The methods were certainly distasteful, and Dresden was arguably a war crime given the lack of need to fire bomb a city just to distract German forces from the eastern front. But overall the campaign did have a rational military impact on the ability of the German war machine to function. The definition of terrorism is so broad as to argue that yes it can be seen as an act of terror. But I'd argue there's a world of difference between Bomber Command deciding that the best way to defeat the Germans is to force them to switch resources and soldier away from fighting in Russia, Africa, Italy and later Normandy in order to focus on air defence and rebuilding, and Al Qaeda deciding that the best way to prevent repression of Muslims and enforce Sharia law is to crash some planes into some buildings.
That's just simplistic nonsense. So, you've watched your own civilian population get splattered by bombing and you are trying to tell me that you wouldn't respond in similar fashion? You are trying to lay your reactions from the safety of today on others who were in the midst of a long very unforgiving war with an air of moral superiority. That is just shameful on your part. BTW neither Oboe or Gee raised targeting accuracy significantly. If the Germans managed to do one thing it was to maintain a high level of anti-aircraft capability right to the end of WW2. Now that had a major effect upon targeting.
No we didn't. We employed our military resources in the best tactical way according to the knowledge and experience of the time.
No, it was after he'd been moved to Pollsmoor and was allowed visitors. In LWTF he explicitly states that Winni visited him soon after he was moved there in 1982, a year before MK started its car bomb campaign at Church Street.
Mainly cos the bombing of Coventry focused primarily on the city's industrial facilities, whereas in Dresden the Allied planners ignored much of the industrial suburbs and instead concentrated their bombing on the civilians, specifically noting the difficulties of housing so many refugees in winter time. Hence the attacks on Coventry killed around 1,200 people, whilst the attack on Dresden killed around 25,000. That's not to say it was a war crime, but there is an argument that it was under the Nuremberg principles of "wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity".
Not so! The concentration of bombs was upon the centre of Coventry and the majority of the bombs were incendiaries aimed at the historic and mainly wooden centre of the city. The majority of the industry was upon the outskirts and escaped with little serious damage considering the mass of engineering and aeronautical firms located there.
Have you read this thread Dave? Think I made a bloody point of saying how I understood my parents' motivations.
Which included terrorising, or 'demoralising', as Portal and Harris put it, the German civilian population.
So then why do you even attempt to dismiss their motivation in favour of your own? None of this supposed discussion of military strategy has any real relevance to the point that you were trying to make regarding Mandela. Personally I couldn't give a **** if Mandela did kill anybody. He was a leader of an organisation that did so he must take his share of the responsibility.
This subject was part of our history exam in school(ok it was many many moons ago)but I seem to remember that Dresden was deliberately chosen because there were more wooden buildings there than other considered targets, which points towards purposely planning on the total destruction of all life within the city, can't think of the German name for the night it happened but it was something like "wind of fire" Can't blame the pilots and crews of the aircraft that delivered the murderous payload but those at government level sanctioned it knowing the consequences and were responsible for the mass slaughter that night, and they were responsible for an act of "terror" that night. Just my honest opinion.
If you focus bombing at night time on an urban area you KNOW you're going to hit civilians, not just with some bombs but with the majority of them. We knew in 1943 that 95% of our bombs were missing by over half a mile. Our leaders made the strategic decision, based upon that, not to revert to daytime bombing until a long-range escort fighter was available and to concentrate on saturation/area bombing. The rational behind this was destroy towns and cities, de-house, demoralise and KILL civilians and DISRUPT armament production. Unless we were aiming for specific targets like Peenemunde and U-boat pens the object of the exercise was political and civilian targeted. FFS, what factories do you think we were after in Berlin? But dave, there seems to be some confusion here as to what you and swarbs think I'm saying (or indeed 'accusing'). I fully support the actions of Bomber Command in WWII. terror was a legitimate response to the terror dished out by the Luftwaffe, and indeed by the tactics deployed by Le may in japan after what the Imperial forces had done to civilians in Asia. The biggest terror of the lot (and most effective) being the A-bombs - what factories were they targeting? As it happens I fully endorse the use of the A-bombs, and the hundreds of thousands of lives of Allied servicemen they saved in not invading the Japanese home islands, even though over 150,000 Japanese civilians died in the process. Still half that died in Nanking anyway. See how easy it is to rationalise this stuff? Anyway, terrorism shmerrorism, as Woody Allen never said. I maintain point that Mandela and ANC when he was active was more akin to the French resistance as a sabotage organisation than the IRA, or certainly Al Qeada and various right-wing American fanatics that specifically target civilians. And that brings us back to air bombing deployed by all sides from Guernica to Dresden, from Rotterdam to Nagasaki.
The wooden buildings were more Hamburg (Operation Gemorrah) and Lubeck. As were the B29 raids on Tokyo, Kobe, Yokahama and so forth. I don't blame the aircrew, btw, and I'm nonplussed that Dave thinks that I do.
