PBS SHOW TO ARGUE ALLIES AS BAD AS NAZIS

[freebird]

Originally Posted by Njaco

Does anyone know the name of that German city that was bombed purely because of a civilian population? I can't seem to remember....Coventry? or.....

Out tax $$ hard at work.

Dresden....

Originally Posted by Soren

Well let's also remember that the "true" Nazis aware of all that Hitler & Himmler were up to numbered less than 15% of the entire German population. I find this fact particularly scary to think about, that so little could lure so many into such a pointless war.

I think the aftermath of the war would have been much different, Germany could argue that it was simply a conflict with UK & Allies over power domination except that the death camps were so horrific that the Nazi regime was condemed as monsters

Originally Posted by ToughOmbre

[b]

PBS SHOW TO ARGUE ALLIES AS BAD AS NAZIS

IT'S ALL ONE 'WAR'

TO

TO if they argue that the Allies bombing of civilian targets "crossed the line" then there is some justification to that argument, there were military leaders at the time that disagreed with the strategy, both on moral & military grounds.

However to argue that the Axis were no worse than the Allies, after the Holocaust & the Rape of Nanking, is absurd

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by freebird

However to argue that the Axis were no worse than the Allies, after the Holocaust & the Rape of Nanking, is absurd

And don't forget the treatment of POWs by the Japanese but you summed it up perfectly!

[ToughOmbre]

Originally Posted by freebird

TO if they argue that the Allies bombing of civilian targets "crossed the line" then there is some justification to that argument, there were military leaders at the time that disagreed with the strategy, both on moral & military grounds.

However, if the Allies refrained from bombing civilian targets and the war lasted longer than it did, and say 600,000 American soldiers died instead of 405,000, what is the moral obligation to those that were killed needlessly, and to their families. This would be my main argument to those that say Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary.

Originally Posted by freebird

However to argue that the Axis were no worse than the Allies, after the Holocaust & the Rape of Nanking, is absurd

Absolutely!

TO

[freebird]

Originally Posted by ToughOmbre

However, if the Allies refrained from bombing civilian targets and the war lasted longer than it did, and say 600,000 American soldiers died instead of 405,000, what is the moral obligation to those that were killed needlessly, and to their families. This would be my main argument to those that say Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary.

TO

Pardon me, I should have been more specific, I was referring to the European bombing, which was known to have very little effect on Axis production, and especially the most destructive raids in '44 & '45 when it was clear the the germans were losing. The raids on the oil plants were
effective, I don't have a problem with that. But I don't think "Dresden" etc was justifiable, as it didn't have much effect, compared to the cost in civilians. Just IMHO, there were arguments on both sides of the issue.


As for Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I would have personally tried to blast an small military target, {Small base/port on the coastline} to demonstrate the power.

However, if it didn't work I would agree with your argument to use it on Hiroshima to end the war {saving 100,000's of casualties on both sides} Also I suspect that the Allies did not know how deadly the radiation & fallout would be.


As to the argument "did we ally ourselves with a brutal dictator?"

Yes we did. Was there another option? I don't think so.....

[timshatz]

I don't know if "Allied with a brutal dictator" really holds. The Soviet Union was in the war before the US. While it is true, we gave material support to the SU, we did it on the basis of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Seems more common sense than anything else. When in the fight of your life, looking for points of disagreement (ideological or otherwise) between yours and a potential Allied power is stupid and possibly suicidal.

[freebird]

Originally Posted by timshatz

I don't know if "Allied with a brutal dictator" really holds. The Soviet Union was in the war before the US. While it is true, we gave material support to the SU, we did it on the basis of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Seems more common sense than anything else. When in the fight of your life, looking for points of disagreement (ideological or otherwise) between yours and a potential Allied power is stupid and possibly suicidal.

Who's we??

I guess from the British Empire point of view, it was Hitlers choice to push Russia into the war, it more or less "dropped in our lap", and it made common sense from any way you look at it.

But that's one of the arguments that they use "But Stalin was as bad as Hitler"...

[ToughOmbre]

Originally Posted by freebird

Pardon me, I should have been more specific, I was referring to the European bombing, which was known to have very little effect on Axis production, and especially the most destructive raids in '44 & '45 when it was clear the the germans were losing. The raids on the oil plants were
effective, I don't have a problem with that. But I don't think "Dresden" etc was justifiable, as it didn't have much effect, compared to the cost in civilians. Just IMHO, there were arguments on both sides of the issue.

I agree with your points about Axis production (mostly aircraft) and oil. However it would be hard to imagine that bombing the civilian population centers did not help to shorten the war. And morality (what morality is there in war anyway?) aside, that was what IMO what counted.

Originally Posted by freebird

As for Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I would have personally tried to blast an small military target, {Small base/port on the coastline} to demonstrate the power.

Maybe, but I think that would have been a waste of a bomb, and we only had two, I think. If they didn't surrender after the first attack on Hiroshima, there's no way they would have surrendered after an attack on a "small military target".

Originally Posted by freebird

As to the argument "did we ally ourselves with a brutal dictator?"

Yes we did. Was there another option? I don't think so.....

And what has proved to be true in history over and over, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

TO

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by Hop

45% of the bombing done by BC was area bombing, 55% attacks on precision targets.



.

I believe thats wishful thinking just in 1945 alone Bomber command flew 67,483 sorties and dropped 181,000tons of bombs that is approx 20% of the total for the whole war and this is how the tonnage breaks down
Attacks on
cities 66,482 tons 36.6%
troops and defences 26081 tons 14.4%
transportation 28102tons 15.4%
attacks on oil 47510tons 26,2%
naval 11149tons 6.1%
Luftwafffe 637tons .04%
specific industries 1236tons .07%
other 552 tons .02%

[trackend]

IMO. What was bombed, not bombed, shot, nuked or anything else boils down to this. The Axis forces were determined to conquer as much of the rest of the world as possible the Nazis wanted to either exterminate or subdugate anyone they took a dislike to, as did the Japanese. The Allies did not invade and enslave most of Europe nor did the Allies walk all over the far East raping and killing indiscriminately. Nor did they start bombing cities full of civilians. The Allies did what the felt they needed to do in order to end the war as quickly as they could with the minimum of loss of life to their own people.
At the time Shooting Bombing, Burning and eventualy dropping the A bomb were all used to achive this.
They did not give a s*** what some guy would say in 60 years time in fact the guy would have quite likely not been born to say it in the first place if the Allies had lost.
When the A bomb was dropped very few people at the time said that it was a terrible thing and should not have been done. Most, especially the guys who had fought their way across a large part of Asia or Island hopped across the pacific and seen half their mates killed or the civilians whos cities had been Blitzed said whoopee we can live the wars over.
Hindsite is real easy 62 years later, but at the time it was a big different kettle of fish.
As for Russia Stalin didnt give a toss about his people so like wise neither did his generals using millions of lives in order to win as quickly as they could.
20,000,000 dead I wonder how any nation would react to losses and atrocities on that scale. We like to believe a bit differently than those of the Red Army but we can only guess on that.

[Haztoys]

[quote=timshatz;368425]

Originally Posted by Haztoys

The statement of "precision bombing" in the 1940's was a fantasy...It never happened ...The US could not do it in day light ...And the Brit's could not hit the broad side of a barn at night..It was propaganda..And the start of the US's BS of a nice clean sort of war to make the American people feel good QUOTE]

Haz, you might want to read Max Hasting's "Bomber Command" which goes into great depth on the subject. While it is very true that Bomber Command had terrible results in the begining of the war, Hasting's shows that they got much better as the war went on. Using Target Marking, Master Bomber, Bomb Mix, Offset Bombing, ect, they managed to drop the mean target error for bombs dropped to less than 400 yards. It's a good read and goes over the details far better than I can in a short post on the board.

Looks if my point of view was off...I will do my home work on this ...

[seesul]

It´s always sad for me to see such a discussion...the agressor seems to be a victim and the victim seems to be an agressor?
Hey people, wake up! Once you start the war, you gotta count with effects...
Agressor build concentration camps...why?...just to kill the NATION,RELIGION or POLITICS...
Victim (and agressor as well) bombed the civilian cities...why? To show the power, to frighten the people and to make the war SHORTER (not the agresor).
The war is not a PC game and you gotta kill or to be killed only because of ****ing decision made by politicians...
I know few WW2 vets (both Allies and Axis) and all of them are friends of mine...why? Because they can speak to each other as a friends today and no one from them would fight anymore...****ing politicians toke them their youth away and teached them how to kill in a best way...shocking?...no, unfortunately reality 60 years ago...do you think it´s long time ago? I don´t think so...but sometime I feel people forget too fast...´cause they don´t care for the past.
But if you don´t care for the past, you can´t build a peaceful future...so wake up...

For those they know Willi Reschke here´s what he told me 2 years ago during his visit during the discussion in our museum:

Dear friends, if I can, I wanna apologize for everything that Germans did to your nation during WW2. Today I know I helped Hitler to reach his target but back then I wanted to defence my land. When I hanged behind B-17, there were only 2 possibilities- to kill or to be killed...Anyway, though I was your former enemy, I´m as your friend here today and I hope we all will be friends forever...I´ll never forget these moments spent here with you.

and:

Roman, I have never expected that I´ll visit this area again and I didn´t know what to expect here as a German fighter pilot. But I have to say that I still can´t get over. Why so many people came here, were so kind to me, asked me questions? I could kill their fathers or grandfathers in WW2 and they were so friendly to me...You know, in Germany, some skinheads used my name and pictures of me on their websites and lot of my friends thought I´m a nazi and I had a lot of problems with that. So that´s why I was so careful when you asked me if I could come here. Today I know it was one of my best decisions I ever toke...

And that´s why I´m interested in the WW2 history...
More at:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/avi...ears-9298.html (Willi Reschke & Joe Owsianik -meeting after 63 years)
Warbird Photo Album - Willi Reschke

[JugBR]

Originally Posted by seesul

It´s always sad for me to see such a discussion...the agressor seems to be a victim and the victim seems to be an agressor?
Hey people, wake up! Once you start the war, you gotta count with effects...
Agressor build concentration camps...why?...just to kill the NATION,RELIGION or POLITICS...
Victim (and agressor as well) bombed the civilian cities...why? To show the power, to frighten the people and to make the war SHORTER (not the agresor).
The war is not a PC game and you gotta kill or to be killed only because of ****ing decision made by politicians...
I know few WW2 vets (both Allies and Axis) and all of them are friends of mine...why? Because they can speak to each other as a friends today and no one from them would fight anymore...****ing politicians toke them their youth away and teached them how to kill in a best way...shocking?...no, unfortunately reality 60 years ago...do you think it´s long time ago? I don´t think so...but sometime I feel people forget to fast...´cause they don´t care for the past.
But if you don´t care for the past, you can´t build a peaceful future...so wake up...

For those they know Willi Reschke here´s what he told me 2 years ago during his visit during the discussion in our museum:

Dear friends, if I can, I wanna apologize for everything that Germans did to your nation during WW2. Today I know I helped Hitler to reach his target but back then I wanted to defence my land. When I hanged behind B-17, there were only 2 possibilities- to kill or to be killed...Anyway, though I was your former enemy, I´m as your friend here today and I hope we all will be friends forever...I´ll never forget these moments spent here with you.

and:

Roman, I have never expected that I´ll visit this area again and I didn´t know what to expect here as a German fighter pilot. But I have to say that I still can´t get over. Why so many people came here, were so kind to me, asked me questions? I could kill their fathers or grandfathers in WW2 and they were so friendly to me...You know, in Germany, some skinheads used my name and pictures of me on their websites and lot of my friends thought I´m a nazi and I had a lot of problems with that. So that´s why I was so careful when you asked me if I could come here. Today I know it was one of my best decisions I ever toke...

And that´s why I´m interested in the WW2 history...
More at:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/avi...ears-9298.html (Willi Reschke & Joe Owsianik -meeting after 63 years)
Warbird Photo Album - Willi Reschke

100% with you man !

[timshatz]

[quote=Haztoys;368505]

Originally Posted by timshatz

Looks if my point of view was off...I will do my home work on this ...

Only by a matter of degrees. The book is an excellent one (Hastings is a very good historian about WW2, wrote books like "Overlord: Six Armies in Normandy" and "Das Riech: March of the 2nd SS Panzer through France"). Very well researched, almost meticulous.

Details your assertion that Bomber Command missed most of it's targets in the early part of the war (the "one bomb in 3" landing within 5 miles of the target). That study lead to better marking and all the stuff in my earlier post. However, as the bombers got more effective, there came a greater question of the morality of area bombing and Harris's "Dehousing" campaign for the German Populace. There were also questions of Harris's (and the American Bomber Barons) attempts to limit dillution of what they saw as the goal of strategic bombing by Ike and other leaders in the runup to D-Day, namely, winning the war by bombing alone. The US thought it could get it done by bombing strategic specific objectives (the oil attacks being the one that finally brought about long term results they desired) while Bomber Command stuck to destroying cities in the belief the will of the German people would crack (experience of the British under German bombs being pretty much ignored). As odd as it sounds, these theories were still considered viable as late as Vietnam.

The book is a great read, if somewhat dry at times. But the thing about Hastings, he knows his subject and if you want to learn about something like Bomber Command, he is a good teacher.

Here's a link to the book:

Amazon.com: Bomber Command (Pan Grand Strategy): Max Hastings: Books

Hope you enjoy it.

[pbfoot]

Everyone is worried that this show will be revisionist history well since none of us have seen it we a judging it on some guy we don't know have never met opinion of the of the show . Yes Seesul war is a brutal and unforgiving affair I have relatives residing in cemeteries in Europe . I also know many vets from both sides and they've been there and done that I know guys that did not enjoy the hospitality of the Japanese , I've met RCAF guys that were interned in Bergen Belsen , and these guys deserve all the respect we can muster .
However I'll bet my ass that decisions made on both sides were sometimes the product of egos and vanity that caused undo hardship to the average guys on both sides suffered because of these vain fools

[Matt308]

Originally Posted by Aaron Brooks Wolters

It has been turned into the war over slavery. Yes, slavery was one of the reasons but that was somewhat later in the war when Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation. The present day media has pretty much suppressed the real reasons for that war. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel slavery is right, I do not believe it should be allowed in any way shape or form, but let's keep the history books correct.

Amen brother. As ugly as the truth is, we should not undertake historical revision for the risk of incurring the wrath of ignorance. And that is the most scary power in the world.