Firebombing of Dresden during World War II

[sedonaman]

I am not up on all the history (nor did I read the link) but:

Catechism

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."110 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

The question I have about this is whether it was written after the fact. WMDs didn’t always exist, and I suspect the CCC was modified to include this after they were developed and used. In such a case, how can we hold people responsible for something that would have been a future sin?

 

[jilly4ski]

Errr…how so? The nation that couldn’t cross the English channel was supposed to conquer the world? I always have to laugh when an American said, “We could all be speaking German”. The idea of them crossing the Atlantic is mind-bogglingly silly.

The Germans, with no real air force and a joke of a navy, were not really that much of a threat beyond central Europe’s plains. Not to mention Hitler was sickly and the country would have collapsed when his toads fought over his throne anyway.

As far as I’m concerned the real tragedy is that the Soviets won and actually did make about half the world suffer, starve, and die for some 60 years.

To stay kind of topic Dresden had no real strategic, military, or economic value. Berlin (like London) was a valid military target for either side for obvious reasons.

It is true the Germans were not able to cross the channel, however, the British benefited from some very fortuitous German mistakes. One being, there was no real plan when the bombings began. The commanders all had different objectives and thus none worked. The British has also taken control over the German spy network and was thus able to both avoid and counter German measures and leak false information. The Germans has little to no information about the British RAF and could not gather information about the success of their raids. From what I understand.

@Monte, that is very kind, I am actually very interested in WWI right now, because of another program I was watching. It seems to be a much less talked about war, thus less information about it. I realize that while I had a really good education 20 century history was not covered very well (besides WWII and the holocaust). All I really know about the war is vaguely what started it, when it started and ended, that it was a trench war, that chemical warfare was employed, and who won. Maybe because you can’t really portray the Kaiser as this horrible person who murdered millions of people just because.

Anyways the NOVA program really sucked me in, and it was very fascinating. The photo interpreters used overlapping photos and special lenses to see the landscape in 3D, thus spotting more than they actually would have, (like the real German ship hiding on the coast of Norway, and the decoy made with tires in the middle of the fjord).

 

[sedonaman]

In any event, the fire-bombing of entire cities would be unconscionable today when a stray American bullet’s chipping some plaster off a Holy Dome of the Rock somewhere is condemned incessantly as a war crime of the worst sort by the Leftist press, triggering a full-blown congressional investigation followed by the prosecution of the lowly soldier “responsible” for such a heinous act. :yup:

 

[Geist]

Eventually - and perhaps even quicker than Soviet communism - Nazism would collapse.

Peace
James

We see this the same way. The ideal solution (I know hindsight is 20/20) would have been to let the Nazis and Soviets butcher each other sans outside interference.

Ideally the Germans would have won, since anyone even passingly familiar with Nazi leadership knew how traitorous and self-promoting they were. Their system (Führerprinzip) could not have survived the death of Hitler as the USSR survived the death of Stalin.

Can anyone honestly imagine Hermann Göring keeping that train wreck going?

With the Lend-Lease we actively supported the USSR even prior to officially entering the war, so I do think America has some collective responsibility for future Soviet atrocities (inside and outside the USSR) since we actively enabled their victory. Supporting one evil to beat a slightly different evil seems like an immoral choice to me.

 

[triumphguy]

To be fair no-one knew just how bad Soviet Russia was at the time.

 

[Tenofovir]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

As a Catholic how do you feel about this? Necessary or war crime?

Way more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo. You do know that? Of course they were culturally different - although back in 1939 my country was at war with Germany but Japan never declared war on us although they were Axis and Hitler staged a faux attack on Germany as provocation for war. Just based on that I feel a degree of empathy to Japan and also bringing in the USA into the war did save our butts, thanks to Japan.
Unfortunate from the POV of the US and I recognize that.

 

[Tenofovir]

Much truth in what you say above. Hitler himself said he was a coward on the water. The Wehrmacht had no real amphibious doctrine, and while they managed to do OK against an unprepared country like Norway, it would have been another matter entirely for them to try to invade across the channel or across the Atlantic.

On land, in Europe, the German forces had no equal. It took the combined power of UK, USA, USSR, France, Poland, Cananda, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc to defeat them.

In a completely alternate scenario where everything goes Hitler’s way where England is driven from the war and the USSR collapses, we have a world not too different from the historical one except instead of the USSR being the “Evil Empire”, it would be the Nazi Empire. I discount Japan because, even with a Nazi victory in Europe, if Japan goes to war against the US…It’s lights out for Japan.

Thankfully not. I would not be alive, being an Untermensch. At least with the Soviets, they let most of the ordinary people survive. But from your point of view, it wouldn’t matter, true.

I’m quite sure the Nazi’s would seek to use the same tactics to export fascism that the Russians did communism. They would seek to subvert various governments where-ever in the world they could. The US would oppose this in every way possible…

False. Nazis were local Socialists. Soviets were international Socialists. The two doctrines were different. The Soviet Union as a goal from its funding had as its duty the unification of all workers and peasants across the globe. The Nazis had no such ideals. They were not after the Americas, Asia or most of Africa. They didn’t even want to fight Britain and France. They were happy building a greater Germany. After extermination of most of the Slavs in Europe they would settle down and grow their empire. Since the Socialist Germans are more productive than the Communist Soviets I think they would have lasted far longer. And with the whole of Europe under the German boot, there would be no incentive from the US to fight a war in Europe or oppose Germany. Peace would be signed and trade would go on. You know like the grain stolen from Ukrainian peasants in 1933/34 in the Holodomor genocide of 6-8 million Ukrainians, was sold to the United States. And I’m not blaiming anyone here for doing business after all the West did business with Eastern Europe. Coca Cola was licensed in Eastern Europe for example.

Eventually - and perhaps even quicker than Soviet communism - Nazism would collapse.

Less likely. Also the Germans treated West Europeans relatively well. It was not the same sort of treatment that the Soviets gave to people they conquered. Common culture, common values etc would prevail. It would last longer. Perhaps democracy would ultimately settle in.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

On land, in Europe, the German forces had no equal. It took the combined power of UK, USA, USSR, France, Poland, Cananda, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc to defeat them.

Less likely. Also the Germans treated West Europeans relatively well. It was not the same sort of treatment that the Soviets gave to people they conquered. Common culture, common values etc would prevail. It would last longer. Perhaps democracy would ultimately settle in.

Friends of mine lived in France under German occupation. They were farmers. The Germans imposed an 80% tax; the French just almost starved. The food was shipped back to Germany.

 

[sedonaman]

To be fair no-one knew just how bad Soviet Russia was at the time.

No thanks to people like Walter Duranty en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty .

 

[Tenofovir]

Friends of mine lived in France under German occupation. They were farmers. The Germans imposed an 80% tax; the French just almost starved. The food was shipped back to Germany.

Because it was wartime. After the war things would improve. But at least the French weren’t routinely rounded up in the streets and shipped off to the Reich as slave labour (my grandmother) and I doubt there was a death sentence for discovering that one had an undeclared animal (my great grandfather was shot dead).

Sorry I should have compared to the Soviets. Our land was confiscated - well that is we had to sell it for the equivalent value of a $100 or so. If you did not agree to the sale, they just took it. That was in the 1970s, definitely during peacetime.

 

[kama3]

The question I have about this is whether it was written after the fact. WMDs didn’t always exist, and I suspect the CCC was modified to include this after they were developed and used. In such a case, how can we hold people responsible for something that would have been a future sin?

I see no moral difference between dropping on someone 20 kilotons of TNT in one package versus dropping on them 1000 packages with 20 tons TNT each. The first one counts as a WMD, the latter does not, although the effect is the same. (Secondary, WMD-specific considerations notwithstanding).

Your statement looks like approaching morality like one would approach the law. Nullum crimen sine lege, it is not a sin, unless CCC says so and lex retro non agit, it’s not a sin until a new edition of CCC is published. Well, maybe, as Bill Maher put it, one should go to the Sacrament of Reconcilliation with a lawyer.

That’s crazy. God gave us all moral intuition and there is no excuse not to use it.

 

[sedonaman]

I see no moral difference between dropping on someone 20 kilotons of TNT in one package versus dropping on them 1000 packages with 20 tons TNT each. The first one counts as a WMD, the latter does not, although the effect is the same. (Secondary, WMD-specific considerations notwithstanding).

Your statement looks like approaching morality like one would approach the law. Nullum crimen sine lege, it is not a sin, unless CCC says so and lex retro non agit, it’s not a sin until a new edition of CCC is published. Well, maybe, as Bill Maher put it, one should go to the Sacrament of Reconcilliation with a lawyer.

That’s crazy. God gave us all moral intuition and there is no excuse not to use it.

Is there a Latin term for “judging yesterday by today’s standards”?

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Because it was wartime. After the war things would improve. But at least the French weren’t routinely rounded up in the streets and shipped off to the Reich as slave labour (my grandmother) and I doubt there was a death sentence for discovering that one had an undeclared animal (my great grandfather was shot dead).

Sorry I should have compared to the Soviets. Our land was confiscated - well that is we had to sell it for the equivalent value of a $100 or so. If you did not agree to the sale, they just took it. That was in the 1970s, definitely during peacetime.

Actually, the men in occupied countries were routinely rounded up and put into labor camps.

I found this in Wiki under German labor camps

Another category of internment camp in Nazi Germany was the Labor camp (Arbeitslager). They housed civilians from the occupied countries that were being used to work in industry, on the farms, in quarries, in mines and on the railroads. Approximately 12,000,000 forced laborers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy inside the Nazi Germany.[42][43]

Although conditions were harsh and food and medical care inadequate, they were not concentration camps. More workers died in them from Allied bombs (often, prisoners were condemned to digging up and defusing unexploded Allied bombs as a matter of punishment for stealing extra rations of food) or industrial accidents than from the difficult living conditions.[citation needed]

The workers were mostly young and taken from the occupied countries, predominantly eastern Europe, but also many French and Italian. They were sometimes taken willingly, more frequently as a result of lapanka in Polish, or rafle in French language, in which people were collected on the street or in their home by police drives.

However, for often very minor infractions of the rules, workers were imprisoned in special Arbeitserziehungslager, German for Worker re-education camp, (abbreviated to AEL and sometimes referred to as Straflager).[44] These punishment camps were operated by the Gestapo and many of the inmates were executed or died from the brutal treatment.

 

[JRKH]

We see this the same way. The ideal solution (I know hindsight is 20/20) would have been to let the Nazis and Soviets butcher each other sans outside interference.

I don’t know that I particularly agree with this. I believe the result of this would have been a communist Block reaching to the English channel. But that is just my opinion.

Ideally the Germans would have won, since anyone even passingly familiar with Nazi leadership knew how traitorous and self-promoting they were. Their system (Führerprinzip) could not have survived the death of Hitler as the USSR survived the death of Stalin.

If the Germans had defeated the Soviet Union, Europe would have wound up in a very sad state for the very reason you cite above. No one in the Nazi Hierarchy was going to be able to hold it together for very long and the “palace coups” would only open the door for either greater instability on the continent, or harsher, more repressive regimes.

With the Lend-Lease we actively supported the USSR even prior to officially entering the war, so I do think America has some collective responsibility for future Soviet atrocities (inside and outside the USSR) since we actively enabled their victory. Supporting one evil to beat a slightly different evil seems like an immoral choice to me.

Again, I disagree with the idea that we are somehow share responsibility for the actions inside the Soviet Union postwar.
The ones responsible for those atrocities are those who perpetrated them. Not the government, but the people who ran the government…

Peace
James

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I don’t know that I particularly agree with this. I believe the result of this would have been a communist Block reaching to the English channel. But that is just my opinion.

If the Germans had defeated the Soviet Union, Europe would have wound up in a very sad state for the very reason you cite above. No one in the Nazi Hierarchy was going to be able to hold it together for very long and the “palace coups” would only open the door for either greater instability on the continent, or harsher, more repressive regimes.

Again, I disagree with the idea that we are somehow share responsibility for the actions inside the Soviet Union postwar.
The ones responsible for those atrocities are those who perpetrated them. Not the government, but the people who ran the government…

Peace
James

The Nazi’s were very successful in simply rounding up their opponents or potential opponents and putting them into labor camps or having them guillotined.

People in the United States knew about Communist atrocities inside Russia and the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. It was openly discussed.

One of the West’s and the U.S.'s big mistakes was extending diplomatic recognition to the USSR because it basically gave the green light to money flowing into the Soviet Union.

The “money laundering” role of Julius Hammer and his son, Armand* Hammer, was widely known. The Soviets were desperate for money and used the Hammers to sell smuggled diamonds and Russian heirlooms in the West. You need to study and research how the Soviets issued oil development rights and concessions to maximize their cash flow.

theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/armand_hammer.htm **

You need to study how the Soviets financed their “coup” and their expansion.

• Hammer sometimes claimed that his father had named him after a character, Armand Duval, in La Dame aux Camélias, a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. In fact, according to multiple biographers, Hammer was named after the “Arm and Hammer” symbol of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), in which his father, a committed socialist, had a leadership role at one time.[8] (After the Russian Revolution, a part of the SLP under Julius’ leadership split off to become a founding element of the Communist Party USA.) Later in his life, Hammer would admit the communist tie himself.[2]

** Excerpt:

His father, Julius, a Russian immigrant, linked up with Vladimir Lenin at a socialist conference in Berlin in 1907 and “agreed to become part of the elite underground cadre that Lenin would depend on to change the world.” A physician by training, Julius built a small drug chain into Allied Drug and Chemical, purveyor of skin creams and herbal medicines.

When the Bolsheviks seized Russia in 1919, Julius worked with Ludwig Martens, Lenin’s de facto “ambassador” in the United States. Julius used Allied, of which Martens was the covert half-owner, to launder sales proceeds of smuggled diamonds — money that financed a revolutionary Communist Labor Party (CLP) dedicated to “overthrowing the government, expropriating banks, and establishing a proletarian dictatorship.” Julius held card No. 1. The CLP eventually became the Communist Party USA and part of the Communist International (Comintern).

On another level, Julius used Allied Drug to ship equipment to the Soviet Union for which the U.S. government refused export licenses. Julius certified that the shipments were bound for Latvia; in fact, they continued on to Russia. The Soviets were so pleased with Julius’ services that they offered Allied a trading concession that stood to earn him millions.

…

Hammer’s cover story was that he helped feed starving Bolsheviks. This was a lie. The Soviets, from Lenin on down, saw him as the ultimate “useful tool” in breaking the Soviet Union out of economic isolation and in providing a conduit through which Moscow could finance espionage and subversion abroad. Mr. Epstein tells in gripping detail how the Soviets used the willing Hammer as a financial errand boy.

Lenin’s grand scheme was to “advance the image of a non-threatening and potentially profitable Soviet Russia.” Lenin relied on capitalist greed to make U.S. German and British businesses vie for Russian concessions and to force their governments to lift trade restrictions. When one of Lenin’s aides asked where he would obtain the rope with which to hang the capitalists, he replied famously, “They’ll supply us with it.”

Lenin used Hammer as his opening pawn in this economic chess game, offering him an abandoned asbestos mine in return for a promise to bring in wheat. Everyone concerned realized the mine was worthless, but it gave the Soviets a means to transfer money to Comintern agents. Lenin issued orders to" make note of Armand Hammer and in every way help him on my behalf if he applies." There were admonitions to keep the relationship secret lest there be a “fatal effect” on Hammer.

Expansion was swift. Hammer persuaded automaker Henry Ford to move into the Soviet Union to develop the “Fordson” tractor. There were fur deals, and a Hammer pencil factory was given a Soviet monopoly. The Soviets permitted Hammer sweetheart deals on sales abroad of precious czarist art. (When Hammer depleted his stock of Faberge eggs, no problem: He counterfeited them in New York.)

 

[Monte_RCMS]

[continuing the excerpt]

The most important element was Allied Drug, which acted as the Soviets’ de facto banker in the United States, laundering millions of Soviet dollars through sham transactions. Hammer eventually made millions in such enterprises as liquor, oil refining and art. The constant element, according to Mr. Epstein, was bribery and sharp dealing, including his capstone deal, the acquisition of Libyan oil rights for his Occidental Petroleum Co.

Hammer never deceived the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, who in 1919 began creating a massive file, “61-280 — Armand Hammer, Internal Security — Russia,” scrawling across the front, “a rotten bunch.” Hoover knew that Hammer financed Comintern agents but did not move, knowing that “it is often more profitable not to arrest a detected courier” when there is no assurance that the replacement will be detected.

Hammer recognized the utility of buying politicians, and here Mr. Epstein understates one of his juicier stories: how the impecunious Senator Albert Gore Sr. got the wealth to enable him to live in splendor in Washington’s Fairfax Hotel and to send son, Al Jr., now the vice president, to the pricey St. Albans school.

In 1950, Hammer made Mr. Gore “a partner in a cattle-breeding business, from which the Senator made a substantial profit.” Thereafter, Gore was Hammer’s designated door-opener in official Washington. When Mr. Gore retired, Hammer made him president of Occidental’s coal division, where he “earned more than $500,000 a year.”

Son Al next put the family’s Senate seat at Hammer’s service. At the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan, Junior managed for Hammer to be seated in a section reserved for senators. Hammer lurked in the doorway, hoping to glad-hand the president, but Mr. Reagan brushed by him without a glance, and with reason. Years earlier, Alexandre de Marenches, the head of French intelligence, had warned him that Hammer was a Soviet “agent of influence.”

 

[JRKH]

The Nazi’s were very successful in simply rounding up their opponents or potential opponents and putting them into labor camps or having them guillotined.

People in the United States knew about Communist atrocities inside Russia and the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. It was openly discussed.

One of the West’s and the U.S.'s big mistakes was extending diplomatic recognition to the USSR because it basically gave the green light to money flowing into the Soviet Union.

The “money laundering” role of Julius Hammer and his son, Armand* Hammer, was widely known. The Soviets were desperate for money and used the Hammers to sell smuggled diamonds and Russian heirlooms in the West. You need to study and research how the Soviets issued oil development rights and concessions to maximize their cash flow.

theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/armand_hammer.htm **

You need to study how the Soviets financed their “coup” and their expansion.
…

You may be right on some of this…Who knows…One thing I do note historically is that:
a) The US recognized and interracted with the USSR and the USSR eventually collapsed.
b) The US refused to recognize and interact with Red China for many years after the fall of the mainland. Red China still stands.
c) The US has consistently refused to recognize the Castro government. That government still stands.

Now - I am surely oversimplifying here, but perhaps, just perhaps, if you want the people of you enemy to know the Truth, particularly when the field of battle is not political, but socio-economic, then it is necessary for there to be socio-economic interaction between them.
Sort of like Jesus eating with the sinners because it is the sinners who needed the truth.

That of course is just my very humble opinion.

Peace
James

 

[Monte_RCMS]

You may be right on some of this…Who knows…One thing I do note historically is that:
a) The US recognized and interracted with the USSR and the USSR eventually collapsed.
b) The US refused to recognize and interact with Red China for many years after the fall of the mainland. Red China still stands.
c) The US has consistently refused to recognize the Castro government. That government still stands.

Now - I am surely oversimplifying here, but perhaps, just perhaps, if you want the people of you enemy to know the Truth, particularly when the field of battle is not political, but socio-economic, then it is necessary for there to be socio-economic interaction between them.
Sort of like Jesus eating with the sinners because it is the sinners who needed the truth.

That of course is just my very humble opinion.

Peace
James

U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union was / had been “containment” preferred by the State Department and based on an essay by George Kennan.

Containment was extremely controversial as being too defensive. If you read all of the books and articles on " Venona " , you will learn that there were literally hundreds of Soviet agents within the State Department and other important influential U.S. government agencies. Work on Venona was stopped by Bill Clinton in 1995 and available work to that date was declassified. Private individuals have continued the work and identifications of Soviet agents continue to trickle out into public view. See work by Haynes and Klehr. Also see work by Romerstein and Breindel.

“Rollback” was briefly favored but not acted upon.

future.state.gov/when/timeline/1946_cold_war/kennan_and_containment.html

Ronald Reagan rejected *containment *and responded to Soviet political warfare against the West by an organized campaign of economic warfare against the Communists … Reagan was a trained economist … and had experience dealing with Communists in his work as head of the Screen Actors Guild.

Google: “Victory” by Peter Schweizer for all the details.

 

[Geist]

To be fair no-one knew just how bad Soviet Russia was at the time.

Not true. The knowledge was there, but suppressed by Western governments.

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6554442/Diaries-of-reporter-who-exposed-Stalins-atrocities-go-on-display.html

Gareth Jones trekked across Soviet Ukraine - then officially off limits to Western journalists - to report on the “Holomodor”, the man-made famine that killed millions between 1932 and 1933.

In March 1933 Jones returned to Berlin to file a press release describing how millions of peasants were starving to death while the Soviet regime exported grain to the West.

His chilling report appeared in British, American and German newspapers including the Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post.

But Jones’ work was dismissed as a “scare story” by Western journalists based in Moscow, keen to maintain favour with Stalin’s government.

Two days after Jones published his report, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Duranty wrote a denial in the New York Post under the headline “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving”.

orwelltoday.com/stalinliar.shtml

Yet Duranty was hailed at the time as the dean of foreign correspondents and a man whose reports could be trusted absolutely. They actually convinced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to give official recognition to the communist government that seized power in Russia.

Under Stalin, now accepted to be one of the most brutal dictators of all times, Duranty reported peace and prosperity were sweeping the Soviet Union and communism was the vanguard of the future. There were no Gulags, no secret trials of dissidents.

The Soviet Union was truly becoming a worker’s paradise.

Yet the opposite was true.

One man, the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, actually revealed Duranty’s deceit back in 1933 when he took a secret and dangerous excursion across the Soviet Union and witnessed Stalin’s campaign of slaughter for himself.

Men, women and children – skin and bones – were begging for pitiful handfuls of grains while Stalin’s henchmen stood guard over full granaries and turned them away.

Muggeridge, who became a legend in later life, was vilified for his truthful reports. He actually lost his job on the Manchester Guardian, and it took years to regain his reputation.

Duranty was honoured not only by Stalin, but by his masters at the New York Times.

 

[Geist]

I don’t know that I particularly agree with this. I believe the result of this would have been a communist Block reaching to the English channel. But that is just my opinion.

I don’t understand, the Germans actually prevented that by their preemptive strike on the USSR.

If the Germans had defeated the Soviet Union, Europe would have wound up in a very sad state for the very reason you cite above. No one in the Nazi Hierarchy was going to be able to hold it together for very long and the “palace coups” would only open the door for either greater instability on the continent, or harsher, more repressive regimes.

It was in a sorry state anyway. I think the Nazi collapse would have been faster and had the same end result as the Soviet collapse, ie democracy.

Again, I disagree with the idea that we are somehow share responsibility for the actions inside the Soviet Union postwar.
The ones responsible for those atrocities are those who perpetrated them. Not the government, but the people who ran the government…

If my government gives or sells bombs to country A to massacre civilians in country B, and my taxes paid for it, I must assume some responsibility. Its a long chain, but its definitely there.