Bootstrap wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 12:02 pm
barnhart wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:16 pm
It seems from the articles that the far right use this event to minimize or draw false equivalence to the Holocaust. I hope I am allowed to object without being painted as a Holocaust denier.
When I lived in Berlin, I knew people from Dresden. They definitely saw the bombing of Dresden as horrible, but less horrible than the Holocaust, and they welcomed the Allies who freed them from the Nazis.
But many then saw the Soviets as their occupiers. Over time, many did come to believe that "the Young Pioneers of Germany are good friends with the Young Pioneers of Russia". But most East Germans never joined the Party, which was the way to get ahead. They did not believe in the system.
For 8 years, most of my friends were East Germans who would be fine with saying that Dresden was a tragedy and a human rights violation. But they would also say it was good that the Allies overthrew Hitler.
I tend to think that if you are going to fight a war the more humane approach is to get it done quickly or not at all. The state of war itself is a horrible place to be for any society and it is generally best to be done with it quickly rather than let it draw out for years or even decades.
So, in a WW2 context, the Allies and Axis powers were at war due to overt aggression by Germany and Japan. There was very little question about who started the war. The only real question for the Allies was their overall strategy for victory.
Could the Allies have prosecuted the war without aerial bombing of German cities? Certainly. They didn't have to bomb Germany. Neither did the Germans have to bomb the UK or Russia. But both sides chose to use aerial bombing as a tool of war.
How would the war have progressed without aerial bombing? Most certainly much slower. The Allies used aerial bombing to directly attack military formations, bases, and so forth which reduced the mobility of German forces and degraded their ability to fight. Aerial bombing also destroyed German industry which reduced Germanies ability to supply and resupply its armies with weapons, fuel, and the means to fight a modern war. Unfortunately at that point in the development of aerial warfare, targeting was pretty crude. The British bombed mainly at night which was by definition less accurate than daytime bombing. And the Americans mainly bombed during the day which was somewhat more precise but not always as Germany was cloudy much of the year. And they bombed from as high as possible to avoid anti-aircraft fire and German fighter planes which made things less accurate still. So, in effect, the limits of technology meant that aerial bombing of German industry was largely done by carpet bombing German cities. Smart bombs that could GPS target specific buildings down to the inch did not exist.
The Allies also did mass bombing raids for protection. A small isolated squadron of bombers was liable to be wiped out. A massive convoy of bombers with massive fighter protection was more likely to get through. So that also meant big bombing raids compared to how things are done today.
What would the war have looked like without aerial bombing of German cities?
1. The war most certainly would have lasted much longer, into 1946 or even 1947
2. The Holocaust would have gone on for an additional year or two with millions more deaths
3. The cost of fighting the war in terms of blood and treasure would have gone way up for the Allies as they would have had to fight their way across Europe against larger and much better equipped German armies meaning the deaths of thousands upon thousands of more American soldiers.
Those are the costs of fighting the war without aerial bombing. A longer war and many many more deaths on the Allied side.
The price paid by conducting a war of aerial bombing of German cities was unavoidable destruction of civilian cities and unavoidable deaths of German civilians.
Either choice has costs in terms of lives. Did the Allies make the right choice? I tend to think so, at least in overall strategy as everything that degraded Germany's ability to fight brought the war to a quicker end with less Allied death.
So when it comes to Dresden specifically, the real question is whether or not bombing Dresden was a legitimate decision that fit into overall Allied war strategy. Or whether it was a gratuitous and unnecessary act. Hindsight is always 20/20. But the generals who made that decision did not know how the war was ultimately going to play out. The war was becoming deadlier as it progressed and 1945 was the deadliest year of the war in many ways. The upcoming invasion of Germany might have cost millions more lives according to some estimates. So they made the decision to bomb. Was it the right one in that context? I've seen it argued both ways and don't have enough expertise to really say. Did it shorten the war? Probably to the extent that German mobility was diminished as Dresden was a major rail hub. But how much? I don't think anyone can say.
