Sorry I wasted alot of time editing this because I like to be clear in my meaning and you posted a second post which, due to the overlap are best responded to together.
Also for that reason you posts are quoted slightly out of order - not to twist your meaning, but to (hopefully) have a logically laid out response.
Karl Heidenreich wrote:boreatwork:
REALLY IMPORTANT: READ THIS
You're making the statement to the effect that the Germans were morally superior in respect to bombing because they never targetted civilians at the same scale.
Maybe I must apologise to boreatwork because I never intended to said whats he is reading. I have not and will not intend to say that the nazis were morally superior to the allies. That has never been my point: my point is that the allies were hypocrites because they were no better. By saying that I am not defending the nazis or what they did but attacking the allies for having a conduct in similar terms.
I fully understood the point you were making that you consider the mass slaughter of German civilians to be a crime
comparable to the genocide the Nazis committed.
I just disagree with your opinion.
First let me again clarify I'm not saying that as a people that allies were any more moral than the German people. Not all Germans were not Nazis or shared their beliefs. There were many Germans in the war who conducted themselves with exemplary behavior. I'm also in no way claiming that some aspects of Bomber Command's war weren't morally distastefull.
What I am saying is, as barbaric and as brutal as it was it still had
some effect on the war. Hence I disagree with your statements as follows (my bold and underline for emphasis):
But not a single conventional strategic bombing, nor against Germany nor Japan produced such a result. The only thing that produced was to strenghted the will of those countries to fight back against deliberte criminal attempts to destroy this same will by terror. This was plain evident since Hamburg's one. When this "offensive" failed it was evident that strategic bombing served no purposeand need to be aborted for another kind of aerail campaign, basically tactical air support to the field armies.
But the British conitnued with their aerial offensive despite the fact it wasn't giving any results neither. The best example was the Hamburg bombing, which led to nothing more than a destroyed city.
Success or failure like morality is not a black and white issue. It's undeniably true that the bomber raids failed at the expectation that they alone could force Germany out of the war. But it's untrue to say that they accomplished nothing, or served no purpose to the war effort. To use your Hamburg example "no purpose" or "nothing more than a destroyed city" skates over the actual effect the raid did have:
"Operation Gomorrah killed 42,600 people and left 37,000 wounded. Some one million German civilians fled the city. The city's labour force was reduced permanently by ten percent.[6] Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped, and over 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed, and there is some indication from later Allied interrogations of Nazi officials that Hitler stated that further raids of similar weight would force Germany out of the war. The industrial losses were severe. Hamburg never recovered to full production, only doing so in essential armaments industries (which a maximum effort was made).[7] Figures given by German sources indicate, 183 large factories were destroyed out of 524 in the city, 4,118 smaller factories out of 9,068 were destroyed. Other losses included 580 industrial concerns and armaments works, 299 of which were important enough to be listed by name, were either destroyed or damaged. Local transport systems were completely disrupted and did not return to normal for some time. Dwellings destroyed amounted to 214,350 destroyed out of 414,500."
The Bomber Campaign did materially affect production, it did hamper logistics, force the Germans to devote increased resources to counter it, and ground down the Luftwaffe into impotance. How much better would the Germans have been able to resist the horde of Soviet tanks had even a fraction of the 15,000+ 88mm guns deployed in Flak belts for home defense been available as AT weapons at the front? Or if the limited german munitions production had been able to build artillery shells instead of the vast volumes of Flak shells?
Why was important to bomb Dresden or Chemnitz in early 1945 when Germany was already defeated? Why to bring up a phony story like that the Soviets asked for the attack or that it was a legitimate military target? It is plain evident this is a lie and a smoke screen. Why the bombed areas were so clearly designated and targeted? Because the main intention was to kill as much civilians as possible, even knowing that will not produce a capitulation from the Germans. It was a deliberate murder.
Germany wasn't defeated. She was still resisting. She was still killing allied soldiers and civilians. Did the allies have perfect intelligence about the value of what they were doing at the time? No, Did the people who ordered the attack genuinely believe it would help the war effort? Probably. Do mistakes get made in wartime? Absolutely. Is it hard for people to admit mistakes which cost others their lives? Certainly.
Again I don't claim Dresden is anything the Allies should be proud of, but I don't villify the people responsible to the degree you do because I have the benefit of hindsight which at the time they didn't.
However I found that there IS a difference in the doctrines involved here. The British started their Strategic Bombing Campaign in 1939 and then never stopped until the surrendering of the Germans (by territorial occupation of allied armies, not by effect of this particular campaign) as did the Germans.
But the high peak of the German strategic bombing, which was at first directed to military or port instalations, when did not produced the effect that the Germans expected then stopped.
IIRC correctly you're not a native english speaker so I'm doing my best to give you the benefit of the doubt that the impression you're giving with your words is not what you're attempting to say.
You state there were differences - you make the vague statement that The British started their Strategic Bombing Campaign in 1939 - then you
qualify what the Luftwaffe was bombing "military or port installations" without similarly qualifying what the RAF was bombing.
As worded, it gives the impression that you're implying that the RAF was bombing targets other than strictly military since 1939.
The Blitz ended in May 1941. As with Warsaw and Rotterdam it was part of the German blitzkrieg group of tactics and operations: to win a certain battle or campaign. The Blitz was part of the preparation of Sea Lion or, in it's defect, to produce the surrender of Britain. But by May 1941 it was obvious it serve no purpose. Then it was called off (and because a new front was about to be open). And it was not called off because the Germans were in a position that they cannot continue with it. This stopping did not happen in 1943 or 1944 but as early in 1941, which means that if no result was obtained then it served no purpose.
...
If they had discovered that Strategic Bombing served no purpose then why did they start production and go on to produce over 1000 He-177 heavy
strategic bombers?
They stopped the campaign because their Political leadership was irratic and decided to focus on the Soviet Union rather than do something rational like force Britain to come to terms first.
Once stopped circumstances prevented it from ever being restarted. Even in 1942 and 1944 when Hitler wanted to raze British cities in response to growing RAF efforts only a shadow of the 1940 force could be spared from the desperate fighting on the other fronts.
To put this in perspective:
By then the 15th Air Force was producing much better results, specially in Germany's capacity to produce and distribute oil and fuels. Of the aerial directed offensives we have this result despite the fact that:
1. 8th Air Force devoted 13% of it's bombs against civilian targets.
2. Bomber Command did use 51% against civilian targets.
3. 15th Air Force only 4%.
But it was the 15th the one that produced the greater harm to Germany, not the 8th and, of course, not the Bomber Command.
I don't dissagree that the resources spent on the bombing campaign might not have found better use. More long range aircraft sooner would have won the battle of the Atlantic earlier for example. However such judgement is with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, particularly following the success of Hamburg it must have appeared that the mass raids against cities were having more effect than they were.
***IMPORTANT*** - I'm not trying to claim you're trying to justify the Nazi's genocide.
I'm merely saying that the Nazi's Genocide didn't even have the illusion of helping the war effort. Many of their great minds fled the country and worked for the allies. Their factories were starved with labour and yet they sent German citizens to the gas chambers merely because they were Jews. Their campaigns against the Slavs in occupied terrorities consumed resources better used at the front and encouraged the formation of resistance movements that would consume even more resources to counter.
Therefore if you have 2 mass killings - one of which is done in the scincere belief that it will shorten the war and thus reduce your own casualties, and the other is done for the sake of genocide - regardless of the fact they're both horrible acts IMO the former ranks higher on the morality scale than the latter.