[Closed] Bomb Site - How did anyone survive?

bwaarp - Member

Also Germany didn't start bombing London because they failed to subdue fighter command, they did it after bomber command accidentally bombed on of their cities (Berlin I think) instead of a military target.

What happened, one of theirs Bombed London first and it was an accident by an off course Bomber ditching its load, Churchill (possibly seized upon the incident)retaliated by Bombing Berlin and in a way sacrificed London precisely to save the fighter command airports that were getting hammered.

Either way at that time (1940 we didn't have the longer range Lancasters that were to do the damage later in the War).

As to my reference back there to 2009 it was intended to illustrate the time period, from September 2009 until now, that England was fighting alone, Russia wasn't attacked until June of 2011 and the whole thing was to continue until 2015, a bit like this recession only lots of folk were dying and bombs and then rockets were being dropped on us, and you wonder why some folk still hate Germans.

All sides during the war seemed to be pretty guilty of some awful atrocities as well and I never buy the line "oh well they started it so they reaped what the sowed".

You really need to study what happened, read up on it, 'they' the Germans, and the Japs were a whole lot worse than the Allies, propaganda aside, Russia lost 20 million dead, 20 million!, that's on top of the 6 million Jews slaughtered.
Don't ever let any revisionistic liberal bullshit play that 'both side were as bad as each other' card, it really wasn't like that at all, they were evil butchers, convinced of their own racial superiority slaughtering [i]untermenscheng[/i] sub humans.

Do you actually believe if they won, they'd have simply turned our country back over to us as we did?

the population of Dresden didn't talk much about the war either

You really need to study what happened, read up on it, 'they' the Germans, and the Japs were a whole lot worse than the Allies, propaganda aside, Russia lost 20 million dead, 20 million!, that's on top of the 6 million Jews slaughtered.

Yet you don't mention a great number of those 20m dead were caused by their own side. Stalin was no less evil than Hitler. No surrender, rape, murder, clearing minefields with infantry to save the tanks, starvation, executions......his tools were similar and his intent the same.

Perhaps our greatest war crime was our alliance with Stalin

Back on topic; very sobering. We have indeed as they say, never had it so easy...

Londoners survived because they pretty much lived in Tube stations at night

actually - only a tiny fraction of the population of london could fit into tube stations. A census in 1940 showed that 27% were spending the night in Anderson Shelters in their gardens, 9% in public shelters only 4% in underground stations. That leaves 60% who weren't in any kind of shelter at all (although some would be on duty rather than at home)

The Morrison Shelter was devised to address this as the Anderson Shelter had two flaws - one was being in a tin box made the bombs sound terrifying and people would sneak back into their homes where they felt safer - the other was not everyone had a garden to put a shelter in. Ellen Wilkinson brought together designers and engineers to devise a solution and put it into manufacture - they arrived, she briefed them then shut them in the room on the understanding that they wouldn't get out again until they had a solution ready to go to manufacture. Within 48hrs the shelters were specced ready to go into production. There was some really nice psychology in the design - the shelter was designed so you could use it as a kitchen table, as the best place to site them was on the ground floor and the kitchen floor was most likely to solid rather than over cellar. In bomb blasts walls on houses nearest to the blast would get sucked out leaving the floor to fall in one piece and crush the people inside - the shelter was designed to catch the collapsing floor, rather than be bomb proof in its own right, and be deformable so that it would absorb some of that impact.

For her initiative Ellen Wilkinson was immortalised by having the shelters named after her boss. Nice.

I really like the shelters - built a replica one once. The were pretty much the first bit of self assembly flat pack furniture most people would have ever bought. Love the instructions - ikea instructions should have a pipe smoker!

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Interesting - I'd always thought they looked a bit useless, but that's some clever design going on.

I guess it shows that you will always reap what you sow.

Having recently visited Hiroshima, and met a [i]hibakusha[/i] (A-bomb survivor), I cannot agree with you. Her story was harrowing, as were the artifacts of the children caught in the blast. 3,000 Japanese citizens still die every year as a result of the bombing, many/most/all innocent. How can you condone that?

That backs up the story I was told that the neighbours house was hit. That was in Colindale Avenue. All the ceilings were still battened when I grew up there. Just down the street from RAF Hendon which seems to have got off lightly.

As to my reference back there to 2009 it was intended to illustrate the time period, from September 2009 until now, that England was fighting alone

Britain and England are not synonyms.

I'd always thought they looked a bit useless, but that's some clever design going on.

Its a bit of switched on thinking really. the Anderson shelter was designed before the war - ariel bombardment was something that had never happened before but it was something that was bound to happen.In the run up to the war it was genuinely feared that there would a million casualties in the first night of bombing alone. Nobody knew what it would be like so they had to guess at the solutions. The anderson was designed for what the blitz might be, the morrison was designed for what the blitz actually was.

Britain and England are not synonyms.

they were in the 40s 🙂 Britain and England meant the same thing, linguistically if not geographically - the distinction is quite a modern one

3,000 Japanese citizens still die every year as a result of the bombing

Do you have any evidence of this extraordinary claim?

Q4. What percentage of A-bomb survivors within the study populations have died?
As of 2000, about 45% were alive, but more than 90% of those exposed under the age of 10 were still living. Projections suggest that in 2020 those percentages will be about 20% and 60% respectively.

Based on the total combined population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time being 600-700k people.
And approx 240k people died within 4 months of the blasts.

Those figures above don't seem right ?

Based on the total combined population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time being 600-700k people.
And approx 240k people died within 4 months of the blasts.

Those figures above don't seem right ?

The population the day before the bomb dropped is only one factor though - people who moved into the cities in the years that followed could/would be effected by the legacy of the bombs as would those born to survivors or settlers in the cities

The population the day before the bomb dropped is only one factor though - people who moved into the cities in the years that followed could/would be effected by the legacy of the bombs as would those born to survivors or settlers in the cities

Fair point.

I've still never seen anything that suggests 3000/Year (or any other figure) are still dying as a result of the bombings ?

I very much doubt it's true.

And it certainly isn't going to possible to prove it is true.

Do you actually believe if they won, they'd have simply turned our country back over to us as we did?

Are you forgetting the part where we handed control of half of Germany and most of Eastern Europe to a psychopathic dictator? Many people who fought for the Allies couldn't even go home after the war 🙁

I've still never seen anything that suggests 3000/Year (or any other figure) are still dying as a result of the bombings ?

not defending the 3000 I was just pointing to the effected population being larger than the figure resident on the day. You've got the resident population, any settlers and then all their offspring. Someone who was a child on the day could quite sensibly be both alive today and have 3 or four generations of offspring - two or three children, 6 to 9 grand children, 18 - 24 great grandchildren all alive now and all subject to the effects to varying degrees. Feels like theres one too many zeros, even for an estimate though.

 

Yes, also extremely difficult to say that one particular person died as a result of the bomb - if they die of cancer, maybe, but even then it's tricky, and what about if they just have poor health because of it but die of something else? How about if they die in a car crash because of bomb-induced cataracts (okay, that was a facetious example, but you get where I'm coming from).

jonah tonto - Member
the population of Dresden didn't talk much about the war either

RichPenny - Member
Do you actually believe if they won, they'd have simply turned our country back over to us as we did?
Are you forgetting the part where we handed control of half of Germany and most of Eastern Europe to a psychopathic dictator? Many people who fought for the Allies couldn't even go home after the war

CaptainSlow - Member
You really need to study what happened, read up on it, 'they' the Germans, and the Japs were a whole lot worse than the Allies, propaganda aside, Russia lost 20 million dead, 20 million!, that's on top of the 6 million Jews slaughtered.
Yet you don't mention a great number of those 20m dead were caused by their own side. Stalin was no less evil than Hitler. No surrender, rape, murder, clearing minefields with infantry to save the tanks, starvation, executions......his tools were similar and his intent the same.

Perhaps our greatest war crime was our alliance with Stalin

Without Stalin and the alliance with him we'd have lost, no question, as it was it was a damn close run thing.

By the time the infamous Yalta conference which seeded all that territory, we were a spent force and Roosevelt was seriously ill, plus he'd lost more than the Allies put together and couldn't trust the 'capitalist' west so needed a buffer zone, I'd have done exactly the same in his shoes, there were already Maverick Yank Generals like Patton spoiling for a fight with the 'commie bastards'. They like us had been at war for four years the yanks had only been engaged for two and hadn't suffered anything like the losses.

It was a nasty business, but we were in no position to dictate terms and lucky to come out of it retaining what we did and even then the seeds were sown for the passing over of control of large tracts of the 'Empire' to the Yanks, who settled our hash once and for all at Suez in '56.

My flat took a direct hit.

They lost 25,000, London lost over 30,000 and over a much longer period

Have a look at this link:

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties ]WW2 Casualties by Nation[/url]

That says that there were 67000 civilian deaths in the UK, compared to 1100000 to 3250000 civilian deaths in Germany. I'll stick my neck out and say that the German people suffered more from WW2. Not as much as the Polish did though. 16+ percent of the population killed. Christ.

For anyone in liverpool there are some good pictures in the old Lewis,s windows near what used to be Rapid Hardware of the bombs damage to Liverpool, also if you go for a ride up past crosby coastguard staton youll find a long beach wall made from broken bricks these where from all the damaged homes, they dumped them there.

Do you have any evidence of this extraordinary claim?

We were given this figure by our volunteer tour guide while we were standing in front of the box in the Peace Park which contains the names of all the victims of the bombing in Hiroshima. Every year they open the box and add the names of victims who have died that year. I'm certain she said 3,000, but it is possible she meant 300.

Of course, this isn't evidence of causation, but when you're stood in a place like that, talking to survivors, the last thing on your mind is questioning their scientific rigour.

about a month ago a massive bomb was found in a central district of Muinch.

some builders were knocking through a wall and found a massive RAF bomb. it had just been bricked up behind a wall.

anyway, the detenation didn't go according to plan and there was an almighty bang. the straw that had been used to dampen the sound/explosion caught fire and set the surrounding buildings alight...

went past the site a week or so after and you could still smell the explosives and charred reamins of the no-longer-there buildings.

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when i first arrived in germany i would sit on the train and look at the old people and begin wondering what they or their folks got up to during the war...

there is a guy that lives in the same neighbourhood as the GF's folks that has numbers tatooed on his arm. why he decided to hang around is beyond me, but he now gives talks at schools and such.

the Bavarian parliment building has lots of pock-marks on its facade.

if you are ever in the Botanical Garden entrance building in Munich and the staff are not looking lift up the massive round carpet in the foyer. you'll see a massive Swaztika there...

at one of the workshops i used to work at (workshop has now moved) there was a stone eagle on the roof. the the head of the eagle was a Swaztika. and this was just some random barn in a field...

Munich was pretty much flattened yet it is hard to believe when you see the city now. so much of the city centre was rebuilt according to pre-war plans.

in all my five years in the Vaterland i'm yet to meet anyone who is proud of what there forefathers got up to. many will speak on a very neutral, matter-of-fact level about what happened but no one is proud.

although saying that there are some dodgy groups, respectable but with close ties to the NPD (National Partie Deutschland) that have some rather suspect members and idealology.

Jawohl! Schneller!

Of course, this isn't evidence of causation, but when you're stood in a place like that, talking to survivors, the last thing on your mind is questioning their scientific rigour.

That's fair enough.

But when you are no longer stood in a place like that, and have had some time to think about it, it's probably best not to quote such unproven guesswork as if we're in any way true ? 🙂

Without Stalin and the alliance with him we'd have lost, no question, as it was it was a damn close run thing.

By the time the infamous Yalta conference which seeded all that territory, we were a spent force and Roosevelt was seriously ill, plus he'd lost more than the Allies put together and couldn't trust the 'capitalist' west so needed a buffer zone, I'd have done exactly the same in his shoes, there were already Maverick Yank Generals like Patton spoiling for a fight with the 'commie bastards'. They like us had been at war for four years the yanks had only been engaged for two and hadn't suffered anything like the losses.

It was a nasty business, but we were in no position to dictate terms and lucky to come out of it retaining what we did and even then the seeds were sown for the passing over of control of large tracts of the 'Empire' to the Yanks, who settled our hash once and for all at Suez in '56.

I wasn't suggesting we should not have got into an alliance with Stalin, history is clear we had little choice.

I was pointing out that Stalin was an arsehole just as much as the rest of those considered by history as being evil.

When I was growing up in east London, 40 years ago, any area of derelict ground was called a bomb site. Looking at that map I realise that some of them really were.

... it's probably best not to quote such unproven guesswork as if we're in any way true ?

Frankly, when you've got arseholes on this thread who think that killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people is justified for the decisions of their military, I couldn't give a ****.

Frankly, when you've got arseholes on this thread who think that killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people is justified for the decisions of their military, I couldn't give a ****.

Fair enough.

Carry on repeating made up statistics then.

Its not the best way to make your point. But it's up to you.

CaptainSlow - Member

I was pointing out that Stalin was an arsehole just as much as the rest of those considered by history as being evil.

Ask a fair number of French and they'll reckon Churchill was an arsehole, for pulling out the airforce too soon and sinking their fleet and some Germans blame him for starting the war in the first place, it's all a matter of perspective. Wars bring arseholes to the surface and gives them purpose. Anyone want to talk about Kitchener in the first bloodbath?

Ormondroyd - sorry haven't been on here for a bit - no, it wasn't Reading, it was Penzance. He reckons they were after the telegraph cable link to the US and got the wrong building.

some fascinating recollections and stories in this thread.

also fascinating is how determined forum posters can be to have the last word on a subject

It's ironic that Kitchener gets a mention, I have my Step Fathers Uncles bronze death plaque and bayonet from the First World War. I was sorting through some old letters and found one addressed to his brother saying how sorry to hear about his brothers death in the Dardenelles (Gallipoli). I've been reading up on the campaign and that is truly shocking at what happened on both sides. Omaha was bad but Gallipoli was savage and when you read about the monumental cock ups and decisions that were made by Kitchener, Churchill and other commanders it makes you realise that the lives on the ground seem so expendable to them.

What happened, one of theirs Bombed London first and it was an accident by an off course Bomber ditching its load, Churchill (possibly seized upon the incident)retaliated by Bombing Berlin and in a way sacrificed London precisely to save the fighter command airports that were getting hammered.

That was the one.

So Churchill used civilians to protect the military in a way that you would expect of HAMAS not a western leader, right?

We don't really have a right to complain about "atrocities" committed by the Germans against us during the war because there were very few. Whilst German, a country in which the majority of the population never voted for the Nazi party during their rise to power suffered millions dead. Someone will probably mention that they got what the deserved due to the holocaust but I'm not so certain they did deserve this, the German people that is. The Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe and the Navy were never really that keen on the Nazi party and individual accounts show that they were often horrified and contemptuous of the SS - it's certainly not a cut and dry issue. In any case I prefer to think of the Germans an people as victims of the Nazi party.

Some posters on here really need to STFU considering our involvement in hilarious genocidal escapades such as Ireland, the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the 'accidental' deaths of Boers in internment camps during the Boer war, the Mau Mau uprising and our all round general imperialism that revolved around annexing countries smaller than us.

Oh but you're a dirty liberal if you think the morality of a war is only that which is decided by the victors - when Britain kills foreigners it's because we were showing those dirty savage jungle bunnies how to live properly and educating them, when Germany does the same it's because they're evil.

We have the same bias today with terrorism. According to the west "People like Saddam and bin Laden hate us for our freedom while we love freedom". The US/UK's close alliance with Saudi Arabia as well as their support of Colombian death squads demonstrates this love of freedom.

Mass slaughter and destruction are OK when we do it because we are spreading democracy and freedom such as protecting the Iranian people from themselves by overthrowing democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. When they do it, its because they are spreading fear and hatred. Another difference between "I Can't Believe It's Not Terrorism" and Terrorism is that we have God on our side and they don't. Whether an act of violence is terrorism or "I Can't Believe It's Not Terrorism" also depends on who perpetrates it. If the act is committed by leftist guerrillas in Colombia, socialists or communists in Latin America, Islamic extremists, Basque separatists, or Palestinian militants it is terrorism. If it is committed by American Backed Banana Republics including Colombia, the United Kingdom or Israel, then it is "I Can't Believe It's Not Terrorism".

I ****ing hate people.

Gallipoli - Dad's dad was there in one of the early waves. About the only one in his little lot who got out alive and he was badly injured. You couldn't get him near the medical profession after that (I can remember his describing all doctors as "horse butchers", which I strongly suspect was a memory from Gallipoli). Afterwards he got posted to the Somme and then Ypres where he served in the front line, but he managed to survive the whole show from 1914 to 1918 and ended up an expert on posion gas. Oh yes and the family got totally bombed out twice in Plymouth in the second war before Dad got evacuated to Penzance as a schoolboy (and then bombed there, see above story).

The point I'm trying to make here, is no matter what the geographic persuasion, put one human being 'in control' of all the others and introduce group violence or social 'protection' and horrendous atrocity's always result and of course ar fully justified by the victors.

Make no mistake however, Hitler at the height of his power was lauded by virtually every single (none jewish)German, all the time they were 'winning' even today there are still those who think he was right but was undermined by elements in the Wehrmacht.

We hold Churchill up as a hero, the saviour of the free world, which he was by our perspective, but he was no saint and at the end of the day it was the blood, guts and toil on behalf of the ordinary Brits that did it. The Alan Turins, the Barnes Wallis's, the R.J.Mitchells who were the real relatively unsung heroes, not to mention the tens of thousands of airmen, naval forces and troops on the ground who suffered at the hands of those leaders.

Which does beg the question why do we allow ourselves to be governed?

As you rightly point out, it's still going on today in the Middle East and Afghanistan, so why do we put up with it?

Make no mistake however, Hitler at the height of his power was lauded by virtually every single (none jewish)German, all the time they were 'winning' even today there are still those who think he was right but was undermined by elements in the Wehrmacht.

Errrr no they didn't, a lot did though....especially after France was defeated....which was a great revenge for the German people after the perceived vindictiveness of France after the first world war. There was never an elected majority that mandated what he and the Nazi party did and what they stood for though.

Which does beg the question why do we allow ourselves to be governed?

Because the end point of such total libertarianism is the rule of the mob. Government is meant to not only serve the will of the people but to also temper it and protect the individual.

Errrr no they didn't, a lot did though....especially after France was defeated....which was a great revenge for the German people after the perceived vindictiveness of France after the first world war. There was never an elected majority that mandated what he and the Nazi party did and what they stood for though.

Interesting;and rather at odds with what I teach my Advanced Higher pupils.
Study of the frequent (7 in 5 years)occupations of the Ruhr and Saar suggest it was more than "perceived." France (and Belgium 😯 )treated Germany shamefully, during the great strikes they shot union leaders in the Ruhr and billed Germany for the bullets. Remember France had one plan after the war, and that was keeping Germany broken.
On Hitler having a mandate;
The Weimar republic is quite famous for the succession of weak coalition governments that featured the centre (centrium) parties trying to govern,with no majority,relying on various deals.Meanwhile the far right and left had a policy of opposing each other (400 political assassinations in 10 years after the Sparticist uprising) Hitler targeted that centre after the failure of the beer hall pustch.(When he decided to use democratic means to win power) On a ticket of order,work and bread, He won 230 out of 600 odd seats,which is the biggest majority that had been seem in the 15 or so years of the post WW1 democracy. 37.5% of the poll, dropping to 33% when he resigned and forced a re-run. Still the majority,which the centre supported. Hitler had the support of the middle class and increasingly large numbers of the working class who formed huge numbers of the 8.5 million unemployed.

Nazi support Upper Classes; fear of communism/desire to see Germany strong/exploit those below them
Middle Classes; fear of economic boom and bust
Working Class; Work.
It all depends how you define "mandated" really. But the majority of Germans supported Hitler well after the war started.

Anyway; sod London...per head of population bombs dropped? Dangerous business farming.....

http://www.caledonius.co.uk/brechin/Page50.html

France (and Belgium )treated Germany shamefully, during the great strikes they shot union leaders in the Ruhr and billed Germany for the bullets. Remember France had one plan after the war, and that was keeping Germany broken.

Given the way those two countries suffered, an approach to ensure that neither of those countries would be bothered by Germany might have seemed like a good idea. In hindsight, obviously it wasn't a great idea but when you've had 60% of your fighting-age men killed or wounded and a good part of your country destroyed over 4 years, spending time thinking about ramifications may not be high on the list.

To bring it back to the OP, my grandfather was on AA guns in Liverpool and other key targets at the start of the war (before finishing the war as in the military police) and never really got over seeing the destruction of cities he felt he was trying to protect. He had 8 brothers who fought in the war (5 on the front line or behind enemy lines for the entire time) and all came back. Three never spoke a word about their experiences. Only one brother speaks about fighting with any fondness but he's also a man who has come to terms with the fact he killed other men. My grandfather cried on the rare occasions he talked about the man (well, 16 year old boy) he killed.

Japanese citizens still die every year as a result of the bombing, many/most/all innocent. How can you condone that?

It stopped them in their tracks and forced them to consider surrender. Job done.

It's easy to be all 'western' about WW2, but do some research into the Chinese losses at the hands of the Japanese. Mind blowing numbers of non-combatants killed face to face, not by dropping ordnance. Maybe 20,000,000 total casualties.

If there ever could be a justification for an A-bomb; that would appear to be it.

Got to agree to a certain extent. You can't judge the morality of the action by the action itself. Given the events in the Pacific theatre and specifically invasions of the Pacific islands, Okinawa etc, it was likely that the loss of life on the allied side would be immense and that the Japanese would hardly spare their civilians either.

Should anyone push a button and kill hundreds of thousands in one fell swoop against someone no threat to themselves? No. However, if you have the ability to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of your own citizen-soldiers by doing so against an aggressor that had already proved to be brutal and inhuman, should you? I'd argue yes.

It wasn't a war like we've had in recent years, it was a war to roll back aggressors who invaded, subjugated and murdered across Asia and Europe. It's harsh but it's difficult to know what the alternative is

Yep, the Japanese went on a murder [democide] spree from 1937, not sure it was 20m but it was massive and certainly in the millions.

If there ever could be a justification for an A-bomb; that would appear to be it.

Don't ever let any revisionistic liberal bullshit play that 'both side were as bad as each other' card, it really wasn't like that at all, they were evil butchers, convinced of their own racial superiority slaughtering untermenscheng sub humans.

it's all a matter of perspective.

Kit - Member
Having recently visited Hiroshima, and met a hibakusha (A-bomb survivor), I cannot agree with you. Her story was harrowing, as were the artifacts of the children caught in the blast. 3,000 Japanese citizens still die every year as a result of the bombing, many/most/all innocent. How can you condone that?

I've done the same.

I'm profoundly ambivalent, and with good reason. My old man was on his way to the Far East, having survived the war in Europe, to take part in the airborne invasion of the Japanese home islands, when the bombs were dropped. The casualty predictions for Operation Downfall we set at 35% on the basis that "that operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population".

Without the atomic bombs he might have made his last combat drop into Japan. Would I be here today?

re. the atomic bombs in Japan, estimates put the number dead at the time from direct effects of both bombs combined to be 150,000 - 250,000....mostly civilians.

Now read about the Rape of Nanking....so called because of the charming way the Japanese soldiers conducted themselves in China....estimates there are for 250,000 - 300,000 civilians killed by the Japanese.....and this was in 1937 before the war really kicked off.

Both the German leaders and the Japanese leaders saw themselves as a superior race to those they were fighting....how do you reason with that?....the Atomic bomb did a job and did it effectively.

Both sides commit atrocities during war, it brings out the worst in people....talking to an old boy in the back of my ambulance a few years ago about his experience of the war.....asked him what it was like, he said it was hideous....said they were in France and starving, they came across some civilians who had food but wouldnt share it, would sell it and were hostile towards him and his colleagues....i asked what they did, his reply was blunt and unexpected....they shot the civilians and took the food they needed.

War is a fact of life, as long as there are people there will be wars.