Dresden, Area Bombing, German Militarism And 70 Years Of Peace

Aenaes · 05-05-2015 12:06pm

Yes but the German navy would have been perceived as a greater threat by Britain rather than France or Russia.

Jawgap · 05-05-2015 12:16pm

There's more than a grain of truth to the idea that the naval arms race between Britain and Germany was the proximate 'cause' of WW1 - or it certainly made it fairly inevitable. Which means you can probably trace the seeds of the conflict back to 1889 and the introduction of the 'two power standard' - which required the RN to be as strong as the world's next two largest navies combined (in the late 19th C that would have been France and Russia).

That set off a flurry of shipbuilding and initiated the arms race, which Germany joined in.

The point at which WW1 became inevitable was the evening of the 30 July 1914 when the Tsar ordered a general mobilisation in Russia - once that happened, Germany in compliance with her two-front strategy had to mobilise (their preparations allowed them to mobilise much quicker than any other continental power), defeat France and turn about and defeat Russia. Once Russia began mobilising Moltke knew Germany couldn't gamble that the Russian armies wouldn't begin moving westward and to meet them he'd need all Germany's armies - which meant sorting France out first to free up the requisite forces.

Snickers Man · 26-10-2018 1:10pm

And just to BUMP this up to the modern day: this thread was started in 2015, long before the Brexit vote.

So the 70 Years of Peace argument, which the OP clearly intended as a reinforcement of his/her views that the wholesale destruction of the cities of an already defeated foe was worth the pay off of lasting peace is now approaching its sell by date.
Regrettably.

fergus1001 · 30-10-2018 4:18pm

the ultimate responsibility lay with bomber Harris and it was a war crime, but there are different standards when you are on the winning side.

They knew Germany was defeated and yet they still proceeded to firebomb a civilian area, he is probably cooking in hellfire as we speak for his actions

fergus1001 · 30-10-2018 7:59pm

Snickers Man wrote:

And just to BUMP this up to the modern day: this thread was started in 2015, long before the Brexit vote.

I think Europe is going to go through a big geopolitical change in the next 30 years and a war will be on the horizon, who will be the next bomber Harris

Stovepipe · 26-11-2018 6:30am

@fergus1001, by your benchmark, every operational commander falls into the category of war criminal, if he bombs a city, regardless of how many weapons it produces, which in themselves, prolong a war. He was following the path outlined by Churchill, who then spinelessly slid away from defending Harris in later years. How else were they to destroy Dresden's industrial capacity? Modern precision weapon technology did not exist for them then.
regards

fergus1001 · 04-12-2018 3:56pm

Stovepipe wrote: »

@fergus1001, by your benchmark, every operational commander falls into the category of war criminal, if he bombs a city, regardless of how many weapons it produces, which in themselves, prolong a war. He was following the path outlined by Churchill, who then spinelessly slid away from defending Harris in later years. How else were they to destroy Dresden's industrial capacity? Modern precision weapon technology did not exist for them then.
regards

although they did not posses the means to pin point where there wepons fell they did have the nordam bomb sight in the lead bomber

up to 75 percent of some batches of Norden bombsights fell short of specifications, missing targets by 280 feet from an altitude of 20,000 feet when specifications called for 50 feet.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/the-norden-bombsight-accurate-beyond-belief/

So even with primitive targeting they were able to land their bombs within 280 feet of their target at 20k feet in the air

the crime lay in the fact that they intentionally targeted civilian areas so as to kill the working population for the factories using fire bombs intended to kill as many people as possible

Stovepipe · 08-12-2020 1:09am

Germany had accurate bombsights too. Look up the Lofte 7 type. When they bombed British cities, they dropped parachute mines, originally designed to sink ships and in the case of bombing cities, designed to blast down tenements and the densely populated housing in the working class areas of the British industrial cities, which were then followed up by cascades of incendiaries and smaller high explosive bombs,many of which were fitted with delayed action fuses to delay the blast of the bombs until they had penetrated the ground, to blast open sewers and water and gas mains and kill rescue workers. They also scattered antipersonnel bombs like the SD-2, which succeeded in closing down several cities for days on end. This was in 1940,well before Dresden.

Dresden, Area Bombing, German Militarism And 70 Years Of Peace

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