Dresden Firestorm

[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]

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]

  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]

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.]

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]

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.]

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.  Bergström 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.]

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 still 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".