Massacres and Attrocities of WW2

[redcoat]

Originally Posted by vailron

Aerial slaughter in Europe reached a climax on 13-14 February 1945 at Dresden. The briefing for air crews misrepresented Dresden as "an industrial city of first-class importance." Dresden had always been a center of art and artists, one of Europe's most magnificent cities, itself a work of art; Dresden's "heavy" industry was the manufacture of porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses. Other industries, according to Kurt Vonnegut, held as a POW near Dresden, consisted largely of hospitals and cigarette and clarinet factories.

The myth that somehow Dresden was solely a city of peaceful culture, blessed with “special status” due to its cultural distinction—as one often hears in references to the 1945 bombing—is completely false. Through the latter half of World War II, Dresden was home to many wartime industries and served as a crucial transportation center for traffic channeling to and from Germany’s Eastern Front. In fact, according to the 1942 edition of the Dresdner Jarhbuch (Dresden Yearbook), “Anyone who knows Dresden only as a cultural city, with its immortal architectural monuments and unique landscape environment, would rightly be very surprised to be made aware of the extensive and versatile industrial activity, with all its varied ramifications, that make Dresden . . . one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich”
Wartime industry included radios, aircraft instrumentation, lenses and optics for use in sights, torpedo tails, ammunition casings, and a host of other specialties that fed into key military programs .

[Kyt]

Yes but the decision to bomb Dresden was not due to it's industry but at the instigation of Churchill, at the behest of the Russians, both of whom thought that it would disrupt the communications network. At that time the bombings were being carried out on larger industrial facilities such as oil production.

The degree to which it was a military decision or a political one then becomes debateable.

As the RAF Hendon states:
British Military Aviation in 1945 - Part 1

13-14 February

RAF Bomber Command opens what will become one of the most controversial aerial bombardments in the history of the Combined Bomber Offensive - the raids conducted on the city of Dresden by the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the night and by the Eighth United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during the following day.

During the opening weeks of 1945, consideration within the higher Allied politico-military leadership turned to the manner in which British and United States strategic bomber forces might be used to aid the Soviet advance into Germany. The desire to provide some tangible assistance to the Soviet armed forces led to the conception of a plan, codenamed Thunderclap, to disrupt German defensive operations by striking at vital urban centres where, as Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, noted on 26 January 1945, "a severe blitz will not only cause confusion in the evacuation from the East but will also hamper the movement of troops from the West."

Debate within the Air Ministry with regards to the merit of diverting RAF Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force from their current primary targets - oil production facilities, jet aircraft factories and submarine yards - to Thunderclap was spurred by the intervention of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. On 26 January, Churchill pressed the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair,"I asked [on 25 January] whether Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. Prey report to me tomorrow what is going to be done." Moreover, the possible advantages of such attacks were not lost on Soviet military leaders. At Yalta on 4 February, General Antonov advocated air attacks against communication centres including Berlin and Leipzig.

The first such centre to be attacked was Dresden. A planned USAAF attack on the city on 13 February 1945 was abandoned due to unsuitable weather. However, on the night of 13-14 February 796 Avro Lancasters and nine de Havilland Mosquitoes of RAF Bomber Command, attacking in two raids separated by a gap of three hours, dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiaries on the city. Following the second raid, a firestorm developed, which led to large areas of the city being burned out. At the time of the attack, Dresden was crowded with refugees fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. It is now accepted that between 40,000 and 50,000 casualties resulted from these attacks.

14 February
A second attack was carried out by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) on the following day, when 311 Boeing B17 Flying Fortresss of the 1st Air Division, US Eighth Air Force dropped a further 771 tons of bombs on the city. Two further US attacks were mounted on 15 February and on 2 March 1945.

[redcoat]

Originally Posted by Kyt

Yes but the decision to bomb Dresden was not due to it's industry but at the instigation of Churchill, at the behest of the Russians, both of whom thought that it would disrupt the communications network. At that time the bombings were being carried out on larger industrial facilities such as oil production.

Dresden had already been bombed twice by USAAF bombers before the February raid, causing nearly 700 fatal civilian casualties.

Churchill merely asked his Chief of Staffs to organise a bombing campaign to help the Russians, he didn't pick Dresden as a target, that was done by the Joint Intelligence Committee who drew up the target list

[Cpl Rootes]

Dresden, do you think it was a massacre (or war crime)?

I don't and my Grandfather who flew in the raid has always said that neither at the time, nor since has he ever thought it was a massacre, but just another bombing raid over Germany.


*EDIT* sorry didn't realise this had been discussed already. Feel free to edit/delete as appropriate.

[Blackblue]

After the fall of Singapore and Borneo to the Japanese, a Prisoner of War Camp was established just outside of Sandakan to house approximately 750 British and more than 1650 Australian prisoners who were sent to the camp during the period 1942-43. In 1945, when the Japanese started to realise that the war may have been lost, and the Allies were closing in, the emaciated prisoners were force marched, in three separate marches, to the village of Ranau in the jungle, 250 km away, under the shadows of Mount Kinabalu.

On 28 January, 1945, 470 prisoners set off, with only 313 arriving in Ranau. On the second march, 570 started from Sandakan, but only 118 reached Ranau. The third march which comprised the last of the prisoners from the Sandakan camp contained 537 prisoners. Prisoners who were unable to walk were shot. The march route was through virgin jungle infested with crocodiles, snakes and wild pigs, and some of the prisoners had no boots. Rations were less than minimal. The march took nearly a year to complete.

Once the surviving prisoners arrived in Ranau, they were put to work carrying 20 kg sacks of flour over very hilly terrain to Paginatan, over 40 km away. By the end of July, 1945, there were no prisoners left in Ranau.
Only six Australians of the 2400 prisoners survived the "death march"
- they survived because they were able to escape from the camp at Ranau, or escaped during the march from Sandakan. No British prisoners survived.

This part of the war is considered by many to be the worst atrocity ever suffered by Australian soldiers,and compares to the atrocities of the Burma Railway, where fewer Australian POW's lost their lives. Those that survived the ordeal of the march, did so only because they escaped into the jungle where they were cared for by local natives.

An Australian Memorial honouring the survivors, POW's, local civilians who helped by clandestinely feeding the prisoners, and soldiers who perished at Sandakan and during the death marches into the jungle, has been erected at what was the Prisoner of War Camp in Taman Rimba close to the city of Sandakan. There are just a couple of rusting bits of machinery around, and the place has an eerie air about it. The Sandakan Prisoner of War Camp has now been transformed into a very beautiful park with a pavilion on site which houses the history of this very tragic period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandakan_Death_Marches