https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-43546839
Horrific story, every day is a school day but this is a grim lesson
Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on Frederick Lindermann is an interesting listen in regard to this.
“He would not shrink from using an argument which he knew to be wrong if, by so doing, he could tie up one of his professional opponents.”
At Churchill's request Lindermann investigated the effects the bombing of Hull had on the morale of the population there - he then told Churchill the opposite of what he had learned and Churchill acted on that false information - and this was the result. A dodgy dossier.
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister-and-the-prof
"Dehousing"!
It got flattened during the war some horrific pictures online... Interesting architecture mix in hamburg
Not about Hamburg, as such, but Bomber by Len Deighton is a very good look at experiences from both sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_(novel)
Horrific story, every day is a school day but this is a grim lesson
The thousand bomber raids that carpet bombed cities were pretty horrible. Of course using precision bombing the allies did not target civilians. The entire blitz campaign killed fewer people than some of the single raids by the RAF
much the same way when phosphorous bombs were dropped on the wooden German cities.
The victors get to say what was acceptable.
Clearly appalling and horrific, and yes, history is written by the victers, but if the roles of the two sides were reversed, I doubt the Luftwaffe would have done any differently.
On a related note Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut is worth reading
that podcast is grimly compelling listening, thanks for sharing cranberry
Ultimately, there is no morality in war, there's no point in getting involved in it. People will do what people do. When push comes to shove, there are no rules.
Tis very easy 80 years on to apply our morality to what happened "then".
So if the Bosch had won, you would be speaking German, you would have no trade unions, no opposition, all the jews would be dead ( maybe the muslims as well), the gay population would have been erdiciated, mental illness would have been treated by extermination, as would have physical disability ....
Unfortunately many people died in Hamburg ... but not the 6 mio the regime killed in the death camps... let alone the others
War isn't the most politically correct environment ... but the reason that you can moan about Brexit, the Scottish referendum, civil partnerships, the minimum wage, and life not being fair is because the allies won.
Okay - they didn't do everything right. But the word, in general, is much better place because of it.
It's life ... don't be too smug because you are free and comfortable.We are a in a stage of politics where people seem to feel that democracy is wrong - only the intelligent, well-read or trendy left should be allowed to run things ... democracy has it problems i.e sometimes it does go your way ... but it might be better that the other options
Tis very easy 80 years on to apply our morality to what happened “then”.
Not really- it was controversial at the time.
I don't think it was that controversial at the time. There was debate of course, and plenty of bomber crew accounts refer to their own concerns - but these are almost invariably also balanced by their recognition that the war needed to be won.
Hamburg and Dresden were dreadfully 'successful' bombing raids where a lot of factors combined in favour of the attacking force renderring them far more deadly than the norm.
I think it is incredibly difficult to put oneself into the mindset of what was happening then. Plenty criticise the Dresden raid but at the time no one knew the war was nearly over.
And this thinking has led to RAF bomber crews never receiving the campaign medal they should have done, despite the 55,000 men lost.
Did the carpet bombing shorten the war?
Was there not a radio 4 'play' on one of the anniversaries of the war where all throughout the day they used short sections to piece together both the stories of one of the bomber crews as well as a family on the ground about to be bombed. I remember it being compelling listening where you ended up glued to the radio waiting for the next segment. It really took it all home to you in a most horrible way
On a related note Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut is worth reading
Not strictly war focussed but “Confessions of a Yakuza” gives an amazing insight into the aftermath in Japan, as well as being an amazing book
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Yakuza
Not really- it was controversial at the time.
No doubt, but there was a huge enemy force maybe 10 miles away that would not have spared anyone had they made land in the UK. It’s an experience and threat that none of us have ever experienced since.
<div>leffeboy
<div>
<div>Subscriber</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>Was there not a radio 4 ‘play’ on one of the anniversaries of the war where all throughout the day they used short sections to piece together both the stories of one of the bomber crews as well as a family on the ground about to be bombed. I remember it being compelling listening where you ended up glued to the radio waiting for the next segment. It really took it all home to you in a most horrible way
</div>
Yes.
That was a dramatisation of len deightons bomber real time.
I've literally just finished the audio book of it. Thouroughlt reccomend.
- By the end of the war 1/3 of German production was anti-aircraft guns. That's a lot of tanks and submarines Germany were denied.
- Bombing forced Germany to pull valuable fighter squadrons away from the Eastern Front.
- There was always a (small) risk of Stalin doing another deal with the Germans and leaving the UK on our own. Stalin *loved* area bombing and it helped keep him on-side.
- Britain had to be seen to be doing something. You could hardly ask the USA to join the war if you weren't even fighting it yourselves.
- We talk about 6 million lives - that was just the beginning. "The Hunger Plan" involved starving 35 million people to death. Stopping Germany winning was necessary at all costs.
- WW2 was the definitive attritional war. It didn't matter where you wore the enemy down, as long as you did.
But most of all, what else would we have done? It's like the campaigns in the Med, you can point out their flaws, but what other options were there? An invasion of Mainland Europe across the Channel was years away, something had to be done.
So yeah, Area bombing is piss poor way of waging war. Comparatively Ineffective, morally dubious, illegal in some cases but it's hard to think of anything better.
I can't think of a serious historian who makes a case otherwise, anyone offer one?
If anyone hasn't heard this it might be worth a listen, a recording of a raid from a Lancaster:
"Dan Snow introduces Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's experience as he joined the crew of an RAF Lancaster Bomber in action over Berlin."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076rvh
Bomber Harris was a notoriously bad driver - when he was stopped for speeding one night the copper said to him ‘you could have killed someone sir’, to which he replied ‘officer I kill thousands of people every night!’...
My reading of it has been that Hamburg was in some ways a bit of a fluke, and he didn’t achieve anything like those ‘results’ again until much later in the war, whilst losing a huge number of aircraft and crews in the Battle of Berlin in late 43, early 44.
The unpleasant fact is that military targets are usually hardened and difficult, whereas if you remove the supporting infrastructure in that locality then the military in that area cannot function for long.
The U-boat pens were protected by thick layers of concrete and required high precision bombing at a considerable cost to the flight crews and planes.
It was a very deliberate decision to destroy the soft infrastructure which included civilian workers and their families.
Genghis Khan understood this technique.
Bloody horrible but don't for one second imagine if the boot was on the other foot it would have been any different.
Did the carpet bombing shorten the war?
One of the ‘best’ A-Level or GSCE History questions right there. The A-bomb certainly shortened the war, but Hamburg, Dresden and the rest? Very difficult to say.
The western allies had to be seen to be doing something to keep Russia on-side. The ‘second front’ hadn’t really been opened yet and the Russians had only just stemmed the tide at Stalingrad. Bombing was, in 1943, probably still the most effective way the western allies could hit Germany without unacceptable losses (unacceptable being a very different level on the Eastern front).
Did it make it easier for the likes of Goebbles to stir up a fight to the last? Almost definitely.
Did it weaken Germany productivity? Probably.
Would Germany have triumphed otherwise? No, Germany was doomed the second they declared war on America, albeit at a much higher price.
No winners in a war, just comparative losers.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and everyone knows about the Nazis and the holocaust, but have a read about the Red Army advance into Prussia and Upper Silesia in particular if you want to be appalled by indoctrinated hatred combined with drunken violence. The sack of Gdynia being a particularly dreadful example. The Red Army routinely raped and murdered recently freed slave labourer women from their own country.
I can’t remember if it was Konev, Rokossovsky or another lionized Soviet commander who was confronted by a journalist about the conduct of his troops. Apparently he thought for a couple of seconds then said “I don’t give a ****”.
Good to ponticate ...
‘my uncle was killed as part of bomber command.... was it right? Dunno - but we are still allowed to vote ....
I am guessing at 24 he thought he was doing the right thing ...
Did it shorten the war ... when if didn’t make it longer ...
BTW ... the atomic attacks on Japan were straightforwardly wrong
BTW … the atomic attacks on Japan were straightforwardly wrong
The atomic attacks killed about the same number of people as liberating a single pacific Island. Without the Atomic attacks there would have been a lot more Islands to liberate and then the Japanese mainland.
They saved a vast number of lives both Japanese and Allied.
BTW … the atomic attacks on Japan were straightforwardly wrong
That’s very simplistic. Remember that the US Navy had just been facing kamikaze pilots and civilians on Okinawa who threw themselves off of cliffs rather than be ‘taken’ by the Americans. I seem to remember the yanks were estimating casualties of c 400,000 to defeat Japan by ‘conventional’ means. The cynical view is that they were worried the soviets would rock up and snatch Japan right at the very end.
Ask yourself this. If you were Truman, how could you sell a campaign to your electorate that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their sons knowing you probably had the means to end it quickly? Be honest, then see if you can be so black and white.
I can’t remember if it was Konev, Rokossovsky or another lionized Soviet commander who was confronted by a journalist about the conduct of his troops. Apparently he thought for a couple of seconds then said “I don’t give a ****”.
I googled: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Vasilevsky
It was one of the others, then!
I knew it wasn’t Zhukov or Chuikov.
BTW … the atomic attacks on Japan were straightforwardly wrong
It was absolutely the right thing to do. The fact that they had to drop two bombs demonstrates the mentality of the Japanese government and how they were prepared to sacrifice their citizens at all costs rather than give up.
It’s good to have healthy debates around stuff like this by the way. Not wanting to derail the thread further, but a good example for me is Iraq.
Was it a good decision from Bush Jnr and Blair to go after Saddam? No. Definitely no if you’re going to lie about the reasons (either some vague notion of terrorism even though a dictator like that would keep religious fundamentalism in check or just sexing up a dossier).
Stand back and look at the bigger picture, though. In my opinion Bush Snr and Major and the rest should have gone all the way to Baghdad in 1991 when they had the ‘moral high ground’ and had already allowed the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds to come out in support. The prime reason 2003 shouldn’t have happened is that it should have got sorted 12 years earlier. Would the outcome have been any different? Don’t know, but if Saddam had to go, it should have been 1991 and not 2003.
Anyone interested watch Ken Burns Vietnam. 18 hour, 10 part documentary series on the war there. The series is extensively researched, with plenty of witness views from all sides. The series will give you an idea of how soldiers have to remove any shred of humanity from their feelings not only to kill the enemy, but just too stay alive. To see how the lines of warfare can become horribly blurred google 'My Lai'
The Vietnam series was really very good. There were the guys who were reluctant at first, but soon realised that if they wanted to get out alive, then they had to put their values aside to a certain extent.
I specifically remember the guy who said something along the lines of “I only killed one person in Vietnam, that was the first one, the rest were all just ‘gooks’ or ‘VC’ or whatever”. To stay alive, he had to convince himself the other side weren’t human. ‘Men’ like to brag and speculate about what they would do in a firefight, but unless you’ve actually been there and found out, it’s all just talk. I’m sure there are ex services folk on here who really know. I don’t!
This very sobering thread is a good reminder on the importance of smashing fascist ideas before they take root
It seems to be pretty clear that the people the west regarded as evil dictators (Saddam, Gaddafi etc) were actually holding the whole place together. Under Saddam Iraq was a secular, fairly civilised place for the vast majority of people, Libya was so civilised that migrants from Africa got as far a Libya and found it so nice they stayed with good jobs in the oil industry, now they keep going to Europe. The whole region has gone up in flames.
I really can't see any case that deposing these secular leaders was a good idea.
You can claim that this is all hindsight *but* that can't be the case since the West propped up these regimes for years precisely to avoid what happened.
Albert Speer comments in the Whirlwind episode of the World at War about the Hamburg raid are quite interesting and poignant. IIRC He says it was the first time he saw it was possible to break the will of the German people and three more raids like that might have ended the war (the program then mentions that the allies didn't have the capability at the time to mount more raids of that ferocity).
I don’t think it was that controversial at the time. There was debate of course,
If there was debate then there was controversy.
I specifically remember the guy who said something along the lines of “I only killed one person in Vietnam, that was the first one, the rest were all just ‘gooks’ or ‘VC’ or whatever”.
Dannyh, the guy is John Musgrave and his insights throughout are gut wrenching. The one you quote is particularly poignant. He describes what he did in his head as a strategy that would keep him alive. I was literally in tears watching the last episode of that series.
I seem to remember the yanks were estimating casualties of c 400,000 to defeat Japan by ‘conventional’ means
The USA are still using the stockpile of purple hearts that they had prepared for the invasion of Japan.
In addition the casualties from the individual atomic bombs was fewer than that of the fire bombing of Tokyo (the Japanese use of wooden buildings making them very vulnerable). The difference was it was just one plane rather than a fleet.
It was absolutely the right thing to do.
Cobblers. The purpose of the atomic bombs was a show of strength from one of the two emerging super powers.
This very sobering thread is a good reminder on the importance of smashing fascist ideas before they take root
Fascism: "radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce".
Care to name any politician in a liberal democracy that comes even close to this? Russian, China, Turkey maybe, but not the USA or the UK. Trump's an old man nearly half way through his term with zero control of the media or even his own party.
Are Britain or the USA showing any sign at all of becoming a dictatorship? Both have the weakest governments in living memory.
Britain's right wing extremists are literally a handful of mindless skin heads. They're showing no sign of any kind of increased support, quite the opposite they're too busy infighting.
The Nazi were serious, and they came to power on the back of mass starvation and WW1. Liberal democracies don't just gradually become Fascist states.
When one of the Political Parties has a private Army that outnumbers the UK Army the panic can start.
In addition the casualties from the individual atomic bombs was fewer than that of the fire bombing of Tokyo (the Japanese use of wooden buildings making them very vulnerable). The difference was it was just one plane rather than a fleet.
Very much this. Japanese towns were made of paper and wood. The USA was annihilating city after city with comparable casualty numbers.
Cobblers. The purpose of the atomic bombs was a show of strength from one of the two emerging super powers.
Because the USA wouldn't have been remotely interested in defeating an bitter enemy that had killed up to 10 million people in China and elsewhere with every weapon available. Japan were a higher priority than Russia at that time.
I fly to Hanover then travel by train to Bielefeld, done it for years. The tonnage of bombs, the devastation of the civilian population was immense along this route.
The journey ends before the viaduct, destroyed by the biggest non atomic bomb, until last year. Most British people do not have a clue what happened to German civilians in ww2.
This is an excellent book that examines this exact question.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/mar/04/highereducation.news
This is an excellent book that examines this exact question.
Crap review though, in the first paragraph it conflates war crime with a moral judgement. The two are completely different. Dresden was a war crime because one of the objectives was to block roads with refugees. That's illegal.
Was it morally wrong? I don't think so, other people will think it was. Legality and morality are two different things.
Cobblers. The purpose of the atomic bombs was a show of strength from one of the two emerging super powers.
Is an alternative view.
If you had been Truman, what would you have done?
These are the kind of conversations we have to keep alive if we are going to stay critical and thoughtful.
Another example I feel chimes well the notion that the road to hell is paved with good intentions:
Mogadishu 1993. The Americans are all piss and vinegar about being fully involved in UN peacekeeping (or at least as much as they ever were). They end up in Somalia with unreliable partners in a UN peacekeeping role. They get snagged in an absolute balls up involving a couple of lucky hits with RPGs on tail rotors and keep doubling down to rescue their personnel. Eighteen dead if I remember. National outcry. Pull back from peacekeeping in future, we’re being mugged off etc.
One year later, Rwanda. A UN peacekeeping force largely denuded of US might and swagger has to basically stand by and watch a medieval genocide being conducted largely with clubs and machetes. A bit further down the line a UN armored convey is stopped by a single bamboo pole on a road just around the hillside from Srebrenica. Without real US commitment the peacekeeper’s bluff is called and they halt, despite the fact they are in armored cars versus guys in DPMs with assault rifles.
I don’t have the answers, but the short-termism of a lot of this stuff is like the definition of insanity!
Ultimately, there is no morality in war, there’s no point in getting involved in it. People will do what people do. When push comes to shove, there are no rules.
Kinda this......^^
Fascism: “radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce”.
Went to look at a house today in Tuscany up in the hills behind Massa Marittima. The old boy selling the place, a retired medical doctor of about 65 years, had a load of photos of Mussolini and of fascist matches in the 50s/60s. Also know if a few other older Italians who have Mussolini on their phones or still carry an old fasces keyring with them (Google fasces-there comes the word fascism). Really no wonder that the new Italian government is there.... Still a strong underlying feeling here.
Hamburg destruction WW2
Yeah, but, yeah, but..... They started it.
The GF's mum has told me stories about her dad never having spoken to his wife or children about his time in the Eastern Front. When friends or family got together all the men/veterans would sit themselves in another room and talk amongst themselves.
I've talked to people who said that they were told at school that if they did not behave they too would be sent to Dachau..... And that was before the war had begun.
The general population knew what was going on. There is no doubt about it.
If those people in Hamburg were working in the factories, or if those in Cologne heard about it and it was bad for morale, then so be it.
