Coventry v Hamburg

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by Gerard, Dec 6, 2009.

  1. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    As to mass/carpet/saturation bombing of cities, Vera Brittain descibed it at the time as "methods of barbarism", a description which has never been bettered


    The methods may have been "barbaric", but...

    1/ it doesn't make them wrong ;) and hey...

    2/ "War is Hell"
     
  2. Drayton

    Drayton Senior Member

    'Total War' is a tricky phrase.

    I suppose you first have to get a clear definition of what 'Total War' really means, and some sort of agreement on that definition, before discussing it properly without confusion.

    What people saw as "total" at the time was two-dimensional. Every aspect of life became subject to the "war effort": the basic availability and distribution of food, how you lived, in the sense of when you could show a light or have enough fuel for a fire, or buy clothes or even furniture; whether you could choose a job or change a job; even whether you could vote in a new parliament - the list could go on and on.

    In the second dimension, the boundaries of what was acceptable as methods of warfare were pushed further and further. Creating a firestorm among civilian populations would have been unthinkable in 1939, but by 1943 was accepted; by 1945 it could be done by one bomber instead of a thousand, with the added "value" of radiation. No wonder the song asks, "When shall we ever learn?"
     
  3. John Lawson

    John Lawson Arte et Marte

    Heimbrent,

    I've been away and have just read the ongoing saga. I am the "unreflected" and unrepentant.

    True I wasn't involved in the 2WW but my father, grandfather and 2 x uncles were, I also had a grandfather and 2 x uncles in WW1. I served for 22 years in the British Regular army, my brother was a paratrooper, my cousin a fusilier and 2 x nephews were in the RCT, not to put too finer point on it we've seen some shitty times, places and situations since th end of WW2.

    Hindsight is the best sight of all and the distance of time is a great place to reflect from. As has been said previously decisions are taken with regard to the situation at that time. War is always total, particularly for those who are killed or maimed, look what PC is doing in Libya, dragging the situation out and embroiling well intentioned governments' underfunded military assests in a hole we can not get out of (I believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions).

    I have no intelectual stand points or persuasive oratory, only this, if you can't finish what you've started - don't start it!
     
  4. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    What people saw as "total" at the time was two-dimensional. Every aspect of life became subject to the "war effort": the basic availability and distribution of food, how you lived, in the sense of when you could show a light or have enough fuel for a fire, or buy clothes or even furniture; whether you could choose a job or change a job; even whether you could vote in a new parliament - the list could go on and on.

    The above economic/social changes to day-to-day life were resisted in Germany for as long as possible.
    Harder to make the distinction between a total war economy & an already Totalitarian one perhaps, but the situation for the citizen/subject 'Unter den Linden' was somewhat different to that for those 'Underneath The Arches'. The Allied nation's switched to an easily describable Total War footing a while before Germany fully accepted that it was the only way the war they started could be prosecuted.
     
  5. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    It is a little late to dispute whether WW2 was Total War. The perpetrators and victims at the time recognised it as such.


    It's not late at all, no.
    I wasn't speaking of how the war was percieved back then, my comments are clearly an ex post view; I referred to the idea of 'Total War' as a theoretical construct (i.e. as a historian's instrument to judge past wars) and not how it might have felt to contemporary witnesses.

    @ John Lawson: Your definition of war being total isn't what I had in mind (see above) - I do however (as far as I can judge) agree with you that war feels total for someone involved even if from an objective point of view the war isn't.
    As for hindsight being the best sight: I don't know whether that's true, it does come with disadvantages as well - either way it's the only sight for a historian researching the past.
     
    James S and von Poop like this.
  6. Rudolph

    Rudolph Junior Member

    Hamburg was bombed during day raids by the Americans, they refused to night bomb as they accepted that too many bombs would fall on residential area's. Bomber Harris just wanted to wipe out Germans whoever they were. Thus thousands of non-German workers brought in to man the factories manufacturing warfare materials died in the fire-storm of 1943. I was there, see FAREWELL to HAMBURG by Dieter Rudolph and enjoy the story of one German family. The main thing we must remember is that Hitlers Regime was defeated.
     
  7. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    Hmmm...I thought that the USAAF restricted itself to daytime raids as they couldn't navigate in the dark....
     
  8. martin14

    martin14 Senior Member

    dble post srry
     
  9. martin14

    martin14 Senior Member

    It's not late at all, no.
    I wasn't speaking of how the war was percieved back then, my comments are clearly an ex post view; I referred to the idea of 'Total War' as a theoretical construct (i.e. as a historian's instrument to judge past wars) and not how it might have felt to contemporary witnesses.




    Sorry, but you were the one who brought up the idea that it wasn't a total war;
    now you are trying to hide behind some vague academic definition of it.

    I'm sure most posters here have seen the footage of Casablanca, and
    unconditional surrender.
    I'm also sure most have seen the response speech by Goebbels just
    after, asking the audience if they are ready for a total war.

    Maybe it would be better not to be so hasty about your ex post view,
    and see it for what they saw it as... the real thing.


    You know what, these people got it right on:


    [​IMG]

    Deutsch: Inschrift: In der Nacht zum 30. Juli 1943 starben im Luftschutzbunker an der Hamburger Straße bei einem Bombenangriff 370 Menschen. Diese Toten mahnen: Nie wieder Faschismus, nie wieder Krieg.

    English: Memorial for Second World War bomb victims, Hamburg, Germany. Inscript: "In the night of 30 July 1943, 370 people died in an air raid bunker building on Hamburger Street. The dead command us: never again Facism, never again war."


    They knew why it happened. And they aren't blaming the Allies for it.
     
  10. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    All through this thread I keep recalling that when I was in Coventry in 1941 after the main bombing attack and in many conversations with people who had suffered through that particular raid - I was always of the impression that the main problem was the fact that the centre of the attacks were the City Centre - and not so much the war munitions plants on the outskirts of the city with it's many shadow factories thrown up in 1938/39 and so it had the people thinking that THEY were the target and not the factories e.g the Owen Owen Department store was heavily bombed at Noon with 300 killed in the basement shelter - and the Daimler two factories - Alvis and the many others untouched on the outskirts- puts the Hamburg 370 into perspective.....just a thought - I was there !
    Cheers
     
  11. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    Sorry, but you were the one who brought up the idea that it wasn't a total war;
    now you are trying to hide behind some vague academic definition of it.

    I'm sure most posters here have seen the footage of Casablanca, and
    unconditional surrender.
    I'm also sure most have seen the response speech by Goebbels just
    after, asking the audience if they are ready for a total war.

    Maybe it would be better not to be so hasty about your ex post view,
    and see it for what they saw it as... the real thing.
    [...]

    They knew why it happened. And they aren't blaming the Allies for it.

    "[V]ague academic definition", I like that. I am a historian, academic research (including being aware of what is an ex post view and what is not) is my profession - and I gladly admit that I prefer academic research over Goebbels' point of view, because unlike you I have my doubts about him having seen "the real thing" - even though he was there.

    You seem to have very little knowledge of a historian's work (or very successfully conceal it) so I suggest you quit trying to engage me with ignorant comments.
    Also, I presume you did not read my statements above (or deliberately ignored them) for had you done so you could not be insinuating that I was "blaming the Allies".
     
  12. martin14

    martin14 Senior Member

    Well now, people on this forum are usually more polite than that.

    Guess I must have been pretty spot on to get a reaction that is both
    haughty and pissy at the same time. :)


    Tell you what, you stick to your books, and I will prefer to listen to the opinions
    of real people, including those people that were there.
     

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