Its been a well-established fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were functionally just weapons test sites, conducted for the purpose of intimidating Stalin and discouraging their invasion of Hokkaido by way of Korea.
Even then, one could argue that the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden (and the saturation bombing of Korea ten years later) were significantly crueler by scale. We didn’t need nuclear weapons to break the back of a country. Nor were we reluctant to wage hideous slaughter across a countryside with conventional munitions for the next 80 years.
Dresden had weapon fabrication sites, had military command infrastructure and was part of the war of aggression. Lets not try to speak about comparisons of cruelty when the scale is so large. Though in terms of Nazi Germany plenty of Germans did support “the war effort” till it turned back on them. Also in Dresden at most 25k died, however Nazis and other reactionaries try to create a wrong perception about it for various propagandist reasons, including saying “Dresden is just like ‘the use of the atomic bomb’”. Victims themselves do that more seldom than reactionaries.
Bei den Luftangriffen auf Dresden vom 13. bis 15. Februar 1945 wurden bis zu 25.000 Menschen getötet.
Of course I want to have “humane wars”, as victims are persons, plenty of innocent within them, but in war against Nazis and Fascist powers like that the rational to discuss is rather why did the US use the bomb? In my opinion mostly to show off and to show it to the world. “Saving lives” was something that came after as argument. The US was about as interested in saving lives in the invasion of Japan as it was in Vietnam.
Dresden also saved some innocent lives by targeting the Gestapo and military rail:
Da die Bomben auch das Zentralgebäude der Gestapo zerstörten, konnte diese die vom 14. bis 16. Februar angesetzte Deportation der letzten 198 Juden aus dem Regierungsbezirk Dresden nicht planmäßig durchführen. Etwa 40 Juden starben im Dresdner „Judenhaus“ durch Bomben, während andere trotz Nutzungsverbots in Luftschutzräumen überlebten. Sie mussten jedoch in den Folgetagen aus der Stadt fliehen, da die Gestapo weiter nach ihnen suchte. Etwa 70 Dresdner Juden entkamen so dem Holocaust.[12][36] Darunter waren Henny Brenner,[37] der später berühmte Puppenspieler Josef Skupa[38] und der Literaturwissenschaftler Victor Klemperer, der damals in sein Tagebuch schrieb:
„Wen aber von den etwa 70 Sternträgern diese Nacht verschonte, dem bedeutete sie Errettung, denn im allgemeinen Chaos konnte er der Gestapo entkommen.“[39]
Translated:
Since the bombs did destroy the headquarter of the Gestapo they couldn’t deport the last of the 198 Jews living in the central government district of Dresden to extermination camps. Around 40 Jews did die in the Dresdner “Judenhaus” due to the bombs, while others survived in air raid shelters, however those had to flee in the next days as the Gestapo did actively search for them (even in the chaos of those days [Note: German civilians did support the Gestapo with those things even at that point, as they did before the attacks]). Around 70 jews managed to escape the Shoa that way. One of them was Henny Brenner, the world famous puppet master Josef Skupa and literature scientist Victor Klemperer, who wrote in his diary of those days:
For those of the 70 star carriers, exempted from death, for them this night was salvation, in the all encompassing Chaos they could escape the Gestapo.
Then dozens of bombers didn’t bomb Dresden that night, instead they bombed Prague, but the crew was misnavigating.
The allies weren’t masterminds. With those errors giving them that is giving them much to much credit.
The press office of Berlin's foreign office did even before the war end suggest to inflate numbers and make Dresden a central propaganda piece:
Am 7. März 1945 wies die Presseabteilung des Berliner Auswärtigen Amtes die deutsche Gesandtschaft in der neutralen Schweiz an, ab sofort in ihrer Pressearbeit zur »Zerstörung Dresdens« die Angabe »Eher 200.000 als 100.000 Todesop- fer« zu verwenden. 29 Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war bereits eine intensive und erfolgreiche Kampagne der deut- schen Auslandspropaganda im Gange, die mit dem Beispiel Dresden den »angelsächsischen Bombenkrieg« als zentrale Anklage gegen die Kriegführung der Alliierten zu positionieren suchte. Meldungen über die »unerhörten Opfer an Menschenleben« in Dresden, die vor allem über die Presse der neutralen Staaten lan- ciert worden waren, fanden rasch eine weltweite Verbreitung. 3
On 7. of March (two month before end of war in Germany) the press office told the German Emissaries in neutral Swiss from now on use the terms “Destruction/Annihilation of Dresden” and use numbers “More likely 200k than 100k dead victims” [at this point the official statistically established numbers in Dresden were betwen 22k-32k], at this point a somewhat successful campaign against the “anglo saxon bomb war” was running and a central piece in their arguments against allied warfare. News articles about "outrageous loss of human life were quickly found in press organs of neutral states and soon in international press organs, too.
It is a matter of weather and material and they did throw enough bombs to hit important targets. It is a game of chance and they did hit the Gestapo office, they hit the rails, they hit factories of the army still in use, hit army garrisons, hit police which enabled deserters to flee in the coming days (at that point the Nazis would draft child soldiers to fight), did effectively destroy anti air capabilities of the Germans, did destroy the strategic command lines, telecommunication and logistical lines for the East, which at that point wasn’t necessary for the Soviets to win, but did actually save lives over there.
If you bomb other nations and try to make civilian population cover and try to instrumentalize attacks on regions that are still war relevant and still enable the Shoa (and even for luck or not did save 70 lives of Shoa victims) are completely legitimate. The German Nazi state used its civilians as shields and also hindered people trying to leave cities.
Talk about the severity and effectiveness is online in nearly all cases is effectively carrying water for Nazis. I know of people who were (as communists) in concentration camps which were happy with the means to further and quicker bring Nazi Germany down. The Nazis did actually start to kill more people in camps to have less people being able to charge them in potential future lawsuits, as Nazis did fear death, prison, revenge and retribution.
After the air attacks the recruitment of Volkssturm members was drastically reduced, too.
Funny, both reports of Western allies, Nazi commanders and Soviet reports do conclude that the bombings of Dresden did cut off the communications, which weakend the Eastern front.
Why do you try to pick single ingredients instead of the full view of the reports? This is stuff I expect from liberal spaces.
proportion of munitions that hit the target =/= whether that target is eventually destroyed.
the first is all i’ve been talking about. the postwar assessments of strategic bombing are critical of that, not in denial of the fact legitimate targets were ever destroyed.
There are a lot of other german cities which were attacked/razed and were less deserving than Dresden, which became a rallying cry for muh concerned citizens. (Although its sad for the beautiful architecture tho).
the invasion of Hokkaido was a pipe-dream, only hazily possible through US tendered landing craft, and not close to prepared on a timeline that’d actually compete with the US for the occupation
Its been a well-established fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were functionally just weapons test sites, conducted for the purpose of intimidating Stalin and discouraging their invasion of Hokkaido by way of Korea.
Even then, one could argue that the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden (and the saturation bombing of Korea ten years later) were significantly crueler by scale. We didn’t need nuclear weapons to break the back of a country. Nor were we reluctant to wage hideous slaughter across a countryside with conventional munitions for the next 80 years.
Dresden had weapon fabrication sites, had military command infrastructure and was part of the war of aggression. Lets not try to speak about comparisons of cruelty when the scale is so large. Though in terms of Nazi Germany plenty of Germans did support “the war effort” till it turned back on them. Also in Dresden at most 25k died, however Nazis and other reactionaries try to create a wrong perception about it for various propagandist reasons, including saying “Dresden is just like ‘the use of the atomic bomb’”. Victims themselves do that more seldom than reactionaries.
Of course I want to have “humane wars”, as victims are persons, plenty of innocent within them, but in war against Nazis and Fascist powers like that the rational to discuss is rather why did the US use the bomb? In my opinion mostly to show off and to show it to the world. “Saving lives” was something that came after as argument. The US was about as interested in saving lives in the invasion of Japan as it was in Vietnam.
Dresden also saved some innocent lives by targeting the Gestapo and military rail:
Translated:
Then dozens of bombers didn’t bomb Dresden that night, instead they bombed Prague, but the crew was misnavigating.
The allies weren’t masterminds. With those errors giving them that is giving them much to much credit.
The press office of Berlin's foreign office did even before the war end suggest to inflate numbers and make Dresden a central propaganda piece:
Removed by mod
What do you try to say?
Removed by mod
It is a matter of weather and material and they did throw enough bombs to hit important targets. It is a game of chance and they did hit the Gestapo office, they hit the rails, they hit factories of the army still in use, hit army garrisons, hit police which enabled deserters to flee in the coming days (at that point the Nazis would draft child soldiers to fight), did effectively destroy anti air capabilities of the Germans, did destroy the strategic command lines, telecommunication and logistical lines for the East, which at that point wasn’t necessary for the Soviets to win, but did actually save lives over there.
If you bomb other nations and try to make civilian population cover and try to instrumentalize attacks on regions that are still war relevant and still enable the Shoa (and even for luck or not did save 70 lives of Shoa victims) are completely legitimate. The German Nazi state used its civilians as shields and also hindered people trying to leave cities.
Talk about the severity and effectiveness is online in nearly all cases is effectively carrying water for Nazis. I know of people who were (as communists) in concentration camps which were happy with the means to further and quicker bring Nazi Germany down. The Nazis did actually start to kill more people in camps to have less people being able to charge them in potential future lawsuits, as Nazis did fear death, prison, revenge and retribution.
After the air attacks the recruitment of Volkssturm members was drastically reduced, too.
the assessment the allies made of their own air campaign after the war determined strategic bombing was ineffective at destroying specific targets.
Funny, both reports of Western allies, Nazi commanders and Soviet reports do conclude that the bombings of Dresden did cut off the communications, which weakend the Eastern front.
Why do you try to pick single ingredients instead of the full view of the reports? This is stuff I expect from liberal spaces.
proportion of munitions that hit the target =/= whether that target is eventually destroyed.
the first is all i’ve been talking about. the postwar assessments of strategic bombing are critical of that, not in denial of the fact legitimate targets were ever destroyed.
There are a lot of other german cities which were attacked/razed and were less deserving than Dresden, which became a rallying cry for muh concerned citizens. (Although its sad for the beautiful architecture tho).
Sure. But Slaughter House 5 was about Dresden so that’s the one everyone remembers.
the invasion of Hokkaido was a pipe-dream, only hazily possible through US tendered landing craft, and not close to prepared on a timeline that’d actually compete with the US for the occupation
Sorry, I hope that’s for others, I already knew. I was shitposting.