Posted on 02/13/2013 9:04:00 AM PST by Kid Shelleen
It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Like I said; The German’s gave up less than three months later; the bombing worked to weaken their resolve to resist. War is hell; and the more hell the faster it ends.
I agree, except that the formation of the Republican Party was a good deal more complicated than the Whig Party + abolitionists.
The Whig Party was national, so its southern members went into the southern wing of the Democratic Party, often holding their noses, when the Party fell apart. Few of the northern Whigs could stomach joining the northern Democrats because of their slavery-enabling platforms. So they formed the basis of the Free Soil Party and then the Republican Party.
But the Grand New Party also had strong elements from the also-disintegrating American (Know-Nothing) Party (southern Americans also joined the Democrats) and northern Democrats who just couldn’t stomach (like the northern Whigs) the sucking up of their leaders to the slavers. The abolitionists were initially a minor force, limited mainly to New England. A LOT less important than defecting Democrats, for instance.
The 1850s were a truly fascinating period in American political history. Things were firing off in all directions till Douglass and Taney stabilized things by trying to take slavery out of the political picture. Almost exactly what was tried with abortion in Roe. Worked even less well, of course.
There wasn’t much point to bombing in daylight if all you wanted to do was carpet bomb. Much safer to do that at night, as LeMay did to Japan with his firebombs. In Europe it was the British, and Bomber Harris in particular, whose thing was carpet bombing - and they did that at night. According to
- Fire and Fury
- The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945
Randall Hansenthe British had excellent intelligence that the American anti-petroleum efforts were squeezing Germany effectively, and Harris was ordered by his British superiors to take every occasion to use his bombers to follow up at night on American efforts in that direction - but of course Harris had discretion, and he aggressively exploited it to evade that command and continue his anti-civilian bombing as his de facto priority until, indeed, there weren’t any more German cities which still constituted a viable target.
Part of the controversy over the Dresden raid was exactly that they had gone that far into the war without bombing it, and it seemed somewhat gratuitous to do it when they finally did. Had Harris hit Dresden a year earlier, it would have been only one more German city he had attempted to raze to the ground.
I was much taken by
- The New Dealers' War:
- FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas Fleming
Information there about the politics of WWII which I hadn’t known, and also some military facts. Fleming asserts that the reputation of the Norden bombsight was deliberately overhyped for domestic American political purposes. There was then, as now, moral objection to carpet bombing civilians. But the Norden bombsight couldn’t actually “put a bomb in a pickle barrel” as was then claimed. It is only now that we’ve started using bombs which are actually hi-tech guided missiles that “putting a bomb in a pickle barrel” is remotely descriptive of the accuracy actually attained in high-altitude level bombing.Not only for military effectiveness, about which the Americans and British disagreed, but also to assuage the conscience of the American civil population, the American Air Force promoted precision, daylight, bombing of military targets. That was a reflection of American culture - to such an extent that the American bomber flying leadership was shocked at the order to carpet bomb Dresden, and had to be bullied into it.
By the time it got to carpet bombing Tokyo, attitudes were different - not least because the Japanese, with their Banzai charges, had established the principle that their own lives were cheap. In addition to racism, which in the Pacific was a two-way street.
Till July, 1945 not a person in the world knew whether the nuke would actually work. It would have been the height of irresponsibility to build a war strategy based entirely on the success of an experimental weapons program.
Not to mention that with no Allied troops on the ground in Europe there would have been nothing to stop the Red Army from going to the Channel.
While we had nukes by mid-1945, we had very few nukes.
That system wasn't built overnight.
The Hughes family orchards in Southern Indiana were used regularly as a burial site for slave catchers who thought they could get away with invading the lower midwest and catching freed slaves to take back South. When I was a young child one of my great aunts was walking me around a remnant of those orchards and she said "They say that wherever there's a pile of rocks there's a slave catcher in there" and I looked around and that orchard had lots of piles of rocks. Only years later did I come to understand what had been going on. There was also a post Civil War Freedman's school in the area that prepared former slaves for independent farming or working as hired hands.
Most likely I'm one of the few Freepers who knows of a relative prosecuted and convicted of violating the fugitive slave act but I'm sure there are others. That act was passed to placate Southerners ~ on September 18, 1850. The Abos were on the march.
BTW, the RadicalRepublicans, ardent abolitionists, were a known political force within the Republican party by 1854 ~ the same year the party was ounded as an anti-slavery party.
The idea the Abolitionist movement didn't participate in the Republican party is not well grounded!
Military materiel was stored, and produced, in Dresden. Frederick Taylor's book "Dresden: February 13, 1945" casts much light on this.
The city was, in February 1945, an important transportation center for what remained of the German Reich, in addition to being a center for ammunition production.
Yes, civilian casualties were high and appalling. But the city contained targets of military value.
Once they had nuclear fission proved, they had nukes if they wanted them ~ and that happened on December 2, 1942 at Alonzo Field Stagg Stadium in Chicago!
Still trying to connect up the military importance of Dresden to Berlin and it's still slithering away ~ like there was no connection at all. The Russians lost 70,000 troops rolling over Berlin. If more Germans had been riding trains up and down the rails through Dresden, they might well have lost several tens of thousands fewer for all anyone can know.
Someday we need to take one of those climate models and convert it to reruns of WWII ~ the only stipulation is that in the end Germany be defeated.
Heilbronn is a city smaller than Dresden or Berlin. Bombed it repeatedly, from 1940 until 1944.
I was stationed there, and we were advised to not go downtown on the anniversary of the worst bombing day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombings_of_Heilbronn_in_World_War_II
Except for occasions when the bombers were used as areal artillery as in the Normandy campaign,the USAAF preferred to concentrate on military targets, in as much as it could. Yes I’m familiar with the Norden Bombsight and it’s pros and cons but despite that the Eighth none the less hit their targets more often then not. Owing to the technology of the times Norden Bombsight was only affective in daylight. It was offered for use to the RAF but the RAF declined. I think maybe you’re confusing ‘’carpet bombing’’ with what the RAF called ‘’area bombing’’ which was basically get near enough(or not) to the target and let fly the bomb bay doors and Fritz was getting sleep that night. Aside from the ‘heavies’’ the USSAF also employed two engine light bombers like the B-25 and the Martin Marauder to hit those targets which constituted the tactical aspect of the war as opposed to the strategic . You can’t deny the stats for Americans lost in the air war over Europe. The Eighth lost some 47,000, 26,000 actual KIA. One in three American airman was a casualty
There is no moral controversy over the use of bombers as “aerial artillery” against front-line troops. Only controversy about that was a matter of safety, or the lack thereof, involved in level bombing near your own troops. Because, again, of the tendency of the aircrews to want to believe the hype about their ability to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. So on one occasion the bombers violated explicit orders against making their bombing run perpendicular to the German defensive line. If their bombing accuracy was as good as billed, that wouldn’t have been a problem, and we would never have heard about it. In reality, it was a problem, and it killed 100 American troops. Including, unfortunately, a bomber commander who was on the ground to observe, but who never had a chance to tell the flight leader what he thought of that caper.
They simply shut down on that anniversary.
The local memorial board ~ with pictures of the dead ~ had a section for the soldiers, a section for the Jews and another section for everybody else. I stopped there once to read through all the names and look at their pictures.
Growing up in Indianapolis had made ALL the names common in my mind.
And my uncle was stationed in Japan; he was told not to go to Hiroshima or Nagasaki during their anniversary of their atomic bombings You think we shouldn't have dropped those bombs? He was told not to go to towns where we fired bombed either; you think we shouldn't have dropped those bombs? more "civilians" died in the fire bombings of Japan than did Dresden, and in a shorter period of time
“And my uncle was stationed in Japan; he was told not to go to Hiroshima or Nagasaki during their anniversary of their atomic bombings You think we shouldn’t have dropped those bombs? He was told not to go to towns where we fired bombed either; you think we shouldn’t have dropped those bombs? more “civilians” died in the fire bombings of Japan than did Dresden, and in a shorter period of time”
I think we should kill as many of the enemy, soldier and civilian, as fast as we can.
When we intentionally killed civilians, we won wars that stayed won.
Ever since, when we try to not kill civilians, we win battles, but not wars—and the sites of the battles we won may revert back.
And I don’t think muslims would be different than Japs and Gerries. They’d know when they were whipped, and wouldn’t want to go back and try again.
The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan ended it, avoided an amphib invasion, saved countless Japanese and American lives.
It was an humanitarian act.
I was under the impression you disagreed with the bombing of Dresden when you stated: "I was stationed there, and we were advised to not go downtown on the anniversary of the worst bombing day."
I would add though to your statement,"Ever since, when we tie the hands of our soldiers with idiotic "rules of engagement" and try to not kill civilians, we win battles, but not wars"
PS: There is a reason why I stated “idiotic “rules of engagement;” some rules are appropriate like no rape, no interrogation for no reason, etc.
bump
In Japan during WW II, some allied airmen were POW in the town oh Hachioji, not far from Tokyo. A photo of one of the airmen being decapitated by a Jap soldier was apparently smuggled out of Japan and was circulated in the USAAF. I believe it was the 5th Air Force that was continually bombing Tokyo. After the photo was circulated, the aircrews were instructed to save one bomb for Hachioji. As a result the city was destroyed completely. I got there about 20 years after and the town had been rebuilt from the bottom up. No mercy.
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