the disastrous policy of military intervention in the land campaigns of Europe, and to concentrate our air power against the enemy's weakest points."

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's prime minister, was already convinced air power could win the war; a conviction that came to him in a dream in October, 1939.

A few days later, he eagerly embraced the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) proposed by Vincent Massey, Canada's High Commissioner to Britain, and his Australian counterpart, Stanley Bruce.

The United Kingdom government has informed us that participation in this air training scheme would provide far more effective assistance toward victory than any other form of military co-operation Canada can give," he told the nation in a radio address.

Privately, he hoped Canada could fight a war of limited liability in the air with few casualties. He signed the appropriate documents at midnight, Dec. 16, 1939, a bewitching hour for King, whose life was full of omens, portents and dreams.

At its peak, the BCATP operated 97 training schools with a staff of more than 100,000. Canada would become known as "The Aerodrome of Democracy" -- a phrase coined by Lester B. Pearson, First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, for a speech by President Roosevelt -- training 131,533 aircrew and manning 48 squadrons overseas and 49 at home.

Close to 250,000 men and women served with the RCAF and thousands more would serve with the RAF. Flying Halifax and Lancaster bombers out of bases in Yorkshire, 6 Group RCAF was an integral part of Bomber Command.

A tour of duty with Bomber Command required 30 missions. Many Canadians would die before completing five, in a maelstrom of swirling searchlights, fighters and flak. More than 17,000 Canadian airmen never returned home, 9,919 of them bomber crews. Mackenzie King's dream of a limited-liability war turned into a nightmare in the skies over Europe.

THE BOMBER BARONS

Despite his earlier statements, Churchill never rationally believed that bombing alone would win the war. Circumstances had forced him to grasp desperate expedients. "It is very disputable whether bombing by itself will be a decisive factor in the present war," he later wrote to Portal. "The only plan is to persevere." And persevere he did.

So, too, did Portal, reiterating that "our sole means of winning the war will be an air attack on Germany ... We might attempt a landing, but our experience of fighting German mechanized armies gives no promise that we could succeed in such a land offensive in which our losses would be enormous and shipping decimated. Even if we succeeded in driving the German armies back to their own frontiers, it is most unlikely that we could overcome their defences and successfully invade Germany."

This view was shared by the American bomber barons, generals Henry (Hap) Arnold, Ira Eaker and Carl Spaatz. They would triumph at a war summit at Casablanca, with the Combined Chiefs of Staff issuing a directive on Jan. 21 1943 stating "your primary objective will be the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened." It was a process that was well underway.

The first raids had been carried out by daylight solely against military targets, and crews were under strict instructions to return to base with their bombs if a target could not be found.

"Indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations as such will never form part of our policy," the Chief of Air Staff stated emphatically on Dec. 7 1939, three months after the outbreak of war. When it was suggested the Ruhr be bombed, Britain's air minister, Sir Kingsley Wood, indignantly reminded the House of Commons that factories were private property


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## Art Johnson

ANOTHER TWIT HEARD FROM!!

"Upon the instruction of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allies were ordered to carry out a firebomb attack."

US President Dwight Eisenhower? i know that FDR only had a couple of months to live at that time but Harry Truman took over from him and had the Atom Bomb dropped.

Where do they find these Deputy Senior Reporters?


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## big bad john

It is traditional in some countries to refer to an Officer by his last and highest rank.


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## Art Johnson

big bad john said:
			
		

> It is traditional in some countries to refer to an Officer by his last and highest rank.



Do you not think that in this particular instance that the reference is confusing?


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## big bad john

Usually they assume you know who they are talking about.  Something about different strokes for different folks.


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## Art Johnson

Who is they? General D.D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force which meant that he was in charge of land forces not the Air Forces and Navies. You and our Deputy Senior Reporter need to read some history and find out who was on 1st base. At the time of the operation that we are speaking of was the Commander in Chief of US Forces.


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## big bad john

First off, I post the article and did not write it, so please do not slag me.  Did you not read Mikes' posting today?  Second the Commander in Chief of US Forces is their President.  Third, "they", in this instance is the accepted British academic form.  Different nationalities write in different manners.

I do not back generalizations, but having said that I will violate my own rule and make one:  IMHO British writers assume that you are knowledgeable on the "subject".  American writers assume you know nothing.  Again, it is a sweeping generalization and subject to flaws.


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## Spr.Earl

Yes Dresden is a blot for we what we stand for today and after the fact it was a War Crime what we did.
Dresden at the time was full of refugees from the East and had no military value what so ever.
I'll say no more,read and learn.


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## big bad john

Todays "The Scotsman"

Neo-Nazis mar Dresden's day 

ALLAN HALL IN DRESDEN 


NEO-NAZIS marched through Dresden in record numbers yesterday to blame Britain for a "bombing Holocaust" on the 60th anniversary of air raids that destroyed the Baroque city and killed more than 35,000 people. 

It was estimated to be the biggest far-right demonstrations since the end of the Second World War, and came just a week before a vital regional election is held in west Germany. 

The entire leadership of extreme-right parties in the country staged a mini Nuremberg Rally to bolster supporters ahead of the poll in Schleswig Holstein next Sunday. 

If successful there, it will be a nightmare for the government: proof that the politics of the gutter can be transplanted from the depressed and bankrupt east to the wealthy west. Polls indicate that the biggest neo-Nazi party, the NPD, will gain seats in the state assembly. 

Dresden, therefore, was a macabre political theatre for the far-right. What was to have been a day of solemn remembrance for the dead morphed into a showcase for the extreme. 

Shaven-headed demonstrators came from all over Germany, carrying black flags, balloons and banners bearing slogans such as: "The bombing Holocaust from England cannot be denied." 

Police estimates put the Nazi marchers at 5,000, while party organisers said between 6,000 and 7,000 attended, dwarfing the 4,700 who turned out in Hamburg in 1997 to protest about an exhibition implicating German soldiers in wartime atrocities. 

Their first stop was a cemetery where representatives from the UK, Russia, Germany and the Jewish community in Germany and the United States laid wreaths to the civilian dead whose ashes are buried in mass graves. 

A Dresden citizens' group was supposed to go next, but the far-right muscled in, laying wreaths claiming 350,000 "innocents" were killed in the attacks - codenamed Operation Thunderclap - and fighting with leftist counter-demonstrators on the fringes of the cemetery. 

One banner at the site read: "The bombing Holocaust will not be suppressed!" Another: "Allied bomb terror - then as now. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and today Baghdad. No forgiveness, no forgetting." 

The neo-Nazis deliberately use the word associated with the destruction of six million Jews under Hitler to provoke their enemies. 

Outside the Semper Opera House in the centre of Dresden, the phalanxes of the far-right drew up to welcome the hierarchy of diverse extreme parties. There was Franz Schoenhueber, a former SS man who heads up the Republikaner Party. 

Next to him stood Gerhard Frei of the German People's Union, Udo Voigt of the NPD, which scored spectacularly in gaining parliamentary seats in Saxony - the state incorporating Dresden - last September, and Holger Apfel, the local MP, who touched raw nerves by equating Dresden's fate with that of the true Holocaust victims. 

Dresden, untouched by bombing just months before the end of the Second World War, was 85 per cent destroyed by two waves of British bombers on the night of 13 February 1945. United States planes blasted the city the next day. 

The official death toll is put at about 35,000, but many survivors believe the actual number was higher as bodies - civilians mostly, fleeing from the advancing Red Army in the east - were reduced to ashes in the firestorm. 

"Thousands of innocent people, including children and refugees, died in most terrible circumstances," Chancellor Gerhard SchrÃƒÂ¶der said in a statement, issued before the commemoration ceremonies began. 

Britain's ambassador to Germany, Sir Peter Torry, said likening the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust was "highly problematic" but played down the threat posed by the NPD. 

"I would take the phenomenon seriously but not overrate it. The neo-Nazis got into Saxony's parliament but on a low turnout," he said. 

No RAF crewmen took part in yesterday's services and acts of remembrance. The healing was left to the clergy instead. The Very Rev John Irvine, Dean of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by German bombers in the war, and the Rev Dr Oliver Schuegraf from Wurzburg, Germany, presented a cross of nails as a sign of reconciliation to the Bishop of Saxony.


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## Infanteer

This is one of those revisionist things that some disgruntled historians seem to enjoy picking on or something.

Dresden was a legitimate target because Total War is a complete societal clash.   Dresden was a legitimate target just as Canterbury was for the German's and Tokyo was for the Americans.   Even if the military utility of utterly pulverizing the city was not very strong, the fact that the object of Total War is to completely and totally wipe the enemies will to resist out (unconditional surrender), there is no reason to doubt that bombing was an integral part of wiping out the German war machine.   Was it brutal, sure - but war is hell and total war is...well...total hell.

_"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." 
- William Tecumseh Sherman_


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## big bad john

We have a tendency to glorify war.  War is not really very nice.  As someone who has been there, I do not like or want to glorify war.  But I have never associated with a better class of people as a whole than service people.  (Okay, Okay you know that I want to say Marines don't you...but I didn't!  lol)

I glorify the effort and self sacrifice given.  My Uncle Harold was a Mid Upper Gunner on a Lancaster.  A tough individual.  He spent the last 6 months of the war as a POW.  He never quite got over seeing the destruction that he had wrought.

We have to remember the good in war, but if we forget the bad then we will keep on going down that path.

thank you for reading my mini rant.


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## baboon6

I would recommend Max Hastings' book Bomber Command to anyone who is interested in this subject, it shows both sides (especially the bomber crews) at a human level, not just a dry operational history.


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## DaveK

Spr.Earl said:
			
		

> Yes Dresden is a blot for we what we stand for today and after the fact it was a War Crime what we did.
> Dresden at the time was full of refugees from the East and had no military value what so ever.
> I'll say no more,read and learn.



You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with
all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war
against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable
catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I
can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in
spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for
without victory there is no survival."
- Winston Churchill
in his initial speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons (10 May 1940)

Keep the big picture in mind.


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## pbi

A few comments on this:

Dresden was not the only Allied case of this in NW Europe: I wrote a paper on Hamburg when I was in Staff School back in the 80's. IIRC the Hamburg Fire Raids targeted inhabited areas as well as port and industrial areas and were specifically planned to be 24/7, in order to make it impossible for the Hamburg Fire Brigade to fight the fires without very heavy casualties. (They tried anyway and took heavy losses in men and equipment). The result of the failure of fire fighting operations, coupled with wooden structures and a dry, hot weather were the conflagrations known as "fire storms" that sucked in buses and trucks and uprooted trees, and toasted people to ash in the shelters.

Was this worse than Coventry or Warsaw or Hiroshima? Probably not, since being burned alive is being burned alive.

Is there any proof that as an act of total war, this type of thing brought about the surrender of any nation more quickly than other means? My impression is that the jury is out today to a much greater extent than it was in the decades immediately following the War, in which it was IMHO almost a given that we "bombed them to the table". It is my opinion that in fact aerial bombardment of cities, especially "terror bombing" really achieved little in the big picture, except to convince the other side that their enemies were heartless savages.

I had a teacher in high school who was a bombardier on the Dresden raid: he had PTSD (back before we called it that) brought on, he said, to a great by the realization of what he had done. He stated that (30 years after...) he still woke up sweating and screaming. But, he said, he believed that the people (like him) who went to do it were "the best our country had to offer" and that "it was a war".

Can we justify this kind of thing? If we fighting to survive, we can justify anything, because if we don't survive nothing else matters. The Nazis and the Japanese chose a path that led to this sort of thing, because they made the mistake of thinking that it would never be used against them. Always a bad assumption.

Cheers.


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## Long in the tooth

Richard Overy discussed in "Why the Allies Won" how Japan and Germany were defeated after being on the verge of victory in 1942.  He concluded that there were four decisive campaigns: the war at sea, the crucial battles on the eastern front, the air war, and the vast amphibious assault on Europe.  All were necessary to defeat Germany.  Both tactical and strategic airpower were needed to defeat the armies in the field and productive capability at home.

But the question remains - were Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay exceeding the necessary force in the fire bombings as stated below?  An interesting fact - General LeMay started planning the most efficient way to destroy the wooden and paper buildings in Japan as early as 1934.  I think that most believe that civilian casualties should, normally be kept to the minimum.  But as others have pointed out, most civilians were employed somewhere as part of the 'military supply chain'.

On a philosophical plane, I believe that just as the state as the right to order me to go to battle, it also has the duty to minimize the chance that soldiers like me die.  In conclusion, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the German fire bombings are all justified if one - only one - allied soldier, sailor or airman was saved.  I know that won't win any hearts and minds.


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## pbi

> But the question remains - were Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay exceeding the necessary force in the fire bombings as stated below?  An interesting fact - General LeMay started planning the most efficient way to destroy the wooden and paper buildings in Japan as early as 1934.  I think that most believe that civilian casualties should, normally be kept to the minimum.  But as others have pointed out, most civilians were employed somewhere as part of the 'military supply chain'.



I read an interesting US Army Air Corps study on fire bombing Japan (it is in the library at Army Staff College in Kingston). The USAAC specifically built wooden Japanese structures to study the effect of firebombing, and also did a detailed study of the Japanese fire service in order to determine its capabilities and limitations in fighting major fires and conflagrations. They clearly intended to start firestorms, and as we know once a firestorm begins it is humanly impossible to stop since no fire fighters or apparatus can get close enough to combat it without being destroyed themselves.
Still, one wonders how we would have defeated these mad regimes without resorting to the combination of methods mentioned in WOG's post. (oh-sorry-bad acronym....)

Cheers


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## Infanteer

Reading up on the last year of WWII, I again came across evidence that the bombing campaign by the Western Allies of Germany was more effective then history seems to allow it.  I remember reading in an article from a "Course Reader" of another troop who was doing something through the RMC.  The article mentioned how over 50% of German War Production went into interceptors to fight-off Allied Bomber raids.  Reading Hastings Armageddon today, he states that Germany after 1942 never had more the 20% of the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front - it was all kept back for home defence.

The article also pointed out the piece of the production pie that Flak used up.  The numbers lead me to believe that the Bombing Raids on the German Heartland, although shown not to seriously affect the German populace, were a major drain on German War Production.  I guess there may be solace in the fact that countless artillery rounds, panzerfausts, and Tiger tanks never made it to the battlefield because the factory space was spitting out prop-blades and aircraft engines.


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## big bad john

It was not very nice.  But sometimes "not very nice" is necessary and in fact works.  It has been said that the two main Arms that won the war were Artillery and Bombers.


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## winchable

Reading an article about "dresden" today there are two ends of the spectrum.

Those that call the attack on Dresden, "Another Holocaust"
and those that say that Dresden is a deserved punishment for following Hilter.

Most people fall in between eventually.

Total war, like you said.
My grandfather survived the London blitz, and based on stories he's told me, pictures I've seen, other survivors stories, the "London Blitz" exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London.....after listening to all of this, I say ..if Germany had the chance they would have done twice as much, and we would not have the luxury of openly discussing it today.
So, at the risk of sounding sick and remembering my background, T.F. Dresden talk to someone who sat through one of thousands of V2 Attacks that wasn't your neighbour doing that.


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## Long in the tooth

Ok, I've thought about this (again) about strategic bombing.  I'll throw this out - were the assets of heavy bomber group used to the best of their abilities by strategic bombing?  In the rudist sense, was Bomber Harris building an empire?  In the CBC documentary (and I will question the viewpoint myself), when asked for bomber support of the Dieppe Raid, Harris says "If you don't have bomber support, will it still go forward? (yes) Then you don't need my support".

Ok, all this was very political, but at least we should question this.


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## pbi

I can't recall where I read this (wish I could...) but I know that some years ago I read an assertion that the Allied operational research done after WWII showed that German industrial production went up considerably during the later years of the war that corresponded with the heaviest bombing campaigns. The piece suggested that this was due to three things:

a) the inherent inaccuracy of bombing in the 1940's coupled with the difficulties of doing fully accurate BDA;

b) the German drive for efficiency in war industries in the latter part of the war, as opposed to the rather chaotic and ill-managed system that IIRC they started the war with;and

c) the German practice of dispersing various industrial operations to satellite plants located in camouflaged sites in smaller centres.

Anybody read anything like this?

I agree that such immensely destructive raids (by Axis and by Allies) must have had _some_  effect, but IMHO the jury is still out on the issue of the stand-alone decisiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign.

Cheers


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## big bad john

pbi said:
			
		

> I can't recall where I read this (wish I could...) but I know that some years ago I read an assertion that the Allied operational research done after WWII showed that German industrial production went up considerably during the later years of the war that corresponded with the heaviest bombing campaigns. The piece suggested that this was due to three things:
> 
> a) the inherent inaccuracy of bombing in the 1940's coupled with the difficulties of doing fully accurate BDA;
> 
> b) the German drive for efficiency in war industries in the latter part of the war, as opposed to the rather chaotic and ill-managed system that IIRC they started the war with;and
> 
> c) the German practice of dispersing various industrial operations to satellite plants located in camouflaged sites in smaller centres.
> 
> Anybody read anything like this?
> 
> I agree that such immensely destructive raids (by Axis and by Allies) must have had _some_  effect, but IMHO the jury is still out on the issue of the stand-alone decisiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign.
> 
> Cheers



I remember reading something about it also.  If I remember correctly, some believe that When Speer took over complete control as Minister in charge of Industry (the exact title escapes me) he ruthlessly streamlined production methods and sorted out blockages.


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## Shec

I recall a couple of things as well.   Immediately after WW2 the USAAF conducted a Strategic Bombing Survey which supported many of the conclusions "pbi"   relates above.

I also remember that amongst my late father's war souvenirs (he was a Bomber Command vet) was a late 1945 or early 1946 Reader's Digest article reporting that one of the more decisive effects of the air campaign was to disrupt the transportation network.     It asserted that while much of this was accomplished by tactical airpower knocking out rolling stock,   strategic airpower played an important role by damaging or destroying major transportation infrastructure such as railway marshalling yards.


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## DaveK

Milward in "The German Economy at War" states that the reason was Speer's efforts to place the economy on a "Total War" footing with all the efforts that it entails, i.e. dispersal of industry, deception, camouflage.

An excellent pre-war economy article is to be found here: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1373/is_11_51/ai_80163115/pg_2

If you really want an interesting read try "Russia's War" by Richard Overy, it provides excellent reading on how the Soviets transformed their economy during the winter of '41-'42 in order to outstrip German production. Just a thought as I think we gaze too long at the second place trophy and forget who won.


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## TangoTwoBravo

The US Strategic Bombing Survey Europe(USSBS) referred to by pbi and Shek was available (in part) in the old OPDP 7 study guide.  It gives a good overview of the bombing campaign.  

The Casablanca conference produced the following direction for the strategic bombing campaign "the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened."  The RAF and USAF had somewhat divergent approaches on the bombing campaign as seen in the double-barrelled mission statement.

Area bombing (aimed at the morale of the German people) accounted for roughly a third of total tonnage dropped and perhaps half of the tonnage dropped on Germany.  The RAF favoured area bombing while the USAF had faith in precision bombing.  Precision bombing, however, requried complete air superiority to achieve.  Specific target industries/facilities were sub pens, oil production and storage, aircraft and anti-friction bearings, transportation and "miscellaneous."  The Germans adapted counter-mearures to the campaign (such as dispersion) and as noted in other posts made efficiencies under Speer.  It does appear that the aircraft gasoline, railway system and Ruhr steel industries were hit hard.  For example, by end 1944, railway carloading were reduced by 75 percent.

On the whole, the USSBS felt that "The most that can be saidis that bombing destroyed a substantial part of the consumer-goods cushion and thereby prevented further conversion to war production during 1944."

On the area bombing aspect, there were over 1,000,000 civilian casualties of whom just over 300,000 were killed.  20 percent of German dwellings were destroyed or seriously damaged.  The USSBS felt that "bombing appreciably affected the German will to resist...War Weariness, willingness to surrender, loss of hope in German victory, distrust of leaders, feelings of disunity, and demoralizing fear were all more common among bombed than among unbombed people."

I feel that the bombing campaign did contribute to the defeat of Germany although it could not have done it on its own.  Strategic bombing offered the only tangible means of bringing offensive action directly against Germany during the early and middle years of the war.  It also had an effect on the ability of the Germans to respond to the Normandy invasion due to the shifting of strategic bombing empahsis towards transportation nodes.

Does this justify the civilian losses?  I'm not sure and the answer one gives will probably depend on the point of view of the individual.  It does appear that the war was won by the time of Dresden but it is much easier to look back than look forward in time.  The bombing campaign should be judged in the context of the time.  I would characterize Dresden as an example of "momentum."  The bombing campaign had been ongoing for several years with high losses on both sides.  I feel that the bomber offensive had achieved a momentum of its own at that point.  I believe that the bombing of Dresden had little military value but was not a war crime.  

2B


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## Infanteer

I'll state again, the fact that over half of the German war production went into countering the Bomber Offensive (regardless of its actual effects) should count for something.


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## TangoTwoBravo

The Axis had to be defeated and the bombing campaign definately contributed to that victory.  We have the comparative luxury of looking back on desperate times and judging the actions of the people invovled.   I, for one, do not condemn the bombing offensive or the use of the two atomic weapons against Japan.  

2B


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## Baloo

S_Baker said:
			
		

> I am wondering if the Axis powers had been victorious would there be a similar discussion?  Makes one think.......



Is this a condemnation of the German people (or Japanese for that matter) as a whole, or merely the political regimes at the time? The majority of Germans cared little for exterminating the Soviet people, or any other for that matter, and while yes, they were not exactly sympathetic, the German populace were not soulless, heartless monsters that many people seem to forget. Just because the government would not have decried it, does not mean that the people wouldn't have regretted it. 

Aside from that, assuming that the Axis would not have had this discussion, what does that matter? Is that not what separates "us from them"? The same principle goes for the current war in Iraq, and terrorists. Some would prefer to shoot the jihadists in the head, no questions asked. But in the end, our beliefs in free trials and justice allows us to achieve the "good", and maintain our beliefs that we package all over the world. Resorting to their level and not caring or ignoring violations of law or human rights would make us no better than them, and smack of hypocrisy. So yes, continue with the debate, and I am glad for it. For if we did not win, as you mention, we would not be allowed (or even informed!) of these types of actions. Our grandfathers and relatives fought for us to be able to examine our actions and debate openly about such matters. Whether or not we agree is irrelevant.


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## TCBF

Is it wise to judge yesterday's actions through today's timid, lying, flacid morality?

Tom


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## big bad john

TCBF said:
			
		

> Is it wise to judge yesterday's actions through today's timid, lying, flacid morality?
> 
> Tom



I don't know...it seems to me it is still wrong to send people to the gas chambers, shoot POWs and other prisoners, and commit crimes against humanity.  But that is only thinking with todays morality.


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## TCBF

Well, your examples were wrong back then too, but I see your point: I should have been more specific.

I am refering to the revisionist philosophy that has seized our elites with a death grip, and allows them to re-interpret history without the facts.  This is easy today, since most Canadians don't learn WW2 history, and can't argue the facts.

So, just for argument, let me state that:

1. Dresden was a major rail and communications hub.

2. Nagasaki was home to a Japanese Army HQ, a rifle factory, and countless other war industries, notwithstanding the fact that the two atom bombings actually saved more Japanese lives than they took.

3. The As Ye Sew Dept.: The NSDAP got over 6,000,000 votes at one point in the 1930s.

Have fun with these, guys.

Tom


----------



## Baloo

Dresden did indeed have many of it's factories producing ammunition at the time. And, it is unconfirmed that they had precision optics production areas there. But as stated, the Russians wanted the main railway systems and marshalling areas wiped out. As a result, the Allies bombed it. Not only bombed it, created a firestorm. This was literally a massacre. The Germans managed to rebuild the factories in due time. While you can argue the value of the A-Bombs in Nagasaki or Hiroshima (which I agree with...), you cannot by any stretch validate the deaths caused in Dresden. Did it end the war earlier? As a result of the industrial bombings, no. The city was gutted, and you cannot justify that. I am not agreeing with the levelling of most any city, but this was just as bad as Guernica or London. The city was terror-bombed. and the industry prevailed, while the people inside did not. No, you cannot justify Dresden.


----------



## TCBF

When you engage a target, you do so with the best technology you can apply to that target at the time.  Not good enough?  Then you do a risk analysis: the damage the enemy can do to us with and without the target in operation.  If taking out the target is justified militarily, then it is attacked.  Would we have liked smart bombs in WW2?  Of course!  We almost lost as many aircrew as we did infantrymen!
As for enemy cas, it is the responsibility of the en to sight their potential targets away from populated areas.  The casualty rolls would appear to indicate they were criminally negligent in this regard.  Of course, no suprise to find they didn't care about their OWN people either.  Tough luck.  A target is a target.

Tom


----------



## Gunner

Great discussion everyone and I would just like to add the following.

I'm not sure if you can suggest that looking at the morality of the Dresden and other fire bombings can be considered revisionist thinking.  There was considerable outrage (some would say horror) at the use of area bombardment against German, British and Japanese cities during WWII.  Doctrinally, prior to WWII, the British advocated the use of bombers to break the cohesion (economic, morale, etc) of the enemy.  Whereas the Germans did not view air power as a strategic resource and most of its aircraft were developed for tactical support to the army (which better suited their central location in Europe).  This was a major strategic mistake for the Germans that would cost them both in the Battle for Britain and the campaign against Russia.  Directed area bombings against the Germans began retailiation strikes against British cities.   

As a baseline for discussion, according to Makers of Modern Strategy (1986), most of the controversy has been centred on:

a.  the ineffectiveness and inhumanity of RAF Bomber Command's avowed policy of are bombing directed against German civilian morale;

For the most part I agree with this statement.  Bomber Command did not have the right equipment (heavy bomber) nor the right tactics to effectively conduct an air war against Germany. The cost of daylight raids pushed their tactics into night flying and limited their capability to actually find and hit the target.  The use by the Germans of the Himmelbelt, Freya radar, etc was extremely costly for the British who were slow in developing measures to allow their bombers to get through.  For the most part, I believe the use of bombers against Germany was nothing short of incompetent on the part of the British High Command until 1944.  Having said that, I also acknowledge the relatively limited ability of the British to take the fight to the Germans between 1940-43.  From a purely psychological perspective, I think the British people needed to feel they were doing something in the war.    

b.  the long-delayed effectiveness of US precision bombing efforts;

The US, as with the British, did not fully become effective until 1944 against Germany.  For want of a long range fighter to escort the B-17 Flying Fortresses into Europe led to considerable losses by the Americans in late 1942 and 1943.  The raid on the ball bearing plant at Schweinfurt in 1943 was the proverbial "straw the broke the camel's back" that led to a rethinking of US daylight tactics.  The development of the P-51D (previously a recon aircraft) into a long range fighter escort provided a capable and versatile aircraft to bring the fight against Germany.  By breaking the Luftwaffe mastery of the skies over Germany the allies were given full air superiority for the remainder of the war (with one notable exception).

c.  the drift of US attacks by early 1945 towards a bombing effort more clublike than swordlike;

I think the US move to area bombing from precision bombing was the result of the movement of German production from most urban centres.  Unable to find suitable precision targets, the US air staff adopted the British model of attempting to crack the populations morale.  Which didn't work in the end.

d.  given that victory through air power alone proved unattainable in the prevailing circumstances, whether the immense material and human resources deveoted to the bombing campaigns might have been better employed in other ways.

I think in the earlier part of the war, addition air assets from bomber command could have been given over to the battle of the Altantic.  Certainly by 1944 the air forces of all allied countries outnumbered whatever the Germans could put up (for example the fighter ratio was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25:1 during the Overlord landings.  The tactical support provided to the allies during the drive into Germany was an outstanding example of combined arms cooperation that must be inherent in modern combat.  Infanteer mentioned the size of the Luftwaffe air defence units.  I haven't heard the figure of 50% of Geman combat power was utilized by the Luftwaffe.  Although well supported by Goering, it remained a lesser arm to the army.  I have heard the number of personnel in flak units as 1 million and this was of considerable discussion as the army required additional manpower and air defence units were draft to serve in army positions.  If I remember correctly, all anti-tank units were manned by luftwaffe personnel (Micheal?).

Cheers,


----------



## pbi

> If I remember correctly, all anti-tank units were manned by luftwaffe personnel (Micheal?).



Most German anti-tank units were manned by the Army or SS, unless they were in Luftwaffe ground combat divisions. You may be thinking about the 88mm battalions which were formed primarily for anti-aircraft work and were thus manned by the Luftwaffe, but had a very powerful anti-tank capability.

Cheers.


----------



## Long in the tooth

We sometimes forget the gauntlet that Allied Crews had to fly through to reach their objectives.  I've read that at it's peak the Germans could man 100,000 air defense weapons; of course these weren't all 88s or 128s.

Curtis Lemay stated near the end of his life that if the Axis had won the war he quite expected to be tried as a war criminal.


----------



## pbi

I am also a bit reluctant to completely condemn "revisionist" history. IMHO the essence of the study of history (as I understand it...) is to uncover facts on a continuous basis, then interpret them to get a picture of the past. The further an issue or event recedes into the past, the more interpretation comes to the fore and the fewer facts are available. Of course, as we discover new facts, it causes us to re-interpret other previously known facts, and perhaps to change our entire view of a particular issue. This, to me as a soldier, is a more professionally correct way of viewing history than to take a particular "snapshot" view of events, encase it in glass and say (figuratively) "_That's what we say happened so don't question it because it pisses us off when you do that"._

Simply because concepts or morality change does not make any one age or era innately "superior" or "inferior" to another. History at all times is IMHO replete with examples of immoral and unethical decision making: we are not newcomers to that.

Cheers.


----------



## pbi

Thanks, S. Baker, but I was actually replying to a series of posts by TCBF. I should have made myself more clear.

Cheers.


----------



## Gunner

> Most German anti-tank units were manned by the Army or SS, unless they were in Luftwaffe ground combat divisions. You may be thinking about the 88mm battalions which were formed primarily for anti-aircraft work and were thus manned by the Luftwaffe, but had a very powerful anti-tank capability.



Thanks PBI.  As I mentioned, the large number of male personnel in Lufwaffe air defence units was always of source of displeasure by the German army, as they badly needed them for ground combat operations (antitank units).  I'll have to see if I can dig up any of my old readings from my master's degree.



> I am doubtful there would have been much discussion by the Japanese or German Governments had they had atomic weapons.  Does it make them better than or worse than us?



SBaker, the difference being is we were on the good side and they were on the bad side. You can't ride a white horse and claim to be morally superior if you subscribe to the same tactics as the Germans and Japanese.  As our mothers use to tell us, two wrongs don't make a right.  I believe the wholescale area bombardment of civilian cities was wrong choice in WWII and view it as the wrong choice today.  Very little was achieved by this tactic other than solidifying the resolve of the German people.


----------



## Long in the tooth

There is a a great deal of angst being brought up here.   My father fought WW2 yet counted his friends among those he fought against.      I scratch my head all the time at the changing alliances of war.   After all, Britain only defeated Napolean with the help of the Prussians.


----------



## Long in the tooth

Germany increased in production until the limitations of fuel and material in 1944.  It maxed out at 2000 tanks and 2000 aircraft per month (split amont different designs), but was restricted by fuel contraints.  Speer had done his job; the command failed to optimize usfulness.  

Was Speer the equal of Beaverbrook or CD Howe?


----------



## big bad john

Worn Out Grunt said:
			
		

> Was Speer the equal of Beaverbrook or CD Howe?



In short no.  Beaverbrook and Howe did not use slave labour.  Remember that Speer was head of Organization Todt.


----------



## Gunner

http://members.aol.com/forcountry/ww2/gma.htm

German aircraft production certainly increased in 1944 but I believe it was more a reflection of German commitment to the total war economy under Speer.  I've also added the AFV production numbers.  Of note, although aircraft production spooled up significantly, a significant percentage of these plans never made it to airfields or were hampered by severe fuel shortages experienced by Germany with their earlier losses in eastern Europe.

http://www.answers.com/topic/german-armored-fighting-vehicle-production-during-world-war-ii



> I am in agreement with you, I doubt that strategic bombing really accomplished much except to shift production from tanks etc to aircraft and FLAK.



As I mentioned, prior to 1944 the allied strategic bombing campaign was a failure and it was only the introduction of the long range fighter aircraft (P51D) that alleviated the German fighter threat against allied bombers.  In 1944/45 the allies were able to establish air supremacy over Germany.



> In doing the analysis I think it is important to point out that it is correct that two wrongs don't make a right, however this was war, not an argument in the play ground.   If the Germans and the Japanese had the ability to stike Canada or the US they would have, not withstanding the occassional volley from submarine deck guns or rice paper balloons that took place.  Revenge is a powerful emotion, so is HATE!



If you are fighting an enemy that breaches the Geneva convention, are you therefore authorized to breach the convention because we are at war?  What about if the enemy hasn't signed on to the Geneva convention, does that mean you are allowed to breach the convention because it is war?  Of course not.  Remember that the British started the large scale/directed destruction of German cities first, not the otherway round.



> In the end, justifying wrongs by bringing up equally despicable behavior doesn't solve anything.



I agree with you.  War has to be taken in the correct context as to what is inflicted upon each opposing force.  Mitigation of collateral damage is a requirement in warfare but I certainly don't wring my hands together when it occurs.

Regards,


----------



## big bad john

By 1944 Germany's key need that went unfulfilled was fuel.  Your right about aircraft and AFVs not making it to the MLR.  In contrast the Soviets were always able to fuel their vehicles.  In Leningrad and Stalingrad, fully fueled and armed AFVs went right from the production line to the MLR that was sometimes only meters away.  When the Allied Forces captured Germany they found large numbers of unfueled and sometimes unarmed aircraft and AFVs in the factories.


----------



## TCBF

Still and all, I think we must attempt to understand the climate of command these decisions were made in before we label the decisions.  Unrestricted submarine and surface warfare meant the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Germans during WW1 and right up the the signing of the peace treaty in 1921. That was not determined to be a war crime then. Those who drove the allied war effort knew their history, and also knew their responsibility.  Both Germany and Japan were working on nuclear weapons as well, the war had to be won before those devices could be brought to bear.  As for the "It makes us just like them!"  Dept.,  No it doesn't, that is just more PC moral equivalency.

"Sir, the enemy is attacking!"

"For God's sake. don't shoot them Laddie, it will make us just like them!"

The Americans got back only a fraction of their men captured by the North during the Vietnam war, yet have gone out of their way to persecute their own officers who knew that  many were shipped off to the USSR, interrogated for their technical knowedge, then disposed of.  The US did not want to rock the boat politically in their relations with the USSR, or domestically.  Any country capable of doing this to their own soldiers (in other words, all countries) is not going to shed tears over any overexuberence in the application of force to a target list.  NOR SHOULD WE.

Tom


----------



## pbi

The problem with that line of argument, TCBF (and I may have inadvertently contributed to to it...) is that its ultimate form is that we need not apply any restrictions to ourselves that may inhibit our ability to defeat the enemy, since that is the ultimate aim of war. Under that line of thinking, Law of Armed Conflict, Geneva Convention, etc would quickly go out the window. That might be great if you can be sure of a achieving an overwhelming victory that leaves your enemy unable to retaliate, but not so good if (for example...) the enemy holds large numbers of your soldiers as PWs, or has captive populations under his hand. In those situations his ability to exact revenge for what he sees as excesses on our part is much less restricted. To me one of the important functions of things such as LOAC is that they provide, in some small measure, protection for our own captured and wounded against vengeance and retaliation. I am not quite so naive to think that they will be effective against every opponent, but neither do I assume that everybody who opposes us is a witless murdering savage who is just drooling to eat the hearts of   our fallen.

IMHO this argument is a slippery slope.

Cheers


----------



## Gunner

I think my question to you was rhetorical but thanks for the response.


----------



## 1feral1

I am not ashamed of the Allied bombing of Dresden, look how many English were killed in the Blitz. As Infanteer says"it was total war", and sadly its the innocent who always seem to pay. Thats just how it was then. We can't re-write history, nor should be.

I look at it this way, in some way the bombing of Dresden assisted in again demoralising the enemy civilian population even more, and may have contributed to ending the war in Europe sooner, which boils down to less Allied casualties, and for my Uncles and their friends who fought in this theatre just 60 short years ago, I am sure it was good news to them that they would no doubt have a better chance of surviving and coming home sooner than later.

War is a four lettered word, I think we can all agree to that. 


Cheers,

Wes


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## big bad john

I agree with you fully Wes.  Look at Coventry, the East End residential districts in London that were targeted.  Then there is Guernicia (sp?).  Someone once said "history is written by the victors".. We don't have to feel bad about winning.  It is losing that we should worry over.


----------



## TCBF

A very good point, because methinks we are beginning to lose one now.

Tom


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## pbi

S Baker stole my thunder. TCBF what war are you referring to?

Cheers.


----------



## 1feral1

TCBF said:
			
		

> A very good point, because methinks we are beginning to lose one now.
> 
> Tom



Which war is that Tom (as you sit back eating a pizza and watch CNN) ?

Yesterday we gave out some kit some some Diggers deploying to Iraq in a matter of days. Where are you coming from?


----------



## TCBF

Ok, fair points.

1. I don't watch CNN.
2. I seldom eat Pizza, unless the cooks at the Sgt's Mess make it, or my wife and son order it.
3. Wish the lads good luck in Iraq for me.  I was on Op APOLLO and crew commanded the first Coyote into Kandahar Airfield.  Although that whole tour was a bit mild to be called a "war" from my point of view, the legalities may state different.
4.  At the time (Feb 2002), a state of armed conflict was deemed to exist between Al Quida and Canada.
As the UN has made the term "War" obsolete, "state of armed conflict" must suffice.
5. If this state of armed conflict has been repealed, news to me.  hence, we are at "War". It didn't end when we climbed onto a C5B and flew to Diego Garcia. 
6. I say we are losing it because we have failed to secure our own borders, yet have have enacted  flawed and draconian legislation which - like so much modern legislation - does nothing to solve the problem and inconveniences everyone except the enemy.  The attack on the WTC was an attack on western civilization. We cannot fight this with one - or both - hands tied behind our backs.  

I look forward to your comments on all of the above, or anything else, for that matter.

Tom


----------



## Michael Dorosh

TCBF said:
			
		

> As the UN has made the term "War" obsolete, "state of armed conflict" must suffice.



When, and how, did they do this?


----------



## 1feral1

Sorry for barking a bit there Tom, I misread your comments. My own stupidity. Sorry. Overall we are in agreement. 

Cheers,

Wes


----------



## TCBF

Oh, heck, no probs, hope all is well down under.   My job just interfered again.  I have to escort a sound tech out to the AFV ranges Friday to record a LAV 3s 25mm firing.   Hey, somebody's gotta do it.

Tom


----------



## TCBF

"When, and how, did they do this?"

My fact or my flawed opinion?  Hmmmm.. you gots me a wonderin now.  I will get back to you on this after I check it out.   

Tom


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## Spr.Earl

After reading some of the posts and reading   some of the after Action Reports that have been made public.Dresden had no Military value whats so ever.

It was a R.V. for refugee's escapeing the Russian advance.
To day the Action would be considered as a WAR CRIME as the City was not vital Miltary Target.

Yes we Allies commited mnay War Crimes in WWII, but they are not called War Crimes becase we won.

Read about how the U.S. treated German P.O.W.'s,1,000's died of starvation !!


----------



## Long in the tooth

I think you are referring to "other causes", the (alleged) actions by Gen Eisenhower to consider Germans as "Disarmed Enemy Combatants" and not "Prisoners of War".  This is congruent with prisoners at Guantono Bay being labled illegal enemy combatants....
Not enemy assailants, not POWs.


----------



## Spr.Earl

Worn Out Grunt ,I worked with a German by the name of Karl Adle, his father served on the Eastern front in the Luftwaffe and his Unit was transfered to Western Europe.

Karls father was one of the few who lived from the American POW Camps after the War.

Check out on the Web,Yers we did commit War Crimes in our past.


----------



## Infanteer

Spr.Earl said:
			
		

> Karls father was one of the few who lived from the American POW Camps after the War.



One of the Few?!?

I just finished going over Max Hastings tome "Armageddon" and I don't recall seeing any systemic prisoner abuse by the Americans.   There was a reason that German soldiers in the East kept fighting their way West and why they even preferred American Captivity to British.

As for everyone committing a war crime, no arguments here.   We would be pulling the wool over our eyes if we insisted on portraying ourselves as the avatars of good against evil.


----------



## JSA

Spr Earl, did I read your comment correctly?  The Americans 'starved' thousands of prisoners?  Systematically or accidentally?  I mean: are we comparing this to the German Death Camps or the Soviet Gulag.  Has a tree fallen on your head?  Just curious.  js


----------



## Brad Sallows

The "systematic starvation of German PoWs" story was debunked.  Search the web if it's important to you that it be true; you'll be disappointed.

I have no doubt some prisoners died of various causes; much of Europe was on thin rations for a while.


----------



## larry Strong

Gunner said:
			
		

> I have heard the number of personnel in flak units as 1 million and this was of considerable discussion as the army required additional manpower and air defence units were draft to serve in army positions.   If I remember correctly, all anti-tank units were manned by luftwaffe personnel (Micheal?).
> 
> Cheers,



In the last years of the war, a lot of the local air defense was manned by women and the HJ


----------



## Michael Dorosh

larry Strong said:
			
		

> In the last years of the war, a lot of the local air defense was manned by women and the HJ



This is true.

Gunner mentioned anti-tank units being the purview of the Luftwaffe.   The 88mm dual purpose gun was used very effectively as an anti-tank weapon, especially in the desert where mobility of the gun wasn't a large factor (the gun had to be limbered and unlimbered, though it could fire from the carriage also).   The LW did man 88s, but many Army units also adopted the gun, both in the AA form and also an anti-tank version without the limber and a more traditional trail-type carriage.

The movie DOWNFALL in art houses now shows an AA gun in Berlin in 1945 - it is manned by HJ and at least one female.

The use of the 88 as an AA weapon defending the Reich meant that it lessened the number available to front line units for anti-tank work.

Almost all veterans describe German artillery as being '88s' but this is a bit of exaggeration - every tank was a Tiger to them, and every gun an 88, even though 88s used in an indirect role were rather rare in comparison to 105s, 81mm mortars, 120mm mortars, 120mm guns, etc. which were the standard complement of German divisional artillery and infantry assets.


----------



## larry Strong

German Div Arty consisted of 10.5cm le. F.H. 18, 15.0cm s. F.H. 18, and some of the Divs also had a bty of either 17.0cm K 18 in Mrs Laf, or the 21.0cm Mrs 18. Although by the end of the war,many divisions were equipped with a miscellany of foreign and captured equipment, especially divisions raised around the end of the war.


----------



## oyaguy

I personally think the controversy of the Dresden Firebombing is simply because it was at a point, after the Bulge{the last gasp of the German Army} where wiping one more German city off the map would change the outomce of the war not one iota. Were the Germans suddenly going to be able to push the Western Allies in to the Channel because the rail centres at Dresden were not bombed? No.

The comparisons that have popped up between Nagasaki, Hiroshima the firebombing of other Japanese cities, and Dresden are not fair. Nagasaki, Hiroshima and the firebombing campaign shortened the Pacific War by a fair margin saving millions of lives, most of them Japanese.


----------



## T.I.M.

TCBF said:
			
		

> The Americans got back only a fraction of their men captured by the North during the Vietnam war



The Americans did expect more prisoners to be returned, but the expected number was about 700. Thus the 591 released in January of 1973 is not a particularly small fraction.

At the time of the prisoner release the US had over 2,000 men listed as MIA.  Most of those had gone missing in known situations and were presumed dead, only remaining MIA because a body had not been recovered.  After the POWs were returned there were only around 250 whose fate remained unknown, and of those only some were likely to have been captured.

North Vietnamese treatment of prisoners was brutal, but there's no serious evidence that thousands of POWs died in captivity, or were kept after hostilities ceased.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

T.I.M. said:
			
		

> The Americans did expect more prisoners to be returned, but the expected number was about 700. Thus the 591 released in January of 1973 is not a particularly small fraction.
> 
> At the time of the prisoner release the US had over 2,000 men listed as MIA.  Most of those had gone missing in known situations and were presumed dead, only remaining MIA because a body had not been recovered.  After the POWs were returned there were only around 250 whose fate remained unknown, and of those only some were likely to have been captured.
> 
> North Vietnamese treatment of prisoners was brutal, but there's no serious evidence that thousands of POWs died in captivity, or were kept after hostilities ceased.



Any man that would call Gene Hackman a liar deserves to be horsewhipped...

...unless of course, he is correct, as you no doubt are.  Good post.


----------



## TCBF

"North Vietnamese treatment of prisoners was brutal, but there's no serious evidence that thousands of POWs died in captivity, or were kept after hostilities ceased."

A large segment of US POWs were sent on to Russia for Technical interrogation.  USAF pilots who did time in Interceptor Sqns or Techie postings in the states would get posted to SE Asia to do their command time in their new ranks.  The Comrades would ask the NVA for any of these guys to be sent on to the USSR for debriefing.  The USSR needed their knowledge of SAGE/NORAD etc, and afterwards, they pretty much died in the camps or were forgotten about.  Once Perestroika/Glasnost looked like it might work, and the USA offered billons to build barracks in the USSR to house the pulled back GSFG/Central Group of Forces soldiers, the survivors posed a dilemma.  Their existence - unknown outside of the US Int community - might derail the billions in transfers, so, they died.

The communists, from WW1, 2 and Korea NEVER give back all of the POWs.  They use them to bargain, and for future advantage.  If you write them off and don't publicly admit they are alive, you don't have to bargain for them.  Gives you more diplomatic freedom of action.

Tom


----------



## T.I.M.

We know that Russians took part in the interrogation of US POWs in Vietnam, including direct access to prisoners by KGB officers.  They also acquired large quantities of information from their North Vietnamese allies, but that all came from interrogations within North Vietnam.

There is the _possibility_ a *small* number of POWs were sent from Vietnam to Russia for interrogation, but there is no proof to substantiate this.  So while the possibility cannot be ruled out, it is hardly fact and would involve only a handful of people - quite literally one or two.  Certainly not a large segment.


----------



## T.I.M.

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Reading up on the last year of WWII, I again came across evidence that the bombing campaign by the Western Allies of Germany was more effective then history seems to allow it.   I remember reading in an article from a "Course Reader" of another troop who was doing something through the RMC.   The article mentioned how over 50% of German War Production went into interceptors to fight-off Allied Bomber raids.   Reading Hastings Armageddon today, he states that Germany after 1942 never had more the 20% of the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front - it was all kept back for home defence.
> 
> The article also pointed out the piece of the production pie that Flak used up.   The numbers lead me to believe that the Bombing Raids on the German Heartland, although shown not to seriously affect the German populace, were a major drain on German War Production.   I guess there may be solace in the fact that countless artillery rounds, panzerfausts, and Tiger tanks never made it to the battlefield because the factory space was spitting out prop-blades and aircraft engines.



The problem is that the British expended huge amounts of resources on the Bombing campaign themselves.   Some sources put Bomber Command as consuming over a third of all British war production, at significant cost in particular to Coastal Command and tank production.   Through to early 1943 the Germans mostly ignored the British raids as an irritation, and the resources expended by Bomber Command were vastly disproportionate to the resources expended and lost by the Germans (a series of raids on Berlin in 1942 cost Bomber Command 300 crew and almost 50 planes destroyed or written off, and destroyed only 100 buildings and killed 9 people).

Given that the bombing campaign didn't start to take serious effect until 1944, and given that the course of the war was really decided in 1942-43 there is a good argument that while strategic bombing played a valuable role in speeding the final collapse of Nazi Germany, it did not play a decisive part in deciding the outcome in the key years.


Edit:  I don't know about that 20% figure.  BergstrÃƒÂ¶m and Mikhalov multi-volume epic of the eastern air war "Black Cross, Red Star" (on the reccommended reading list for all you Il-2 players) puts over half of all the Luftwaffe's casualties after 1941 as on the eastern front.  I'd have to go take it out from the library again to get the specific numbers, but I don't think they jive with only 20% of the Luftwaffe being in the east.


----------



## TCBF

"We know that Russians took part in the interrogation of US POWs in Vietnam, including direct access to prisoners by KGB officers.  They also acquired large quantities of information from their North Vietnamese allies, but that all came from interrogations within North Vietnam.

There is the possibility a *small* number of POWs were sent from Vietnam to Russia for interrogation, but there is no proof to substantiate this.  So while the possibility cannot be ruled out, it is hardly fact and would involve only a handful of people - quite literally one or two.  Certainly not a large segment."

Boris Yeltsin actually told Reagan of some of this at one point, and the US sent TFR (Task Force Russia, including Col Ralph Peters) to investigate.  Needless to say, the tracks were well covered by then.

The fact is, when the USA pulled out of Vietnam, they knowingly wrote off many POWs they knew were still alive in VN or Soviet hands.

Tom

Tom


----------



## T.I.M.

TCBF said:
			
		

> Boris Yeltsin actually told Reagan of some of this at one point, and the US sent TFR (Task Force Russia, including Col Ralph Peters) to investigate.   Needless to say, the tracks were well covered by then.



Yeltsin did comment on US POWs in Russia, but the head of the US Joint Commission could not substantiate it, and was of the opinion that Yeltsin was "confused," (his aides didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and this is ol' Boris we're talking about) and that Yeltsin was probably referring to American defectors.

I mean, sure, you can choose to believe that the US government is participating in a vast conspiracy of silence on the issue, but I find it more likely that the lack of evidence indicates that there is nothing to find rather than that it was all methodically covered up.

And again, true or not, the numbers we'd be talking about would be very small.   Not the hundreds or thousands some of the more vociferous MIA websites talk of, but ones and twos.


----------



## Figure11

The problem is that the British expended huge amounts of resources on the Bombing campaign themselves.  Some sources put Bomber Command as consuming over a third of all British war production, at significant cost in particular to Coastal Command and tank production.  Through to early 1943 the Germans mostly ignored the British raids as an irritation, and the resources expended by Bomber Command were vastly disproportionate to the resources expended and lost by the Germans (a series of raids on Berlin in 1942 cost Bomber Command 300 crew and almost 50 planes destroyed or written off, and destroyed only 100 buildings and killed 9 people)."

With all due respect, I think that this is somewhat of an over simplification. None other than Albert Speer saw the allied bombing offensive of Germany as a second front in its own right which tied down hundreds of thousands men employed in a static capacity, whio would have been more gainfully employed on the eastern front.


----------



## T.I.M.

It's not an equation that can be easily balanced, however when discussing the German resources drained by the bombing raids one _also_ has to keep in mind the vast resources it drained in turn from the British.  And drained at a critical time.

One also has to keep the years involved in mind.  Yes, by 1944 (probably by mid 1943) the bombing campaign had become an effective second front, but from 1940-1942 (the critical years for Britain) it can be argued that the campaign cost the British a great deal in diverted resources from other war projects, in return for the minimal effect than it had on the Germans.


----------



## TCBF

Whenever the Germans talk about missed opportunities due to the delay in or lack of critical resources being at the right place at the right time, they always blame the bombing.

Imagine what they could have produced had they not had to expendl labour and resources on repair and re-establishment of critical industries.   Sure, they increased production as it was - but it wasn't enough.


----------



## T.I.M.

Actually we don't have strain our imaginations too much.   We have pretty good numbers, from Speer and others.

Speer's post war assessment states that in 1944, tank and aircraft production fell about 30% short of desired numbers due to interruptions and disruption caused by strategic bombing.   Speer claimed this was the decisive factor in Germany being unable to stop the allied offensives in 1945.

The problem is that even WITHOUT these shortfalls - that is, if the bombing had had no impact and Speer had reached his production targets - Germany would _still_ have been outproduced on the order of 2:1 in tanks and 4:1 in aircraft.   In short, bombing or no, Germany was going to be massively outproduced in war materiel in 1944.

So, sure bombing had an effect, and sure, as a very _visible_ effect on the particular part of the world Speer was in charge of, but the numbers just don't substantiate his claim that it was THE decsive effect.   The fact is even Speer's best - and totally uninterrupted - efforts would have been woefully inadequate to the task of matching allied production.

Even without the bombing campaign (particularly when one factors in the diversion of allied resources and personnel from bombing to other areas of the war effort) it _stil_l wouldn't have been enough.


----------



## TCBF

Taken by itself, no.  But in concert with other initiatives, it may have resulted in a sucessful Ardennes offensive, or at least a more vigorous defence of Germany, which would have resulted in a longer war, and more dead all around.

Would they have won?  No.  If they had hung on until 1946, they would have caught a nuke.

But if the issue is "Did the strategic bobming campaign shorten the war and save lives?" I would say "Yes".


----------



## T.I.M.

But did it?

What would have happened had those resources been spent on, say, developing better tanks, as Dowding advocated?   How would the Battle of the Atlantic have played out had Coastal Command not had to wait for Halifaxes and other obsolescent Bomber Command hand-me-downs?

As to just how many resources Bomber Command consumed, about a third of the British war budget paid for Bomber command.   Of the over 4 million Britons who served in WWII, almost a million served in Bomber Command (though the exact number is hard to calculate, and does not include thousands more allied and Commonwealth members) - with Bomber Command having a strength of about 250,000 at any one time in the later war years.   Over 150,000 aircrew served over the course of the war and of these 77,000 became casualties and 55,000 were killed - a higher casualty rate than any other military branch.

Remember that towards the end of WWII Britain faced a serious manpower shortage that forced serious limits on the operations of its army commanders, and that the Bomber Command personnel were uniformly highly skilled officers, NCOs and technicians and reflected a huge outlay of training resources.

Large portions of the British industry and research establishment were dedicated to the development and production of heavy bombers and bombing methods.   Tank development directly suffered as a result, and Coastal Command, which had a desperate need for long range aircraft had to play second fiddle to Bomber Command's needs, with serious results for the early years of the U-Boat war.

So for all its effects on Germany we have to remember the effect the strategic bombing campaign had on the British war effort as well.   It was manifestly _not_ a free ride, and Britian paid for every drop in German factory output with the toil of its own industries.   It's a complex and interwoven affair, and historians will probably continue to argue whether the campaign was cost effective for generations, but my position is that - in the case of Britain at least (the US is a slightly different story) - it was not.

Not materially anyway.   The necessity for the British people to feel they were striking back and the effect the campaign had on British morale and political will is another matter entirely.


*Edited for spelling 'cause I'm a sloppy typer  *


----------



## TCBF

Good points.  

Not as much of a sure thing as I thought it was.

So, I will modify my "Yes" to a "Perhaps."


----------



## capt j

The bottom line is we were going at it toe to toe with the "Hun". Was it Bomber Commands and the Mighty Eigth's job to kill Germans? Of course it was let there be no mistake about it. Was it wrong............... no it wasn't. I take issue with those that enjoy the freedom that was paid for in blood and then question the very manner in the way it has been provided. As far as I am concerned there are some 100,000 Canadians still serving in Europe they are all dead. Please do not lower ourselves to a level that slags the dead and the very few alive for the job they did. Now I know there are those that will say it wasn't the airmen it was their political masters. You know those political masters didn't do such a bad job at the time..................................


----------



## time expired

Just a couple of points on the Dresden discussion--
-1 the war was by no means over in Feb. 45 in the west the germans were still fighting hard and the
 allies were not yet across the rhine,thefore the idea that the war was almost over is only true in retrospect
-2 Dresden was a legitimate target because it was the main supply rail junction for the germans facing
Marshal Konevs army who were falling behind the the russian armies to the north,because of stiffening
german resistance.
-3 The chances of a german being killed by an allied bomb was approx. .5% the chance of allied aircrew
being killed was close to 50%.Hardly the odds that mindless terror fliegerwould accept.
-4On a more cynical note ,the allies must have hit the right people as in Jun. 45 there were no more
nazis left in germany just anyone who was there.
             time expire, incidentaly born in Coventry.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

T.I.M. said:
			
		

> I mean, sure, you can choose to believe that the US government is participating in a vast conspiracy of silence on the issue, but I find it more likely that the lack of evidence indicates that there is nothing to find rather than that it was all methodically covered up.



"Occam's Razor"

Hmmm... a thread bumped from 8 months ago.  Oh well, still interesting to me....


----------



## Michael Dorosh

TCBF said:
			
		

> Whenever the Germans talk about missed opportunities due to the delay in or lack of critical resources being at the right place at the right time, they always blame the bombing.



Of course they did.  I wouldn't dream of them blaming their hopelessly backwards political structure, based on Führerprinzip and the necessity for Hitler to have his subordinates working at cross purposes.  Or the fact that industry was poorly integrated, and they were wasting enormous amounts of resources on civilian consumer products and pipe dream technology like the Maus or the V rockets, or a half finished aircraft carrier, or strategic bombers to bombard New York with.  Or their lack of a war economy.  Or the fact that huge proportions of their work force were unwilling slave labourers.  Or that racial policies in the east guaranteed that millions of potential allies were simply written off as undesirables until it was too late.  Or that their military was divided into four seperate fiefdoms, with such idiocies as the Luftwaffe Field Divisions allowed to dilute combat power from the Army, whom Hitler (wisely in some cases) mistrusted deeply.  Or the fact that even the Russians were better by 1944 at operational art than the German Army.

I think the Allied bombing campaign achieved far less damage to German industry than the Germans themselves inflicted on their own war effort.  Lucky for us it was such an amateur show.


----------



## 3rd Herd

TCBF said:
			
		

> Would they have won?  No.  If they had hung on until 1946, they would have caught a nuke.
> 
> TCBF
> A sword swings in both directions. Given time the Germans were well on their way to completing nuclear capability. The destruction of the heavy water plant in Norway and the bombing of Peenemunde only slowed the process down.Von Braun was well on his way to perfecting a delivery system after all he jump started the US space program with his modified V 2 rockets. With the German surrender two uboats were discovered to have uranium oxide in between their in and outer hulls upon examination in east coast shipyards. These boats were on their way to Japan supplying this key component to the Japanese nuclear program. A program that until recently was well buried by the Japanese.
> 
> Next post war BDA showed much to the surprise of Allied air commanders that the strategic campaign was less effective than thought. Of far greater success was the tactical air effort. Thunderbolts, Tempests and Typhoons are credited with destroying more German AFV's than Allied AFV's along with rolling stock and locomotives. In the Vietnam conflict the same happened, bombing commenced and the Vietnamese went underground.Their final offenses in 1974 exemplifies this as well as the 1972 offense.
> 
> Post war memories illuminate an interesting facet of the strategic bombing campaign "the idea of depopulating centers of production in order to reduce the ability to produce war materials" not the destruction of the production facilities themselves.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

3rd Herd said:
			
		

> A sword swings in both directions. Given time the Germans were well on their way to completing nuclear capability.



Source?  I'm led to believe it wasn't that close.



> Thunderbolts, Tempests and Typhoons are credited with destroying more German AFV's than Allied AFV's along with rolling stock and locomotives.



Trains maybe, but the number of German AFV loses to Typhoons in the Normandy has been looked at quite seriously in recent studies - and I don't have the details near to hand but it seems to me that a only fraction of the AFVs claimed by Allied fighterbombers were actually killed.  The conclusion was that while German convoys were rightly scared to move in daylight, the actual number of German tanks destroyed by airpower was low.



> Post war memories illuminate an interesting facet of the strategic bombing campaign "the idea of depopulating centers of production in order to reduce the ability to produce war materials" not the destruction of the production facilities themselves.



I believe this is quite correct.


----------



## 3rd Herd

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> Source?  I'm led to believe it wasn't that close.
> Physics World New light on Hitler's bomb Forum: June 2005
> 
> Controversial new historical evidence suggests that German physicists built and tested a nuclear bomb during the Second World War. Rainer Karlsch and Mark Walker outline the findings and present a previously unpublished diagram of a German nuclear weapon
> 
> ATOMIC RIVALS AND THE ALSOS MISSION: US Department of Emergy, Office of Hertige and History
> Many German scientists, including Heisenberg, continued to make pleas for greater government funding, but as the war turned against Germany, it increasingly focused its science and industry on more immediate war needs.  German pile work continued to focus until the end on heavy water piles, and this work was hampered by a series of attacks that were made on the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant by American aircraft, British commandos, and the Norwegian resistance.  In the final year of the war, aerial bombing and eventually the advance of Allied ground troops also disrupted their research.  When Germany surrendered in May 1945, its atomic researchers were still struggling to reach critical mass with a pile, a goal Fermi had first achieved at the Met Lab in December 1942.
> 
> but it was not until April 1945, only weeks before the final German surrender, that the bulk of the German uranium was captured and any final fears of a Nazi bomb were alleviated.
> 
> David Irving The Virus House
> In the first two areas, the Nazi project was a failure, because although great theoretical progress was achieved, their scientists ran out of time. The lessons that they would have learned by the time of their soourn in Farm Hall, Cambridgeshire, in August 1945 was that in military science you cannot afford to rest on your laurels and be complacent
> 
> 
> Trains maybe, but the number of German AFV loses to Typhoons in the Normandy has been looked at quite seriously in recent studies - and I don't have the details near to hand but it seems to me that a only fraction of the AFVs claimed by Allied fighterbombers were actually killed.  The conclusion was that while German convoys were rightly scared to move in daylight, the actual number of German tanks destroyed by airpower was low.
> 
> Conclusion in Tank History Channel Jan 1, 2006 discusion of allied (western) vs german tank kills. Bovington Tank Musem
> 
> I believe this is quite correct.


----------



## pbi

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> Of course they did...I think the Allied bombing campaign achieved far less damage to German industry than the Germans themselves inflicted on their own war effort.  Lucky for us it was such an amateur show.



Good post Mike. Not only their national level military-industrial complex, but their military logistics were a horror show, starting from the dangerously low ammo stocks going into the Polish Campaign in 1939. Good thing for the Germans that the western Allies couldn't get their sh*t together during "_Case White_". The Germans might have run out of bullets. On top of that, it is almost impossible to catalogue the array of different types, makes, nationalities, marks and experimental prototypes that the various German forces put into the field over the course of the war. One is tempted to wonder what the results would have been if they had adopted  "Soviet" -type war production in, say, 1936; a relatively few types, developed in an evolutionary manner, with draconian standardization. Perhaps it's just as well that they didn't...

Cheers


----------



## 3rd Herd

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> I think the Allied bombing campaign achieved far less damage to German industry than the Germans themselves inflicted on their own war effort.  Lucky for us it was such an amateur show.



For example, it is relatively easy to determine the amount of physical damage an air attack causes to a railroad marshaling yard--the number of buildings or railcars destroyed, tracks torn up, and so forth. It is more difficult to measure the effect such damage will have on an entire rail network, given the redundancy of such systems, the availability of repair teams, and the ability to route traffic through other yards. It is more difficult still to judge what effect the shortage of materials not moved by the destroyed trains will have on the economy as a whole. One finds an illustration of this problem and its complexity in the work of one historian who has examined the records of the German railroad bureau in World War II. His analysis revealed that the destruction and disruption of German rail traffic severely curtailed the movement of coal, the primary fuel for most industrial production and power generation, throughout the Reich. Therefore, the shortage of coal caused by the disruption of the rail system had a major effect on the production of steel, resulting in the decreased output of tanks, ships, and heavy artillery
Mierzejewsk Alfred C., The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944­1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)

and Micheal I have emailed Bovington for clarification of tank loss statement. will post response.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

pbi said:
			
		

> Good post Mike. Not only their national level military-industrial complex, but their military logistics were a horror show, starting from the dangerously low ammo stocks going into the Polish Campaign in 1939. Good thing for the Germans that the western Allies couldn't get their sh*t together during "_Case White_". The Germans might have run out of bullets. On top of that, it is almost impossible to catalogue the array of different types, makes, nationalities, marks and experimental prototypes that the various German forces put into the field over the course of the war. One is tempted to wonder what the results would have been if they had adopted  "Soviet" -type war production in, say, 1936; a relatively few types, developed in an evolutionary manner, with draconian standardization. Perhaps it's just as well that they didn't...
> 
> Cheers



Thanks.  It is a bit sad to see the old myths perpetuated by popular history but perhaps things are continuing to change in the right direction.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

3rd Herd said:
			
		

> For example, it is relatively easy to determine the amount of physical damage an air attack causes to a railroad marshaling yard--the number of buildings or railcars destroyed, tracks torn up, and so forth. It is more difficult to measure the effect such damage will have on an entire rail network, given the redundancy of such systems, the availability of repair teams, and the ability to route traffic through other yards. It is more difficult still to judge what effect the shortage of materials not moved by the destroyed trains will have on the economy as a whole. One finds an illustration of this problem and its complexity in the work of one historian who has examined the records of the German railroad bureau in World War II. His analysis revealed that the destruction and disruption of German rail traffic severely curtailed the movement of coal, the primary fuel for most industrial production and power generation, throughout the Reich. Therefore, the shortage of coal caused by the disruption of the rail system had a major effect on the production of steel, resulting in the decreased output of tanks, ships, and heavy artillery
> Mierzejewsk Alfred C., The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944­1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
> 
> and Micheal I have emailed Bovington for clarification of tank loss statement. will post response.



I'm rereading THE BUNKER by O'Donnell.  Just came across the part where IIRC factories in the Ruhr were working at 91 percent of capacity in April 1945... It's certainly an interesting debate.  Given the heroic sacrifices made by the men of Bomber Command and the USAAF heavy bomber crews, its tough to admit that perhaps they really didn't accomplish all that much.  I think you are correct when you suggest much about the results are open to interpretation.


----------



## enfield

Interesting debate - and well worth resurrecting the thread. 



			
				Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> Given the heroic sacrifices made by the men of Bomber Command and the USAAF heavy bomber crews, its tough to admit that perhaps they really didn't accomplish all that much.  I think you are correct when you suggest much about the results are open to interpretation.



True, German factories were operating at high effiency in 1945 (as an aside, one theory/anecdote I've read is that effiency increased as bombing disrupted ties to central HQs, allowing individual factories to get on with business and ignore higher authority.). 
Several authors have pointed out, however, that there were strains placed on key products and that this is where bombing had its effect; the best example being oil and petroleum products. While the Germans were always able to rebuild quickly, the constant pressure on refineries, synthetic plants, distribution systems and storage facilities lead to massive fuel shortages - so the factories may turn out 100 Tigers, but they can't go anywhere. 
Another point is that the Allied bombings forced Germany to undertake massive home defence measures, such as fighters, flak batteries, etc. The resources poured into fighter and air defence production represented a large diversion from other industries - an aerial battle of attrition. Unfortunately, I don't have any numbers handy for this. 

Much is made of the increases in German production in 44/45, but I think the question to ask is: How much could Speer have accomplished without the problems of bombing? He managed those gains in 1944-5 by ironing out some of the incredible contradictions and inefficiencies in the Nazi system, which made for immediate gains. Perhaps the problems of production within the Third Reich were so huge that those gains were relatively easy once the red tape was cut away. Without thousands of tons of bombs disrupting his work, he may have been able to accomplish more. Are their any numbers available on Real Productions vs. Potential Capacity? I don't believe the Third Reich ever came close to their potential capacity, or the rates of productions (per capita) established by the Allied economies. 

In the end, I think the answer is somewhere in the middle - bombing helped, but only to a degree. Certainly (as was mentioned above) the Nazi's ruined more of their own production capacity through their own policies than the Allies ever could by bombing. 
There was no 'secret' to victory in WW2 (whether bombing, code breaking, 'blitzkrieg') it was a myriad of factors, most of which were as old as war itself. If anything, the key factor was millions of Russian peasant soldiers slowly grinding their way west.


----------



## 3rd Herd

Enfield 
I disagree that there was a single desive KEY factor but the culimation of several factors both a the strategic level and at the tactical level.

1) the soviets slowly slogging there why to german could not have dome so with out the massive leadlease assitance from the United States, no so much in armaments as in transport. Twice the Soviets had to halt their offences due to lack of supplies. First when reaching the Warsaw line in 1944 and again in early 1945 or the push to Berlin would have been much sooner. Secondly Stalin took the time ti pacify liberated territory requiring both logistics and manpower-Strategic

2) As pbi states "One is tempted to wonder what the results would have been if they had adopted  "Soviet" -type war production in, say, 1936; a relatively few types, developed in an evolutionary manner, with draconian standardization." This could have been implemented even later say 1942 as for every Tiger series built four Panzer 4's could have been produced in numbers sufficient to match both the T-34 and the less capable Shermans.-Strategic

3) As I stated above the loss of coal heavily contributed to the lack of production espically steel. This is exemplified in the design change of German AFV's from turreted to assult platforms. With the assult platforms such as the Hertzer for usage in the tactical sense ie. german offensesive mind set instead of using them for a purley deffensive role was a contributing factor.

4) Stetegic bombing was not successful as we have been led to believe. "Because the German economy through most of the war was substantially undermobilized, it was resilient under air attack. Civilian consumption was high during the early years of the war and inventories both in trade channels and consumers' possession were also high. These helped cushion the people of the German cities from the effects of bombing. Plant and machinery were plentiful and incompletely used. Thus it was comparatively easy to substitute unused or partly used machinery for that which was destroyed. While there was constant pressure throughout for German manpower for the Wehrmacht, the industrial labor supply, as augmented by foreign labor, was sufficient to permit the diversion of large numbers to the repair of bomb damage or the clearance of debris with relatively small sacrifice of essential production. Air power in the European phase of this war reached a stage of full adolescence, a stage marked by rapid development in planes, armament, equipment, tactics and concepts of strategic employment, and by an extraordinary increase in the effort allocated to it by all the major contestants. England devoted 40 to 50 percent of her war production to her air forces, Germany 40 percent, and the United States 35 percent. source: The United States Strategic Bombing Survey  September 30, 1945 Summary Report (European War)pg 1

5) But Bombing did help to imobilize the German army for in In February and March of 1945 the Germans massed 1,200 tanks on the Baranov bridgehead at the Vistula to check the Russians. They were immobilized for lack of gasoline and overrun. In addition to the bombing the failure to capture the Buku oilfields and the inability to hold the Ploetsi oil add to Germany's fuel woes.

6) As Micheal states "...Germans themselves inflicted on their own war effort " Hitler and his meddling most certainly is another factor as exemplified in the Me 262 program when Hitler intervened in 1944 with an ill-timed order to convert the ME-262 to a fighter-bomber. Virtually every manufacturer, production official, and air force general interrogated including Goering himself, claimed to have been appalled by this order. By May 1945, 1,400 jets had been produced. Had these planes been available six months earlier with good quality pilots, though they might not have altered the course of the war, they would have sharply increased the losses of the attacking forces. 

7) The German error in not recognizing the value of their "liberation" of soviet territory. In their dealings with captured soviet troops, imagine the change of events if Hitler had overcome his prejudice against Assian troops and agreed to full cossack divisons. When he did 1943 by 1944 there were an additional 250,000 cossacks serving in the german field formations. (Richard Overy, Russia's War, Penguin Group, New York, 1997). In dealing with the civil populace under the "untermenschen" belief Hitler cost the German's a willing work force both agraculturly and industiraly. After all a happy worker is more productive and intially anti soviet feeling were strong.

8) The invasion of the Balkans to bail Mussoleni out in Greace stripped troops already planed for use in Barbarosa and led to a campign of attrition that was of no stategic value. This bail out was to bit in back when italy capitulated forcing him to remove troops from the Eastern front and transfer them to italy. Costly again in logistics such as rail facilities not to mention the troops and equipment themselves.

a few thoughts







.


----------



## Michael Dorosh

3rd Herd said:
			
		

> 2) As pbi states "One is tempted to wonder what the results would have been if they had adopted  "Soviet" -type war production in, say, 1936; a relatively few types, developed in an evolutionary manner, with draconian standardization." This could have been implemented even later say 1942 as for every Tiger series built four Panzer 4's could have been produced in numbers sufficient to match both the T-34 and the less capable Shermans.-Strategic



The Shermans would still have outnumbered the PzKpfw IV - and in actuality, the Sherman was on a par with the Pz IV, particularly later models of the Sherman with 76mm main armament; compare the armour protection of a Sherman Jumbo, for example, with a "Mark 4", or the penetration data of the 17 pdr vs a Pz IV and you start to see what I mean.  Maneuverability etc. are also comparable; the Pz IV had narrower tracks than a Panther or Tiger, for example, and had no real advantages over a Sherman - reliability was certainly less.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Take it for what you will Michael, but it's really nice to see you here where you belong. Following up on history, and keeping the perspective straight, is what you do best. Try and concentrate on this aspect, you do well at it.


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## 3rd Herd

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> The Shermans would still have outnumbered the PzKpfw IV - and in actuality, the Sherman was on a par with the Pz IV, particularly later models of the Sherman with 76mm main armament; compare the armour protection of a Sherman Jumbo, for example, with a "Mark 4", or the penetration data of the 17 pdr vs a Pz IV and you start to see what I mean.  Maneuverability etc. are also comparable; the Pz IV had narrower tracks than a Panther or Tiger, for example, and had no real advantages over a Sherman - reliability was certainly less.



well  Micheal correct me if I am wrong but was not the ratio 1 up gunned Sherman to four 76 mm. Shermans. or in an armoured bn. 3 Coy's 76  mm to one coy 17 pdr.Sherman.  As for the" 76mm main gun it was comparable to the German long 75mm. 
If you discuss reliability in terms of taking a hit what were Shermans called? Ronson lighters I believe was the term. As for the PzKpfw IV armoured skirting gave more protection although they did not have the sloped armour of the T-34. Shermans main advantage, there were allot of them and from the soviet point of view

"It is suggested to the Red Army to use such German tanks as StuG III and Pz IV due to their relability and availability of spare parts. The new German Panther and Tiger can be used until they broken down without trying to repair them. They have bad engines, transmission and suspension." - Department of Weaponry of the Red Army, late 1944. 

"During the Lorraine Campaign General Patton and a few of his armored commanders were called upon to furnish "testimonials" as to the efficacy in action of the M-4 tank. These "testimonials" may have had some value in building public confidence in American armored equipment, but they should not be taken as a critical evaluation of the American medium tank. The M-4, mounting the short-barreled 75, was outgunned by the Panther (Mark V). The M-4 was less adequately protected by armor than was the Panther. The American medium tank, however, had some important points of superiority. It was more mobile than either the Mark IV or the Panther, although less maneuverable than the latter"


----------



## TCBF

I would say the day they lost the war was the day they liberated Kiev and did NOT run the Ukraine flag up the pole and welcome their newly liberated allies to the war effort.

Of course, the same mindset that caused them to consider the Ukrainians inferior was the one which caused them to march east to start with.

As far as inefficient economic decision making in a dictatorship goes, have we not been seeing that in Ottawa?

 ;D

Me, on FALLEX 1987, in a Lynx on the Autobahn south of Schweinfurt, at zero-dark-buffalo, talking to my driver: "That's the SKF ballbearing plant over there - keep an eye out for B-17s." 

Tom


----------



## 3rd Herd

TCBF said:
			
		

> I would say the day they lost the war was the day they liberated Kiev and did NOT run the Ukraine flag up the pole and welcome their newly liberated allies to the war effort.
> 
> Of course, the same mindset that caused them to consider the Ukrainians inferior was the one which caused them to march east to start with.
> 
> As far as inefficient economic decision making in a dictatorship goes, have we not been seeing that in Ottawa?
> 
> ;D
> Me, on FALLEX 1987, in a Lynx on the Autobahn south of Schweinfurt, at zero-dark-buffalo, talking to my driver: "That's the SKF ballbearing plant over there - keep an eye out for B-17s."
> 
> Tom




Was it a Thursday by chance Tom?


----------



## TCBF

A Thursday?  As in "Black Thursday?"  I can't recall.

I have "Irish Alzhieimers": I forget everything except my grudges.

 ;D

Tom


----------



## 3rd Herd

TCBF said:
			
		

> A Thursday?  As in "Black Thursday?"  I can't recall.
> 
> I have "Irish Alzhieimers": I forget everything except my grudges.
> 
> ;D
> 
> Tom



Schweinfurt was first attacked on August 17, 1943. 230 B-17s were mounted for the attack, but the Luftwaffe marshaled over 300 fighters in opposition. 184 B-17s reached Schweinfurt and 36 either crash landed or were shot down with bomber crews experiencing 341 casualties. The defensive effectiveness of the box formations had not been sufficient to defeat the lethal attacks of the Luftwaffe. Coupled with a loss of 24 bombers and 200 men from a strike on Regensburg that same day, this was a heavy blow to the 8th Air Force. In addition, reconnaissance indicated the Schweinfurt bombing was not as accurate as had been hoped and the ball bearing factories had not been critically damaged. 

After three months of rebuilding its strength, the 8th Air Force again attacked Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943. The day would go down in history as "Black Thursday." 291 B-17s left England, 229 bombers reached the target, and 60 bombers were lost. Crew casualties amounted to 639 men, a loss the 8th Air Force could not afford and which for all practical purposes stopped unescorted deep bombing penetrations into Germany. The bombing of Schweinfurt was more accurate this time, but strike analysis indicated that it did not impose a crippling blow to the German ball bearing industry. 

Source O'Leary, Michael Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Production Line to Frontline 2, Botley, Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing.(1999).


----------



## TangoTwoBravo

I wonder about the Allied bombing campaigns effect on the Allied war effort as well.  Bombers and their crews represent an "opportunity" cost.  The ten or so men put into a bomber can't be used for anything else and the same can be said for the support personnel.  The industrial effort to manufacture the bombers could be used for something else as well.  Looking at manpower in particular, would the relatively high-quality individuals sent to the bombers to man .50 cal machineguns have been better served in the ground forces as section commanders/squad leaders/crew commanders?

Looking at the tank production question, is there an established production exchange equation for the Panther, Tiger and Mk IVH?  The Mk IVH was certainly a capable tank right up to the end, but I think that the Panther was needed (once the bugs were worked out).  How many extra Mk IVHs could have been produced if Tigers and Panthers had not been built?  Would that have helped?

Guderian was concerned about rationalizing German AFV production when he was appointed Inspector of Panzer Troops mid-war.  The Mk III disappeared and he tried to focus efforts on a smaller number of designs.  It is interesting to note, however, that his efforts to rationalize assault guns were frustrated by their belonging to the Artillery.  

I have read that the Germans produced some 80,000 AFVs during the war.  22,000 were tanks of the Mk III to Mk VI range inclusive.  Add to that roughly 10,000 Stug assault guns and over 6,000 tank destroyers.  Rounding up, this makes roughly one half of AFV production aimed at tanks/tank destroyers and assault guns.  One third of 1943 AFV production was devoted to halftracks.  

The US produced a staggering 207,000 AFV during the war.  50,000 of the 80,000 tanks manufactured were Shermans.  The Soviets produced 102,000 AFVs, of which some 71,000 were T34/KV/IS tanks.  UK numbers include commonwealth countries and give almost 25,000 tanks out of a total of 70,000 AFVs.  It should be noted, however, that over 5,000 British tanks never saw action due to being obsolete when produced or being chronically unreliable.

These numbers give the Allies over 170,000 tanks to face just under 40,000 German tanks/TDs/assault guns.  Numbers do not tell the whole story as tactics, crew training, quality and supporting arms also play a part.  In addition, would the late-war German produced AFV have had fuel and crews for them?

Could the Germans have tried to match the Allies in numbers by going for "cheaper" tanks or with more ruthless standardization?  The Americans, in particular, resisted efforts to improve established designs to keep production numbers up.  It is also interesting wonder if the efforts devoted to halftracks could have been better invested into more assault guns or tanks?  Bringing this back to the topic, somewhat, what effect did Allied bombing have on these numbers?

My apologies for babbling,

2B


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## 3rd Herd

Feel free to babble 2Bravo
"The situation was bad not only in the war front. While Russian tank production increased to unbelievable levels, the German obsession for complex new super weapons, like the advanced but then immature Panther and Tiger tanks, largely reduced German tank production. General Guderian, the best German armor expert and commander, said "As interesting as these designs were, the practical result was just a reduced production of the Panzer 4, our only efficient tank then, to a very modest level.". Shortly before the battle of Kursk Guderian added, about the Panther and its crews, "They are simply not ready yet for the front". In early 1943 the Germans were about to destroy their own tank production rates by terminating Panzer 4 production in return for a production of just 25 new Tigers per month, but at a moment of reason Hitler gave control of tank production to Guderian who stopped this idea."

intersting article on German Tank trends at http://www.lonesentry.com/tanktalk/

as too would the Germans have crews here is an citing showing the the allied side

Tabulating the results of this mismatch, Cooper highlights the staggering cost of the Army’s flawed choice for its main battle tank. Over the next 11 months, the Third Armored Division, which began the Normandy campaign with 232 M4 tanks, would see 648 of its Shermans destroyed in combat, with another 700 knocked out of commission before being repaired and returned to service—a cumulative loss rate of 580 percent. Casualties among tank crews also skyrocketed, producing an acute shortage of qualified personnel. By late 1944, Cooper recalls, the Army was sending newly arrived infantrymen into combat as replacement tank crews. Some of these recruits received only one day of armor training before being dispatched to the front in their M4s.
Source: Cooperr Belton Y. Death Traps:  The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II   Presidio Press Novato, California, 1998

In answers to your question re: bombing effect on numbers I found the following at: 'Tank Industry Report Second Edition January 1947',The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: European Theater of Operations Second Edition January 1947 http://www.angelfire.com/super/ussbs/tankrep.html

"The tank industry was not hit as a target system until August 1944. Before this time, Alkett, in an area raid in November 1943, had been the only plant heavily damaged by air attack, but by June 1944 it had fully recuperated through setting up a new plant in Falkensee. In August, September, and October, most of the big tank factories were heavily attacked. Of five plants surveyed, destruction and structural damage during these three months amounted to 64 percent of the total plant areas." 

"By mid-1944 German panzer production, with practically no hindrance by direct air attack had level off with June output at 1,657 and July 1,669. However, certain plants were thereafter scheduled to increase output, and except for the 38 t assault gun, for the industry scheduled gains were representative of what production would have been the remainder of the year in the absence of bombing."

"By subtracting actual production for the period August through December 1944 from estimated potential production for the same period, it may be calculated that the attack on panzer production cost the enemy 2,250 tanks, assault guns and self-propelled guns. After December the combined effects of bombing and loss of territory reduced panzer output further, but the amount attributable to bombing alone is a figure that cannot be isolated."

me thinks this wesite answers our questions on boombing effectiveness on German AFV it is worth taking a look at as it has production monthly tables


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## TangoTwoBravo

Good link.  I've read excepts from the strategic bombing report (and I drew from it back on page 2 of this thread) but never in this detail.  It seems to me that the bombing campaign's impact on tank production came rather late in the war.  Aug 43 would have been more timely for an increased effort, but I suppose they were doing what they could when they could.

I'll apologize in advance for a tangent here.  The standardization question remains intriguing.  For the Germans, it is interesting (if pointless) to wonder if they should have only produced the Mk IV and not the Mk III in the early war period.  The US was very strict regarding modifications and upgrades to the Sherman, putting emphasis on quantity over quality.  The Brits tinkered more (the Firefly as one example), perhaps as a result of their experience in the Western Desert when German and British tanks were constantly being upgraded or replaced by newer models.  I believe that the first US Shemans with 76mm guns (a somewhat less capable gun that the 17 pdr but still better than the 75mm) were the result of field workshops putting guns from M10s on Shermans.  They then had problems getting 76mm rounds from the system since Tank units weren't suppose to have 76mm guns...  Even the Russians upgraded their T34s through the war, with the biggest change being the introduction of the new three man turret with the 85mm gun.  Doctrinal problems also seem to have plagued many country's designs (cruiser tanks vs infantry tanks, tanks vs tank destroyers, "heavy tanks" vs medium tanks, etc).

Quantity vs quality is not a new argument.  We always want both, of course, but compromises must be made somewhere (see my profile quote).  As a (former) tank crewman, I would tend on the side of quality, but I suppose that quantity has a quality of its own.  Still, trained manpower for tank crews is a critical and perishable resource for an army.  It "costs" the same to put five crewmen in an inferior tank as it does to put them in a good one.  In addition, if you put them in a survivable tank you can keep them around longer.  You might also find that they will press home attacks and follow up advances with more speed and aggression.  I figure that an Army should seek to upgrade its tanks but find production efficiencies in other vehicles.  For example, tinker with your MBTs to keep them with or ahead of the bad guy but perhaps do away with having light tanks and weird and wonderful halftracks.

Cheers,

2B


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## 3rd Herd

Interested parties
Here is the reply from Bovington Tank Museum as promidsed in an earlier post:

Thanks for your enquiry and apologies for the delay in replying, it was due to a terminal left unattended in the course of an extra-long vacation. Equally unfortunately I don’t have an answer on this and I suppose to some extent it relies on definition. If we are talking about immediate air strikes, aircraft versus tank as in the case of RAF Typhoons with Rockets then I doubt it. Recent research seems to show that accuracy was very poor and one assumes this would also apply to low flying attack by bombs and cannon. When it comes to high level bombing then production centres certainly took a toll but to what extent this resulted in total destruction of individual vehicles, rather than simply delaying production is difficult to judge. After that I think there would be even more difficulty in deciding between tanks knocked out by tanks, tank destroyers and anti-tank guns along with hand-held weapons and so on.

Such evidence as there is seems to be limited to Normandy which may not be typical; an article by Dr Alfred Price in Air Power Review for spring 2005 shows about ten percent destroyed from the air, 31.5 % simply abandoned undamaged, 39.5 percent wrecked by their own crews to prevent capture and 20 % attributed to ‘other causes’. Not very promising for air power. If you have the opportunity study ‘Air Power at the Battlefront by Ian Gooderson (Frank Cass 1998 isbn 0 7146 4211 8) .This confines itself to Europe 1943 -1945 and appears to give an even lower figure where tanks are concerned; he lists a number of Operational Research documents that might repay study.

On balance I would say the odds were strongly in favour of ground forces.

DavidF
Comments'


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## TangoTwoBravo

Just to put this back into the spirit of the thread, are factories producing military equipment legitimate targets?  If the answer is yes, does that extend to the workers in them?  If that answer is yes, are workers for military industries legitimate targets even when they are not at work?  

I would argue that the factories are certainly "legitimate" targets and that the presence or absence of the workers should not be a factor in selecting the time of the attack.  While I believe that uniformed soldiers are targets regardless of time and place, I don't see the factory workers as targets when they are not at work.  Its a double standard, I suppose.  

I believe that a certain level of collateral damage is acceptable if the factory is in a city.  It's location among dwellings should not give it immunity.  That being said, flattening a city to get one factory would probably be out of proportion.  That being said, what is the acceptable margin of collateral error?


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## 3rd Herd

2Bravo said:
			
		

> If the answer is yes, does that extend to the workers in them?  If that answer is yes, are workers for military industries legitimate targets even when they are not at work?
> 
> I would argue that the factories are certainly "legitimate" targets and that the presence or absence of the workers should not be a factor in selecting the time of the attack.  While I believe that uniformed soldiers are targets regardless of time and place, I don't see the factory workers as targets when they are not at work.  Its a double standard, I suppose.



as I stated in an above post " strategic bombing to a certain extent was to deprive cities of there populace and therefore factories of their work force" 

After commencement of the genre of strategic bombing[ Guernica, Spain ]the existing ratio of civil verses military causalties reversed itself. Prior to world war two there was an acknowledged ratio of 10 to 90, civilian verses military. Remember war was and to this day a spectator sport. The are many narratives of families packing lunches and trundling off to vantage points to watch the battle unfold . One of the foremost example of this is the battle of Gettyburg.

With the advent of airpower as a strategic weapon this ratio reversed to 90 to 10, civilian causalties verses military. The subject of this thread is a prime example the 'Dresdan Firebombing'. Equally could be said of Gen. Curtis LeMay's switch in bombing doctine with regard to Japan. Moving from the use of high explosive bombs to the fire raids.

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## MarkOttawa

This is very interesting--take that Mr Irving:

How Many Died in the Bombing of Dresden? (usual copyright disclaimer)
_Spiegel Online_, Oct. 2, by Frederick Taylor
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,581992,00.html



> The question of many people died in the World War II Allied bombing of Dresden has been politically charged for decades. Now, a commission of historians has said the real total could be much lower than previously thought. But the debate likely won't go away.
> 
> The city of Dresden was destroyed following a vicious Allied bombing raid at the end of World War II.
> Calculations of the death-toll from the Anglo-American bombing of Dresden in February 1945 have varied widely, but never ceased to be dramatic. Figures suggested have ranged from 35,000 through 100,000, and even up to half a million at the wilder fringes of speculation.
> 
> It is easy to see why. Dresden was a magnificent city of three quarters of a million people, its population further swollen by hordes of anonymous refugees from the Eastern Front. Its historic heart was destroyed in one apocalyptic night by aircraft armed with more than 4,500 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs. This devastated area amounted to around 13 square miles (34 square kilometers).
> 
> The firestorm that destroyed Dresden’s architectural treasures and so much of its civilian population became a byword for the horrors of modern warfare and a stain on the Allies’ claim to have fought a “good war” against Nazism. This was a truly catastrophic event to which only very big numbers seemed able to do justice.
> 
> Now, more than 60 years later, it seems we must lower our estimates. After four years’ work, an impressive commission of German historians this week filed its report on this issue, and it seems that even the lowest figure so far accepted may be an overestimate. Drawing on archival sources, many never previously consulted, on burial records and scientific findings -- including street-by-street archaeological investigations -- plus hundreds of eye-witness reports, the “Dresden Commission of Historians for the Ascertainment of the Number of Victims of the Air Raids on the City of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945” has provisionally estimated the likely death-toll at around 18,000 and definitely no more than 25,000.
> 
> These conclusions, to be elaborated on in a full report due out next year, are convincing. However, despite the eminence of the commission’s experts, including Germany’s most distinguished historian of the air war, Dr. Horst Boog, they will be controversial, especially in Dresden itself. Many of those who lost families, homes and loved ones in the catastrophe have found dignity and meaning in the sheer magnitude and dark grandeur of the event, and to see the Dresden casualty figures reduced from the hundreds of thousands to more “normal” (though still horrendous) levels seems incredible, even insulting.
> 
> And there are the political distortions. The Nazis were the first to exaggerate the number of victims for propaganda purposes, and the communists were liable to push the numbers up during the post-war period, in order to discredit the Anglo-Americans, who had been the Soviets’ allies until 1945 but were now their Cold War enemies. Finally, neo-Nazis in modern Germany conjure up dizzyingly high figures running into the hundreds of thousands, while at the same time playing down or denying the World War II mass murder of the Jews and the Roma and Sinti, hoping thereby to convince their fellow-citizens that the Allied bombing of Germany was an even worse “holocaust” than the actual one.
> 
> Hence the commission’s establishment in 2004 was opposed by many in Dresden and its work has since been subject to political chicanery. That it has finally issued its report seems something of a miracle. And that its members have courageously and doggedly followed the logic of the evidence, knowing the unpopularity it may bring, speaks strongly for the integrity of the historians involved.
> 
> So can we say "case closed"? Almost certainly not. Many Dresdeners, understandably, cling to their memories and traditions even in the face of historical evidence. The far right will undoubtedly persist with a line of propaganda central to its aim of undermining the democratic German state and rehabilitating the Nazi past. For all these people, interpretation of the Dresden death-toll will likely remain an article of faith rather than a matter of fact.
> 
> FREDERICK TAYLOR
> Frederick Taylor is the author of "Dresden: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1945" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), which examines the apocalyptic destruction of the German city just weeks before the end of World War II. Taylor's book counters the widely held view that the Dresden bombing served no strategic purpose by pointing out that Dresden hosted numerous workshops and factories dedicated to the war effort. Taylor published "The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961- 1989" in 2007, likewise with HarperCollins. He studied history and modern languages at Oxford and Sussex universities in Britain and focused on the history of the extreme right in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.



Mark
Ottawa


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## geo

Humm.... 
1945 - 2008 = 63 years and counting.
18 000 deaths or 100 000, at this point in time.... does it matter ???
Was Germany ready to capitulate ???  How about Japan ???
We could only work with the information available in 1945... and that was that the Nazi & Japanese war machines were still fighting and taking lives.

The destruction of Dresden, Hamburg OR Hiroshima, Nagasaki simply amplifies the absurdity of war.  Should Spiegel be be asking about the death and destruction wreaked on London, Coventry, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Shanghai up to AND including 1945 ??? 

War is brutal & you aren't about to find much humanity in the day to day running of a campaign of conquest.

Lest we forget!


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## 1feral1

geo said:
			
		

> Humm....
> 1945 - 2008 = 63 years and counting.
> 18 000 deaths or 100 000, at this point in time.... does it matter ???
> Was Germany ready to capitulate ???  How about Japan ???
> We could only work with the information available in 1945... and that was that the Nazi & Japanese war machines were still fighting and taking lives.
> 
> The destruction of Dresden, Hamburg OR Hiroshima, Nagasaki simply amplifies the absurdity of war.  Should Spiegel be be asking about the death and destruction wreaked on London, Coventry, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Shanghai up to AND including 1945 ???
> 
> War is brutal & you aren't about to find much humanity in the day to day running of a campaign of conquest.
> 
> Lest we forget!



Good post Geo, that about sums up the reality of it all.


Cheers,

Wes


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## mariomike

Bomber Command crews were ( reportedly ) told that the Nazis had convinced the German people that at the end of World War One  their armed forces had remained still on foreign soil and basically undefeated. And that they - the German forces of WW1 - had been "stabbed in the back" by politicians back home. 
Crews were told: "Never again will any future German government be able to say that the homefront was fairly well intact at the end of a war."


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