[Closed] "We were supposed to be the good guys...we ended up being worse than they were."

Yup, that broke me out of my normal morning doze pretty quick.

Just watched that, what a lad. Bordering on controversial for the beeb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone

7.39am for the interviews with him and German survivors.

It affected Kurt Vonnegut badly

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Yes. Caught that earlier. "We were supposed to be the good guys".

People are capable of justifying pretty much anything which upon reflection seems just plain wrong.

Hopefully history is taught in a well rounded open manner and we can learn from it - sadly I doubt it will make much difference as we drop bombs on random suspects in the middle east.

yourguitarhero - It was someone on here who recommended that book. May have been your good self. Its brilliant!

Will give that a watch later

In the meantime, an interesting take on the good guys/bad guys thing

25,000 civilians killed

madness

@nick 15,000 French died in friendly fire during the Normandy landings, mainly as a result of the allies bombing the wrong places. The numbers of civilian deaths in Russia is staggering, 15 million ! War is madness.

EDIT: thanks for the link, btw

yup, we were definitely worse than the germans and the Japs - look at all the death camps we had, oooh, and dont forget the forced labour of all those POW's we starved to death.

Yes it is. Made worse perhaps by the notion that Dresden had no tactical or strategic importance at that stage of the war, we knew it was full of POW, civilians and refugees, and we still dropped bombs on it.

2500 tonnes of HE and nearly 1500 tonnes of incendiaries.

Dresden was terrible.

War is terrible.

I can understand how terrible it was for those bomber crews when they discovered what they had done.

However, I agree with Smudger. We didn't have death camps, we didn't perform medical experiments on children, we didn't starve and work POW's to death.

If the Nazi's had had the 1000's of Lancaster bombers in 1940 what do you think would of happened to the UK?

War is hell - I'm not being flippant. I'd just like to say that we cannot judge what happened then as right or wrong as we have not lived through the experience.

That said the bombing of Dresden was a low point - not the lowest but something that we should never forget 😥

My view is the quote from the veteran is more about the shattering of his own personal self-image - that he was a member of a military that were somehow above these kind of atrocities, rather than down in the mire with the Germans and the Japanese.

His experience is unusual for a combatant - he dehumanised the Germans for five years as he fought them, then found himself at the heart of a city bustling with civilians, saw their humanity, then watched them (and some of his comrades) detonated and burned alive by an assault designed to maximise civilian casualties.

It offers a perspective on your own side that not many get to see.

Its quite interesting to see some people are still trying to justify it.

Rather than learning from it and clearly stating it was wrong and striving to ensure we don't do that sort of thing again.

I'm not holding my breath though. I think "civilised country's" are under a thin veneer of decency which will evaporate at the slightest suggestion.

i vivisted Dresden last summer (albeit in the rain) and naturally as an Englishman wanted to find out a biot about the bombings.

Dresden had no tactical or strategic importance at that stage of the war, we knew it was full of POW, civilians and refugees, and we still dropped bombs on it.

psychological, innit. and the russians were advancing from the east. bombing was meant to spread about between other large towns in the area, but due to weather conditions Dresden was the only visible target.

Dresden was terrible.

before the Bombing it was nicknamed the Florence of the Elbe. a university and old court (Saxony) town without any major industry, although Zeiss, large chemichal plants and other industries are nearby.

now Dresden is a bit of a shit hole. walk 3 minutes from the touristy innenstadt (inner-town for want of a better word) and it is a shit hole. Lots of NPD and AfD posters, oh, and PEGIDA heartland. the neos used to have amassive meet up each year on the anniversary of the bombing, crying out about the injustice without seeing the irony of the whole situation.

not somewhere i'm going to rush back to. although a lot of its current problems are due to its recent soviet past and (also a a consequence of that) the slightly retarded, small minded view East Germans have of the world. (was struck by the number of memorials i saw dedicated to people with "foreign" sounding names who had been beaten and kicked to death in the last 20 or so years.

personally i don't see it as wrong, but i'm very much of an eye for an eye type. had they not (the Germans in general) been swpt up in some fascist fury and started attacking every nation on their border then their towns and cities wouldn't have been destroyed. as said above, if they had the means to do in 1940 what we and the US did in 1945, they would have, no doubt about it.

and in some respects the german nation has in a roundabout way profited massively from their "moment of madness". rather than having to mend and make do as Britain and other Allie nations did, they had a blank canvas for nice new infrastructure, lots of help for industry following on from the war and have essentially, 60 years or so later come out on top of Europe.

I'd just like to say that we cannot judge what happened then as right or wrong as we have not lived through the experience

This. Not justifying it, with hindsight it was obviously wrong, they should have known that. But a "total war" scenario is something none of us have experienced, thank god.

But both sides killed tens, hundreds of thousands of civilians. It always happens in war. It's horrendous.

you can wring your 20-20 hindsighted hands all you like, but if it saved one allied life by demoralising/terrorising the german civilian/military population even just a tiny bit more than they were already terrorised/demoralised by that point in the war, then who the **** are you to try to second guess the actions of the guys running the war.

The German border was still intact at this point, the ardennes offensive in January showed they still had teeth.

As someone else pointed out, war is hell. dont fight fair, fight to win.

The revisionist version of history that Dresden bore no strategic importance is not borne out by the discussions at the time, including the fact that an assault on rail centres was considered to be of huge importance to the Russian advance, Marshall Konievs armies were only about seventy miles to the East and vulnerable to counter-attack, plus the Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex was one of the key targets requested for destruction by General Antonov at the Argonaut conference.

Some interesting reading here:

Finally, In the words of Sir Arthur Harris:

[i]The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things."[/i]

I'm tumescent just thinking about winning the war (and one world cup)...and by sometimes beating the weevil Jerries at their own game. Please don't flaccidify it with historical revisionism.

I wonder if the Russians beat themselves up over the civilian atrocities they committed as they went through Germany?

Er wait a minute..

I know a lot of it wasn't reported due to restrictions at the time, but some of you apologists perhaps should have been around Bristol (unreported) Plymouth(also unreported) not to mention Coventry and London during the Blitz. I'm sorry they sowed the wind as the famous quote goes, their turn was to reap the whirlwind, they deserved it you couldn't have had what occurred in Germany during the third Reich without an awful lot of compliance from a willing populace and at that time the War was still far from over.

War is terrible, but 'they' started it twice, need I also remind everyone who first dropped bombs on who? From the Zeppelins in WW1 to the V1 & V2's still raining down at that time, I won't hear anything bad being said of those bomber crews, that and I know/knew some of them personally.

21st Century liberal hand wringing revisionists born in the peace and security their sacrifice provided..

That's better. Erection restored.

need I also remind everyone who first dropped bombs on who?

The RAF bombed Germany before the Luftwaffe bombed the UK.

Not that it makes that much difference, just thought I would be a bit pedantic.

i'm sorry they sowed the wind as the famous quote goes, their turn was to reap the whirlwind, they deserved it you couldn't have had what occurred in Germany during the third Reich without an awful lot of compliance from a willing populace and at that time the War was still far from over.

quite... have spoken to many Germans that are old enough to remember either being there or growing up with the Nazis. if kids didn't behave then it was a common threat (around the Munich area at least) from parents and teachers that the kid would be sent to Dachau.

the people of that time were not completely ignorant of the fact that people were disappearing never to be seen again. perhaps not every one knew the full extent of the camps, but a great many did.

watched that documentary about the liberation of the camps (not to be watched whilst having dinner or with the little'uns snuggled up next to you!). the Allies brought local into the camps to show them the extent of what was going on. many were already aware as they had been using slave labour within their towns and businesses. now you cannot argue that people were ignorant of the camps.

there were a many Germans that spoke up against fascism, albeit too few and too late.

what is that old quote....

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

Truly horrendous, especially when you remember that Dresden was intentionally kept pristine so that when we did eventually bomb it, we could accurately gauge the damage that could be wrought in one raid.

There's no excuse or justification for bombing civilians.

Also, my father survived [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhurst_Road_School_Disaster ]this.[/url]

He recalls that the pilot was waving out of the cockpit and that the children were waving back at him moments before he turned and dropped his single bomb.

Some time later, Dad recalls being told in school assembly that the RAF had informed the headmaster that the RAF had launched a reprisal raid on a German school. Even at eight years old, my father realised that this was utter, utter madness.

So now some of us are justifying it because............well you can see lots of "justifications" in the above threads.

All written by people with hindsight and a modern view.

So, based on that what hope is there of avoiding this sort of thing in the future - none, Id say.

gobuchul - Member
need I also remind everyone who first dropped bombs on who?
The RAF bombed Germany before the Luftwaffe bombed the UK.

Not that it makes that much difference, just thought I would be a bit pedantic.

Whole swathes of the East Coast and the town I live in were destroyed by Zeppelin attack.

Bombing civilians = German Tactic and I very much doubt the RAF tactically bombed civilian targets initially in WW2 neither in reality did Germany it was airfields and convoys and the first London attack was an error as we all now know and Churchills bomb Berlin response effectively saved the RAF's airfields by diverting bombs to London, but what ever at that stage numerically the Germans had far more Aircraft and it was a very close run thing.

My dad was a wireless operator in a Wellington during the war. He was involved in (and survived) many raids. He wasn't involved in the big Dresden raid as he was -by that time- an instructor.
However, he never once openly had doubts about what he did or felt the need to apologise at the time or at any point later to anyone and I'm carrying on that tradition on his behalf.

Do you know what - we did it, with hindsight we shouldn't have done it, but we can't "undo" it.

21st century revisionist handwringing on either side won't help the victims.

Off the top of my head, First Luftwaffe ww2 attack on british soil, october 1939, nine bomber raid on Royal Navy base at rosyth

First british bombs on German soil were in March 1940 with a raid on a seaplane base on island of Sylt, in retaliation for a Luftwaffe raid on the Orkneys a few days earlier that killed a civilian.

No part of history is beyond critical examination.

The raid may have destroyed infrastructure but the use of incendiaries was completely and utterly wrong.

'Because they did it' is no reason to do something.

No wringing of hands here - that's just a lazy way to label people who disagree with you.

http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/

Good podcast on the subject here

We didn't have death camps, we didn't perform medical experiments on children, we didn't starve and work POW's to death.

These weren't known about at the time, though.

The use of "we" bothers me too. Unless anyone on here is 90 years old, "we" weren't involved in any of this. The 20th Century was a chain of bad decision after bad decision, which led to millions upon millions of people being fed into the meatgrinder of total war. Playing a game of which side was better than the other is nonsensical.

In Dresden, thousands and thousands of innocent civilians died horribly for no good reason. This is what hapens in war, it happened on both sides, and in both cases the blame lies not with the airmen ordered to carry out the raid, it lies with the people who made the bad decisions that led to that situation.

This is the horrible thing about total war - it doesn't just kill people, it kills morals too. Anything goes, winning at any cost is what matters.

The BBC rewrites history again and forgets the most important bits such as there was a war to win by fair means and foul if necessary - a question of survival. Bombs in Dresden saved allied lives on the fronts, as did everything done to weaken the Nazi war effort.

My grandfather was sent to Coventry after the first raid and arrived just in time for the second. I visited Heilbronn (which was also leveled) with a German friend and we discussed the bombings with his attitude being, yes, what was done to Heilbronn wasn't good but given what the Nazis were doing, justified. You'll struggle to find many Germans to claim they were on the side of right and good in WWII and if you do find the odd one they'll probably be Neo-Nazi.

Technically wrong you need to go back to WW1, Zeppelins first dropped bombs on defenceless citizens to undermine moral of the troops fighting in the trenches.

The zeppelin bombings weren't in the same league though and quite a lot of time had passed between them and ww2 - bombardment was something to expect but the nature of it wasn't understood.

We've don't give Chamberlain enough credit for delaying the UK's entry into the war - that delay was crucial in terms of preparation. We knew arial bombardment would be a part of it but had no reference to what it would really be like other than it would be worse than ww1 - but by what magnitude? There was genuine fear that civilian casualties would run into millions in the UK - not just over an (un-known) duration of a war but in just the opening days and weeks.

In that period of delay we evacuated children from the cities, built spitfires and lancasters and anti-aircraft defences and civilian shelters and so on. We started ready.

In terms of the quote in the OP 'we ended up being worse then they were' I can understand that emotion in that moment - being on the receiving end at the moment when the nature of war changed and at a time when what 'they' were doing was widely unknown. We didn't know what 'they' were doing til the war was over.

But in the summing up the Allied countries lost war 2:1 in military fatalities and 10:1 in terms of civilian dead - 45million allied civilians v 4 million Axis civilians. Focusing on any isolated events of the war - Dresden - The Dambusters - Hiroshima needs be done in context of all of the war.

The Germans have defnitely coped far better with losing than the British have with winning.

It's history. We are supposed to learn from it, not repeat it. What we learn from Dresden is that firebombing civilians is a horrific thing to do, no matter how it's justified.

Royal Navy base at rosyth

raid on a seaplane base on island of Sylt, in retaliation for a Luftwaffe raid on the Orkneys

Military targets.

very much doubt the RAF tactically bombed civilian targets initially in WW2

The RAF bombed civilian targets before the Luftwaffe. It was this that caused Hitler to demand they started bombing UK cities in retaliation, this is considered to be what saved the RAF and allowed them to win the Battle of Britain.

FWIW I am not suggesting that we were the "aggressors" and believe that the "They sowed the wind" quote has a lot of truth in it.

Churchill was a great believer in Total War, if the RAF were capable in 1940 he would have carpet bombed all of Germany and intended to use poison gas if the Germans landed on the UK. Fair enough I think.

built spitfires and lancasters

We certainly didn't build any Lancasters in the 1930's!

Churchill was a **** of the highest order. Arguably that's necessary in a military commander, but he wasn't a nice guy.

The RAF bombed civilian targets before the Luftwaffe. It was this that caused Hitler to demand they started bombing UK cities in retaliation

Arguably it was a case of starting the war you're ready for. We expected a war of bombardment civilian attrition and we were ready for it - you can't then allow the war to take another direction.

Churchill was a * of the highest order.

Really?

Is that because he was a bit more right wing than you?

Or are you talking about some of the dubious decisions he made when dealing if civil unrest?

I would be very interested in hearing your argument to justify calling him a *.

Churchill was a **** of the highest order. Arguably that's necessary in a military commander, but he wasn't a nice guy.

Was auch immer Churchill war , Gott sei Dank war er die descisions machen annd du Ben 🙂

These weren't known about at the time, though.

Auchwitz had already been liberated by the time of the Dresden raid...

Is that because he was a bit more right wing than you?

Almost everyone is more right wing than me 😉

He wanted to gas the Kurds. He had racist attitudes towards black Kenyans, Palestinians, Indians, and he wasn't particularly fond of the Jews either.

And yes, he sent soldiers and tanks to quell a peaceful civilian protest in Glasgow.