quote:

US bomber losses - which were very heavy not only in terms of aircraft shot down but also those damaged - meant that it was not at all possible to fly deep into Germany without fighter escort

Cottar,

But they did have fighters with a range which allowed them to do that.

The americans flew the 3rd wave to bomb Dresden. About 1/3rd got lost due to cloud but, though a gap in the cloud saw 'a fine looking city next to a major river'. They proceeded to bomb it.

The city was Prague.

quote:

Didn't Speer say that a couple of raids on the scale of Hamburg within a week or so of each other and it would have been game over.

Tomus,

He may well have done but the fact remains that german armaments production rose steadily between 1942 and 1944, the period during which the area bombing campaign was at its highest. As Speer pointed out, when the allies reached the Rhine, production capacity was still at 80% of it's peak.

quote:

He also warned that continued attacks on the ball bearing production facilities around Schweinfurt would produce the same result. In both cases the Allies changed tactics before the job was complete.

Hi Fil2,

One often hears this type of comment but when you read such things, always look for the references that they author provides. If none are provided, it's probably just opinion. If they are provided, check them out. In many cases the author does not write with a high degree of accuracy.

You've probably read the above somewhere but compare it with what the Summary Report of the United States Bombing Survey says about Schweinfurt:

"From examination of the records and personalities in the ball-bearing industry, the user industries and the testimony of war production officials, there is no evidence that the attacks on the ball-bearing industry had any measurable effect on essential war production."

It is also not the case that the allies changed tactics. Again, quoting from the above survey:

"Although there were further attacks, production by the autumn of 1944 was back to pre-raid levels."

History becomes much more interesting when you listen to what someone says and compare it to what someoneelse says they said.

quote:

Originally posted by Harry Amphlett:

quote:

Didn't Speer say that a couple of raids on the scale of Hamburg within a week or so of each other and it would have been game over.

Tomus,

He may well have done but the fact remains that german armaments production rose steadily between 1942 and 1944, the period during which the area bombing campaign was at its highest. As Speer pointed out, when the allies reached the Rhine, production capacity was still at 80% of it's peak.

True but then I hate to imagine what capacity German arms production would have reached had we not bothered bombing.

Without the bombing campaign what precisely were we to do? JUst sit and take it? That's an absurd proposition. It was an accepted rolling campaign with a real and direct military objective and IMO succeeded.

quote:

Without the bombing campaign what precisely were we to do? JUst sit and take it? That's an absurd proposition.

Tomus,

Then why do you make such a proposition as the only alternative? You're both posing and answering the question.

The above two options are not exhaustive. Why not look at some of the alternative proposals which were made at the time? Precision bombing too was an option with many possible targets to choose from.

Hugh Dowding complained bitterly that Fighter Command was under strength and that resources and developmental work was in favour of long range bombers. Longer range fighters together with a lower number of bombers could have taken the fight to the enemy in France with a greater emphasis on attacking military installations and their supply routes, sustained pressure on the railways for example. This may have saved many allied lives in Normandy and may have prevented the establishment of V1 and V2 firing sites, thereby saving british civilian lives. We'll never know because we never tried.

There were many alternative proposals around but all had to give way to decisions which were made before the war started including the doubling of an order for 1,360 strategic bombers in 1938.

As I have indicated earlier, all the arguments in this thread based on events which happened during the war fail to recognise that the doctrine of killing large numbers of civilians gained prevalence before the war started. Once the war started, the mind set was already in place.

quote:

Originally posted by Tomus:
Without the bombing campaign what precisely were we to do? JUst sit and take it?

A more sensible option would have been to concentrate on fuel supplies, in particular the Romanian oil fields. Whilst losses in attacking this target were high so were the losses in the area bombing campaign which I believe were something like 75,000 aircrew.

Without fuel the German army would have ground to halt. Remember, the Battle of the Bulge was lost because the Germans could not press their initial advantage home because the tanks had run out of fuel.

Mobility and supply were key in WW2 as the Soviets found out with the benefit of American built trucks.

quote:

A more sensible option would have been to concentrate on fuel supplies, in particular the Romanian oil fields.

Or the iron ore supplies which left the Norwegian port of Narvik. Continuity of supply was essential, so much so that Germany invaded Norway to secure it.

This was standard practice for the Nazis trying to give the impression that the local population was rising up against the Jews. The same practice was adopted in the Ostland in 1941 to try to show that the local inhabitants were responsible for killing the Jews. Krystallnacht was not a spontaneous action by Germans but a planned Nazi operation.
[/quote]
That it was organised by Goebbels is not in question. That the SA instigated it is not in question. That ordinary people didn't take part is wrong:
From wikipedia:
"

Evidence of this can be seen firstly in that riots broke out on the night of November 7 and continued in some places after the pogrom was later called to a stop, which were thus not the actions of the Nazi’s. Also, many sources mention women and children in the riots, who were clearly not Stormtroopers but ordinary citizens taking part. The number of German citizens involved in the riots is impossible to know however, as most of the Stormtroopers were wearing civilian clothes and they were thus indistinguishable."

Ordinary German people were also very apt at helping the Nazis locate Jews or tell on "unsociable" actions. Many gay and lesbians were rounded up like this.

quote:

Again you seem to think that only the German people were psychic and knew what the Nazis’ anti Semitism would lead to.

You don't need to be psychic to know that a party has racial hatred at its hub. Your bizarre attempts to justify German naivety is in itself naive. "Mein Kempf" and political pamplets gave teh German people all they needed to know.

quote:

No one predicted the holocaust and as I said even in 1944 the Jews of Hungary, who you would think had the greatest interest in knowing the truth, initially refused to believe that such a thing could be perpetrated by such a cultured nation.

No one is suggesting that they could predict the holocaust. What is true is that ani-semitism was fundamental to Nazi propaganda prior to the 1932 elections and that throughout the 1930s the German people were content to see the erosion of Jewish rights. That steady erosion - that seepage of human dignity - led to the holocaust: unpredicted in the 1920s, but not so alarming to the German sensibilities having accepted all the erosions of human dignity around them during the 1930s.

quote:

How many of the more than one million people in the UK who marched to protest against the Iraq war have emigrated?

I was referring to those non-Jews who were disgusted so much by their leaders that they could have left the country (not the victims of Nazism who clearly, in their millions, were doomed). What did they do? If life was so unpleasant and their leaders performing such vile acts in their eyes, why didn't large swathes leave?

Again - the testimonies prove a content German nation, adhering to their regimeted lives and more than happy to see the human rights of fellow German eroded. The drip-drip that meant by the time Jews were being carted off for the final solution, it didn't seem, to the Germans,anything out of the ordinary. Just another erosion - more property for them to acquire when the occupants left.

quote:

The concentration camp system was originally regarded as positive law and order measure.

Because putting political opponents away was so normal in western Europe?
(Your comments are begging belief at such high levels now I'm wondering if you're indulging in some sick game.)

quote:

The residents of Dachau welcomed the first concentration camp when it was set up as they believed it would provide local traders with opportunities to do business with the camp.

I bet they did.

quote:

This turned out not to be that case as the SS made its own arrangements to ensure that as little as possible was known about what went on in the camps.

How terribly disappointing for the traders. I guess they had to make do with salvaging other assets from the Jews.

quote:

Virtually all the initial people arrested, including large numbers of Jews, were released.

Not quite.

quote:

Until the war started the number of deaths in the concentration camps was quite small, so the concentration camp argument does not really apply.

No - many people in thenm died of malnutrition and disease.

quote:

The Western Allies did nothing to stop the holocaust. The inmates of Auschwitz were praying for the Allies to bomb the concentration camp and the death camp even if it resulted in the deaths of inmates.

The debate over bombing Auschwitz is given here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/bombau.html

"Prisoners would surely have died in any raid, but Erdheim notes that Birkenau prisoners worked outside the camp, so the number of casualties would not been as high as some critics suggest. Moreover, the focus, Erdheim says, should be on the number of Jews who might have been saved by the bombing."

In reality the Nazis,now accelerating the deaths, would have resorted to other quick tactics in destroying the Jews - probably rounding them up and bombing them themselves. In either case the allies were focussing on bringing the Nazi regime to its knees. To stop the atrocities.

Again - you blame the allies when, ultimately, the Germans were cuplable, and in their lust for pursuing the final solution, would have resorted to any tactics.

quote:

Towns include those such as Freiburg where 3000 civilians were killed in Nov 1944 and Pforzheim where 17,600 civilians of population of approx 60,000 were killed in February 1945. Darmstadt, 12,300, Sept 1944, Kassel, 10,000, Oct. 1943 and the list continues all the way to small villages such as Wildberg in Jan 1945 and Haiterbach April 1945.

Even Pforzheim was justified for its instrument manufacture. There were a few cases of villages and towns - even German dropped their payloads over Freiburg early in the war.

quote:

Ordinary German people were also very apt at helping the Nazis locate Jews or tell on "unsociable" actions. Many gay and lesbians were rounded up like this.

And to this you can add anyone who said that evacuating the jews was wrong. 2,800 catholic nuns and priests perished.

Pastor Niemöller, a lutheran and supporter of the Nazis in 1933 was arrested, charged and imprisoned in 1937 for 'Abuse of the Pulpit'. He said that Christians should return to worshipping God, not a man. On his release in 1938 he was taken into protective custody in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

You are correct to write that people eager and enthusiastic to curry favour existed. It afforded many opportunities for those in the right position. The caretaker of block of flats for example would invite himself into your flat on say, news years eve and expect gifts at christmas, if you wanted him to fix your heating in the future for example. You wouldn't complain because of his powerful 'friends', i.e. those to whom he gave details about who you saw, when you saw them, what books he had seen whilst in your flat and what conversations you had with neighbours.

Hard to tell what ordinary people do when you live in a society where neighbours spy on neighbours.

A man recalled on BBC radio recently of his days in the Hitler Youth and how they were taken to the Warsaw Ghetto. The column of young boys, a Nazi party leader and a single armed guard all in uniform became the focus of a lot of verbal abuse. "See how they are? We bring them here, give them housing but look what they do to these once fine buildings and see how they repay us."

Young minds are easy to shape.

Another recalled, on an organised visit to a concentration camp, when he asked what the chimney in the distance was.

"A crematorium" was the reply.

"Why do you have a crematorium here?" he asked.

"Well", came the reply, "How many people live in your town?"

"About 75,000" the boy replied.

"And do you have a crematorium? the guide asked.

"Of course"

"Well we have over 100,000 people here and we have a crematorium too" the guide explained.

The ease with which these things can be done is frightening.

quote:

Even Pforzheim was justified for its instrument manufacture.

That's how it was justificated yes. But is it true or is it, as Churchill put it, a pretext?

You have said that a deliberate policy to kill only civilian workers, in their homes and not at their place of work was the right policy.

You said "yes - and rightly so".

You don't need to justify the killing of 17,200 civilians by saying that there was an optical factory there. You state that the killing of civilians is justification in itself.

I just happen to disagree on this point.

quote:

Because putting political opponents away was so normal in western Europe?

decrypted,

Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany were all dictatorships. Add to that the various styles of governments you had in eastern europe and the balkans, and the fact that Germany had never had any sustained period of democracy in the modern sense of the word.

Be careful of what you say and to whom you say it was much more the norm in large parts of europe.

quote:

That's how it was justificated yes. But is it true or is it, as Churchill put it, a pretext?

You have said that a deliberate policy to kill only civilian workers, in their homes and not at their place of work was the right policy.

You said "yes - and rightly so".

You don't need to justify the killing of 17,200 civilians by saying that there was an optical factory there. You state that the killing of civilians is justification in itself.

I don't think killing civilians alone is justified. Nor did bomber command. There were a number of reasons given for bombing Pforzheim. And we also have teh benefit of hindsight.

You need to remember that operations were going on a nightly basis for the RAF. Many inteligence reports were correct. Even after the event. In the chaos of war, when you're in your sixth year there will always be decisions that - with hindsight - weren't clear-cut or weren't correct.

We can all look back now, and analyse every raid, every result, every effect on the war machine. But at the time the intention was to bring about at least a deceleration of the Nazi war machine. At best for revolution or growing resentment against the Nazi regime from within.



I just happen to disagree on this point.[/QUOTE]

quote:

Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany were all dictatorships. Add to that the various styles of governments you had in eastern europe and the balkans, and the fact that Germany had never had any sustained period of democracy in the modern sense of the word.

They were the minority and better models of society existed - so no excuses for the regressive Germans.

Be careful of what you say and to whom you say it was much more the norm in large parts of europe.[/QUOTE]

quote:

That it was organised by Goebbels is not in question. That the SA instigated it is not in question. That ordinary people didn't take part is wrong:

Again you misinterpret what I said. The essence was that Krystallnacht was an organised event and whilst some non SA/SS people were involved it was not the mass of the population as you suggested. I bet that it would be easily possible to get British thugs to get involved in racist attacks, even today, so there were nothing special about some ordinary Germans getting involved.

quote:

Ordinary German people were also very apt at helping the Nazis locate Jews or tell on "unsociable" actions. Many gay and lesbians were rounded up like this.

This is fundamental in a totalitarian state. Neighbour denounces neighbour. Just look at the level of informants run by the Stasi or the people persecuted by Stalin on just someone uncorroborated say so.

quote:

You don't need to be psychic to know that a party has racial hatred at its hub. Your bizarre attempts to justify German naivety is in itself naive. "Mein Kempf" and political pamplets gave teh German people all they needed to know.

Pity that three million Jews in Poland did not see what the Germans saw.

quote:

I was referring to those non-Jews who were disgusted so much by their leaders that they could have left the country (not the victims of Nazism who clearly, in their millions, were doomed). What did they do? If life was so unpleasant and their leaders performing such vile acts in their eyes, why didn't large swathes leave?

Again you suggest that Germans could have left at will but you fail to say where they could have gone. The fact is that displacements of large sections of population only occur in war or in dire economic conditions. Neither of these conditions existed in Germany in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power.

quote:

The concentration camp system was originally regarded as positive law and order measure.

Because putting political opponents away was so normal in western Europe?
(Your comments are begging belief at such high levels now I'm wondering if you're indulging in some sick game.)

I am quoting from memory of exhibits and recorded testimony from my visit to Dachau a couple of years ago.

quote:

No - many people in thenm died of malnutrition and disease.

True but not until the last few months of the war. In the case of Dachau, 50% of the 30,000 who died there died in the last five months before liberation mostly from typhus. This was brought on by massive overcrowding as inmates were transferred from the East and the lack of food which the SS did not supply on the claimed basis that the Allies were strafing the supply trucks. Nonetheless the classic impression of a concentration camp being piled high with dead bodies and walking skeletons did not arise until the very last days of the war. That is not to say that concentration camps were not places of unspeakable cruelty and death but they were not a principal component of the holocaust and the German media did not carry any reports of what went on.

quote:

Again - you blame the allies when, ultimately, the Germans were cuplable, and in their lust for pursuing the final solution, would have resorted to any tactics.

I never blamed the Allies for the final solution, all I said was that they did nothing to stop it. In fact if the war had been presented to the British and American public as a venture to save the Jews there would have been Allied war effort. The Nazis, not the Germans were responsible for the holocaust – unless your thesis is that all Germans were Nazis. On January 20th, 1942 Heydrich chaired a meeting of fourteen high-ranking civil servants and SS-officers at a mansion at Wansee. This meeting determined the final solution, it was held in the utmost secrecy and the German population were not told about it nor asked their opinion on the outcome. To suggest that the German public must have known is ridiculous.

quote:

Again you misinterpret what I said. The essence was that Krystallnacht was an organised event and whilst some non SA/SS people were involved it was not the mass of the population as you suggested.

I didn't suggest it was the mass of the population. I showed you that civilians took part, and continued to cause damage well after the event. Men, women and children.

In other words, the state led and willing people followed (people weren't made to go ut into the streets and perform acts of barbarism. They chose to.)

quote:

I bet that it would be easily possible to get British thugs to get involved in racist attacks, even today, so there were nothing special about some ordinary Germans getting involved.

We're not talking about NF or English hooligans. We're talking about a cross-section of people.

quote:

This is fundamental in a totalitarian state. Neighbour denounces neighbour. Just look at the level of informants run by the Stasi or the people persecuted by Stalin on just someone uncorroborated say so.

Which doesn't make it correct. Two wrongs don't make a right. People have to actively inform on others. Isn't it wonderful how the German people, finding it easy to turn a blind-eye to the erosion of Jewish rights could so assertively see to it that they were informed upon as well?

(Interesting you mention the Stasi - their biggest success came with the East German population.)

quote:

Again you suggest that Germans could have left at will but you fail to say where they could have gone. The fact is that displacements of large sections of population only occur in war or in dire economic conditions. Neither of these conditions existed in Germany in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power.

People fleeing from what they consider a tyrannical regime will always flee in large numbers (regardless of whether other nations can take them in). This didn't happen with those who were content - those who made up the vast majority of Germans.

Nor were there as many organised resistance groups as there were in occupied nations during the 1940s.

quote:

True but not until the last few months of the war. In the case of Dachau, 50% of the 30,000 who died there died in the last five months before liberation mostly from typhus.

http://century.guardian.co.uk/1930-1939/Story/0,,126987,00.html
(Selecting pertinent text - Dachau 1934)
"
The number of prisoners (according to the September list) is 2,200-2,400.
...
A prisoner sentenced to detention ("Arrest") in one of these cells gets nothing to eat on the first day, then bread and water for three days, and a hot meal every fourth day.

...
In addition to the regular punishments there are special forms of arbitrary ill-treatment. Thus prisoners are sometimes beaten with wet towels. Sometimes they are bastinadoed until the soles of their feet are lacerated. Several S.A. men (Brown Shirts) who arrived in the camp on August 1 were bastinadoed as well as being maltreated in other ways. Two of them, Amuschel and Handschuck, died of their injuries. The Communist Fritz Schaper was so beaten that he was prostrate for eight weeks. On September 2 one of the Nazi guards broke a prisoner's jaw with a blow of his fist. On June 30 twenty prisoners were so beaten in the cellar under the kitchen that their cries could be heard by the other prisoners. Some prisoners have also been beaten with lengths of rubber hosepipe. Some have been burnt with cigarette ends and some have been put to what Americans call the "water torture..
...
Amongst the prisoners who have received severe injuries are L. Buchmann, Georg Freischütz, and a journalist named Ewald Thunig. The Munich Communist Sepp Götz was killed after being so beaten that he could no longer stand. The student Wickelmeier was killed by a bullet. The Communist Fritz Dressel was beaten to death. Leonhard Hausmann, a municipal councillor, Lehrburger, Aron (a member of the Bamberg Reichsbanner) and Stenzel were killed. Willy Franz was killed in September - he was officially reported to have hanged himself, but the post-mortem showed no traces of hanging, while the face was stained with blood and the clothes blood-sodden. At the end of November the Communist official Buerk (from Memmingen) was killed. The total number of prisoners who have been killed or who have died of their injuries at Dachau cannot be far short of fifty.
"

That was only in 1934.

By 1939 the Nazis were merrily gassing thousands of handicapped people, in preparation for the final solution.

quote:

I never blamed the Allies for the final solution, all I said was that they did nothing to stop it. In fact if the war had been presented to the British and American public as a venture to save the Jews there would have been Allied war effort.

I don't think presenting the holocaust would have sped the effort. It was already at full speed.

quote:

The Nazis, not the Germans were responsible for the holocaust –

I don't think I ever said the German people were responsible for the holocaust. They were certainly in the know-how with regards the ill treatment and death of Jews, at least on a small scale.

I blame the German people for their apathy, their acceptance of the erosions of civil liberties, for their devotion to Hitler that meant the war dragged on for a year longer than it should have. With that apathy came little courage to fight back. And in many cases came a fanaticism to the devotion of Nazism.

quote:

I don't think killing civilians alone is justified. Nor did bomber command.

decrypted,

That's not what you said earlier. Your answer to the question:

quote:

But are you prepared to accept that from Feb 1942 there was a deliberate policy to kill only civilian workers, in their homes and not at their place of work?

was:

quote:

Yes - and rightly so.

Killing civilians alone meaning just killing civilians for civilians sake.

It was right to kill those who lived and worked in key industries.

They were part of the war machine. Inextricably linked to the output of war material.

The harsh reality is that there was no clear way of separating attacks on factories with attacks on residents nearby. Precision was limited to (at best for daytime USAF raids) about 100 yards. At night it was best to carpet bomb an area, hoping to take out the factories and the workers who ran them.

quote:

There were a number of reasons given for bombing Pforzheim.

decrypted,

I raised Pforzheim, amongst others as you claimed:

quote:

If simply killing civilians was the aim they'd not target industrial areas (which would be the most heavily defended)they'd opt for towns, villages and historical monuments.

They did target towns and villages in addition to large industrial areas. You point out the german error in Freiburg as if merely having something to say is, in itself, adequate. The fact is, despite your assertion above, Freiburg, not an industrial centre, was bombed as were many others.