A Century Ago Canadian Soldiers Supposedly Killed Prisoners
- Thread starter Old Sweat
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OldSolduer
Army.ca Relic
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Yes you would be, I'd have put you there and then occupied the cell next door! :blotto:dangerboy said:
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That's kind of where I was coming from above, that WW2 is a grey area and it kind of irks me when I see modern day academics knocking actions made at a time when the survival of your country and all of its citizens was at stake.
Does that make it okay to rape/pillage/murder? Of course not, but to see the kinds of tools working on the war museum exhibits questioning decisions (and effectiveness) by the bombers is quite unfair.
Some quackjob like the group who stood up against KIA children going to university in a tweed jacket who has never had a discomfort in his life calling a WW2 vet a murderer who suffered 6 years of his own country getting bombed.
[/rant]
Does that make it okay to rape/pillage/murder? Of course not, but to see the kinds of tools working on the war museum exhibits questioning decisions (and effectiveness) by the bombers is quite unfair.
Some quackjob like the group who stood up against KIA children going to university in a tweed jacket who has never had a discomfort in his life calling a WW2 vet a murderer who suffered 6 years of his own country getting bombed.
[/rant]
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Petamocto said:
Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments, had this to say:
"The RAF night attacks are considerably more effective than the US daylight attacks, since heavier bombs are used, an extraordinary accuracy in attacking the target is reported.’ "
In 1959, Speer wrote:
"The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion in Europe . . . Defence against air attacks required the production of thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over the country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who in addition had to stay in position by their guns, often totally inactive, for months at a time . . . No one has yet seen that this was the greatest lost battle on the German side."
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mariomike said:
An interesting, maybe somewhat opinionated, piece on gas in WWII, the Bari incident being the worst.
http://www.rense.com/general83/gas.htm
According to the article, the major allies did not sign on to use no gas.
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Earlier in this thread, Kurt Meyer. He and other German senior officers were paroled early so the post war allies could pick their brains on fighting the Soviet tank armies. Old Sweat will correct this post if I am wrong.
Additionally there were all the German rocket (terror weapons) and jet engine/aeronautical engineers that both sides(allied and Soviet) scooped up and put to work immediately after WWII. US Space program got it's start from the likes of von Braun.
P.S. In WWI the Germans bombed England with their Zeppelins, and later with four engined biplane bombers, well before the 1939, and onward, bombing of European cities. The Spanish Civil War was the tactical proving ground for the Germans and Italians.
There is a maker in London, England, along the Thames River where the lamp post still has the shrapnel damage. I believe the first casualties were all killed in a pub. Without looking it up, Billy Bishop's or may be it was Barker's squadron, was recalled to England for air defence duties.
Additionally there were all the German rocket (terror weapons) and jet engine/aeronautical engineers that both sides(allied and Soviet) scooped up and put to work immediately after WWII. US Space program got it's start from the likes of von Braun.
P.S. In WWI the Germans bombed England with their Zeppelins, and later with four engined biplane bombers, well before the 1939, and onward, bombing of European cities. The Spanish Civil War was the tactical proving ground for the Germans and Italians.
There is a maker in London, England, along the Thames River where the lamp post still has the shrapnel damage. I believe the first casualties were all killed in a pub. Without looking it up, Billy Bishop's or may be it was Barker's squadron, was recalled to England for air defence duties.
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Rifleman62 said:
I also heard that said about Kurt Meyer.
One of the airmen called back to England from the Western Front for Zeppelin defence was a young night-fighter ace named Arthur Harris. To be known as "Bomber" in the next war.
He told an amusing story. He was ordered to harpoon a Zep with 500 feet of steel cable pulled by a BE2 airplane. At the end of the cable was a harpoon: "You get above the Zeppelin, and pull the handle. The harpoon goes down through the envelope of the Zeppelin, opens its barbs and catches in the structure, and there you are!"
Harris retorted, "Well, where am I? The Zeppelin has 3,000 horsepower and I have 75. What I should like to know before attempting this is - who goes home with whom?"
He was then told there would be an explosive grenade on a ring. You slide the grenade ring down the cable, and it explodes at the contact point of the harpoon.
In the Second World War, RCAF aircrews were also briefed on a political reason for bombing. That when the NAZI's had come to power, that they had campaigned in the city centres and pointed out that the cities were left pretty well intact after WW1, and therefore, although there was an Armistice, they were not totally defeated.
"Never again will any future German government be able to say that the country was fairly well intact, but still defeated." "and incidentally, show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do."
Ref: "Battlefields in the Air: Canadians in Bomber Command" pg: 152.
Re: Science projects:
In 1971 Albert Speer pointed out in an interview that Bomber Command had created "an armaments emergency in Germany which ruled out a major program to develop the atomic bomb."
Re: Poison gas.
"The U.S. reportedly had about 135,000 tons of chemical warfare agents during the WW II; Germany had 70,000 tons, Britain 40,000 and Japan 7,500 tons. The German nerve gasses were deadlier than the old-style suffocants (chlorine; phosgene) and blistering agents (mustard gas) in Allied stockpiles. Churchill, and several American Generals reportedly called for their use against Germany and Japan."
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/01/26/gas-masks-for-all/
This is a photo of a Number One Group Lancaster. It was taken sometime after May 1944 at RAF Station Binbrook. That big yellow circle shape on the nose is a gas disc:
http://i591.photobucket.com/albums/ss351/Lancaster-Archive/WP%20Source/Snifter.jpg
Another Lanc with a gas patch. 460 Squdron. July 20th, 1944:
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/1143/bombloading2.jpg
At the 00:58 mark on this video is another gas disc. Photo taken at Easter 1945:
That's number 424 "Tiger" Squadron RCAF:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B69CquvLHgY
( Out of curiousity, I looked that raid up.
That "Blockbuster" was destined for Hamburg on a day trip. 1 Apr 1945, which happened to be Easter that year. The Aiming Pont was the Bloom and Voss shipyards, where the new type of U-Boats were being assembled, but the target area was completely cloud covered. The local report describes "considerable damage" to houses, factories, energy supplies and communications over a wide area of souhern Hamburg and Harburg. There was an unexpected intervention by the Luftwaffe day-fighter force. 8 Lancasters and 3 Halifaxes were shot down. It was Bomber Commands's worst loss from that date until VE-Day. )
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Rifleman62 said:
MGen Chis Vokes stopped Meyer's execution knowing his own troops had done the same thing, or so goes the story.
What Vokes said is that he did not feel that Meyer knew that the executions were taking place.
The only members of the 12 SS Panzer Division executed for murdering prisoners were the CO and one of the officers of 2nd Battalion, 26 SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. This was for the murder of three Canadians at battalion headquarters on 9 June. In this case, the CO was not even present, and he had refused to execute other prisoners despite a direct order from his regimental commander. The other officer, who had carried out the deed, had only done so because the regimental commander drew his pistol and gave him the choice between shooting the three POWs or being shot himself.
The regimental commander, SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, had been implicated in the murder of British POWs in 1940 as well as the shooting of 35 Canadians at Fontenay-le-Pesnel on 8 June and the execution of three more Canadians at his regimental headquarters at Haut-du Bosq on 11 June. He survived the war and a spell as a prisoners of the Russians and died in bed in 2000.
The only members of the 12 SS Panzer Division executed for murdering prisoners were the CO and one of the officers of 2nd Battalion, 26 SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. This was for the murder of three Canadians at battalion headquarters on 9 June. In this case, the CO was not even present, and he had refused to execute other prisoners despite a direct order from his regimental commander. The other officer, who had carried out the deed, had only done so because the regimental commander drew his pistol and gave him the choice between shooting the three POWs or being shot himself.
The regimental commander, SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, had been implicated in the murder of British POWs in 1940 as well as the shooting of 35 Canadians at Fontenay-le-Pesnel on 8 June and the execution of three more Canadians at his regimental headquarters at Haut-du Bosq on 11 June. He survived the war and a spell as a prisoners of the Russians and died in bed in 2000.
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