ZGram - 3/29/2003 - "On the history of the WWII Allied air campaign"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

March 29, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Although there are political correctness sparklies sprinkled 
throughout this commentary, here is more evidence that Germany is 
getting into Revisionism (of sorts...).  Jorg Friedrich, a military 
historian, is the bestselling author of "Der Brand" ("The Fire"), a 
history of the Allied air campaign against Germany during World War 
II.  Few books in Germany have caused such a stir as this one.

March 28, 2003

COMMENTARY

Beyond Slaughter: Memories of '45:  The bombing of Baghdad cannot be 
compared to the Allies' incineration of German cities in WWII.
 
By Jorg Friedrich, Special to The Times

At high noon on March 12, 1945, just eight weeks before the 
capitulation of Germany to the Allied forces, 1,000 American planes 
attacked the city of Swinemuende on the Baltic coast of Germany. The 
city, crammed with refugees from eastern Germany who had been 
ethnically cleansed and systematically raped by the Red Army, was 
bombed mercilessly and sprayed by machine gun fire from American dive 
bombers, which chased people through the city.

Of the city's 25,000 civilians, 23,000 were killed that night.

A similar fate befell the city of Wurzburg just four days later, when 
225 Lancaster bombers dispatched by British bomber command dropped 
1,100 tons of bombs. The city -- a bishop's seat in southern Germany, 
one of the jewels of European rococo style -- was destroyed by flames 
in 17 minutes. Although the end of the war was imminent, 6,000 
civilians were killed that night.

This was more than "shock and awe": This was the final months of the 
relentless, five-year Allied bombing campaign that took civilian 
deaths to their apex -- bombing, burning, incinerating the cities of 
Germany in a round-the-clock effort to destroy morale, foment 
insurrection and weaken the industrial heart and soul of Adolf 
Hitler's war machine.

This was no Iraq. Despite comparisons made in recent days between the 
bombing of German cities and the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad, 
this was actually the opposite. Instead of seeking to avoid civilian 
casualties as they are doing today, the Americans and British in the 
1940s sought to maximize them.

Forty-five thousand people were killed in Hamburg during the air 
attacks; 50,000 in Dresden, 12,000 in Berlin, 10,000 in Kassel, 5,500 
in Frankfurt and so on. In Pforzheim, a city of 63,000, one-third of 
the population was incinerated in one night in February 1945, even as 
the war was coming to a close.

Night after night after night, entire cities were lighted on fire, 
like a non-nuclear version of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Never before in modern history had a civilian population endured such 
a military assault. One and a half million bombs were dropped on 161 
German cities and 800 villages over five years, leaving half a 
million civilians dead, including 75,000 children. An additional 
78,000 of Hitler's slave workers and prisoners of war were killed.

No one was ever punished for these acts. The winners, not 
surprisingly, didn't indict themselves for war crimes.

And, in fact, there was nothing technically illegal about their actions.

According to Telford Taylor, the chief U.S. prosecutor of the 
Nuremberg trials, there was no international agreement limiting 
aerial bombardment to military targets -- so, technically, the 
bombing was legal.

Nevertheless, it was unprecedented and beyond any of the customs of 
war. The war itself was just, but the means by which it was conducted 
were unjust and unimaginable.

And worst of all, the bombing was an unmitigated failure. It simply 
didn't work. It weakened Hitler but didn't lead to his overthrow. It 
didn't destroy morale or incite rebellion; 75,000 children killed and 
it didn't do anything except, perhaps, strengthen the resolve of the 
German people against the Allies.

For years afterward, Germans didn't mention these things. We lost the 
war, and rightly so. Now we were making peace with the world, and it 
seemed wrong, somehow, to speak about the wounds that had been 
inflicted on us by countries that were now our allies, our protectors.

In the years that followed, none of the numerous British and American 
historians of the bombing campaign fairly described the tragedy of 
mass destruction and massacre wreaked on the German cities. Even 
German historians who knew better didn't dare to describe the 
devastation unleashed by the Allies.

At a press conference last week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 
noted comparisons had been made between the current campaign and the 
bombings in Germany. It's a laughable comparison.

You cannot compare the mass destruction of incendiary warfare -- 
aimed at killing civilians in extraordinary numbers -- with the noisy 
but relatively precise and targeted attacks on Baghdad. Such 
comparisons are far too kind to Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the British 
leader of the Allied air campaign.

The difference is this: In Baghdad today, civilian deaths constitute 
failure; in WWII Germany, they meant success. The U.S. would be a 
pariah in world opinion today if it targeted even one Iraqi city the 
way it attacked German cities relentlessly for five years.

A better comparison is to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass 
destruction. If the Iraqi leader were to use chemical or biological 
weapons -- which strike civilian and military targets 
indiscriminately over a large territory -- that would be comparable. 
Then Hussein would be the true heir of "Bomber" Harris.

=====

(Source:  Los Angeles Times, 3/28/2003 )