February 11, 2025 • 34 mins
This week sees the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. It was one of the most destructive of the Allies’ late-war bombing campaigns over Germany. Somewhere between 22,000 and 25,000 people were killed and a famously beautiful city was leveled. It’s been called an Allied war crime, and Kurt Vonnegut’s famous novel “Slaughterhouse 5” reinforced that idea in the public mind for generations. But was it a war crime? Was it unnecessary? Professor Phil Nash enlightens us!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello everyone, Professor Buzzkill here. This week marks the beginning
of the eightieth anniversary of the bombing of the German
city of Dresden during World War Two. That bombing took
place from the thirteenth to the fifteenth of February and
caused a great deal of destruction in that city, killing
up to twenty five thousand people. Debates about their reasons
(00:31):
for bombing Dresden began almost immediately after the raids and
have continued to the present day. But like so many
other aspects of World War Two, misinformation about the bombing
spread quickly and became absorbed by the public as genuine fact,
and as so often happens, misunderstanding followed and they continue
to be propagated today. So we're going to have an
(00:53):
encore presentation of the classic Professor Buzzkill episode about Dresden.
The guest is your favorite buzz Killer, Professor Phillip Nash.
He lays out the evidence for us in a clear
and convincing manner, but also talks about the nature of
strategic bombing in World War Two and all the moral
questions that were surrounding it at the time and that
have surrounded it ever since everything he says bears listening
(01:17):
to again, And I hope you find it enlightening.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ladies and gentlemen, to sound you here as a buzz
saw ripping through a painting of George Washington chopping down
cherry trees. It's time for Professor Buzzkill, busting myths and
taking names.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
The bombing of Dresden on the thirteenth and fourteenth of
February nineteen forty five was one of the most destructive
of the Ally's late war bombing campaigns over Germany. Somewhere
between twenty two thousand and twenty five thousand people were
killed and a famously beautiful city was leveled. It's been
called an Allied war crime, and Kurt Vonnegut's famous novel
(02:03):
Slaughterhouse five put that idea in the public mind for
at least a generation. But was it a war crime?
Was it unnecessary? Well, buzz Killers, it's your favorite professor
here to address those questions. Was it a war crime?
Was it unnecessary? But of course I shouldn't do these
things on my own, because I'm not a World War
two expert. Fortunately, we have a World War two expert
in the house in the bunker Professor Phil Nash. How
(02:24):
are you, sir, I'm doing great. Thanks, it's so nice
to have you back again, so generous with your time
coming these many months to do shows and Chowsen shows.
Can you give us some of the context and background
of these bombing raids and what they sort of meant
for Allied policy and the war in general.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Sure, major aspect of World War two, especially in Europe,
is war in the air. And I know he's a
popular figure on the show. A lot of this has
to do with Winston Churchill. Oh yes, yes, British strategy
age the stage and I have got a Churchill quote
later on because I know we have a Churchill content
requirement on the show, right, So absolutely, in any case,
early on, because the lessons for World War One, Churchill
(03:01):
and other British strategists agree on what sort of a
peripheral strategy, which I think I mentioned in an earlier show.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You don't take the Germans head on.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You don't have the military strength, you don't have the manpower,
you don't want to repeat to World War One. So
you have this peripheral strategy where you just sort of
piece together the sort of indirect campaigns against Hitler's Germany.
You take on Italy rather than Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
North Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
You rely on resistance and a special operations executive. Right,
you parachute in weapons to gorillas, So.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
A lot of case the periphery is also the air.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You rely on your naval blockade, your naval strength, no land,
no bator, and the way you bring the word to
Germany is through strategic bombing. Now, right away we get
into this sort of sort of conundrum because strategic bombing,
and by that I mean sort of terror bombing of
cities is started by the Germans. They bomb Warsaw, they
bombed Rotterdam. Then there's the Blitz nineteen forty forty one,
(03:53):
especially where they systematically bomb British cities, including London, causing
all sorts of destruction and civilian death in early in
the war, but American and British leaders both condemned bombing
of cities as if not a war crime, grossly immoral.
And one of the reasons we're fighting this war is
because our enemies do things like.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
This, right, Okay, fast forward to nineteen forty.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Two, and it turns out that the Allies, both the
British and the Americans decide that developing big forces of
strategic bombers and lowers, large four engine planes that can
carry big bomb loads and fly long distances, you mass
them in large numbers and you go after the enemy's cities.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, which, technically speaking, for at least for the time being,
we're going to call them the cities are civilian encamps,
not military bases. Right, And that gets complicated later on.
But that's where the original argument against bombing of cities
by the British in the American rights is considered a
moral argument because these are civilians.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Right, that you're waging war agains civilians, which is a
war crime in the broadest senses of war crime. But
where as you said, where it gets complicated is civilians
are also factory workers who have armies the field. By
feeding them, clothing them, giving them munitions and weapons.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And tents, they're building the weapons and cities, right.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, And so then you get into this very sort
of curious game where it turns out that it's very
difficult to target only military targets. It's very difficult to
bomb factories and not houses because your bombers are not
that accurate. Right, The British quickly discover that bombing during
the day is suicidal because too many of your bombers
(05:25):
get shot down by German anti aircraft fire and by
period fighters.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
But they can see you.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
So what you so you fly at night to protect
your bombers. Well, at night time, your bombing is even
less accurate. Yeah, sure, bombs fall miles away, sometimes twenty
thirty miles away.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Sometimes you make navigation errors.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Even during the Dresden raid, some of the bombers are
supposed to bomb Dresden, bomb Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Oh, which is a wastays away.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, so you make a wrong turn, you do you
think that's the city all on a river from you know,
twenty five thirty thousand feet They all look the same,
those cities because you're way high up. Yeah, so there,
it's not at all. You know, we're used to these
days precision guid ammunition and you know, bombs with cameras
in the noses that you can steer through a doorway.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
These are dumb bombs. These are not smart bombs.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
They go all over the place. You cannot just attack
military targets, right. They British are honest about this, to
their credit, and so they engage what's called well, they're
not honest with their labeling. They call it area bombing, okay,
and they use euphemisms like de hoousing workers, as if
you could destroy their houses without killing them, especially at
night when they're not in the factories but in their houses, right, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Which is also more scary, right, they more terrorizing them.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
That's part of the story.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
That's part of the story is that people like Arthur
Bomber Harris, who is head of Arif Barmer Command, sort
of controversial figure. He argues that civilians are a legitimate
military target. Yeah, and this gets into the whole idy
of not area bombing.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
But terror bombing.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Right, what do you do is you make civilians lives miserable,
you kill and maim them, you terrorize them, and then somehow,
but this was never made clear, how somehow their morale
starts to suffer and somehow then there their country will
lose the war. I don't know how it's supposed to work.
Maybe this was to put pressure on their leaders, or
maybe back of kupdeta that overthrows Hitler or something.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
What amazes me about this thinking is that the British
had their own live example in front of themselves of
how this was not going to work.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, because one of the reasons that one of the
justifications the Germans used was that they will the civilians,
will have the civilians in London, and then all these
other Britishes will demand a negotiated peace because this is
too much to bear.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And how did they happen?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
How did the British people react? They became more fierce,
They became legendary in their resistance. Now, why would you
assume that that would happen on your side but not
on that side?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Never made clear any case.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
The Americans who joined the war of late nineteen forty one,
they also in interest in the strategic bombing. But their
approach is a little different and in one way a
little dishonest because the Americans have their b seventeen quote
unquote flying fortresses, right, they've thought it blew out the
thought of versus that they were invulnerable because they're bristling
with like fourteen fifty caliber machine guns and they're called
(07:56):
flying fortresses. In other ways, they believe that they really
can't be shot down by enemy fighters.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Oops.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And don't they also fly higher than I don't know
if I.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Don't know if they like higher we have.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They have something called the Norden bomb Site, which was
an optical At the time. The legend was you could
hit a pickle barrel from ten thousand feet, which is
not true. They were amazingly accurate and it was it
was a top secret device all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
If time.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The idea was that we can bomb during the day
and we can do precision bombing. Oh I see, Okay,
we Americans don't believe in killing civilians. We're just going
to tack military targets. Well, where the rubber meets the road,
that's the distinction without a difference, right, we end up
killing all.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Sorts of civilians as well.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
The British say, look, those as silly Americans. They're killing
all sorts of Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
They focus on military targets, but to facto they are
engaged in terror bombing as well.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Yeah, right, right then.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
The Americans, as far as I know, don't openly say
we're trying to destroy German morale the way the British do. Right,
but they're in effect they're killing lots of civilians as
they destroy military targets.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, now is this all then? Does this all of
them become combined or is it a part of what's
known as Operation Thundercloth, that means bomb There was in
Eastern cities.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Big picture was called the combined bomber Offensive, British bombing
at night, Americans bombing during the day, sort of a
one two punch, and it became a massive effort. And
by the way, you know, I'm a sort of a
critic of strategic bombing, but the bravery of these.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Bomber crews is amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Oh sure, yeah, unbelievable what they put up with, some
of the hardships, some of the loss of life. By
the way, the only one more dangerous job in all
of World War Two on any side, and that's as a.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
U boat crew.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh no, kiddy.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The rate of loss was I believe.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Three and four, which is extraordinarily high. But in terms
of your survivability, you were better off being in a
rifle company, even in the Red Army, than you are
being in.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
A bomber crew.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Oh no, kidding of your longevity, you're way above the day.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
If you look at the losses, especially among the Americans
at first, if you look at the rate of loss,
if you you know you were required to fly twenty
five missions. A lot of guys didn't make it because
you're just rolling the dice every time, and.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
The losses was so catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Losses only start to go down in early nineteen forty
four when the Americans start to have fision numbers of
long range fighter escorts that can ward off the German
fighters and protect our bombers, and then our losses go
way down. In any case, Thunderclap was originally a plan
in mid nineteen forty four to bomb a whole bunch
of eastern German cities, including Berlin. That was scaled back,
(10:16):
and then Thunderclap became the name of justice. Relatively I
stressed a relatively small ray just on Dresden in February
nineteen forty five. Oh okay, okay, okay, So that yeah,
it's known as Operation Thunderclap, But that name was used
in different ways. So Dresden bomb mid February nineteen forty five.
Germany's on the ropes, by the way, A lot of
its other cities ye have been just laid waste. Dresden
(10:39):
was the seventh largest city in Germany. It was it
roughly the size of Manchester. For it's hit first by
a large wave of British bombers and then US bombers.
Total amount if you look at the if you want
some idea of the magnitude of the raid, hundreds and
hundreds of planes, total amount of bombs, both high explosives
and incendiaries, equivalent to one quarter of the Hiroshima bomb.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So, I mean it's not the biggest raid in Europe,
but just to put it, I mean, we're talking about thousands,
about three and a half thousand tons of TNT equivalent
both high explosives and in sandy areas.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now, how these incendiaries, that's what that's what creates the
firestorm that we hear so much about, Right, is that
was so distructive.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, that's what's so de Starting to keep in mind
that by this point this is going to sound sort
of disgusting in a way, but they've sort of developed
an art to how to not just destroy city but
set it on fire. Yeah, and you drop high explosives first,
and what those do is they blow off the roof
and blow off the wind, blow out the windows and
blow out the doors, and then fires can spread more easily.
So you drop your in centdiaries. By the way, in
(11:40):
Sandiary bombs are very tiny and they're not much bigger
than a can of bug spray, and so.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
You can drop thousands of them.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, but they are full of petroleum and gas or whatever.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, more or less a form of napalm, which is
jellied gasoline basically, And so then they're meant to ignite
and spread fires, yeah, which they do.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Which they do in any case.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
The idea behind the Dreasdon raid was that along with
a Red Army offensive, and the Red Army has made
great progress in the East and is closing in on
the German borders by February nineteen forty five. The idea
is that a big raid on Dresden, combined with the
Red Army offensive will hurt German morale.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
So German morale remains the target.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh okay, okay of this kind, so that that part
of the strategy is still kind of the British idea
rather than the that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
There's also there's also a military idea behind it, which
is because things are so bad in the East, the
Germans are moving, especially after the failed Battle of the Bulge,
They're moving units from the.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
West back to the east. A lot of those trains
go through residents.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Right right, so it is a transportation center.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
And then the result of this intense raid is a firestorm,
and people should know what that is. There were lots
of bombing raids. There were lots of fire bombing raids,
in other words, where the intent was to start fires.
There were very few fire storms. That's a technical oh, okay, okay.
There were only about a half dozen of those total
in Japan and Germany, including Tokyo March nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because I used those those terms interchangeable, I should right.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
The goal was to start a firestorm or at least
destroy a lot of things with fire, but that was rarely.
In fact, I've seen it claim it was only about
five percent of fire bombing raids result in a firestorm.
A firestorm is a technical term if in a dense
enough city you have enough fires going at the same
time in a dense enough area, you get, in effect,
this kind of a chimney effect. All those fires are
(13:22):
heating so much air that the air in the set
where the fire is, the air in huge quantities is
basically because of hot air, rises is basically blown high
into the atmosphere. That creates a vacuum, and so then
air at the ground level rushes in to fill that vacuum.
So much air is rushing basically a to feed the fire,
and b because it's being sucked in because the hot
(13:45):
air is rising, it creates hurricane force winds. Hurricane hurricane
force winds like winds about one hundred and fifty miles
an hour generated by a fire.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
That is a firestorm. That's a technical designation.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And if you look at some of these places like
brid Resident there are accounts of people and children and
being sucked into the fire from blocks away physically physically
basically cartwheeling through the air, being sucked by high winds
into the area that's on fire.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Wow, so you know this is the kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
This happened in Tokyo on March chiny forty five, where,
for example, canals and rivers and ponds which are often
sought as refuge people running from the fires are brought
to the boiling point where asphalt streets are brought to
the melting point, and people running for their lives actually
get stuck in streets trying to run away.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
People die of all sorts, of causes, but rarely.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Are they Like in Dresden, for example, the majority of
the victims suffocate.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right, they're not even burned.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
They're not burned because in fact, and one of the
reasons why we have a pretty good idea of the
numbers of dead is that we could identify most of
the bodies.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Now if you look.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Online, and by the way, they're pretty gruesome, but there
were lots of people who were burnt to death and
chared beyond recognition.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I hope this isn't too graphic, but there was one
read an account by a British prisoner of war who
was in Dresden at the time and it was forced
to help with the clean up, and he said he
went down into a massive area shelter and all that
was there is basically, you know, it's a big room
that's maybe i don't know, fifteen feet wide, twenty feet long.
All it left in the room is basically this green
brown pool with bones sticking out of it.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
In the green bound pool was the flesh thing.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Well yeah, yeah, yeah, Now that was relatively rare.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like I said, most people suffocated either all the oxygen's
being sucked up by the fire. Yeah, and it's being
replaced by carbon monoxide. So one way another, these people
being suffocated, there are other people who die just to
be of the heat. No, you can you die of heat,
because we're talking maybe fifteen hundred of these fahrenheit.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I forget the exact number.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So when these firestorms, it's the entire everything, everything, your
entire sort of world in dressed in is being that's right.
The temperature is the only good news.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And if you see this also in firestorms in nature,
when you have bad brush fires, the only good news
is that the fire doesn't spread that rapidly because all
the wind rushing sword of the center has a cooling
effect on the areas that aren't burned yet.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Oh right, that's so it's not spreading.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Laterally, but where it's burning is burning very intensely and
causing all these other effects.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And if the bombing area is wide enough, then the
area is big enough that the whole.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Right now, by the way, as long as we're talking
about strict square mileage, people should also know that firestorm raids,
not only in the resident actually destroyed more square miles
of city per kill a ton of explosive equivalent than Hirohiama.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Or Nagasaki did.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Oh my goodness, So in.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Terms of efficacy and destroying city in terms of square mileage,
this is actually more effective than an atomic bomb.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Which was also true in the in the Tokyo fire.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Correct, correct, Yeah, more. I think more of Tokyo is
destroyed than of Herosima is destroyed.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
So do we know how many people? If we move
on to the controversial and the miss do we know
how many people were killed that I've seen wildly happen?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Now we have a pretty good idea. For a while,
maybe ten twenty thirty years ago there was a controversy.
From everything I've read, there is no controversy. In fact,
the range, the acceptable range today is relatively narrow for
such a thing, much more narrow so than when you
get with Hiroshima.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is the range of our intro is twenty two hundred
twenty two thousand.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right between twenty twenty twenty five thousand, which, by the way,
should not be minimized massive civilian loss of life by
a name of standard, but much less than say, number
of people killed in the Hamburg firestorm of nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Right, which is worse but less well known.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Works probably the probably less well known, less controversial. I'm
not quite sure why. I mean, they're belonging in the
same category.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But in twenty ten, Dresden City actually put together city
if he doesn't, put together an official historical commission, and
they came up with those numbers using all the latest evidence.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
That was very good evidence even at the time. By
the way, there's good evidence right right right, And.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Like I said, most suffocate and are identifiable huge numbers
of alleged dead, like between one hundred and thirty five
and two hundred thousand. I've seen estimates as fires two
hundred and fifty thousand dead, which really would have been
miraculous in a bad way. Those come from Nazi propaganda
at the time. Yeah, Joseph Geerbls and his propaganda machine
were very quick to cash in on this as a
sort of another Allied atrocity and the reason why we
(17:49):
need to fight hard against the Allies, because they're brutal
beasts to kill civilians in large numbers. Yet two hundred thousand, unfortunately,
a lot of people, even on the Allied side, believe
that number at the time. Yeah, and so one of
the reasons why at the time, not in retrospect at
the time there was a lot of controversy in Britain
as to the immorality of this. Worse were people like
David Irving.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Maybe we should do a.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Show on him sometimes? Is that that fascinating character in
a bad way? This is a British historian who I believest.
His first book nineteen sixty three is called The Destruction
of Dresden, and later, by the way, people should know
David Irving is a Holocaust and I are very much
pro Nazi in a lot of his histories. He made
a few contributions partly because later on because a lot
of Nazi Nazi veterans and including Nazi leader veterans, were
(18:28):
willing to cooperate with this one British historian because they
knew he was pro Nazi right, and he in nineteen
sixty three relatively early on. You know what, that's just
what three years after Rise and Fall the Third White
comes out, So it's right in any case, he basically
makes the case this was a war crime with massive
loss of life. Sure, once again not the twenty two
thousand isn't massive, but it's a factor of four or
(18:48):
five or six, and that was taken very seriously, and
those numbers got repeated many times. And then, of course,
so let's not forget about Kurt Vonnegut and slaughter House five.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
What happened, wells explained to bus Killers.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Was an American soldier who was captured in the Battle
of the Bulge and ended up as a pow in
the city of Duresden in And I think he was
literally in Slaughterhouse five as a worker, right, that was
a makeshift pow camp, and he was there witnessed it firsthand.
By the way, I just saw this afterwards, later on,
after the book slaughter House Five became a huge hit,
(19:20):
he actually sort of felt bad about it. He basically said,
the only one person ever benefited from the bombited resident
that was me. Yeah, I profit, But he did help
popularize what went on. And I think when you put
that sort of very powerful book together with some of
those higher numbers, you understand why Dresden becomes a big
deal in the public mind.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
But we should also point out that, of course, as
terrible as it was for Vonnegut, and it was obviously
worse for the people who died, there's no way for
an individual person, even if you were there, to know, right,
there were two hundred thousand or twenty thousand, whatever the
number is. You know, yeah, he can only see. So
I always love.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
When people who were in a war basically contest what
history and says by saying I was there, you weren't.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, you can only see what twenty feet? Yes, but well,
and it's I think it's pretty clear. I think most historians,
most people have studied Vonntgut anyway, say that he bought
the irving line hook line and sinking right at least
this earlier or irving lower, you know it was.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Again, I think that at the end of the day
he'd probably say, okay, so the numbers were smaller. It
doesn't mean it wasn't a horrible thing. Yeah, anyway, something
sort of an academic exercise.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
But he also Vonicut also later in life, made a
big deal about it that it was it was not
a military target, that it was purely malicious to bomb it, right,
things like that, right, but not in not in Slarns right.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
And then so that leads us in somewhere or other controversy.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
As dangerous as a as a wedding cake.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Right now, it had been spared bombing up until this
point which makes people suspicious, right, and it was an
important military target.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Why did you wait? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Other cities had been bombed repeatedly by the way, it
wasn't had been targeted. Yeah, it had been bombed with
minor rays on its railroad marshaling yards a couple times earlier,
in nineteen forty five, much smaller rates. But you know,
some people have claimed it was undefended and.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
That was an open city, open city. Not really true.
It was poorly defended.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Some of its air defenses had been sort of cannibalized
and sent to the Eastern Front or sent elsewhere. So
it was certainly poorly defended. But there were, for example,
there were Luftwaffe assets in the region. It was like
most German cities, it was poorly served by air raid shelters.
Historians are very clear today about one of the Nazis'
many failures and one of their many reflections of their
contempt for the German public is they just did not
(21:26):
really care to provide adequate air raid shelters, and people
ended up in their sellers basically, and those are not
the same, and that's where a lot of them died.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
So it was Dresden if you will a legitimate target
given the standards of the Allied bombing list or whatever
it was at the time, Yes.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
No question. It had.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
For example, it had all sorts of war related industries.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
It had the transported it was the transportation hub right
for the Eastern Front.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
If you look the actual raid, how it was planned
and conducted, those parts of Dresden weren't targeted. So it's
kind of a mixed answer to your question. Yes, it
had legitimate military targets in it. Yeah, but those were
not targeted by that raid. Do we know why they
didn't target them? It seems to be that the goal
here was that this was a more conventional terror bombing,
in other words, the ultimate target here at the end
of the day. You know, they would list the others,
(22:13):
but they would see the ultimate target here is German morale,
and that's a reason to concentrated have a concentrated bombing
of the city center. People pointed out that if you
wanted to go after the factories in Dresden, and there
were factories in resident they tend to be spread out
in the suburbs. Okay, And if you want, like the
American bombers who took part in the raid. They focused
more narrowly on the railroad marshaling yard. Now a lot
of their bombs fell all over the place. Yeah, but no,
(22:36):
this is it's as far as I could tell. It
seems like the goal here was, in other words, to
claim it was a military target, that sort of post
facto justification rather than actual reason for the way they bombed.
So this is a this is a terror bombing. Bombing
the suburbs would have if you're looking at undermining the
German war machine, bombing the suburbs of Dresden would have
been more effective, or the idea would have been better.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
But is there any indication that this bombing was also
planned in order to scare their pants off the Soviets?
After all, it is kind of an eastern German city.
The Soviets are pressing in from the east, and this
is what we can do.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And as in the Alliance already right, there's at least
one RAF document document that the places are not clear.
Let's make it clear that we can reach this far.
On the other hand, the Soviets were are also asking,
like at Yalta, they asked, they asked, would you you know,
have some of your bombing because the Soviets, by the way,
had a really powerful army, they did not have a
(23:28):
strategic air force. They were not bombing German cities.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And of course he also is the conference where Roosevelt Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Right, they get together to discuss sort of the endgame. Right,
that was just before the raid, by the way, just
like a week before the race, and Stalin says, please
help us, right, help us.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, So it is it's complicated, right that it's not
an openly anti Soviet act.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
By the way, the bombing has often been lamented as.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
The destruction of a great cultural center, which Dresden was,
and a lot of their cultural buildings were destroyed. Only
recently have they restored some of them, like the frauen Kirche,
their famous church.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Right, that is certainly true. Some problems with this argument.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
If I live in a city that's not known as
the cultural center, what am I chopped liver?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Yeah, you know, I remember poor people of Hamburg. I
remember this clearly.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I was in Germany in the early eighties and when
you had a big peace movement there and the government
had initiated this program of putting these official blue and
white plaques. There were little plaques they'd put on the
side of culturally important buildings. It's sort of designating as
a culturally important building that's supposed to be spared in wartime.
Oh right, So the peace movement started cranking out these
stickers that were sticker versions of that, and they would
(24:31):
put it on everything cars and trash cans and houses.
And it's like basically saying what I'm saying, which is,
aren't all these things important?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Aren't all civilians right? Aren't all of man's works supposed
to be preserved? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
What is this distinction you're making that it's okay to
kill kids in the school but not a famous church, right,
I mean it's an interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
And poor it's poor, you know, for substitute for the
people of Homburg told.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And should be very careful what they do with his
next argument. But we should also point out that Resden,
compared to other German cities, was a heavily pro Nazi
city that compared to other German cities, they were very
much on board with the Nazi project.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
They were very much on board with the persecution of
Dresden's Jews.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
For example, Okay, Now, like I said, be careful with
this argument. Doesn't mean I'm justifying the bombing of Dresden. Yes,
I'm saying we need to complicate the picture of Dresden
to sort of this fantasy land, perfect city, cultural and
what a tragedy they were bombed.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
As opposed to other cities being bombed. That's all I'm saying.
I'm just trying to complicate it a bit.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
By the way, the Germans that also targeted cultural centers
in nineteen forty forty one in the Blitz, oh sure,
Canterbury and Exeter, in places like that, Germans had no hesitation.
And by the way, while we're on the subject, Hitler
and Goering openly talk about trying to create a firestorm
in London. They wanted and where they weren't just targeting
military targets when they bombed London, not even close.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
That was terror bombing. They wanted to kill British.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Civilians because like Dresden, the big factories are sort of
in the if you will, in the inner suburbs of London,
the outer ring.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
German bombers are no more precise than American and British bombers. Right.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
The problem for the Germans that they had no real
strategic bombers. They were using media in bombers and the
strategic role and its one of the reasons the blitz failed.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Right, So then you might want to ask this is
a war crime.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Part of the problem is the Hague Conventions that were
in place at the time, early in twentieth century sort
of laws of war didn't talk about airpower because this
was not because you didn't have air airplanes when they
talked about this.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
That's one problem. Some scholars like A. C.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Grayling, who's written a book on strategic bombing, he would
argue that this is immoral, but is not a war crime.
And that's an important distinction. Right, war crime, that's a
matter of international law. You can put people on trial
for war crimes. Others say it is this is a
war crime, partly because it violates the law of war
that talks about proportionality.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay, now, this is this is very interesting because this
is an almost technical argument, but it's extremely important to
get these points of christ.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
In international law of war, they talk about just war theory,
and one of the most one of the pillars of
just war theory is proportionality. In other words, what you
do on the battlefield, there has to be a relationship
between ends and means. In other words, was the nature
of this raid commensurate with military necessity?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
In other words, even if you say, well, look there's
a railroad car here, that's a legit military target. If
in targeting that rail car you are at least open
to the possibility of killing ten thousand civilians, that's not proportional.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Okay, gotcha, right, right, right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Now, here's where it gets murder.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Rail car isn't worth ten thounds.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And then then, as you might imagine, this quickly becomes
a can of worms, and people like bomber Harris right
had of Barmber command, he would say, these cities are
all legitimate targets because if we destroy German Morale, Germany surrenders,
the war ends quicker we say, British lives.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
That was basically his argument, and he stuck to it
long after the war. That was his argument.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's like, yeah, it's tragic that civilians have to die,
but it's not just about destroying.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Factories, right en.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I mean, Morale is a legitimate target because it's part
of their war effort, and it's part of it. You
damage that part of their war effort, we might win. Now,
people like Bomber Harris even today, you still have, even
in this country today, of wild eyed proponents of air power.
You know, when someone like not to single him out,
but when someone like Ted Cruz says, you know, we
essentially need to turn the sand into glass, right and
(27:58):
sort of bomb them back into.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Stone age or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
People have this belief that you can without risking maybe
even a single of your own lives, you can wave
your magic wand and make the enemy disappear. It wasn't
true in Vietnam, wasn't true in World War two, right,
very mixed results and such a World War two, huge loss.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Of civilian life.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
So I mean, if you were to ask me if
it was a war crime, that it would have been
very difficult to prosecute people.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
On loads of grounds. Is it a moral? I would
say yes.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I think targeting civilians in general, no matter who does
it personally, I think that's a moral, whether you have
a firestorm or not, whether it's Dressden or Hamburg or
Berlin or London. Right, And you know in the notion
that this is sort of payback where the German people
had it coming. I'm very uncomfortable with that. Sure, you
know a lot of those folks were Nazis, and a
lot of them weren't a lot of them were children, right.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A lot of them were anti Nazis. A lot of
more POWs, including Japan. Look at that.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
It was twenty thousand Koreans dyeing in Hiroshima, Allied POW's
dye in Hiroshima. I mean, it's a really crude instrument
and really hard to justify morally in my view. And
maybe this is the time to insert this Churchill quote
that I promised earlier. This is Churchill secretly writing to
RIF Farmer Command twenty eight March nineteen forty five, so
what about six weeks after bombing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
This is actually evidence on paper, So this is the
one they focus church quote.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
No, no, no, no, this is this is genuine and I'm
assuming it's part of his reaction to some of the
public public debate, because there was public debate. There were
In keep in mind, this is during wartime when most
British people hated Germans.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
With a passion. A lot of people in Britain in
print in public saying you know this is going too far.
Maybe this isn't moral.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Okay, Churchill rights and I quote it seems to me
that the moment has come when the question of bombing,
the question of bombing of German city simply for the
sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts should
be reviewed and end quote.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Very interesting phrasing.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Right, he's using the word terror, Yeah, simply for the
sake of increasing the terror. He would never admit that publicly, No,
but this is at the time. This is not him
feeling bad about it afterwards, like long afterwards, like not
he's writing his memoirs. But at the time he's sort
of acknowledging the purpose of this is Publicly at the time,
they would have if they were ever asked about this,
they would say, oh, no, it's a military target. Look
at the railway, Marshall and yards look right. They would
(30:08):
never admit what their goal was here was terror. And Churchill,
I guess, to his credit, actually started to raise painful
questions about this. The problem here is that after they
get this memo, people like bomber Harris are livid.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, they really don't appreciate.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
This, and they actually insist that Churchill issue another memo
with different phrases, and he takes out the word terror.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Oh okay, so but interesting he's he puts this, he
commits this to paper, and he's at least actually not
in pulling Bomber Harris aside at a meeting and saying, oh, right,
let's rethink this, right, which would have been lost to history, right, right, right,
which is interesting?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I mean it almost suggests like Churchill, right, and you're right.
In any circumstance like this, a leader has a choice. Sure,
but maybe he wants to create a paper trail. Maybe
he's already saying, look, if this becomes really unpopular after
World War Two, I want something that suggests that I
had qualms about it, which would interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Buzzkill is a genuine Churchill quote.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
And sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, they try.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
To they it's sort of moral equivalents. They try to
suggest that, well, yet we Germans committed war crimes. You
committed war crimes, and that sort of evens the.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Playing field, right, Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
A lot of people, including myself, have a real problem
with this argument.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
The fact that the conduct of the Allies was often
immoral and included war crimes. Even if you include all
the strategic bombing, this is not remotely put them in
the same moral universe as the Nazis, for example, Just
just to make this clear, even if let's let's see,
let's say you go along with Bomber Harris say that
German civilians are a legitimate target, because I'm arale, the
object there is to win the war and to end
(31:38):
it more quickly and prevent the suffering on your side.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
You can't say that about the Holocaust.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
No.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
In fact, the Holocaust was conducted at the expense of
the German war effort, right, not as part of the German.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
War effort, and even before the war had started, right,
and it was about racial purity. It's entirely different thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And Jews were not killed incidentally, No, that's sort of
clatteral damage in some larger effort.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And that is not sort of a minor distinction. That
is a major distinct, right, you know. Now.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
But partly what's going on here is that it is
okay today and it should be okay today to talk
about German victimhood. Right, German citizens suffered in World War Two,
and it is really callous to say well, then you
shouldn't vote for Hitler, right, Well, a lot of them,
it didn't vote for Hitler. A lot of them were
living in dictatorship. A lot of them were some of
them anywhere we're involved in resistance. They don't deserve to
(32:22):
be punished for Hitler's crimes. The post war period is
now historians look a lot at the expulsion ofth new
Germans from Eastern Europe, in which millions died.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
By the way, we should acknowledge that and talk about it.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Right, that's not that's I mean, that shouldn't be like, well,
we shouldn't talk about that because the Germans responsible for
the war. It seems to me we can do that
and acknowledge the tragedy of war for combatants and non
combatants on all sides, and still acknowledge the righteousness of
the Allied cause.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
In other words, you can acknowledge the Allied causes complicated,
which it is.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Look what we did.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
We allied ourselves with one really nasty totalitarian dictator to
defeat another. The rice of crushing Hitler was to make
Eastern Europe into sort of a communist hellhole. By the way,
I'd argue those people were much better off under Stalin
and Khrushev and Bresnav's rules, and they were under Hitler's rule.
They just lat out were. But that was a huge
moral price to pay right. We made a pact with
(33:15):
the devil. Basically, that's one of the many moral ambiguities
world War two that does not at all detract from
the righteous to the Allied cause destroying German and Japanese militarism.
No one should apologize for that for even for a minute.
Maybe you should apologize for some of the ways you
went about it, some of the moral compromises you made
along the way, and we should talk about civilian victims
on all sides. But that doesn't mean the Good War
(33:37):
wasn't at the end of the day, the good War.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, certainly, what we've done here is we've shown all
the complications and all the context as well. That makes
Dresden such an ongoing question and such an important question.
Buzz Killers, we'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Kept the gun
Hello everyone, Professor Buzzkill here. This week marks the beginning
of the eightieth anniversary of the bombing of the German
city of Dresden during World War Two. That bombing took
place from the thirteenth to the fifteenth of February and
caused a great deal of destruction in that city, killing
up to twenty five thousand people. Debates about their reasons
(00:31):
for bombing Dresden began almost immediately after the raids and
have continued to the present day. But like so many
other aspects of World War Two, misinformation about the bombing
spread quickly and became absorbed by the public as genuine fact,
and as so often happens, misunderstanding followed and they continue
to be propagated today. So we're going to have an
(00:53):
encore presentation of the classic Professor Buzzkill episode about Dresden.
The guest is your favorite buzz Killer, Professor Phillip Nash.
He lays out the evidence for us in a clear
and convincing manner, but also talks about the nature of
strategic bombing in World War Two and all the moral
questions that were surrounding it at the time and that
have surrounded it ever since everything he says bears listening
(01:17):
to again, And I hope you find it enlightening.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ladies and gentlemen, to sound you here as a buzz
saw ripping through a painting of George Washington chopping down
cherry trees. It's time for Professor Buzzkill, busting myths and
taking names.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
The bombing of Dresden on the thirteenth and fourteenth of
February nineteen forty five was one of the most destructive
of the Ally's late war bombing campaigns over Germany. Somewhere
between twenty two thousand and twenty five thousand people were
killed and a famously beautiful city was leveled. It's been
called an Allied war crime, and Kurt Vonnegut's famous novel
(02:03):
Slaughterhouse five put that idea in the public mind for
at least a generation. But was it a war crime?
Was it unnecessary? Well, buzz Killers, it's your favorite professor
here to address those questions. Was it a war crime?
Was it unnecessary? But of course I shouldn't do these
things on my own, because I'm not a World War
two expert. Fortunately, we have a World War two expert
in the house in the bunker Professor Phil Nash. How
(02:24):
are you, sir, I'm doing great. Thanks, it's so nice
to have you back again, so generous with your time
coming these many months to do shows and Chowsen shows.
Can you give us some of the context and background
of these bombing raids and what they sort of meant
for Allied policy and the war in general.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Sure, major aspect of World War two, especially in Europe,
is war in the air. And I know he's a
popular figure on the show. A lot of this has
to do with Winston Churchill. Oh yes, yes, British strategy
age the stage and I have got a Churchill quote
later on because I know we have a Churchill content
requirement on the show, right, So absolutely, in any case,
early on, because the lessons for World War One, Churchill
(03:01):
and other British strategists agree on what sort of a
peripheral strategy, which I think I mentioned in an earlier show.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You don't take the Germans head on.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You don't have the military strength, you don't have the manpower,
you don't want to repeat to World War One. So
you have this peripheral strategy where you just sort of
piece together the sort of indirect campaigns against Hitler's Germany.
You take on Italy rather than Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
North Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
You rely on resistance and a special operations executive. Right,
you parachute in weapons to gorillas, So.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
A lot of case the periphery is also the air.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You rely on your naval blockade, your naval strength, no land,
no bator, and the way you bring the word to
Germany is through strategic bombing. Now, right away we get
into this sort of sort of conundrum because strategic bombing,
and by that I mean sort of terror bombing of
cities is started by the Germans. They bomb Warsaw, they
bombed Rotterdam. Then there's the Blitz nineteen forty forty one,
(03:53):
especially where they systematically bomb British cities, including London, causing
all sorts of destruction and civilian death in early in
the war, but American and British leaders both condemned bombing
of cities as if not a war crime, grossly immoral.
And one of the reasons we're fighting this war is
because our enemies do things like.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
This, right, Okay, fast forward to nineteen forty.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Two, and it turns out that the Allies, both the
British and the Americans decide that developing big forces of
strategic bombers and lowers, large four engine planes that can
carry big bomb loads and fly long distances, you mass
them in large numbers and you go after the enemy's cities.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, which, technically speaking, for at least for the time being,
we're going to call them the cities are civilian encamps,
not military bases. Right, And that gets complicated later on.
But that's where the original argument against bombing of cities
by the British in the American rights is considered a
moral argument because these are civilians.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Right, that you're waging war agains civilians, which is a
war crime in the broadest senses of war crime. But
where as you said, where it gets complicated is civilians
are also factory workers who have armies the field. By
feeding them, clothing them, giving them munitions and weapons.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And tents, they're building the weapons and cities, right.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, And so then you get into this very sort
of curious game where it turns out that it's very
difficult to target only military targets. It's very difficult to
bomb factories and not houses because your bombers are not
that accurate. Right, The British quickly discover that bombing during
the day is suicidal because too many of your bombers
(05:25):
get shot down by German anti aircraft fire and by
period fighters.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
But they can see you.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
So what you so you fly at night to protect
your bombers. Well, at night time, your bombing is even
less accurate. Yeah, sure, bombs fall miles away, sometimes twenty
thirty miles away.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Sometimes you make navigation errors.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Even during the Dresden raid, some of the bombers are
supposed to bomb Dresden, bomb Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Oh, which is a wastays away.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, so you make a wrong turn, you do you
think that's the city all on a river from you know,
twenty five thirty thousand feet They all look the same,
those cities because you're way high up. Yeah, so there,
it's not at all. You know, we're used to these
days precision guid ammunition and you know, bombs with cameras
in the noses that you can steer through a doorway.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
These are dumb bombs. These are not smart bombs.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
They go all over the place. You cannot just attack
military targets, right. They British are honest about this, to
their credit, and so they engage what's called well, they're
not honest with their labeling. They call it area bombing, okay,
and they use euphemisms like de hoousing workers, as if
you could destroy their houses without killing them, especially at
night when they're not in the factories but in their houses, right, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Which is also more scary, right, they more terrorizing them.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
That's part of the story.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
That's part of the story is that people like Arthur
Bomber Harris, who is head of Arif Barmer Command, sort
of controversial figure. He argues that civilians are a legitimate
military target. Yeah, and this gets into the whole idy
of not area bombing.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
But terror bombing.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Right, what do you do is you make civilians lives miserable,
you kill and maim them, you terrorize them, and then somehow,
but this was never made clear, how somehow their morale
starts to suffer and somehow then there their country will
lose the war. I don't know how it's supposed to work.
Maybe this was to put pressure on their leaders, or
maybe back of kupdeta that overthrows Hitler or something.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
What amazes me about this thinking is that the British
had their own live example in front of themselves of
how this was not going to work.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, because one of the reasons that one of the
justifications the Germans used was that they will the civilians,
will have the civilians in London, and then all these
other Britishes will demand a negotiated peace because this is
too much to bear.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And how did they happen?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
How did the British people react? They became more fierce,
They became legendary in their resistance. Now, why would you
assume that that would happen on your side but not
on that side?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Never made clear any case.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
The Americans who joined the war of late nineteen forty one,
they also in interest in the strategic bombing. But their
approach is a little different and in one way a
little dishonest because the Americans have their b seventeen quote
unquote flying fortresses, right, they've thought it blew out the
thought of versus that they were invulnerable because they're bristling
with like fourteen fifty caliber machine guns and they're called
(07:56):
flying fortresses. In other ways, they believe that they really
can't be shot down by enemy fighters.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Oops.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And don't they also fly higher than I don't know
if I.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Don't know if they like higher we have.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They have something called the Norden bomb Site, which was
an optical At the time. The legend was you could
hit a pickle barrel from ten thousand feet, which is
not true. They were amazingly accurate and it was it
was a top secret device all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
If time.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The idea was that we can bomb during the day
and we can do precision bombing. Oh I see, Okay,
we Americans don't believe in killing civilians. We're just going
to tack military targets. Well, where the rubber meets the road,
that's the distinction without a difference, right, we end up
killing all.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Sorts of civilians as well.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
The British say, look, those as silly Americans. They're killing
all sorts of Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
They focus on military targets, but to facto they are
engaged in terror bombing as well.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Yeah, right, right then.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
The Americans, as far as I know, don't openly say
we're trying to destroy German morale the way the British do. Right,
but they're in effect they're killing lots of civilians as
they destroy military targets.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, now is this all then? Does this all of
them become combined or is it a part of what's
known as Operation Thundercloth, that means bomb There was in
Eastern cities.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Big picture was called the combined bomber Offensive, British bombing
at night, Americans bombing during the day, sort of a
one two punch, and it became a massive effort. And
by the way, you know, I'm a sort of a
critic of strategic bombing, but the bravery of these.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Bomber crews is amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Oh sure, yeah, unbelievable what they put up with, some
of the hardships, some of the loss of life. By
the way, the only one more dangerous job in all
of World War Two on any side, and that's as a.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
U boat crew.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh no, kiddy.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The rate of loss was I believe.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Three and four, which is extraordinarily high. But in terms
of your survivability, you were better off being in a
rifle company, even in the Red Army, than you are
being in.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
A bomber crew.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Oh no, kidding of your longevity, you're way above the day.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
If you look at the losses, especially among the Americans
at first, if you look at the rate of loss,
if you you know you were required to fly twenty
five missions. A lot of guys didn't make it because
you're just rolling the dice every time, and.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
The losses was so catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Losses only start to go down in early nineteen forty
four when the Americans start to have fision numbers of
long range fighter escorts that can ward off the German
fighters and protect our bombers, and then our losses go
way down. In any case, Thunderclap was originally a plan
in mid nineteen forty four to bomb a whole bunch
of eastern German cities, including Berlin. That was scaled back,
(10:16):
and then Thunderclap became the name of justice. Relatively I
stressed a relatively small ray just on Dresden in February
nineteen forty five. Oh okay, okay, okay, So that yeah,
it's known as Operation Thunderclap, But that name was used
in different ways. So Dresden bomb mid February nineteen forty five.
Germany's on the ropes, by the way, A lot of
its other cities ye have been just laid waste. Dresden
(10:39):
was the seventh largest city in Germany. It was it
roughly the size of Manchester. For it's hit first by
a large wave of British bombers and then US bombers.
Total amount if you look at the if you want
some idea of the magnitude of the raid, hundreds and
hundreds of planes, total amount of bombs, both high explosives
and incendiaries, equivalent to one quarter of the Hiroshima bomb.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So, I mean it's not the biggest raid in Europe,
but just to put it, I mean, we're talking about thousands,
about three and a half thousand tons of TNT equivalent
both high explosives and in sandy areas.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now, how these incendiaries, that's what that's what creates the
firestorm that we hear so much about, Right, is that
was so distructive.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, that's what's so de Starting to keep in mind
that by this point this is going to sound sort
of disgusting in a way, but they've sort of developed
an art to how to not just destroy city but
set it on fire. Yeah, and you drop high explosives first,
and what those do is they blow off the roof
and blow off the wind, blow out the windows and
blow out the doors, and then fires can spread more easily.
So you drop your in centdiaries. By the way, in
(11:40):
Sandiary bombs are very tiny and they're not much bigger
than a can of bug spray, and so.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
You can drop thousands of them.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, but they are full of petroleum and gas or whatever.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, more or less a form of napalm, which is
jellied gasoline basically, And so then they're meant to ignite
and spread fires, yeah, which they do.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Which they do in any case.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
The idea behind the Dreasdon raid was that along with
a Red Army offensive, and the Red Army has made
great progress in the East and is closing in on
the German borders by February nineteen forty five. The idea
is that a big raid on Dresden, combined with the
Red Army offensive will hurt German morale.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
So German morale remains the target.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh okay, okay of this kind, so that that part
of the strategy is still kind of the British idea
rather than the that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
There's also there's also a military idea behind it, which
is because things are so bad in the East, the
Germans are moving, especially after the failed Battle of the Bulge,
They're moving units from the.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
West back to the east. A lot of those trains
go through residents.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Right right, so it is a transportation center.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
And then the result of this intense raid is a firestorm,
and people should know what that is. There were lots
of bombing raids. There were lots of fire bombing raids,
in other words, where the intent was to start fires.
There were very few fire storms. That's a technical oh, okay, okay.
There were only about a half dozen of those total
in Japan and Germany, including Tokyo March nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because I used those those terms interchangeable, I should right.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
The goal was to start a firestorm or at least
destroy a lot of things with fire, but that was rarely.
In fact, I've seen it claim it was only about
five percent of fire bombing raids result in a firestorm.
A firestorm is a technical term if in a dense
enough city you have enough fires going at the same
time in a dense enough area, you get, in effect,
this kind of a chimney effect. All those fires are
(13:22):
heating so much air that the air in the set
where the fire is, the air in huge quantities is
basically because of hot air, rises is basically blown high
into the atmosphere. That creates a vacuum, and so then
air at the ground level rushes in to fill that vacuum.
So much air is rushing basically a to feed the fire,
and b because it's being sucked in because the hot
(13:45):
air is rising, it creates hurricane force winds. Hurricane hurricane
force winds like winds about one hundred and fifty miles
an hour generated by a fire.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
That is a firestorm. That's a technical designation.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And if you look at some of these places like
brid Resident there are accounts of people and children and
being sucked into the fire from blocks away physically physically
basically cartwheeling through the air, being sucked by high winds
into the area that's on fire.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Wow, so you know this is the kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
This happened in Tokyo on March chiny forty five, where,
for example, canals and rivers and ponds which are often
sought as refuge people running from the fires are brought
to the boiling point where asphalt streets are brought to
the melting point, and people running for their lives actually
get stuck in streets trying to run away.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
People die of all sorts, of causes, but rarely.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Are they Like in Dresden, for example, the majority of
the victims suffocate.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right, they're not even burned.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
They're not burned because in fact, and one of the
reasons why we have a pretty good idea of the
numbers of dead is that we could identify most of
the bodies.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Now if you look.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Online, and by the way, they're pretty gruesome, but there
were lots of people who were burnt to death and
chared beyond recognition.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I hope this isn't too graphic, but there was one
read an account by a British prisoner of war who
was in Dresden at the time and it was forced
to help with the clean up, and he said he
went down into a massive area shelter and all that
was there is basically, you know, it's a big room
that's maybe i don't know, fifteen feet wide, twenty feet long.
All it left in the room is basically this green
brown pool with bones sticking out of it.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
In the green bound pool was the flesh thing.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Well yeah, yeah, yeah, Now that was relatively rare.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like I said, most people suffocated either all the oxygen's
being sucked up by the fire. Yeah, and it's being
replaced by carbon monoxide. So one way another, these people
being suffocated, there are other people who die just to
be of the heat. No, you can you die of heat,
because we're talking maybe fifteen hundred of these fahrenheit.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I forget the exact number.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So when these firestorms, it's the entire everything, everything, your
entire sort of world in dressed in is being that's right.
The temperature is the only good news.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And if you see this also in firestorms in nature,
when you have bad brush fires, the only good news
is that the fire doesn't spread that rapidly because all
the wind rushing sword of the center has a cooling
effect on the areas that aren't burned yet.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Oh right, that's so it's not spreading.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Laterally, but where it's burning is burning very intensely and
causing all these other effects.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And if the bombing area is wide enough, then the
area is big enough that the whole.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Right now, by the way, as long as we're talking
about strict square mileage, people should also know that firestorm raids,
not only in the resident actually destroyed more square miles
of city per kill a ton of explosive equivalent than Hirohiama.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Or Nagasaki did.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Oh my goodness, So in.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Terms of efficacy and destroying city in terms of square mileage,
this is actually more effective than an atomic bomb.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Which was also true in the in the Tokyo fire.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Correct, correct, Yeah, more. I think more of Tokyo is
destroyed than of Herosima is destroyed.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
So do we know how many people? If we move
on to the controversial and the miss do we know
how many people were killed that I've seen wildly happen?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Now we have a pretty good idea. For a while,
maybe ten twenty thirty years ago there was a controversy.
From everything I've read, there is no controversy. In fact,
the range, the acceptable range today is relatively narrow for
such a thing, much more narrow so than when you
get with Hiroshima.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is the range of our intro is twenty two hundred
twenty two thousand.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right between twenty twenty twenty five thousand, which, by the way,
should not be minimized massive civilian loss of life by
a name of standard, but much less than say, number
of people killed in the Hamburg firestorm of nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Right, which is worse but less well known.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Works probably the probably less well known, less controversial. I'm
not quite sure why. I mean, they're belonging in the
same category.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But in twenty ten, Dresden City actually put together city
if he doesn't, put together an official historical commission, and
they came up with those numbers using all the latest evidence.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
That was very good evidence even at the time. By
the way, there's good evidence right right right, And.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Like I said, most suffocate and are identifiable huge numbers
of alleged dead, like between one hundred and thirty five
and two hundred thousand. I've seen estimates as fires two
hundred and fifty thousand dead, which really would have been
miraculous in a bad way. Those come from Nazi propaganda
at the time. Yeah, Joseph Geerbls and his propaganda machine
were very quick to cash in on this as a
sort of another Allied atrocity and the reason why we
(17:49):
need to fight hard against the Allies, because they're brutal
beasts to kill civilians in large numbers. Yet two hundred thousand, unfortunately,
a lot of people, even on the Allied side, believe
that number at the time. Yeah, and so one of
the reasons why at the time, not in retrospect at
the time there was a lot of controversy in Britain
as to the immorality of this. Worse were people like
David Irving.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Maybe we should do a.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Show on him sometimes? Is that that fascinating character in
a bad way? This is a British historian who I believest.
His first book nineteen sixty three is called The Destruction
of Dresden, and later, by the way, people should know
David Irving is a Holocaust and I are very much
pro Nazi in a lot of his histories. He made
a few contributions partly because later on because a lot
of Nazi Nazi veterans and including Nazi leader veterans, were
(18:28):
willing to cooperate with this one British historian because they
knew he was pro Nazi right, and he in nineteen
sixty three relatively early on. You know what, that's just
what three years after Rise and Fall the Third White
comes out, So it's right in any case, he basically
makes the case this was a war crime with massive
loss of life. Sure, once again not the twenty two
thousand isn't massive, but it's a factor of four or
(18:48):
five or six, and that was taken very seriously, and
those numbers got repeated many times. And then, of course,
so let's not forget about Kurt Vonnegut and slaughter House five.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
What happened, wells explained to bus Killers.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Was an American soldier who was captured in the Battle
of the Bulge and ended up as a pow in
the city of Duresden in And I think he was
literally in Slaughterhouse five as a worker, right, that was
a makeshift pow camp, and he was there witnessed it firsthand.
By the way, I just saw this afterwards, later on,
after the book slaughter House Five became a huge hit,
(19:20):
he actually sort of felt bad about it. He basically said,
the only one person ever benefited from the bombited resident
that was me. Yeah, I profit, But he did help
popularize what went on. And I think when you put
that sort of very powerful book together with some of
those higher numbers, you understand why Dresden becomes a big
deal in the public mind.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
But we should also point out that, of course, as
terrible as it was for Vonnegut, and it was obviously
worse for the people who died, there's no way for
an individual person, even if you were there, to know, right,
there were two hundred thousand or twenty thousand, whatever the
number is. You know, yeah, he can only see. So
I always love.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
When people who were in a war basically contest what
history and says by saying I was there, you weren't.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, you can only see what twenty feet? Yes, but well,
and it's I think it's pretty clear. I think most historians,
most people have studied Vonntgut anyway, say that he bought
the irving line hook line and sinking right at least
this earlier or irving lower, you know it was.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Again, I think that at the end of the day
he'd probably say, okay, so the numbers were smaller. It
doesn't mean it wasn't a horrible thing. Yeah, anyway, something
sort of an academic exercise.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
But he also Vonicut also later in life, made a
big deal about it that it was it was not
a military target, that it was purely malicious to bomb it, right,
things like that, right, but not in not in Slarns right.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
And then so that leads us in somewhere or other controversy.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
As dangerous as a as a wedding cake.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Right now, it had been spared bombing up until this
point which makes people suspicious, right, and it was an
important military target.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Why did you wait? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Other cities had been bombed repeatedly by the way, it
wasn't had been targeted. Yeah, it had been bombed with
minor rays on its railroad marshaling yards a couple times earlier,
in nineteen forty five, much smaller rates. But you know,
some people have claimed it was undefended and.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
That was an open city, open city. Not really true.
It was poorly defended.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Some of its air defenses had been sort of cannibalized
and sent to the Eastern Front or sent elsewhere. So
it was certainly poorly defended. But there were, for example,
there were Luftwaffe assets in the region. It was like
most German cities, it was poorly served by air raid shelters.
Historians are very clear today about one of the Nazis'
many failures and one of their many reflections of their
contempt for the German public is they just did not
(21:26):
really care to provide adequate air raid shelters, and people
ended up in their sellers basically, and those are not
the same, and that's where a lot of them died.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
So it was Dresden if you will a legitimate target
given the standards of the Allied bombing list or whatever
it was at the time, Yes.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
No question. It had.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
For example, it had all sorts of war related industries.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
It had the transported it was the transportation hub right
for the Eastern Front.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
If you look the actual raid, how it was planned
and conducted, those parts of Dresden weren't targeted. So it's
kind of a mixed answer to your question. Yes, it
had legitimate military targets in it. Yeah, but those were
not targeted by that raid. Do we know why they
didn't target them? It seems to be that the goal
here was that this was a more conventional terror bombing,
in other words, the ultimate target here at the end
of the day. You know, they would list the others,
(22:13):
but they would see the ultimate target here is German morale,
and that's a reason to concentrated have a concentrated bombing
of the city center. People pointed out that if you
wanted to go after the factories in Dresden, and there
were factories in resident they tend to be spread out
in the suburbs. Okay, And if you want, like the
American bombers who took part in the raid. They focused
more narrowly on the railroad marshaling yard. Now a lot
of their bombs fell all over the place. Yeah, but no,
(22:36):
this is it's as far as I could tell. It
seems like the goal here was, in other words, to
claim it was a military target, that sort of post
facto justification rather than actual reason for the way they bombed.
So this is a this is a terror bombing. Bombing
the suburbs would have if you're looking at undermining the
German war machine, bombing the suburbs of Dresden would have
been more effective, or the idea would have been better.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
But is there any indication that this bombing was also
planned in order to scare their pants off the Soviets?
After all, it is kind of an eastern German city.
The Soviets are pressing in from the east, and this
is what we can do.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And as in the Alliance already right, there's at least
one RAF document document that the places are not clear.
Let's make it clear that we can reach this far.
On the other hand, the Soviets were are also asking,
like at Yalta, they asked, they asked, would you you know,
have some of your bombing because the Soviets, by the way,
had a really powerful army, they did not have a
(23:28):
strategic air force. They were not bombing German cities.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And of course he also is the conference where Roosevelt Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Right, they get together to discuss sort of the endgame. Right,
that was just before the raid, by the way, just
like a week before the race, and Stalin says, please
help us, right, help us.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, So it is it's complicated, right that it's not
an openly anti Soviet act.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
By the way, the bombing has often been lamented as.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
The destruction of a great cultural center, which Dresden was,
and a lot of their cultural buildings were destroyed. Only
recently have they restored some of them, like the frauen Kirche,
their famous church.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Right, that is certainly true. Some problems with this argument.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
If I live in a city that's not known as
the cultural center, what am I chopped liver?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Yeah, you know, I remember poor people of Hamburg. I
remember this clearly.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I was in Germany in the early eighties and when
you had a big peace movement there and the government
had initiated this program of putting these official blue and
white plaques. There were little plaques they'd put on the
side of culturally important buildings. It's sort of designating as
a culturally important building that's supposed to be spared in wartime.
Oh right, So the peace movement started cranking out these
stickers that were sticker versions of that, and they would
(24:31):
put it on everything cars and trash cans and houses.
And it's like basically saying what I'm saying, which is,
aren't all these things important?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Aren't all civilians right? Aren't all of man's works supposed
to be preserved? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
What is this distinction you're making that it's okay to
kill kids in the school but not a famous church, right,
I mean it's an interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
And poor it's poor, you know, for substitute for the
people of Homburg told.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And should be very careful what they do with his
next argument. But we should also point out that Resden,
compared to other German cities, was a heavily pro Nazi
city that compared to other German cities, they were very
much on board with the Nazi project.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
They were very much on board with the persecution of
Dresden's Jews.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
For example, Okay, Now, like I said, be careful with
this argument. Doesn't mean I'm justifying the bombing of Dresden. Yes,
I'm saying we need to complicate the picture of Dresden
to sort of this fantasy land, perfect city, cultural and
what a tragedy they were bombed.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
As opposed to other cities being bombed. That's all I'm saying.
I'm just trying to complicate it a bit.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
By the way, the Germans that also targeted cultural centers
in nineteen forty forty one in the Blitz, oh sure,
Canterbury and Exeter, in places like that, Germans had no hesitation.
And by the way, while we're on the subject, Hitler
and Goering openly talk about trying to create a firestorm
in London. They wanted and where they weren't just targeting
military targets when they bombed London, not even close.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
That was terror bombing. They wanted to kill British.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Civilians because like Dresden, the big factories are sort of
in the if you will, in the inner suburbs of London,
the outer ring.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
German bombers are no more precise than American and British bombers. Right.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
The problem for the Germans that they had no real
strategic bombers. They were using media in bombers and the
strategic role and its one of the reasons the blitz failed.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Right, So then you might want to ask this is
a war crime.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Part of the problem is the Hague Conventions that were
in place at the time, early in twentieth century sort
of laws of war didn't talk about airpower because this
was not because you didn't have air airplanes when they
talked about this.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
That's one problem. Some scholars like A. C.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Grayling, who's written a book on strategic bombing, he would
argue that this is immoral, but is not a war crime.
And that's an important distinction. Right, war crime, that's a
matter of international law. You can put people on trial
for war crimes. Others say it is this is a
war crime, partly because it violates the law of war
that talks about proportionality.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay, now, this is this is very interesting because this
is an almost technical argument, but it's extremely important to
get these points of christ.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
In international law of war, they talk about just war theory,
and one of the most one of the pillars of
just war theory is proportionality. In other words, what you
do on the battlefield, there has to be a relationship
between ends and means. In other words, was the nature
of this raid commensurate with military necessity?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
In other words, even if you say, well, look there's
a railroad car here, that's a legit military target. If
in targeting that rail car you are at least open
to the possibility of killing ten thousand civilians, that's not proportional.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Okay, gotcha, right, right, right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Now, here's where it gets murder.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Rail car isn't worth ten thounds.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And then then, as you might imagine, this quickly becomes
a can of worms, and people like bomber Harris right
had of Barmber command, he would say, these cities are
all legitimate targets because if we destroy German Morale, Germany surrenders,
the war ends quicker we say, British lives.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
That was basically his argument, and he stuck to it
long after the war. That was his argument.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's like, yeah, it's tragic that civilians have to die,
but it's not just about destroying.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Factories, right en.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I mean, Morale is a legitimate target because it's part
of their war effort, and it's part of it. You
damage that part of their war effort, we might win. Now,
people like Bomber Harris even today, you still have, even
in this country today, of wild eyed proponents of air power.
You know, when someone like not to single him out,
but when someone like Ted Cruz says, you know, we
essentially need to turn the sand into glass, right and
(27:58):
sort of bomb them back into.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Stone age or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
People have this belief that you can without risking maybe
even a single of your own lives, you can wave
your magic wand and make the enemy disappear. It wasn't
true in Vietnam, wasn't true in World War two, right,
very mixed results and such a World War two, huge loss.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Of civilian life.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
So I mean, if you were to ask me if
it was a war crime, that it would have been
very difficult to prosecute people.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
On loads of grounds. Is it a moral? I would
say yes.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I think targeting civilians in general, no matter who does
it personally, I think that's a moral, whether you have
a firestorm or not, whether it's Dressden or Hamburg or
Berlin or London. Right, And you know in the notion
that this is sort of payback where the German people
had it coming. I'm very uncomfortable with that. Sure, you
know a lot of those folks were Nazis, and a
lot of them weren't a lot of them were children, right.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A lot of them were anti Nazis. A lot of
more POWs, including Japan. Look at that.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
It was twenty thousand Koreans dyeing in Hiroshima, Allied POW's
dye in Hiroshima. I mean, it's a really crude instrument
and really hard to justify morally in my view. And
maybe this is the time to insert this Churchill quote
that I promised earlier. This is Churchill secretly writing to
RIF Farmer Command twenty eight March nineteen forty five, so
what about six weeks after bombing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
This is actually evidence on paper, So this is the
one they focus church quote.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
No, no, no, no, this is this is genuine and I'm
assuming it's part of his reaction to some of the
public public debate, because there was public debate. There were
In keep in mind, this is during wartime when most
British people hated Germans.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
With a passion. A lot of people in Britain in
print in public saying you know this is going too far.
Maybe this isn't moral.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Okay, Churchill rights and I quote it seems to me
that the moment has come when the question of bombing,
the question of bombing of German city simply for the
sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts should
be reviewed and end quote.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Very interesting phrasing.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Right, he's using the word terror, Yeah, simply for the
sake of increasing the terror. He would never admit that publicly, No,
but this is at the time. This is not him
feeling bad about it afterwards, like long afterwards, like not
he's writing his memoirs. But at the time he's sort
of acknowledging the purpose of this is Publicly at the time,
they would have if they were ever asked about this,
they would say, oh, no, it's a military target. Look
at the railway, Marshall and yards look right. They would
(30:08):
never admit what their goal was here was terror. And Churchill,
I guess, to his credit, actually started to raise painful
questions about this. The problem here is that after they
get this memo, people like bomber Harris are livid.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, they really don't appreciate.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
This, and they actually insist that Churchill issue another memo
with different phrases, and he takes out the word terror.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Oh okay, so but interesting he's he puts this, he
commits this to paper, and he's at least actually not
in pulling Bomber Harris aside at a meeting and saying, oh, right,
let's rethink this, right, which would have been lost to history, right, right, right,
which is interesting?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I mean it almost suggests like Churchill, right, and you're right.
In any circumstance like this, a leader has a choice. Sure,
but maybe he wants to create a paper trail. Maybe
he's already saying, look, if this becomes really unpopular after
World War Two, I want something that suggests that I
had qualms about it, which would interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Buzzkill is a genuine Churchill quote.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
And sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, they try.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
To they it's sort of moral equivalents. They try to
suggest that, well, yet we Germans committed war crimes. You
committed war crimes, and that sort of evens the.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Playing field, right, Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
A lot of people, including myself, have a real problem
with this argument.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
The fact that the conduct of the Allies was often
immoral and included war crimes. Even if you include all
the strategic bombing, this is not remotely put them in
the same moral universe as the Nazis, for example, Just
just to make this clear, even if let's let's see,
let's say you go along with Bomber Harris say that
German civilians are a legitimate target, because I'm arale, the
object there is to win the war and to end
(31:38):
it more quickly and prevent the suffering on your side.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
You can't say that about the Holocaust.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
No.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
In fact, the Holocaust was conducted at the expense of
the German war effort, right, not as part of the German.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
War effort, and even before the war had started, right,
and it was about racial purity. It's entirely different thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And Jews were not killed incidentally, No, that's sort of
clatteral damage in some larger effort.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And that is not sort of a minor distinction. That
is a major distinct, right, you know. Now.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
But partly what's going on here is that it is
okay today and it should be okay today to talk
about German victimhood. Right, German citizens suffered in World War Two,
and it is really callous to say well, then you
shouldn't vote for Hitler, right, Well, a lot of them,
it didn't vote for Hitler. A lot of them were
living in dictatorship. A lot of them were some of
them anywhere we're involved in resistance. They don't deserve to
(32:22):
be punished for Hitler's crimes. The post war period is
now historians look a lot at the expulsion ofth new
Germans from Eastern Europe, in which millions died.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
By the way, we should acknowledge that and talk about it.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Right, that's not that's I mean, that shouldn't be like, well,
we shouldn't talk about that because the Germans responsible for
the war. It seems to me we can do that
and acknowledge the tragedy of war for combatants and non
combatants on all sides, and still acknowledge the righteousness of
the Allied cause.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
In other words, you can acknowledge the Allied causes complicated,
which it is.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Look what we did.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
We allied ourselves with one really nasty totalitarian dictator to
defeat another. The rice of crushing Hitler was to make
Eastern Europe into sort of a communist hellhole. By the way,
I'd argue those people were much better off under Stalin
and Khrushev and Bresnav's rules, and they were under Hitler's rule.
They just lat out were. But that was a huge
moral price to pay right. We made a pact with
(33:15):
the devil. Basically, that's one of the many moral ambiguities
world War two that does not at all detract from
the righteous to the Allied cause destroying German and Japanese militarism.
No one should apologize for that for even for a minute.
Maybe you should apologize for some of the ways you
went about it, some of the moral compromises you made
along the way, and we should talk about civilian victims
on all sides. But that doesn't mean the Good War
(33:37):
wasn't at the end of the day, the good War.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, certainly, what we've done here is we've shown all
the complications and all the context as well. That makes
Dresden such an ongoing question and such an important question.
Buzz Killers, we'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Kept the gun
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