The Allied bombing of German cities in World War II was unjustifiable

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Filmed at the Royal Institute of British Architects on 25th October 2012.
Event info:
No one doubts the bravery of the thousands of men who flew and died in Bomber Command. The death rate was an appalling 44%. And yet until the opening of a monument in Green Park this year they have received no official recognition, with many historians claiming that the offensive was immoral and unjustified. How can it be right, they argue, for the Allies to have deliberately targeted German cities causing the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians? Even on a strategic level the offensive failed to bring about the collapse of civilian morale that was its intention.
Others, however, maintain that the attacks made a decisive contribution to the Allied victory. Vast numbers of German soldiers and planes were diverted from the eastern and western fronts, while Allied bombing attacks virtually destroyed the German air force, clearing the way for the invasion of the continent.

[@henwilvw9376]

The claim that the bombing had no effect on industrial production is completely false. The Wehrmacht itself said clearly that the bombing of the cities cost them the equivalent of 2 full armoured army corps every six months.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

LOL. The German High Command also said that all they needed to do to defeat Russia was to "kick in the front door". So much for a "credible source"...

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Re. the question (rhetoric) of "What else could have been done?/How should anybody have known that strategic bombing would turn out to be not nearly as successful as hoped? (or as post-1945 studies reveal)" Re. "efficacy", a stated policy (thinly veiled by euphamisms) of flattening entire cities, it was indeed very little "bang for the buck" when compared what GB put into it on *their* production side, seeing how a strategic air force is (and was back then) the most expensive form of warfare. *Why was Area Bombing entirely flawed from the outset? (1942 perspective).* Also the related, and often repeated (but fallacious) rhetoric like "..but how much stronger would Germany have been?' That is not a rhetorical question. As you know, the objective of the rhetorical question is to place an opposing view under pressure, by asking a question to which would reveal a weakness in the opposing side's logic. In this case, it not a successful example of rhetoric, because the answer is simple. *German production was limited by resources.* A truism re. "production" is that it depends on 3 main factors: raw materials, labour, finance (incl. the construction of production sites). I don't wish to overcomplicate this, but to KISS it: If even one one these is missing/lacking then obviously production will suffer. In a nutshell. Europe in 1940 (Nazi sphere of influence) lack the resources for a protracted war in which production figures would be a determining factor for the Axis to win. Re. Europe. No Bauxite (or very little, compared to the entire sphere of influence in Allied hands or secured connections) = no aluminum No Nickel = no armor No Chrome = no high grade steel No tungsten = no tools No rubber = no tires for trucks *No oil = no mobile warfare.* German production would not have been significantly higher, because they did not have the raw materials, or access to those places in the world which had these resources. Anybody who states that 'German production would have been higher', should also follow it up with a full assessment of where the extra raw materials for a higher production would have come from, and more importantly, the oil to fuel the weapons of warfare (tanks, planes, artillery tractors, etc.) German production came to a standstill around early 1945, when advancing ground forces cut off the last remaining connections to the sources of raw materials.

[@henwilvw9376]

@@ralphbernhard1757 It is idiotic to claim that the Wehrmacht was un unreliable source of information especially with the silly example you use, which is probably unsubstantiated nonsense. Perhaps that was said by some lunatic nazi party member, but not the High Command of the Wehrmacht.

[@henwilvw9376]

@@ralphbernhard1757 You also don't understand how Germans think. What actually, you are saying is the bombing had no value. FYI I have lived in Germany for over 25 years, am married to a German and can tell you that it did affect production significantly and hindered daily life disasterously. This despite making the Germans fighting mad, eventually had a big demoralising effect on them. I learned this directly from family who lived through it (and cleared up the mess). You are just rattling off all the usual stuff that gets put out some of which is correct but which gives no credence to much of the rest a lot of which is just exaggerated wishful thinking combined with modernistic self flagellation. Germans do not go around trying to excuse themselves for what was done, which would be pure hypocrisy in the light if the fact that it was they who conceived the idea of 'Total war and then applied it. Their enemies responded in kind, which surprised them at first and then didn't.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@henwilvw9376 My first comment is to point out a fallacy called "confirmation bias". Just because a German says something which happens to "ring true", or confirms an own belief, doesn't mean it's true. *Under all circumstances, the veracity of statements, irrelevant of who makes it, must be objectively proven.* If not, it is "an opinion", or a belief. You see a lot of this kind of "well Speer said so it must be true"-style logic. Well...no. Anything anybody says (incl. my own comments) must be provable. They are at worst an opinion, at best a theory. I'm South African BTW, living in Spain.

[@marksw5499]

What was unjustifiable is starting the whole damn war in the first place.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Yes. The citizens of governments who start illegal wars certainly deserve death. www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq Every last one. Even the women and kids.... Like Jesus always used to say: "F*ck the meek. Fight the women and kiddies...."

[@hackerman7835]

@@ralphbernhard1757 MEN, women and children.

[@MrPoot-cx9ez]

Ralph Bernhard I notice that you have a bad habit of blathering on about our terrible war machine but you never mention or critique the heartless cowardly beneficiaries who watched millions of their innocent neighbors rounded up to be killed. They deserved everyone of those bombs. It’s war.!Really they deserved to be overtaken by the Reds. I bet they’d treated them nicely. Would’ve really given you something to bitch about.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@MrPoot-cx9ez Let him who is innocent, throw the first stone. Who said that?

[@MrPoot-cx9ez]

Ralph Bernhard Does the video have “Europe” in the title? talking about the people that Hitler fought for.. you know, those people that had something to gain from Hitler’s actions. You went so far off track.

[@julianmarsh8384]

There is an assumption that a ruling class, be they politicians, industrialists, or military leaders, has more brains and rationality than the rest of us. Individuals might, but in general they don't. The Germans bombed British cities in the belief it would break the morale of the citizens; it didn't. We then bombed the hell out of Germany to achieve the same goal--and it failed. In Vietnam, we tried again re: North Vietnam....failed again. In Iraq, we deliberately targeted the nation's infrastructure as a means of terrorizing the general population...failed again. One can be anything but surprised by the ignorance and stupidity of our so-called leaders.

[@ilikethisnamebetter]

1:05:20 "B29s were stationed in East Anglia complete with atomic weapons.." I''m not sure what the questioner meant, but the first atomic weapon was tested only months after Germany was defeated. According to Wikipedia, nuclear-capable US aircraft were first deployed in the UK in 1949.

[@kiwitrainguy]

As I understand it, the deployment of those B29s was in response to Stalins blockade of Berlin.

[@50043211]

@@kiwitrainguy B29: First flight: 21 September 1942, Introduction: 8 May 1944, so no to what you said.

[@50043211]

There were B29s in the UK since March 44 however that the B29s had atomic weapons is BS. Germany was the first target intended for the use of nuclear weapons, only the surrender before the completion saved it from delivery.

[@rockytoptom]

Try not to use Wikipedia as a source hahaha Even though this is true, bomb research was not actually completed until after Germany's defeat, Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information

[@dukecraig2402]

​@@50043211 There wasn't "B29's in the UK since March 44", those B29's were nothing more than one's that stopped by there on the way to Asia to do some runway tests in England to check and see if their use there was viable, some say it was really just to freak out the Germans and make them change things on their side of the Channel by making them believe it was the beginning of the new super bombers coming to the war there, and I think there was only one of them anyways. But either way and irregardless of how many there was it was only a stop over on the way to I believe India or China where the first B29 bases were, they were only there for a very short amount of time, not from then on, and once again I think it was only one of them.

[@AlbertSchram]

SPEAKERS FOR THE MOTION (BOMBING BAD) A C Grayling from 3:36 to 15:12 Richard Overy from 27:45 to 37:27. SPEAKERS AGAINST THE MOTION (BOMBING GOOD) Patrick Bishop from 15:49 to 26:49. Antony Beevor from 38:27 to 48:18.

[@freedomisfromtruth]

Speakers against should have been in Auschwitz with other Polish prisoners.

[@kiwitrainguy]

@@freedomisfromtruth The one raid they (both the RAF and the USAAF) should've conducted but didn't was the bombing of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. Their justification for not doing so was that too many of the prisoners would have been killed. I say that it would have been better to do something rather than nothing. The inmates of those camps when questioned after the war remarked that they were going to die anyway so would rather die in conjunction with the destruction of those camps than be killed in the gas chambers.

[@Awesomes007]

@@kiwitrainguy Interesting. Never thought of this. Thank you.

[@brucenadeau2172]

@@kiwitrainguy even if the allies destroyed the camp the germans would used other camps with all the supp;y problems the germans had the one thing they mass produce is trains to take people to the campstil the allies saw the camps no one really beleived these horrors

[@kelrogers8480]

I feel that the chairman's tone towards the elderly gentleman in the audience was short, haughty and a bit impolite? Perhaps a little more respect towards someone who actually lived the war would be in order?

[@Brzeczyszczykiewicz1]

I agree, but the chairman wanted short questions only, and the elderly man didn't really ask a precise question

[@seamusanderson7148]

I got that sense from literally every questioner. Very rarely did the chairman not seem annoyed by people asking questions or making comments.

[@chieftenbets2114]

Only the dead have seen the end of Wars. 'When will they ever learn'

[@FreeTurtleboy]

@Min Tin While you enjoy your Freedoms......in your Hut. Courtesy of many Brave Men's Sacrificed LIVES.....

[@dougraddi908]

That made no sense to me.... like Chinese music

[@redandright2059]

This falls under the rule, “Don’t want nothing, don’t start nothing.”

[@afaultytoaster]

Matthew 5:38: You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

[@kidnebhagalandson7487]

No, it does not, you ignorant muppet.

[@FreakyRat]

My father is 97 years old and flew wellington bombers during WW II. He has recently been diagnosed with dementia and now the memories of bombing civilian targets are fresh in his mind again. Repeatedly during the day he breaks down in tears and soul destroying guilt of the people he's killed. It's not easy seeing you father breaking down in remorse and trying to make him understand it wasn't his fault or decision. I hate to think of the guilt the pilots of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing must have lived with.

[@L.budz.]

Nah they don't live with guilt they are heroes in their view, this is how the brainwashing works

[@rosesoulis1840]

False self-modesty..... rubbish

[@evolassunglasses4673]

No more brother wars.

[@martthesling]

The pilots of Hiroshima had no guilt. They knew they saved millions of lives.

[@L.budz.]

@@martthesling hilarious to justify using nuclear weapons on innocent civilians, also firebombed German citizens near the end of the war and starved 10 million people to death

[@kellyjackson7889]

the captions on these debates are hilarious 'Starlin Brad'

[@mitchrichards1532]

The bombing campaign forced the Germans to use 1 million workers to clear and repair bomb damage, maintain an anti-aircraft artillery park as large as the German Army's field artillery park with a million more personnel to man and service it. German spent millions of man hours and critical material building bomb shelters, flak towers and other defensive structures as a result of the bombing. The bombing resulted in the complete destruction through attrition of the German day fighter force, which gave the Allies air supremacy. Round the clock bombing caused a 50% cut of potential German production in 1944 and just about destroyed German industry in 1945. German oil was greatly reduced in 1944 and severely hurt Wehrmacht training programs and paralyzed tactical mobility on the battlefield. These are just random thoughts regarding the direct, as well as 2nd and 3rd order effects of the bombing campaign. It was critical in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

[@mitchrichards1532]

@War Child Obviously to weaken the Wehrmacht and end the war...which it did. If the Nazis had the same air power, they would have used it in exactly the same way. In 1940 they used everything they had to "bomb England into submission", and they failed. If they had greater capacity, they would have used it for obvious reasons. They even tried a "baby blitz" in 1944, but didn't have the capacity to have any effect.

[@mancbastard801]

@Ian Miles well you should probably avoid Germans aswell pal. They bombed many cities to the ground such as London, Stalingrad, Warsaw and Rotterdam just to name a few. Don’t forget they started the war. “You reap what you sew”.

[@seanettles657]

Germans were literally burned alive - due that horrific bombing. The bombs induced starvation - all over Germany - and typhus - the real killers of peoples in prisoner camps - which were all over the world, not just in Germany, and have been and ever will be a part of war.

[@mitchrichards1532]

@@seanettles657 I see you have been digging into revisionist BS history.... No Germans starved during the war, only prisoners in concentration camps, work camps and Soviet POWs. Even the Polish POWs were fed through the whole war.

[@mitchrichards1532]

@@johanlaidoner122 Very ill-informed and speculative...

[@andreaschristian8044]

Like the detective inspector, the historian investigates things that he has not experienced. He tries to be sober and impartial, but this is not possible. The antiquarian may have judicial independence when writing the assassination of Julius Caesar. The contemporary historian determines facts whose child he is, as a child of his time. He is a judge in his own cause, in his parents' cause. That's why he's always threatened with finding out what you'd like - or how you'd like it. When you make the monsters of the millennium out of the Germans, you inevitably come to the conclusion that everything you did to them was justified. But if you turn the bombed germans into families, women, children, old people, some of whom didn't even manage to run away from the bombs. If you give the bombed people faces and don't turn them all into Nazis, then you start to identify with them and maybe you come to what may have been a little more impartially.

[@davidgutierrez8297]

Hindsight is a privilege people often forget they have. Sometimes what led to an incident is more important than the incident itself.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Correct. And the *foundation* of European disunity was lain in London, looooooong before Hitler and waaaaay before "nasty Wilhelm" stepped into the scene, it was already a policy to ally against the strongest continental state/country/alliance. The best way to avoid going to war altogether, is to have leaders who don't make others "the enemy" as a default setting... www.britannica.com/topic/balance-of-power The Germans, became "the enemy" because of *where they lived (Central Europe) and because what they had (strongest economy) or "most power"* They took over this "role" from "nasty France", after 1871. *London lords: "Nasty nasty Krauts. How dare they unite and industrialize..."* See what happens when you make other people "enemies" as a matter of policy?

[@cyberhermit1222]

Allies refused peace offers, even when Hitler was winning, they targeted civilian areas, bombed entire cities when the war was already won.

[@JohnCasteel1333]

YEah but if hypocisy is permissible and fine, then what are you talking about? The same exact point could be made if the Germans won. Your point doesn't make sense.

[@davidgutierrez8297]

@@JohnCasteel1333 You can either accept history for what it is or forever judge it for what it never was.

[@JohnCasteel1333]

@@davidgutierrez8297 what you said literally means nothing. My point is judge RIGHTLY and equally learning from the reality and not paint a reality based biasly

[@richardgarratt9497]

'3rd of the time i shop in waitrose' was enough for me

[@ralphbernhard1757]

At 19:00 mins "The war was pretty much going Germany's way..." Umm...no. German soldiers were freezing to death on the Eastern Front, Rommel and the Italians had been kicked out of Egypt, and the USA, the most powerful economy in the world with endless resources, was on the Allied side.... Only a fool would have considered that losing was an option for the West. The same historians who will tell how Churchill was jumping somersaults of joy, because he knew the USA's entry sealed the fate of the Axis, will also tell you that "the war was going their way" as a justification. Stop the misconceptions Mr. Bishop.

[@scaleyback217]

Indeed Ralph - the mythbreakers peddling a myth maybe? The Germans had lost their war the moment they stepped out of Germany into Poland. I have spoken with high ranking German officers who were very junior officers as they did so and some thought that was the point Germany had started to lose the war many of their leaders so craved. The greatest, "What if" of the 20th century has to be what if the British Empire had sat it out and traded our way through the years waiting for the Germans themselves to deal with their Nazi problem. Would we have spent everly year since handwringing that we had done nothing to stop the eradication of the Jews and the collapse of freedom in Europe? Would we have had to eventually go to war with the USA? (For sure their were factions in the US hell bent on destroying the power of the Empire for their own benefit and the British Empire would have remained strong enough to resist US expansion. Maybe even looking to an evolvinng German empire to assist. There's a Netflix blockbuster to be had from that particular what if!

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@scaleyback217 WW2 was wisely declared, but unwisely implemented. There was an alternative to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend"-false dichotomy. *GB indeed had only rivals, and no real "friends".* A result if its own flawed foreign policy.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@scaleyback217 It "started" quite innocently, way before WW1. With a London policy. *British leaders made the strongest continental power/alliance/country "the rival/enemy" as a default setting as a matter of policy, and policy only...* [britannica(com)com/topic/balance-of-power] *According to London's own policy:* "Within the European balance of power, Great Britain played the role of the “balancer,” or “holder of the balance.” It was not permanently identified with the policies of any European nation, *and it would throw its weight at one time on one side, at another time on another side,* guided largely by one consideration-the maintenance of the balance itself." *The Germans, became "the rival/enemy" because of where they lived and what they had (economy/power).* They took over this "role" from France, after 1871. They dared unite, and industrialize, and raise their own standard of living away from a purely agrarian society. *Note: nothing personal.* The policy didn't mention any names. It was simply "policy". Make the strongest country/alliance the rival, and "balance it out". Nothing personal. It could be France one day, Russia the next. It could be "alliance x" one day, it could be "alliance y" the next. "Temporary friends" one day, "temporary rival/enemy" the next. After 1871, and especially after German industrialisation, it was simply Germany/the Dual Alliance. *A few London lords made entire nations the "enemies" as a matter of policy.* It came first before all other considerations. It practically dictated how London acted (commissions as well as omissions) regarding 1) alliances (or no alliances) 2) treaties (or no treaties) 3) non-aggression pacts (or no non-aggression per accord) 4) neutrality in a dispute (or when to jump in and meddle) 5) whose "side" to chose in crises (irrelevant of "right" or "wrong" from an objective standpoint) 6) when to engage in arms races 7) whom to "diss" and whom to "snuggle up" to at international conferences/peace conferences/arms limitations or during international political differences. *Go over your history, and spot the "handwriting"...*

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@scaleyback217 And the "area bombing"-fanboys? The term "naive old buffer" comes to mind. How could they be so wrong? Didn't they know that for any US President, the US would always come first? Didn't they know or even instinctively feel that most of the US elites were just waiting for the British Empire to crumble? *So let's become "best fwiends" with a faraway "empire", the American Century.* And don't even get me started on that "enemy of my enemy is my friend" claptrap. When in history has that ever worked out? Never has and never will, especially where ideological enemies are concerned. *Because Stalin too, was just waiting for the old European Empires to crumble.* So let's make Stalin a friend too. Two "friends", just waiting for you to crumble and fail. "England has no eternal friends, England has no perpetual enemies, England has only eternal and perpetual interests." (Lord Palmerston) *Why should it be different for anybody else?*

[@justaperson3641]

That's not true. That's a myth

[@nickcalmes8987]

When you no longer can defend your country from such devastating air power, then maybe you should surrender to the allies. Why didn’t Hitler just surrender? Don’t put the moral weight on the allies for this. We didn’t choose the war

[@bubiruski8067]

The Fnglish masterminded the actual Russian style of warfare. They obliterated everything - no matter if military, civilians, schools, hospitals, kinder garden,… They did not even care for their own losses. How to surrender to such a foe ? Would you like to surrender to the Russians now ?

[@afaultytoaster]

Hitler was a genocidal lunatic. The civilians he controlled were not him, though, and collective punishment is a war crime

[@onenamlit3861]

Was anyone else disturbed by Mark's comment/question at 1:05:07, about B-29 bombers with atomic weapons being stationed in East-Anglia in 1945? This flies in the face of my understanding of the development of the Manhattan project, with the Trinity test happening mid July, after VE day. It's also historically accepted that B-29s were never stationed in England (or Europe) during the war, with the exception of a single experimental YB29, "Hobo Queen", which did a few runway tests in England on her way to deployment in India. Fascinating debate, thanks for posting it!

[@BradBrassman]

The first B29 wasnt capable of carrying either nuclear weapon so the already converted Avro "Grand Slam" Lancaster (with its proven operational record) was going to deliver it. The Americans of course would not countenance a British plane doing the job so hastily made adjustments to the B29.

[@dukecraig2402]

​@@BradBrassman First off that story about Lancaster's were supposedly going to deliver the bomb is a bunch of nonsense, Mark Felton likes to make things up for the sake of getting clicks to generate revenue. Lancaster's were never even considered to deliver the bomb, they couldn't have and there's a multitude of reasons why they couldn't, first off a Lancaster carrying that much weight would have it's altitude and speed reduced to the point where it wouldn't have been able to escape the blast of an Atomic Bomb. Secondly and probably even more importantly is the fact that with a Lancaster the bomb would have had to have been armed on the ground before take off, something that was unacceptable to the mission, it took hours to arm the bomb after take off in a Silverplate B29 in a heated and pressurized compartment. Contrary to what you guys know and believe about the Lancaster is the fact that it's bomb bay while long was very shallow, it wasn't like American bombers that had deep bomb bays with bombs stacked on top of each other in racks, when a Lancaster was loaded with 500 lb bombs they were only one deep because of how shallow the bomb bay was, the only bombs that could be stacked on top of one another was the small 100 lb Incendiary bombs and they could only be two deep, just one on top of another one, also with conventional bombs since there was no way of accessing the bombs from insider of one, because the floor of the inside of the fuselage was the ceiling of the bomb bay, the bombs had to be armed on the ground before the bomb bay doors were closed, unlike American bombers that had a catwalk that went through the bomb bay enabling the bombardier to arm the bombs after take off. Regular unmodified Lancaster's could not carry the Tall Boy type bombs, along with the fact that they had to have the few defensive guns they had stripped out to drop the weight the Lancaster's that carried the Tall Boy and Block Buster bombs had to have the fuselage modified by having the floor removed and additional bracing put inside to make room for the bomb, and even then the bottom of the bomb hung outside of the fuselage. The specially modified Silverplate B29's had the bomb bay pressurized like the rest of the fuselage so that the bomb could be finish assembled and armed after take off, something that would have been impossible to do with a Lancaster. Anyone who believes Mark Felton about Lancaster's supposedly being the original bomber to deliver the A bomb or even being considered as a backup is simply being taken for a ride by him, the only aircraft in the world in 1945 capable of flying high enough and fast enough to escape the blast of an A bomb was the B29, Mark Felton likes to make things up and never lists sources for anything because there are none, it's nothing more than a bed time story, the "Black Tigers" were not in the Pacific as a back up for dropping the A bomb nor did they even know anything about such a bomb being invented, they were simply there to do a feasibility study on whether or not the Lancaster bomber could be used in that environment since the war in Europe was over and they'd never operated Lancaster's in the tropics, that's all, they had absolutely nothing to do with the A bomb nor could they have even loaded one on their unmodified Lancaster's with it's bomb bay that was less than 3 feet deep. And to the original point of "B29's in East Anglia in 1945" the speaker was referring to late 1945 when they were placed there as a response to heightened Russian aggressiveness after the end of the war.

[@Pfsif]

Those who designed the ABomb fully intended to genocide the German people.

[@mcamp9445]

@@dukecraig2402 epic comment

[@dukecraig2402]

@@mcamp9445 The heaviest load ever carried by a bomber in Europe was in a B17, so if any bomber other than a B29 could have been used they'd just have modified one of them to do it, but even one of them couldn't, because it never could have escaped the blast even though it would have been able to fly higher than the Lancaster. And even if it could escape the blast it still couldn't have because they weren't pressurized, the altitude that the bombs were dropped from, over 32,000 ft, is higher than the crews bodies could have tolerated and still be dependable at their job, before the US entered the war the British had obtained some B17's to use and against the advice of Boeing and the USAAF who told them to bomb no higher than 25,000 ft tried doing it from 32,000 ft, the crews suffered all kinds of problems like blurry vision, severe cramps and a host of other things that you wouldn't want a crew that's dropping an atomic device to have, oxygen masks to prevent hypoxia are one thing but without being pressurized either in a fuselage or some kind of suit like SR71 and U2 pilots wear the human body suffers from psyological problems, so if anyone knew that a crew in an unpressurized bomber, like a Lancaster, couldn't accurately drop a bomb from over 32,000 ft it'd have been the RAF. The RAF would have also known that without the Norden bombsight you weren't going to get a bomb dropped from over 32,000 ft to explode only 800 ft from your aiming point, which is exactly what the Enola Gay did, and contrary to the myths that the Norden bombsight wasn't accurate and that it was offered to the British and they turned it down neither one was true, first off the Norden bombsight not only couldn't be mounted in the Lancaster but they never even would have considered it nor would it have been offered to them, they were flying night missions where optical sighting from high altitude on targets that were under blackout conditions isn't possible, as to it being mounted in the Lancaster that wasn't possible either, the Norden bombsight works in conjunction with the Sperry autopilot system and since Lancaster's didn't have the Sperry autopilot system mounting the Norden bombsight in the Lancaster wasn't feasible, even if it could have been mounted in the Lancaster the months that Lancaster crews would have been offline to be retrained for it's use was something they certainly weren't going to do being in the middle of a war and all. Regarding the myth that the Norden bombsight wasn't accurate it's a product of people with a bias who skew certain information simply to bash the USAAF, skewed information includes blaming every bomb dropped by the 8th Air Force that missed it's target on the Norden bombsight when in fact the majority of bombs dropped by the 8th Air Force weren't aimed using the Norden bombsight, instead 65% of them were aimed using the far less accurate H2X ground scanning radar system especially during the winter months when overcast clouds prevented optical sighting, other factors that unjustly get blamed on the Norden bombsight are things like lead navigators flying entire formations to the wrong target resulting in them getting bombed and a "zero bombs on target" result being averaged into the math even if the bombardiers absolutely plastered what they were actually aiming at, the Germans lighting off smoke pots to obscure visibility, or them camouflaging targets and setting up decoys nearby and the results being other things that get blamed on the Norden bombsight. The fact is when the Norden bombsight was actually used and those other issues that get blamed on it aren't present the Norden bombsight had an over 80% bombs on target average from the first bomber box, following boxes had a degradation in results from having to sight through all the dirt and debris thrown above the target from the bombs of the previous box, each 500 lb general purpose bomb displaced enough dirt and threw it into the air above the target to fill 13 dump trucks, each B17 dropped twelve 500 lb general purpose bombs on a deep penetration mission, that's 156 dump trucks worth of dirt and at sixteen B17's per box it's 2,496 dump trucks worth of dirt in the air above the target that the next box has to sight through. And for my British friends who've made it this far instead of reading at first that the heaviest load ever carried by a bomber in Europe was by B17's and without reading the rest of this freaked out and responded with "No it wasn't, Lancaster's carried the one million pound Tall Boy bomb and B17's only carried _______ (fill in the blank which will be based on a Wikipedia claim that's incorrect even for deep penetration mission's) ", the heaviest weight ever carried by a bomber in Europe was the Aphrodite mission B17's, sorry but it's the truth.

[@davidrodgersNJ]

I wonder who would have won the war if these guys had been in charge?

[@ludaMerlin69]

Probably the soviets, as in real life.

[@tyler4108]

Wonder if you would have been okay with being a German in Dresden while 40K people died.

[@davidrodgersNJ]

@@tyler4108 No of course not. Is this as well as you can reason?

[@rohiths3554]

There'd have been no war If at all soviet union would have been defeated not germany

[@thesheeteels8252]

I think that the British cities which were bombed not wanting the same for German cities is a credit to them, as were the early rules of engagement which outlawed civilian targets. Those early attempts of civility or any others were unlikely to win the war against the Nazis, whose atrocities and theft laughed in the face of decency.

[@bastiat9049]

The British started it. Learn factual history.

[@CB13212]

Britain bombed civilian based locations first took Hitler weeks to give the go ahead to return the favor Hitler admires the British and wanted them on their side but unfortunately Churchill was the devil

[@fuwa9616]

The British were the first side (for every nation involved) to target civilian cities.

[@seesmann638]

Logic of War Crime glorifies: Our enemy killed civillians now we can civillians too in the 10 fold number actually. This is the same logic that hitler used in justifying his war crimes. Guess with whom you got ideological worldviews in common?

[@MarkloopRAF]

@@bastiat9049 So Germany never bombed Rotterdam civilians in 1940 before the Battle of Britain? If you want to learn history, learn all of it.

[@edwardhart8449]

When you go to war you have left your self and all of your citizens open to everything and anything your enemy can throw at you.

[@bubiruski8067]

True ! Thus the Fnglish declared war to let this happen !

[@brucenadeau2172]

@@bubiruski8067 english declared war because german attacked british allay poland without a declaration of war

[@bubiruski8067]

@@brucenadeau2172 The question is rather what kind of ally were the Poles. Many countries at that time in Europe were fascists - the Italians, Spain, the Austro Fascists, the French mixed fascists and commies, the Finns, the Germans and the Poles. Poles had continues animosities with all its neighbors. So what was it what the Fnglish wanted to save in Poland? Did they want to save democracy in fascistic Poland? True, the Germans attacked. But the Slovaks assisted with two divisions, the Soviets assisted, the Lithuanians assisted morally, the Italian fascists assisted also morally. The Fnglish declared war on the Germans - not on the Slovaks, not on the Italians, even though they were already attacked by the Italians, not on the Soviets. This WWII was a designers war - it only is not portrayed such !

[@PaganWarrior100]

As an Englishman, I still find it puzzling that we refer to WW2 as a "British victory." What did we win exactly? We went into the war to defend Poland but ended up giving Poland to Stalin. Fight one dictator to help another? The war was a waste of our own people. The government ended up allowing our Empire to collapse at the end of it all, as well. Britain never should have given the war guarantee to Poland. It would have been better to let the USSR and Nazi Germany fight it out with each other.

[@Oners82]

+Charles McCarron Try reading "Lying for Hitler" which categorically exposes Irving's lies and why he was so easily defeated in court.

[@Oners82]

+War Child Wow, some serious right wingers here...

[@PaganWarrior100]

Misses the point and resorts to name calling.

[@Foucault42a]

+Albert Samuel Any empire is good which keeps the 1400 year empire of Scum-Islam at bay.

[@gregorynasrallah1755]

+The Man With a Name I agree, all of Germany's ambitions were in the east. Britain and France declared war on Germany over Poland, and really didn't do much about it. Germany only wanted the areas of Poland that were taken from them in the First World War. Stalin was preparing to invade western Europe and seized most of Poland, but there was no declaration of war against the U.S.S.R.

[@SkywatcherAnomalous89]

If you put a rule on yourself in war that the enemy doesn’t care for you are already at a disadvantage.

[@thethirdman225]

Did you not consider the possibility that there might have been better and more effective ways to prosecute the air war? You only have to read Max Hastings' book on Bomber Command to realise the absurdity carried on on a daily basis in the office of ACM Arthur Harris and his side kick Saundby. Then you find out how little Harris was prepared to cooperate with the SHAEF and of course. the Americans. My background in reading and sentiment is almost entirely aligned with Bomber Command but the most important targets were disregarded by Harris and his staff in favour of area raids on cities.

[@abel_underwater]

@@thethirdman225 awww, keep crying 🤣 We should’ve nuked them instead, especially for the atrocities they committed in places like London/Poland/Belgium/Netherlands/France/USSR/N.Africa/etc. Imagine cheering and parading on the streets when your maniac leader is committing industrial genocide, and then act surprised when the world hits you back. Gtfo

[@thethirdman225]

@@abel_underwater Please name a book you have read. Just one on the subject will do. Go on wannabe tough guy. Let’s hear how well you think you know the subject.

[@abel_underwater]

@@thethirdman225 Well considering I have a PhD in military history, with an emphasis on WW2, I’d say I’m more than qualified. It’s easy when you’re living in the most peaceful era in human history, thanks in large part, to what those brave young men/women did. So for you to use hindsight and apply todays morals from the comfort of your warm, and safe, home is quite a disingenuous. Do you actually think the allies woke up won day and went: “You know what? Let’s liberate France and Belgium, but let’s also make sure to target those same civilians we spent all this time, blood, money, and effort liberating.” In what world does that even make any sense? No they didn’t go out of their way to deliberately target civs; so stop trying to push that narrative. Also, you seem very angry and appalled at the actions of allies, whose “crimes” if you can even call it that, PALES in comparison to those of ACTUAL fascists. You know the ones actually committing crimes against humanity? Let’s instead focus on the minuscule offenses of the those liberating Europe from actual tyranny. If Max Hastings had his way, we’d all be speaking German or Japanese today. Thank god for actual leaders willing to make the hard choices, just so clowns like Max can write a book about it.

[@thethirdman225]

@@abel_underwater 🤣🤣🤣 PhD., my arse. You still didn’t understand what I was talking about, did you? Anyone with a PhD. would have addressed what I said and either brought a good case against it with some back up or agreed. You just have no idea what I was talking about, whatever you think of Max Hastings. You’re attacking all the wrong things and your argument is irrelevant. Go play on the freeway.

[@nonyadamnbusiness9887]

Fine example of how the critical lessons of history are missed. The people will always pay for the actions of their government. That's the lesson of WW2.

[@toi_techno]

The people and their government are the same thing

[@rustybucket7323]

​@secretname4190 the Japanese killed 25 to 30 million unarmed Chinese. The Japanese people cheered it on and were more than happy to reap the rewards of conquest. They were evil and they ordered crap so crap they aye. Same goes for the Germans. The Italians- that's a longer story.

[@gustaveliasson5395]

Private profits at collectivized costs.

[@fredrikengstrom2107]

Maybe, but with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, a lot of people question this narrative, which makes the debate still relevant: How much should civilians pay for the actions of their government.

[@blathermore]

I assumed the "unnecessary" bombings, including Tokyo, was because the rebuilding contracts with western corporations were already signed.

[@internationalproductions9258]

blathermore That sounds horrifying. Do you mind citing where you found that information?

[@xxfrosty609xx3]

blathermore source?

[@edwardd8751]

The views of those who have never heard a shot fired in anger.

[@woodenseagull1899]

Edward. Having lived through that era I agree. Such a pointless discussion I.m switching off!

[@ThePainterr]

Two wrongs don't make a right...

[@etangdescygnes]

Having pondered carpet bombing, and read Prof. A.C. Grayling's "Among the Dead Cities" , Frederick Taylor's "Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945", and several of Antony Beevor's books, I was eager to hear this debate. Having listened to everything except the summaries, I am disappointed. There were several issues that ought to have been addressed: 1. In a "total" war, how and where does one draw the line between civilians and combatants? What about people making canteens (eating utensils) for soldiers? Are the boffins who design weapons civilians? Are highly skilled technicians making military radios and bomb-sights civilians? What about air raid wardens? What about coal miners, farmers, and dairy maids? Are they all civilians, or essential participants in the total war economy? Where is the line? 2. Among people whom one labels civilians, are there some people who were members of the Nazi Party, and supported its eugenic, racist, and genocidal policies? Were they legitimate targets? 3. How much of Germany's total war effort was devoted to combatting the bomber onslaught against her cities? How many guns of different calibres, how many gun rounds, and how many gunners were needed to shoot down bombers? How many people were required to make those munitions, and how many people, vehicles, and fuel were required to take the ammunition to the guns? How much of Germany's optical and electronic industry was expended against the bombers? How many aircraft and pilots? How many Germans were required to repair gas, water, and sewage pipes? How many electricians were needed to repair electrical grids and equipment? How many people were required to repair roads, railways, and buildings? (I have read an estimate that Nazi Germany ultimately devoted 25% of its entire economy to preventing and repairing the damage inflicted by bombers.) 4. How many doctors and nurses, how much medical equipment, and how many drugs were diverted from Germany's armies to treat civilians injured by bombing? 5. One needs to consider the actual goal of each bombing raid in terms of its outcome. A key lesson of the German bombing of European cities was that amazingly few people were actually killed, due to air raid warnings and shelters, evacuation of non-essential people from dangerous areas, and the intelligence and prudence of individuals. By contrast the destruction of buildings and lesser property was enormous. Hence a motive for carpet-bombing Germany was the destruction of houses - particularly those of factory-workers - and not death and maiming on a huge scale, which the Allies did not imagine would occur. (Even after Hamburg, the Allies were highly skeptical about claims concerning the number of people maimed and killed.) The "death by suffocation and heat" caused by firestorms in basements and air raid shelters was unforeseen - it hadn't happened in Coventry, Portsmouth, London, Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool, etc. because the Germans couldn't drop enough bombs sufficiently quickly and tightly to produce a firestorm. It is likely that some carpet bombing destroyed vast swathes of houses at little cost in human life, whereas others killed and maimed a great many people within relatively tight zones. Should all these raids be grouped and condemned together, as the same phenomenon? Or should one really identify and condemn a particular subset of raids? 6. Air crews were always told they were aiming for specific targets of military value, although the British and US War Cabinets often knew the targets would probably not be hit during the raids. For example, bomber crews could be told to aim for a city's central railway station and marshalling yards, in the knowledge that the entire city centre would be flattened - as at Dresden. Today it may be clear to us whether a target could be justified or not, but at the time there was no clear line. If you were trying to hit a certain factory making aircraft engines, for example, what is the minimal acceptable ratio of collateral damage to destruction of the plant? How can you possibly measure and guarantee this? The Nazis often positioned military factories next to forced labour and concentration camps. Is it legitimate to target the factory, knowing the people in the camps will be maimed and killed? Is this any better or worse than maiming and killing German civilians? A weak and horribly superficial debate, but I have come to accept that the UK long ago ceased to be a leading intellectual force!

[@frankgonzalezdelvalle8180]

@War Child 1-The War was started by Germany, they broke the treaty of Versailles, Annexed 2 countries and were a threat to Europe because they tried (and momentarily succeeded) to conquer it, While the Germans didn't directly want a war against the British and hoped they would just surrender after France, they attacked Britain's Allies, No country would see all its neighbors fall to an invading force and not put up a fight. GERMANY DECLARED WAR ON POLAND FIRST, they started the war. 2-I highly doubt those are actual numbers, after all the KPD was too weak even at the start of the war, and even if they were commies, they still supported the regime. But I must say, indiscriminate bombing of civilians is ALWAYS wrong, no matter the political leanings of the people killed, even then, the Germans did not care about the political leanings of Londoners during the Blitz, or when they leveled Warsaw to the ground. It is not a matter of being "Morally Superior", it is war, and if you are fighting against a foe that bombs cities to their destruction, they can not complain about the taste of their own medicine. 3-The Germans attacked Poland, Poland was allied with Britain and France, i don't know what is sneaky about it, Germany attacked first. 4-Again, There is no way that bombing civilians is justifiable, but guess what: The Germans did it too, first, they just get done to them what they did. 5-That does not refute the argument in any way, the bombing and fire were intended, of course, they were trying to destroy the property in order to damage the German war economy, The Germans tried it too, but failed. 6-Name calling has never been a successful strategy in a debate, neither the red herring, what you said is just irrelevant to the argument

[@etangdescygnes]

@Robert Peter Case If one or more things I wrote annoyed you, I would like to receive constructive arguments. It did not require any mental effort on your part to blurt out the tired old cliché: "Get a life!". If you have something interesting and useful to contribute, I'd like to read them. Statements like "Get a life!" or "Put a boot in it!" add nothing.

[@tobykneale8379]

if not for the lone bombing raid ordered by Churchill on Berlin, hitler would not have turned his aggression towards cities like London. in the long term, this was actually the saving grace during the battle of Britain as the bombing of London allowed the RAF to repair their runways and produce more planes, as the aerodromes were previously under constant raids from dive bombers.

[@thevillaaston7811]

The Germans bombed London First.

[@arthurlewis9193]

Because Hitler had never bombed any cities before?

[@cpj93070]

Which was ordered because of the lone German raid by mistake on London during the Battle of Britain.

[@richardvernon317]

@@cpj93070 Germans always planned to bomb London in the immediate lead up to Sea Lion kicking off. The British knew this from various intelligence sources. That is the reason that the Cromwell Invasion Alert was raised after the first major attack on London on 7th September. Quite a lot of the Luftwaffe leadership wanted to attack London as they hoped it would drag up all of fighter Command to allow their fighters to kill it.

[@texassportsman5880]

In a video with Robert McNamara he stated the LeMay said the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan wasn't necessary. He was firebombing and incinerating up to 90k old men, women and children each night. With that much carnage going on the two bombs were not necessary.

[@hans5987]

It wasn't the immediate damage of the atomic bombs because yes fire bombings were far more destructive but it was the potential of being able to level a city with just one single bomb.

[@johnwhite2576]

Nonsense the A bomb were qualitatively different. Lemay overestimated the impact of fire bombing on Japanese will to fight. WEd been incinerating cities for months and they were planning to arm millions of citizens and building kamikazes in preparation for the homeland invasion. In fact it required TWO a bombs AND The fear (erroneous) that we have many more ready to drop that convinced Tojo to weigh and break the stalemate on the governing council. Please go and study history instead of spotting politically correct ex post nonsense because it fits your narrative. Dont extrapolate from the perspective of a soft 2021 America the endurance and brain washing and fanaticism in japan 9n 1945.

[@yourlocalmilkman916]

@@johnwhite2576 oh please its becayse of the soviets

[@rustycalvera977]

Given that Japan saw no face in ever surrendering, the atom bombs were seen as "divine" giving them a face saving out in their ability to now surrender. So yes, Lemay was wrong, unless untold millions upon millions more Japanese were to die in firebombing raids.

[@mikeytrains1]

They called for total war; and total war they received If they wanted it, they got it-unjustifiable or justifiable

[@afaultytoaster]

There are multiple groups of people you're combining with "they" though. The Nazi command called for total war, and the women and children who died to incendiary bombs received total war.

[@jameshaxby5434]

Yes, the so called "Strategiv Bombing" which leveled many German cities, was mostly unjustified, except, when key factories were right down town, and I don't know how often that was the case back then. Today most large factories are located well outside of cities.

[@CB13212]

It wasn’t the case is most cases

[@manilajohn0182]

That's war. The Germans should have never invaded Poland.

[@TheDimking]

officially, about 14 million civilians were killed by bombing USSR cities, Siege of Leningrad, forced labor, concentration camps. Talk about justice now.

[@mjl1966y]

I think it's time to look at the Russian home front for a change. After decades of dwelling on Western Europe in WWII and the only real excursion into the Eastern front being the Holocaust and the strategic disaster of operation Barbarossa, we need to talk more about the 25 million Russians who died in WWII. It's time.

[@nikdagostino9277]

They phrased the question terribly. For clarity they should have asked if the bombing was justifiable. People were confused when he asked the question with a double negative.

[@rockytoptom]

VERY true. These poor people listening were so caught up in the emotion of the travesty war is too really understand the true nature of the question or the complex spectrum of the possible contexts of the answers.

[@fdumbass]

As an example of allied bombing in occupied countries, a British bombing raid in 1944 killed nearly 200 civilians, including 61 children, at a school here in Norway.

[@flashladderacrobat]

I just finished Bomber by Len Deighton for the 3rd time, if you want to know what it was like to bomb and be bombed then this is the book to read.

[@normancotterill7849]

One of the greatest novels of our time.

[@PaulabJohnson]

An excellent read. For those interested someone has uploaded a radio version onto youtube recorded by the BBC

[@yuglesstube]

It's been forty years since I have seen that book. I should read it again.

[@xdmilos1]

Bombing destroyed 90% of German Industry, who knows what would be the course of the war without bombing. Allready in mid 1942 German command concluded that Germany is losing around 200 000 workers per month ( worker killed, wounded or workplace destroyed) and in the next 12 months they would lose any chance to win the war if that continues.

[@bubiruski8067]

The course of this war does not matter. There was no need for this war the English declared !

[@MSM4U2POM]

@@bubiruski8067 "There was no need for this war the English declared !" Just like there was no need for the war the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Norwegians and the French also "declared", you mean?

[@bubiruski8067]

@@MSM4U2POM Historian avoid to mention many facts, such as the visit of dlanigeR xarD (read the name right/left) in Moscow. Consequently Ribbentrop made a visit in Moscow and sadly filed a pact. Pole seized a portion of Russia, the Vilnius area from the Lithuanians, the Olsa area from the Czech, had a border dispute with the Slovaks, threatened to shoot with ship guns into Gdansk, and were in conflict with the Germans. Therefore the Poles were attacked by the Russians, by the Slovaks and by the Germans. London established 4R nalP (r/l) for Norway. Therefore the Germans occupied Norway. The Germans did not occupy Sweden, because there was no 4R nalP (r/l) for Sweden. Due to the Polish occupation of Zaolzie the Germans took the Czech under protectorate. No xarD (r/l) visit, no Ribbentrop visit, no M/R Pact, no WWII. That easy !

[@bubiruski8067]

@@MSM4U2POM The global idiots made a combined effort to annihilate the only reasonable power in central Europe. Thus, later not a single was decisively won - not Korea, not Aden, not Angola, not Vietnam, not Afghanistan. SA is lost, and Ukraine will be lost soon. This all caused by London !

[@bubiruski8067]

@@MSM4U2POM Poles seized the Vilnius area.

[@matthiasbaumbach5393]

The question about Otto Klemperer was wrong and cynical and proved the questioner to be badly educated on the topic but rather biased. The diarist from Dresden was Victor Klemperer and he indeed claimed the bombing of Dresden saved him and his wife from deportation. But he also mentioned that this bombing was totally indiscriminate and killed arians (as he said) and jews. Only those jews who survived had a chance to flee.

[@bolivar2153]

By the time of the Dresden bombings, there were very few Jews left in Dresden. Most had already been deported to meet their ultimate fate. He was one of the very few remaining, having been saved thus far by his marriage to an "Aryan" wife and his service during the Great War.

[@bubiruski8067]

The West never care about the fate of the jews !

[@bubiruski8067]

In this sense one could say the West is even complicit with the nazis.

[@bolivar2153]

@@bubiruski8067 Yes, anti-Semitism existed everywhere. All deplorable. However, Chelmno, Auschwitz, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, etc. were uɐɯɹǝ⅁ creations. There is simply no comparison to be made.

[@pelontorjunta]

Don't forget that German munition production was 58% targeting air war, 12% sea war and only 30% land war. Bombing campaign especially after summer 1943 forces Luftwaffe pulled most of it's air cover from east and south to Reich. In 1944 less than 20% of Luftwaffe fighter power and just about 12 of anti aircraft artillery power was in Eastern Front. Also in 1943 Germans used some 4-4½ billion RM for concrete shelter construction value same as some 40 000 tanks/assault guns, 80% focusing allied bomber campaign.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The issue under discussion (from the intro), is whether it was justified to bomb civilians.. Everything you mentioned, would also have happened if the German industries and infrastructure had been targeted, instead of city centers.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Metalmanmick13 Good thing about my...ahem....'trolling' is that it is all facts. Facts can be googled. What is it specifically that you wish to discuss?

[@cwinowich]

obviously the bombing wasn't justified, this isn't a debate but more so an exploration and explanation for the less educated. war time propaganda does its best to make horrible things seem justified, but they never are. The first speaker is spot on about everything, the second speaker's argument that "to defeat evil, you must be even more evil than them" is just repulsive to me. And his argument that they just didn't have any other options is similarly false, daytime bombing would have been much more accurate and capable of hitting military targets, the air losses would have just been steeper, and the evil unenlightened British at the time decided it was best to save a few pilots even if it meant slaughtering many more times of civilians.

[@Friedrich-Wilhelm-1980]

the only decision i feel we made in extreme error was waiting for the russians to catch up the USA should have occupied germany in whole and rebuilt it like we did in japan and pushed right into russia and finished them off

[@Friedrich-Wilhelm-1980]

@James Henderson yea and im saying that the soviets should have been wiped out when they were starving and tired the former german military would have helped us in a heartbeat to push back the red army

[@SandfordSmythe]

I don't think American mothers wanted anymore knocks on the door, with military officers standing there. With some military experience, I'm shocked at your cold sociopathic attitude about the use of American boys.

[@Friedrich-Wilhelm-1980]

@@SandfordSmythe you are free to think that but look at the millions more that died at Stalin's hands and the family's that were broken the rise of north korea and nuclear armerment of china all a result of letting the USSR stay in place You call it cold I call it necessary

[@volkerschutz5202]

The RAF started bombing civilian targets in Germany in the early days of the Battle of Britain.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

+Volker Schutz Oh, puh-leese, don't confront a brainwashed society of 'revenge for Coventry'- screaming kiddies with something as insignificant as mere 'facts'...

[@bkkold]

The Germans terror bombed Britain during WWI with the Zeppelins and Gothas as well. But, the 2 wrongs make a right argument is nonsense. Any bombing of civilian populations in an indiscriminate manner is always wrong.

[@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819]

Volker Schutz only after London had been bombed as part of the early days of the Blitz. Yes, it is now know that that bombing was accidental, but nobody was going to believe that in summer 1940, after all the Germans had a history of bombing (and shelling) civilian centres during WW1 - the only person in uniform that I know of being killed during the December 1914 shelling of Scarborough was a postman. Please don't mention the 1940 Monchengladbach bombing as that was targetted at the railyards in that city - the 4 people killed included a British citizen

[@donM2707]

Volker Schutz Rule Britannia 🇬🇧✌🤘🤘🤘

[@crickcrot]

Elberiver11 1,413 people were killed in Britain during ww1 by Germans who bombed civilians in many countries both world wars and bellyache about being bombed in return.

[@LebendigerGeist]

It's remarkable that all four of the panellists agree that the bombing of cities into 1945 was unjustified. Considering that much of the damage to German cities was done very late in the war, the speakers against the motion were actually half for the motion. Very good high level and surprisingly non-jingoistic discussion.

[@jimcactus9265]

Banning civilian bombing is definitely the moral highground. However, it has to be viewed in light of Germany's bombing of England by plane and V-2 rockets, and the annihilation of the Jews and Roma peoples- civilians - in Nazi controlled lands. Germany was the first violate this moral prohibition. The prolonging of the war required the allies to consider targeting the "feedstock" of the Nazi war machine itself, the domestic industries and the people who worked in them.

[@kimmedavid]

@@jimcactus9265 the destruction and death rates in england are a joke compared to germany. and the area bombing of cities started actually in 1940 , the holocaust didnt start at 1940 , more like 1942. you dont know what you are talking about

[@StevenRecknagelMusic]

@@kimmedavid none of them know what their talking about that’s how they can try to justify it. How sad. They deleted my response within minutes. I’m planning on making a response video to this

[@johnblythe5731]

Where has the intelligens gone ???

[@StevenRecknagelMusic]

@@johnblythe5731 good luck finding it amidst sheep

[@normanbraslow7902]

Today we are incapable of putting ourselves in the positions of those who made these military decisions. Just be thankful not to have been forced to make those decisions.

[@SandfordSmythe]

@Polish Hussars So this means we ditch our morality and military honor?

[@SandfordSmythe]

@Polish Hussars Messed up part of the world with fascist mentalities.. It will take a century to bring it back to normal.

[@brucenadeau2172]

@@SandfordSmythe the german wore the first to attack british cities

[@SandfordSmythe]

@@brucenadeau2172 I was referring to a continuation of a big bully fascist mentality that continues to exist in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

[@herzkine]

Sure, doesnt mean they were the best ones and necessary. Doesnt mean i expect perfection in Chaos, but its fair to say the fact, if it was unnecessary

[@davids2218]

I have an idea: don't start wars. If you do start a war and are militarily defeated, then surrender for the sake of your people. Your foe will be obligated to destroy your means of making war, and it will be very bad. In hindsight there will have been many options to lessen the destruction, but history and real-time decision-making do not work this way. In summary (in this video, Germany and Japan), don't start wars - bad things will happen. Intellectuals will opine for decades to come, but your people and country will still be dead. Mr. Putin, I hope you are taking note.

[@miwi9883]

But Germany militarily wasn't defeated until April/May 45'. Yes it was clear that this would eventually happen from 1943 on, but if that was clear then why attack the civilian population? Because it only strengthen the will of the ordinary soldiers and had no or only little effect on Industrial capacity of Nazi Germany. Or do you ultimately mean that their population just deserved it? But as long as one side can moraly justify the bombing of the enemy population the other side will do it too. Imagine there is another war in Europe, how would it be wrong today that one of the factions bombs dams and cities of the other factions? And even if we say now it's wrong, the arguments used to justify the bombings back then can easily be used by the other side regardless of what we say now. And lastly if you say nowadays Russia started the war and always the country starting the war is guilty and their population deserves to be bombed - how did Vietnam, Laos, Korea and Iraq deserve their severe bombings? None of these countries started a war against the countries that would later bomb then.

[@bubiruski8067]

Kathrin Gun: “Still no regrets, but the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. The more we find out that in fact the million-person march was a real cause of worry for Downing Street and for Blair personally, it makes you think we were so close and yet so far.” Not much different !

[@cyberhermit1222]

Allies refused peace offers, even when Hitler was winning, they targeted civilian areas, bombed entire cities when the war was already won.

[@rohiths3554]

@sin sot are you forgetting the British blockade? That starved off germany off food and resources? Britain also conducted terror attacks in Germany.

[@richardbono5540]

@@cyberhermit1222 Would you have been satisfied with that peace?

[@richardbono5540]

@sin sot Even Churchill said he would have signed on if he had a better hand of cards to deal with, and the Empire would have been the better for it, the rest of Europe, not so much. In the end the the British Empire was the biggest loser, And as far as Roosevelt being duped by Stalin at Teheran? not a chance he knew exactly what he was doing. Carving up literally a world class prize with Russia and picking the bones of the British Empire

[@cyberhermit1222]

@@richardbono5540 Yes...London would still be an English city without knife gangs running rampant.

[@mikeymara411]

when *consumer level* internet was theorized, this was the imagined result - intellectual debate archived in full and made available for free.

[@twoedgedsword2487]

This is not intellectual debate. It is appalling, even horrifying, madness.

[@mikeymara411]

you didnt post this for that message

[@dondraper4438]

@@twoedgedsword2487 Facts don't care about your feelings.

[@dogukan127]

I'd rather watch shitty teenager challenges and baseless conspiracy theories sir thank you

[@kevinmartyn1617]

I went to Germany and went to both "BerganBelsen" and Celle. What I cannot take on board that NOT a single bomb was dropped on Celle during WW2

[@jamesguy1030]

Kevin Martyn ~ Yeah, if you haven’t already seen it before, Check out the amazing documentary footage called = “Hellstorm” The Real Genocide of Nazi Germany It’s one of the most important & interesting documentary’s I’ve seen for many years. i hope that you find it as interesting as myself.

[@proudhellene5874]

@Max Watson thats what the victor told you

[@evangiles4403]

The reason why the camps were never bombed was because you would kill more through bombing and the German reprisals than you'd save

[@stefanmittler8458]

Germany started its attacks on British cities in Juli 1940 (Brighton, Plimouth, Southhampton), more than 10 MONTHS after the first british attack on German cities: Bielefeld, Bremen, Düren, Duisburg, Emden, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Hagen, Hamburg, Hannover, Kiel, Krefeld, Leverkusen, Mannheim, Münster, Rostock, Wilhelmshaven, Worms - all these cities were attacked by the RAF BEFORE the first german bomb fell on a british city!

[@ericlouclair2585]

When you declare war against germany, that is the answer!

[@ralphbernhard1757]

So Arthur Harris was "just following orders" I heard... We in the west shouldn't have had even the slightest inhibitions about "tweaking Lend-Lease" (to avoid the complete collapse of the SU, but not enough for communism to win). In other words, just as much Lend-Lease as needed, but not enough for the commie to storm all the way into Central Europe. We should have "aided" the Nazis by as little strategic bombing as possible, but only as much as necessary to aid D-Day, but to avoid the complete collapse of Germany, the backbone of the Axis. Why shouldn't it have bothered us in the least if the Eastern Front had settled somewhere between Leningrad and the Black Sea, with the two sides fighting until utter exhaustion? *Because we owed Stalin nothing.* Not single Jeep and not a single Studebaker truck, carrying commies into Central Europe by the millions. Not a single drop of blood. "Comrades! It is in the interest of the USSR, the Land of the Toilers, that war breaks out between the [German] Reich and the capitalist Anglo-French bloc. *Everything must be done so that the war lasts as long as possible in order that both sides become exhausted.* Namely for this reason we must agree to the pact proposed by Germany, and use it so that once this war is declared, it will last for a maximum amount of time." Stalin 19th August 1939 So our leaders sacrificed own soldiers, own resources, and millions of own dollars, to hand over half the world to the commies. Only to end up fighting them in the other half for the next fifty years. Korea, Vietnam, the ME. Thousands of body bags of *"our boys".* Rather silly to "help Stalin" don't you think, if we could have just let *them* "slug it out to utter exhaustion, and then march over the ruins, a fate Stalin had intended for us... Ah...smart leaders. Too bad we didn't have any...

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Smart leaders. Too bad we had too few... Let them 2 "slug it out" to utter exhaustion. Without the logistics of Lend Lease's 600,000 vehicles of all types (note: *almost as much as Nazi Germany produced in 5 years),* 1000 steam engines, etc. the Eastern Front would have stabilized somewhere between the Baltic States and the Ukraine. Recipe for success? Just enough Lend Lease to avoid the collapse of the SU. Not enough for them to storm into Central Europe (see "logistics" = trucks, etc.) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease A little bit of gain for the Nazis for a few months, a little bit of gain for the commies for a few months. See-sawing their way into oblivion. Then, in 1945: D-Day *Our* soldiers and tanks rolling past Berlin (shooting Hitler "like a snake" along the way), then liberating Warsaw, Prague, Budapest... No Nazis. No commies. No Cold War. No Russians storming past Berlin and gaining access to German technology, which they'd use against us after 1945. (Capturing nuclear and rocket scientists, Tabun and Sarin poison plants, chemical engineers, radar technology, latest jet engine tech, entire underground production plants, etc., etc.)

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Lend Lease. The entire list. www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html Dumbest "leaders" we ever had....

[@citizenduffus1370]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppWcc2aZntGafrs

[@ChaosEIC]

I think you could not calculate how much was needed to stabilise the SU. I mean once Stalin is defeated or surrenders to Germany, D-Day is not a possibility anymore. So you had to have a strong Soviet Union to make a D-Day happen. Dont forget that the Soviets did 90% of the fighting and without a total war in the east, an opposed landing im France would have been suicidal.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@ChaosEIC The WM was defeated as soon as it had reached its own natural logistical dead end. At a certain point, just like in the Western Desert, an army cannot extend its reach, because the logistical system cannot feed the advance anymore. What was tue for Rommel, and which historians freely admit, was also true for the WM on the Eastern Front. Look at Lend Lease in detail. There was no need to give the commies, which had made *you* the ideological enemy, the means to reach Central Europe.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

According to the Area Bombing Directives of February 1942: "...entire cities were to be targeted..." How effective was this to reduce the pressures of Allied soldiers fighting on the front lines? One of the most feared German weapons of WW2 was the Tiger tank, built at Henschell in Kassel. Kassel was "blasted as a whole" in October 1943. The entire city center was destroyed and about 10,000 "enemy" women and kids were burned to a cinder. *Henschell wasn't the target of this raid and Tiger production rose from 1943 (650 built) to 1944 (around 1000).* I assume the "poor Russians" these raids were supposed to have aided, and the Allied tankies in their tin can Shermans weren't amused.... Utter folly, and there are still people who revere men like Portal and Harris as "far sighted"?

[@scaleyback217]

The Tiger tank for short periods it was serviceable was indeed formidable. The Sherman was the superior weapon even given its shortcomings. Once equipped with the more powerful gun it was more than the master of the Tiger which spent most of its time being serviced/repaired and proved horrendously complicated and expensive to produce. Not so the tincan Sherman - numbers had a quality all of their own. Harris for sure was not far sighted - maybe even a little myopic but he knew what he was employed to do and did it - kill Germans. Why flatten a factory turning out a liability? I wish that would have been part of their decision making but I doubt it would have been so, probably missed simply because they were not accurate enough to kill off the factory isolated from the surrounds. Just as efficient to flatten and kill those who either worked for or with the factory. Emotively using burned to a cinder does not aid your point. They died, nothing more and if that were not part of the planning I would be surprised. I suspect a great many of that generation in their homes of Britain would have been happy to here of ten thousand gone and would have been even happier if it had included the suburbs and added ten thousand to the number. Harris was merely........ well necessary really. Nothing more complicated than that.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@scaleyback217 Men like Harris were fools of the "just following orders"-category. *Because there was another "victim" of Area Bombing hardly ever discussed: the British Empire.* Yup, turns out the biggest loser was the British Empire. Because Winston *"expire the Empire"* Churchill... ...teamed up with.... Bomber *"burnt the Pound Stirling in a whirlwind"* Harris... What could possibly go wrong? They lost their "empire", and others took over. One nation's leaders chose to answer with *"more than the measure",* and as a result bombed themselves into financial and economic ruin. Too bad they didn't read their Bibles, where it says "an eye for an eye"... Quote: "The findings are that the strategic air offensive cost Britain £2.78 billion, equating to an average cost of £2,911.00 for every operational sortie flown by Bomber Command or £5,914.00 for every Germany civilian killed by aerial bombing. The conclusion reached is the damage inflicted upon Germany by the strategic air offensive imposed a very heavy financial burden on Britain that she could not afford and this burden was a major contributor to Britain's post-war impoverishment." [Google "GB 1939-45: the financial costs of strategic bombing"] *Note: an average house in London cost around 3,000 Pounds in 1944]* Imagine that. A house in London, for every "Oma Schickelgruber" killed in Germany.

[@dangibbs5390]

If you look at the raid tables for almost all German cities you notice after all main objectives have been achieved there is always a large scale night fire raid on the historic centers, these raids for me are the issue and are extremely questionable. Had these fire attacks not happended bomber command would have had my full support, instead they erased 800 years of history from central Europe which is unforgivable.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@dangibbs5390 Excellent standpoint. I'm also an advocate for a measured strategic bombing doctrine, with strict orders to at least aim for valid targets. If these key industries are missed unintentionally, then that is collateral.

[@MrDaiseymay]

@@ralphbernhard1757 Do your minder's know you're out and about?

[@gedeon2696]

What about Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, London? Was their bombing "justified"??

[@bubiruski8067]

The Fnglish assisted fascist Franco by a naval blockade. So what ?

[@bolivar2153]

@@bubiruski8067 Britain was neutral during the Spanish Civil War. The Naval blockade was aimed at all nations, Britain's navy attempting to enforce a League of Nations embargo on arms supply to Spain. Unfortunately, Russia, Germany and Italy had other ideas.

[@markharrison2544]

The UK committed suicide by backing the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Churchill even covered up the Katyn massacre.

[@kailashpatel1706]

No the Polish guarantee was suicide..

[@MrLarryC11]

Excellent debate - pity that the audio is so muddy.

[@freedomisfromtruth]

There is no debate, anyone against bombing would have known nothing about german atrocities or have been a nazi themselves

[@nicholasdonofrio627]

The woman who had the question about using hindsight to learn from history had a powerful argument. Nato hasn't learned from the bombing campaigns from WW2 because it keeps trying to break countries from the air and it doesn't work. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea. All of these wars were stalemates despite expensive morally unjustifiable bombing campaigns.

[@obamabinbaben7772]

Exactly this. It was a bit annoying to hear the host and some folk laugh at her question. It was one of the more powerful ones in the debate

[@danielw.8356]

The bombing campaigns were so successful, we happened to bomb the Swiss several times over. (Sarcasm)

[@andreasklisch3695]

During bombing campaigns, German plants of fuel synthesis were destroyed - leading to a grounded Luftwaffe in latest war phase. German railway lines, bridges a.s.o. were repeatedly destroyed, causing delays in delivering raw materials to German war material factories. For example, U-boat wharfs in Kiel, Hamburg and Bremen repeatedly had delays because problems of delivery of sections due to bombardment of traffic infrastructure. So, of course this was a strategic success.

[@peace-now]

I know. An inquiry was conducted and James Stewart (same guy), the judge, supported USAAF bombing. You can get away with anything, if you are English or American.

[@kr33tz]

@@andreasklisch3695 ...and a humanitarian disaster.

[@roeng1368]

The swiss were far from innocent either, happy to bank Nazi gold, and supply their war effort too.

[@danielw.8356]

@@roeng1368 oh my curse the Swiss for being surrounded by the Nazis for 6 years. And having to work with them instead of being crushed and invaded. Damn those Swedes too.

[@willhovell9019]

What a waste of effort and interlect. I happened , it's not a matter of view. Barbaric bombing had to be met with any tactic available. London was still under attack by V weapons in March 1945. The technology wasn't really available for precision bombing except squadrons of Mosquito aircraft.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

With their own policy of "flattening Germany", British leaders *stabbed their Empire in the back,* losing it a few years after declaring themselves "winners" and throwing a few parades.... See below.

[@willhovell9019]

@@ralphbernhard1757 The Empire was over anyway . Britain pledged to the British Indian Army to free India after hostilities , particularly after the cowardly surrender of General Percival , with a criminal past in both Ireland & India. The British people were only interested in social reconstruction and didn't really care about the colonies. except fools like Eaden , with Britain and France defeated at Suez in 1956. One of the few positive consequences of WW2 was the collapse of European colonisation of the globe. The only 'stabbers in the back ' were the Axis fascist countries , whom came close to permanently extinguishing European civilisation and culture. Not forgetting the Austrians , Hungarians, Roumanians and Vichy French , all equally culpable for the holocaust and the 60 millions of dead people.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@willhovell9019 That is one of the biggest misconceptions in history. Australians, Kiwis, Brits, Scots, South Africans, etc., etc. did not go to war *because* they wanted Empire *to end.* They were overwhelmingly conscripted by their leaders (or volunteered) to go to war to fight *for* the continuation of "Empire".

[@ralphbernhard1757]

You are conflating 2 different issues. 1) the "fight" of the British population against their own elites 2) the "fight" for empire (aginst rivals). Both before and after WW1 the same thing happened. 1) Before WW1 Brits fought against social injustice, with strikes and protests. 2) *From 1914 to 1918 they predominantly united behind "Empire"* 3) After WW1 it was "repeat 1)". Fight for social justice. You are just explaining that the same thing happened before WW2, and after... 1) Before WW2 Brits fought against social injustice, with strikes and protests. 2) *From 1939 to 1945 they predominantly united behind "Empire"* 3) After WW2 it was "repeat 1)". Fight for social justice.

[@willhovell9019]

@@ralphbernhard1757 the Scottish people are British, at least for the present. The British Empire was a busted flush by 1920 and went from being the largest creditor to the most indebted country in the effort to support France & Belgium against Pan German militarism and crushing the oldest ( except Portugal) ally , the Ottomans

[@kevinyang101]

This is the first time I've even heard about this topic. Thanks iqsquared for this video.

[@seanettles657]

history is written by victors - and the Bolsheviks won - the won in Britain. They won in the US. The destroyed European culture and peoples - absolutely. They won in Russia against the Russian people there - and moved abroad. They're still winning, All wars are bankster wars

[@onenamlit3861]

If this is still an area of interest for you, WanderingMacrophage, I highly recommend this documentary: www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/bombing/

[@abel_underwater]

@@seanettles657 cry more b*tch, next time don’t start and then, subsequently, lose 2 world wars🥲

[@XavierKatzone]

Tragic event, but now near impossible to understand the mindset and zeitgeist at the time.

[@kelrogers8480]

I disagree. There are still many alive from that war, and many, many years in between in which those questions could be asked, and have been.

[@Zfahidy1066]

@Polish Hussars If it was wrong for the Germans to do it, it was wrong for the Allies to do it too.

[@Zfahidy1066]

@Polish Hussars It wasn't justified though. It did nothing to end the war or even to hinder the Germans' ability to fight. It was sheer malice and as such, unjust.

[@BradBrassman]

Its really a pointless exercise to even debate this point simply because we do so with today's moral compass.

[@angelamagnus6615]

In ww1 poison gas was used. Now it is immoral. LOL

[@BradBrassman]

@@angelamagnus6615 Indeed. So is bombing dams!

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Why is this channel deleting comments?

[@rob2long724]

It's wonderful to hear these armchair tacticians talk about WWII 60 years after the war ended. But what did the people closest to the situation have to say about the effects of bombing in WWII? None other than Albert Speer - Nazi Germany's Minister of Armaments - the man responsible for managing the whole of Germany's industrial complex for the purpose of manufacturing the weapons of the German forces, had a very different view of the effects of Bombing. Speer was interviewed for the famous BBC documentary series "The world at War" of the 1970's. The great thing about that documentary series was that many of the major figures of the war where still alive at the time it was produced. In that interview, Speer said that the 1000 plane raid on Hamburg in late 1943 was so devastating to Germany's ability to produce weapons and ammunition that if the British had done just two or three more of these kinds of raids on other manufacturing cities, then the war would most likely have ended in 1944. When you consider the number of people who died in 1944 and 1945, in the death camps and on the battle fields, it would have made a big difference to history. They didn't do another raid like this at that time because the bombers where diverted to softening up defenses in preparation for D-Day and to help out in the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-Boats. (Much to the chagrin of Bomber Harris). Ironically, if they had done these 2 or 3 more 1000 plane raids in the Ruhr Valley, D-Day may not have been necessary.

[@MohOEM]

So bomb cities and kill civilians in order to stop manufacturing weapons!?! And not only that but use white phosphorus to destroy the already destroyed "factories"!??? As if every house was a factory??

[@abcd-gn3nf]

Bombing did not destroy Germany’s manufacturing capacity in Eastern Europe.

[@laserprawn]

First of all, Bomber Harris himself was by definition an "armchair tactician" - this is lost on armchair tacticians who deride historians hypocritically. All tacticians are necessarily of the armchair variety, by definition. Yet when Speer was asked what issues the bombing raids had caused for wartime logistics, his response was "none". Very often factories which had been bombed were repaired and functioning within a couple days, and there was never a question of suffering enough casualties that they were short on technicians. The trade sanctions placed on Germany which constrained import of raw materials had far more of an effect than the bombing. Another thing to note is that Speer is only speaking about American bombing, which often actually did intend to hit military targets primarily. When the British switched to night raids only, it was an explicit admission that only civilian targets would be hit. Therefore - given the British context - any industrial damage to Germany was by definition accidental, and can't rightly be factored into the account of how expedient the bombing campaign was. The British intended to kill innocent people with bombs, and only the innocent.

[@tancreddehauteville764]

Bombing could be justified as long as the objectives were military or industrial, but the mass carpet bombing of cities is never justifiable.

[@tancreddehauteville764]

@David Marks But they weren't the only enemy targets to be struck. There were plenty of military and industrial targets. Deliberately targeting civilians is pure terrorism for its own sake.

[@pitster1105]

That was the objective. It was the 1940s they didn’t have smart bombs back then so civilian were unfortunately harmed

[@klaus-peterkubiak7795]

If I killed somebodys wife and he kills my brother in revenge, we will both go to prison. The bombing of civilians, especially on this big scale, was a war crime. Dresden was bombed some weeks before the end of the war, and this could not even serve as an excuse that it had shortened the war.

[@bolivar2153]

No, strategic bombing wasn't a war crime at that time, no matter which side carried it out. A war crime is "an act that constitutes a serious violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility." From the ICRC, with regards the laws of air warfare : "[...] it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property, as the Conventions then in force dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war."

[@damianousley8833]

The bombing of Germany did hamper German armaments production at critical points and delayed manufacture of weapons that may have extended the war. Unfortunately the Germans started the terror bombing on other countries and defenceless civilians and reaped the whirlwind of airborne destruction of their own cities and deaths of their civilians. The bombing delayed the production of the tiger 1 tanks and also the building of advanced Uboats. Unfortunately delivery of bombs accurately had to evolve slowly, even the Norden bombsight had severe limitations and US bombers also utilised area bombing.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The production of advanced UBoats was not mainly delayed due to the bombing. The main reason for the delays was the rapid development, partly the result of constantly changing demands during development, after the May 1943 defeat of the conventional boats. Little had been done before that, except in wasting resources on "Wunder boats" like the Walther drive, instead of simply going for the more conventional approach: more batteries/streamlining/higher underwater performance at the the expense of surface handling and speed. Before 1943 UBoats were basically treated as "surface torpedo boats", and no need for a different doctrine than the Wolf Pack foreseen. After May 1943, it was realized something better was desperately needed: hence the rapid development of the Types XXI and XXIII. Both ended up with massive flaws (similar to the Tiger an Panther tanks) *because of the rapid development.* Trying to iron these mistakes out during production, took years (same as with tanks like the Panther, which wasn't really "battle ready" until 1944). The bombing had little to do with the above. Beware of taking "shortcuts" in reasoning, because of some you *want* to believe.

[@damianousley8833]

@@ralphbernhard1757 The main problems in building the type 21 U boats was the adoption of mass production techniques when Albert Speer was put in charge of the production of U boats. The assembly of 9 prefabricated sections was fraught with quality control problems as the diversification of construction of the various sections went to a number of manufacturers, some of which had very little experience in marine engineering. In fact after the much propagandised launch of the first type 21 U boat it leaked badly enough that it went straight into dry dock for lengthy repairs. There were only 4 type 21's that passed inspection and went into service by wars end, The decentralisation of the manufacture of the submarine sections was due to the fact that allied bombing had destroyed or damaged the U boat shipyards. A number of U boats under construction were written off in the shipyards by allied bombing. Bomber Command had put U boat manufacturing facilities high on its list of targets. They built a number of hardened assembly U boat pen style pens to assemble the type 21's. These in turn were bombed by the Lancaster's with heavy high tonnage concrete busting bombs and earthquake bombs resulting in damage to the assembly pens. Bombing in Germany early on in the Rhur and other centres did considerable damage to the factories that produced the marine diesels for the type 7and type 9 U boats. This did produce delays in production of these U boats. The type twenty one did have large battery storage and high underwater speeds and a built in snorkle. The snorkle had been developed originally by the Dutch and they tried to deniegh the Nazis this technology that they had developed , but the germans discovered it and then utilised it later in the war. The greatest blunder technically was that the Germans failed to recognise the technical developments in radio detection that the British had made in radio wavelength detection means with High frequency direction finding, huff-duff . This research was carried out openly in Britian by civilian scientists and was well published from the late 1920s to the 1930's and used the the field of meteorology to plot thunderstorms by their radio emmissions. The technical leap made by the British was making a portable unit about 1 cubic metre in size to be fitted into convoy escorts and other navel vessels. This was thought to be hard to do by german radio scientists and engineers even though they understood the principles well, they thought you needed a large land based installation to make it work . This rendered the centralised control by radio communications of U boats obsolete and produced a dangerous situation that the U boats gave away their positions in real time to the convoy escorts and hunter/killer groups if they made radio transmissions, even short messages gave away their position direction. Radar from early1941 made it difficult for Uboats to transit or navigate and to attack surfaced. Of course the naval code breaking effort played its part in the struggle for both sides. All in all the battle of the Atlantic seasawed with one side having the advantage and then losing it to then regain it on tactical and technical situations. The type 21s even though they looked good in certain aspects of speed and underwater battery endurance, were studied by the allies after the war, and found to have design weakness in that they may not have stood up well to depth charge attacks. And is why the British and American designs of submarines did not adopt the type 21 design completely and only took certain aspects of the design into their postwar submarine designs for production of newer conventional submarines. One often overlooks the U.S. navy submarine designs in WW2 and they were fairly good long range submarines with better living conditions on board. The US submarines were fitted with air conditioning systems that helped dehumidify the air on board which helped reduce electrical shorting and arcing problems and were also roomy enough to accommodate retrofitting active radar systems to assist in surface vessel detection and aircraft monitoring.

[@SteveMatthews2006]

This is why intellectuals and war should never be in the same conversation

[@marthacanady9441]

Isn’t hindsight wonderful. It gives one such a marvelous moral superiority.

[@infonomics]

In a time of war, what is the distinction between those who throw the grenades and those who make them?

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Interestingly, that is also how terrorist organisations argue when they target your family and friends, and your fellow citizens...

[@johncasper5052]

The ally powers did not bombed all the weapon factories and strategically important targets in Germany which would have ended the war in the 1945 because they wanted that war more badly and the suffer of people than the German. Apparently this is what the evidence indicates. Also, the ally power could have ended the suffer of the people in the concentration camps as they had known quite early about those camps and yet they did not attacked them from the air but instead they bombed Dresden incinerating 400-500 thousand civilians. The fact that in Dresden there were only civilians and many refugees who had fled from Soviet aggression was known to the allies.

[@jamesguy1030]

John Casper ~ Yeah, You make some very interesting and important points. Check out the amazing documentary footage called = “Hellstorm” The Real Genocide of Nazi Germany Most of the evidence in this documentary has been hidden from the general public until now. Please share it with as many people as you can before it gets removed The Censorship Continues But OUR WEAPON IS TRUTH !

[@AG9229]

They did bomb war machine factories. You are factually incorrect.

[@taylorford1689]

They *did* bomb the Ruhr, which hurt the German war machine by stagnating the growth of production -even Speer acknolwedged it-. What saved the Germans was the decision to bomb Berlin instead to win the war. If they just stuck to bombing the Ruhr, the Germans would've been in a lot worse situtation Also, why would they want suffering of the people? There was no such incentive for the Allies -for the Germans, the justification was racial beliefs and cold hearted economical pragmatism-.

[@johncasper5052]

​@@taylorford1689 Yeah they bomb strategically important targets. Yeah that is a good question. Why did not they keep bombing he Ruhr area and other weapon factories until they no longer existed instead of bombing civilians in City which were not significant in terms economy, and production of weapons and supplies. Why they wanted the suffer of people (actually the death of people), I do not know.. Probably because the controllers of this world who have never changed were crazy and they are still crazy. The other thing that I keep asking is why did not the allies attack the concentration camps from the air when they knew about at a quite early stage toward the end of the war. In 1942 they knew the what Hitler was intending to do with the Jews. This is mainstream news, it is not classified. I am sure that there are a lot of classified information about the what happened back then and about the wars and nasty businesses conducted manly by the U.S and the poodle the UK. (a couple of other countries have joined). If you wanna be so honest about the history and if you do not fear facing the truth than why are you so secretive, just lay you cards on the table. Of course even then everything can be misconstrued.

[@AG9229]

Christian van Laak ok, couple of things. Firstly, Dresedn was the target. If you think allied OR axis bombing was accurate enough to target only the factories, you're a moron. Secondly, stating every British person was racist due to the Empire is a straw man logical fallacy. Lastly, what you think about British people is completely fucking irrelevant and demonstrably not true. What is demonstrable is that your argument is vapid, dishonest, partly irrelevant and lacking in historical context. Yawn.

[@bubiruski8067]

@Richard Trump: One should also take into account that Stalin could easily afford his arms program. The Spanish comies handed over 510 metric tonnes spanish gold to Stalin. Look for Moskow Gold. By this he was certainly able to buy all materials and even technology on the world market.

[@cwolf8841]

Lend Lease was a big help.

[@stephentetley684]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

[@MudHut67]

Didn't require any hindsight to know that bombing civilian targets would lead to civilian death

[@megajimmyfive]

@@MudHut67 Not civilians, Nazis

[@suburbanyobbo9412]

@@megajimmyfive Disproportionately civilians.

[@megajimmyfive]

@@suburbanyobbo9412 There were no civilians in Nazi Germany. Only Nazis.

[@suburbanyobbo9412]

@@megajimmyfive Lol, yeah that is the narrative that the politically illiterate pedal. To begin with the people who were bombed by the RAF were overwhelmingly not Nazis and were often democratic socialists, as the RAF targeted working class areas. And many Nazis were civilians as opposed to military personal.

[@brandonstanley9125]

This isn't relevant. If it diverted the Nazi war production to deal with the bombing, and thus enabled a quicker allied victory, it probably ended up saving lives.

[@thorthewolf8801]

Yes, but as pointed out, they had other means of achieving the same results.

[@spookyboi8446]

Imagine getting jumped and you fight back just for someone to tell you afterwards that you should have just taken the beating and called the cops after...

[@user-wj6dt5bq3w]

Britain got jumped in Poland? Try telling a cop that some stranger got jumped, but you took it personally and you felt jumped. Your jumped analogy doesn't work.

[@000000AEA000000]

what a boring and one-sided panel. in and by itself very typical for british intelligent discourse culture.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The question why it took GB 7 years after WW2, to carry out their 1st nuclear test, even though the technology had already been developed by international scientist (also British) before 1945. Because its the *American Century* for those who walk the corridors of power, and fairy tales of the "Big Three" and "cute Uncle Joe" for those who don't understand how the world *really* works... Because in WW2 the concept of "a Big Three" was a joke, because the "big three" were not only allies, *but also rivals.* Each wanting to be on top once the war was over... *At the turn of the century, nothing symbolized power and rule like the big gun battleships, and by 1945 nothing symbolized power and rule like the mushroom cloud of a nuke...* But while at the end of WW1 the powers got together and divided and negotiated who would get what share of the "symbol of power (Washington Naval Treaty, 1922), at the end of WW2, there would be no such negotiations. Strange... Big daddy USA said to the rest of the world *"you shall not have nuclear weapons!"* [Google how that unfolded with: "history/british-nuclear-program] Strange, how "best friend forever" would let the financially drained GB spend 5 years and millions of Pounds on developing a weapon for themselves which *was already completed in development...and just had to be handed over to "a friend"...* Strange also, that during WW2 GB merrily gave their "special friend" all the best war-winning secrets (Tizzard Committee, and all that), but when it became time for the "new best friend" to return the favor, and give the secret of nuclear arms back to GB whose scientists had helped develop nukes in the USA, the answer was *"no, it's mine".* 1945 Washington DC: "If you want nukes, develop them yourself. In the meantime, I'll dismantle your empire. What are you going to do about it?" That's how leverage works. Rule Britannia, replaced by the American Century. Pax Britannica, replaced by Pax Americana. *Why didn't Washington DC/The American Century give their "special friends" the secret of nuclear bombs in 1945?* What is your best answer?

[@ddc2957]

You taught them everything you know. To your own detriment.

[@GoetzimRegen]

They needed a man of the Boers pay for bomb, or operation James Bomb. Einstein was right, 1941 where the first bomb ready.

[@B.A.767]

Try telling that to the people and families in Gt Britain that night after night, suffered the bombing brutality of Adolf Hitler and his air force

[@nikgeorgio]

The winners write the history...the losers were "evil monsters" whereas the winners are " innocent" and "humanists"...

[@Albert-the-Astro]

For real, quite frankly I get tired of hearing about the evil Nazi’s, when the allies were just as evil in my opinion.

[@jk1271]

@@Albert-the-Astro yeah, how dare the polish share a border with Germany. 🤡 👞 👞

[@AntiFreeMarket]

so the holocaust was good?

[@AntiFreeMarket]

@@Albert-the-Astrocope

[@grevberg]

Albert Speer made a couple of points, firstly a few more raids like the Hamburg would have broken Germany. Secondly it kept hundreds of thousands of troops and thousands of guns in Germany and not on the Russian front a second front of sorts.

[@Tom81dd]

Uno G actually in autumn '44 he said that industrial capacity is 'down' to 94% due to bombardment damage / workforce losses so far and called the british raids ineffective

[@magisterhpp]

Yes, they want to get away with it since 1945 spreading disinformation etc. etc. etc.........But to inform you correctly: Almost all the FLAK in Dresden e.g. was removed to the Russian front.

[@ziblot1235]

Speer was a suckass. He was fighting for his life. He would have said anything to make the Brits and Amis like him, including a BS assasination attempt. What a liar. But I would have done the same. You see what keeping your dignity and pride did for the Generals.

[@seanettles657]

which may have been the point - right? Let the Bolsheviks go free and infiltrate the world - so that it now looks like this, with transhumanism here, and the new Messiah on its way so that the NWO can roll out. Those still advocating this fake history we've all been feed totally floor me -

[@scaleyback217]

@@magisterhpp So that means the Allies had planned that particularly well then surely? Would you have been happier if all of the aircraft had been lost to the cruel efficiency of the dastardly Hun as they ensured their assets were perfectly defended? Who in the allied command is to blame for the Germans not protecting their assets? Dresden was an important asset which was bombed at the request of the Russian command as most of the German forces/materiels were being transited through Dresden. It also served as a great signal to the Russians that the west had this sort of capability as they advanced they witnessed it first hand. The Russians had no such long range capability - you can be sure each town/city the Russians saw flattened by air superiority and subsequent area bombing (the Dresden bombing was pretty accurate by the standards of the time) sent Stalin a pretty unequivocable message in the only sort of language he understood. He knew he was looking at the future for any Russian asset within range. Russian logistics were at breaking point and should he be foolish enough to continue his westward advance his huge Army could have been decimated by allied air power alone - add to that the ground forces the allies had at their disposal the outcome would almost certainly not have been in Stalin's favour. The bombing of Dresden served more than one purpose.

[@phipsi3287]

As a German and furthermore a history student, I would argue in the following manner. Concerning your argument on behalf of the 'socialist' component in NAZI-politics - that in fact existed: The public dept more than doubled in the time period indicated; the actual wages dropt by 25%; a booming economy, yes, but designed exclusively for an upcoming war. And we lost stuff like freedom of speech and press, democracy, equality before the law and so on and so forth. But hey...paid vacation!!!

[@Red1Green2Blue3]

Public debt doesn't equal socialism lol. The US has trillions of dollars of public debt but they aren't socialist lol.

[@dcfrank4904]

To those against the motion, Basically your argument is "The Nazis were awful, therefore anything the Allies did was justified." I don't know how as intellectuals you're able to be serious with this line of logic because I guarantee you, were the tables turned and it was the Germans who were bombing Allied cities with no military value, there would be outrage and mass denouncement of Germany. The Nazi party never had a majority in terms of votes, even less in party membership, So why does the entire populace need to pay for the crimes of a party it is admitted used fear and violence to maintain power, you're shooting yourselves in the foot by harping on the point of Nazi barbarism being the reason for justificition because then it's hard to be convinced that they were a popular party when such measures are needed to maintain power. Why would London be a crime but Dresden is not? The only justification you seem to be able to profer is 'If the Allies did it, then it's justified' I don't care how distinguished you are, But if that's a position you'll try to defend, Only one word will suffice for this, Bullshit.

[@swarthyjake4433]

DC Frank - you Sir , are a cad , a cad and a bounder , by George if I had my horse whip to hand I would give you a sound thrashing , do you hear me Sir , a sound thrashing ! bah to you Sir .

[@talboters44]

I THINK YOU WOULD FIND THAT IT WAS THE US AIRFORCE WHO BOMBED THAT FAR. NOT THE BRITS . YOU NEVER SAW THE CROWDS AND CROWDS CHEERING HITLER DID YOU THE NAZIS WERE FOLLOWING ON FROM THE GERMAN AGGRESSORS IN WW1 . I MUST ADMIT THE TERMS SETTLED AFTER WW1 WERE HARSH BUT I COULDNT BLAME THE FRENCH FOR DECIDED IT WAS ONLY RIGHT

[@billyoshea7402]

boo boo boo hoo @@swarthyjake4433

[@radify9248]

elektryczny LPS Though I kinda disagree with the person who made this comment, but you saying to people to kill Germans is harsh and not much better if at all, also not every German is a nazi most actually have a brain

[@privacyadvocate6697]

finally at 29 minutes this debate has a reasonable person

[@mcsquare77]

It was in 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Britain attempted to bomb German warships and light vessels in several harbors on 3 and 4 September. Eight German Kriegsmarine men were killed at Wilhelmshaven - the war's first casualties to British bombs.

[@arkonazvyturis3876]

UK and France didn't give a f**k about Poland. Nor UK or France declared war on Soviet after their Polish invation. After Soviet aggretion on Finland UK were keen on supporting Finland on one condition the force had to be deployed via Narvik and Kiruna. UK didn't bother to declair Soviet this time either. All UK had contribute to mankind is: colonialism, rasism, and the concept of concentrationcamps. (the ones UK had in Boerwar). Bomber Harry; Enola Gale crew and fatman should also have stand trial in Nürnberg

[@novkorova2774]

Why would you start counting from there? Does it mean anything? You choose to ignore what happened in Spain and Finland, just because it wad technically a different war.

[@JABN97]

And on 1 September 1939, around 4 in the morning on the very first day of the German invasion, the Luftwaffe bombed and demolished the Polish city of Wieluń. A city without any military targets present. Most likely, because they wanted to a ‘scientific experiment’ on a perfectly square city, to evaluate how effective their bombers could be in destroying civilian morale by exterminating civilians. What was the point you were trying to make? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Wieluń

[@pallhe]

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Grayling that you can try to put yourself in the shoes of people from a different historical period AND apply modern ethical standards, not as an exercise in gleefully judging historical figures and thereby putting yourself on a pedestal, but as a way of gaining deeper understanding of the past and learning lessons.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The so-called "modern ethical standards" have been in place for 2,000 years, with the birth of that great philosopher Jesus Christ, and other eastern religions like Buddhism. People just haven't been putting his teachings into effect. Saying that people who lived in 1940 simply didn't know better than to send soldiers out with the intention to kill civilians (and that this was morally wrong according to the Bible on the nightstand) is actually stating that one doesn't consider the people who lived back then as "moral" human beings, and a slap in the face of your grandfather... Just saying....

[@pallhe]

@Polish Hussars Ethical standards are obviously a social construct and continue to evolve. They're in the news everyday and not everybody is on the same page in that regard. With respect to what Ralph Bernhard said in the above comment two years ago, I would posit that the proponents of religious belief systems are moral laggards nowadays.

[@Red1Green2Blue3]

Agree with both you and Ralph. Reflecting on past actions helps inform the future but it's also clear people knew that indiscriminate bombing was unethical during the Second World War, they did make an active choice to do it anyway.

[@dynamo1796]

A pointless exercise to be true, nothing more than self-satisfying retrospecticism.

[@FHIPrincePeter]

Why did they not invite Victor Gregg to the party?

[@manilajohn0182]

This idea of passing judgment on one aspect of a world war and claiming it as unjustifiable is absurd. War itself is unjustifiable. One historian likened it to "...a mad kind of burglary; the plundering of one's own house". The German invasion of Poland was unjustifiable, as was the rape of Nanking and a host of other actions during in military history. Playing the "Your atrocity is worse than my atrocity" is an utter waste of time.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Of course, the term "precision" was relative, but if one sends out ones forces in well-thought out operations, like Operation Bellicose, one can have *real* effects. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bellicose Men who advocated this, like Ralph Cochrane, were not supported sufficiently from the top. At the top, they stuck to the intention to "area bomb" city centers. That meant bombers were sent to intentionally "dehouse" civilians, thereby wasting them away on attacks which did more to hasten the financial end of Empire, ending in GB's post-war ruin, rather than effectively contributing to the end of the war.

[@bolivar2153]

9% of bombs landed near enough to the target to damage it. Which means (surprise, surprise) that 91% of them didn't. It was luck on that night that the target's locations within the town and the prevailing conditions that caused the errors determined that the overwhelming majority of the bombs that were dropped, and missed, landed harmlessly away from the civilian populations.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 German production wasn't limited by the bombing. It was limited by raw materials...

[@bolivar2153]

@@ralphbernhard1757 When did they run out of materials?

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 Dude...you are *tedious.* Is this a "strategy" of yours? *I didn't write "run out".*

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The endless questions. How effective was Area Bombing? What role did it play in the German surrender? What was the benefit to the Allied cause of sending out soldiers with orders to kill 'enemy' civilians? For an answer, watch the post-WW2 newsreel... "Wrecked railroads, power plants, factories and coal mines at Ruhr Valley in Germa...HD Stock Footage" (Copy and paste into YT search bar) Notice, how at 2.00 minutes into this video, the narrator mentions that "...75% of the Ruhr Area's industry survived the war..." WTF? What have they been bombing all those years then? Women and kids?

[@OleLeik]

It was a valid military target and destroying it was justified according to the laws of war, practices and attitudes of the 1940,s Brutal warfare for sure, but it was a brutal war and Dresden was a rather minor post in the huge butcher bill of WW2.

[@OleLeik]

@Christian van Laak Thinking something is a warcrrime do not make it so. Carpet bombing of enemy cities of military value was quite legal at the time. Thus no warcrime commited. The claimed body count was rather issued by Goebbels. I wonder why some people these days are so hell-bent on blowing up the Dresden death far beyond estimates established and documented by reputable and unbiased historians? Isn't ten thousands of people killed in a single night horrible enough? As I see it, agenda driven raising of the death toll without or against evidence is an insult to the memory of those who died in horrible ways. In Dresden and elsewhere.

[@andrewisjesus]

You have to dehumanize your enemy when you've just committed an atrocity. No you killed sentient human beings who are people just like you many of your distant relatives and you should be absolutely ashamed for it

[@daves2552]

Albert Speer disagrees with all of you saying it wasn’t necessary. Watch the numerous interviews with him saying that if the bombings had been INCREASED the war would have ended a year earlier.

[@bubiruski8067]

Questionable the extent of torture to get Speer to this testimony !

[@mitchrichards1532]

@War Child You go to a bar with a friend and another guy threatens your friend. You tell the guy that's my friend, so if you hit him, I hit you. He hits your friend, you hit him...but its your fault for starting a brawl. Great logic dipsh't...lol

[@Grogster2007]

How could we use the bombers in support of ground forces when we had no ground forces at this time in Europe????

[@ralphbernhard1757]

The fact the British had 'no ground forces' (tanks, millions of men in land forces, etc.) and 'no tactical air force', was the result of something called 'doctrine'. Doctrine is the guideline which is followed to order to determine a nation's priorities. For an island nation, the RN and a strategic air force had priority.

[@meaninthemirror]

Allies will pay the price of the atrocities they committed. They burned alive women, children and elder people during whole war. Especially RAF. One of the most cowardly war acts in human history.

[@markcarey8426]

Yes, and germany never dropped any bombs on civilians in britian. They were always careful to only target military bases. And the earth is flat and alice is in wonderland. For chissake grow up.

[@meaninthemirror]

@@markcarey8426 Winning a war doesn't make you justified. Even though Germany's raids were just response attacks that cannot be comparable Allies cruelty against innocent people. Germany paid for the price for this. Not a single person on Allied side questioned. Be a humanbeing first.. otherwise it doesn't matter what you are all about.

[@charlesmcgowen6562]

JAzzy You are either stupid or ignorant. Germany is responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of civilians. Germany not only started the Second World War in the European Theater, including Russia, it is also responsible for committing atrocities against civilians during the First World War. Germany should consider itself fortunate that the atomic bomb wasn't used on Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin. Fortunate indeed. Germany started it. The Allies finished it.

[@chodkowski01]

JAzzy FeLdaR, the Germans never bombed civilians and cities. If Germany never invaded Poland and Japan never bombed Pearl Harbor none of this would have happened.

[@chodkowski01]

JAzzy FeLdaR, Germany was the cause of 75 million people dying during WW2.

[@johnmarksmith1120]

Given the parties involved, should the word Unjustifiable really be tossed about or do you not receive History Channel in your part of the world?

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Correct. British leaders went to Sudan and Iraq, bombing everybody else, thinking nobody could bomb them... The instigators like best buddies Harris, Portal, Trenchard and Churchill went waaaay back. They had no problems terror bombing women and children in Iraq during the 1920s, in "ops" euphemistically called "air policing", and kept a secret from the general public back home. It was justified by the elites in London as "a cheap alternative to land forces". So what did the citizens of Iraq ever do to GB? Or neighbors? Or did they invade anyone to "deserve it" too? From historynet: "Air policing is a relatively simple strategy. Aircraft operating out of well-defended airfields are supported by fast-moving armored car squadrons. When an outlying village or isolated tribe refused to pay taxes or ignored the central government, airplanes would be dispatched to strafe and bomb the offending group. Trenchard explained he could achieve results more cheaply with his RAF squadrons..." Such fun, terror bombing and strafing civilians, cowering in tents and simple villages made of mud and stone. Such a "great opportunity" (sic.) to test new weapons, like delay action bombs (time fuses), or fragmentation bomblets on innocent civilians... Once a terror bombing fanboy, always a terror bombing fanboy. Their pathetic empire's HQ back home in London, Bristol, Coventry, Hull, Birmingham, etc., etc. would one day "reap" as it "sowed", a hundred times over... Well. Who would've guessed the 2,000-year old biblical logic counts for all...

[@bolivar2153]

@@ralphbernhard1757 One could say they learned well from the German's who introduced terror bombing during the Great War. It is Germany who may claim the World's First for such a tactic with the bombing of Liège, 6 August 1914, followed by similar raids on Antwerp, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn, etc. and the subsequent raids on London (express permission for the targeting of civilian centres of population being given by the Kaiser). As you say, 2000 year old biblical logic counts for all.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 More bs from the bs-department :-D No, Germany did not "invent" the concept of "waging war on civilians". In fact, if you *really* knew your history, you'll find thousands of examples, in most wars, and at all times, *and by all sides.* *Kagoshima, Sebastopol (Krim War), Savannah, the Opium Wars, and hundreds of other "targets" ravaged by naval bombardment and wars as a result of squabbling over spheres of influence.* That is what influenced public opinion at the time (1880s and 1890s), and why a nation of taxpayers would gladly use their newly created wealth, to support the construction of a navy. The object was not becoming the victim of another nation's arrogance of power. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Canton_(May_1841) Any sympathy for "poor Japanese" or "poor Chinese"? No? Or did they simply stand in the way of expanding "Empire"? As it was, during WW1, the Imperial German Navy might not have broken the long distance blockade of the RN, but they did avoid the RN from steaming into the Baltic, "Copenhagenizing" one German city after the next... www.google.com/search?client=tablet-android-asus-rev&biw=602&bih=964&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=copenhagen+navy+bombardement&oq=copenhagen+navy+bombardement&aqs=mobile-gws-lite.. Any sympathy for "poor Danes"? How about "propaganda ministers" cheering their own "Copenhagenizing" of "enemies", including women and children? Any criticism on your behalf there on the innocent citizens which your RN bombarded? No? Guess not...

[@bolivar2153]

@@ralphbernhard1757 Again, Germany was the first nation to target civilian population centres in war with the tactic of aerial bombardment, the intention being that of sowing terror. This was a decision endorsed by the Kaiser himself and was a policy conducted throughout the Great War, first by Zeppelin and later by multi-engine fixed wing aircraft (strategic bombers).

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 So what? Who cares? As a neutral observer, and non-European, here is my standpoint to all that bs: that was a perfect answer to your Lords' decision to *wage war on civilians* with a long-distance blockade, intended to starve civilians to death. This was *already a decision taken as a matter of policy, long before any guns even started firing.* Waging war on civilians (including citizens in neutral countries, who would be affected as "collateral") was already policy in London, long before "Duh...Zeppelins..." Same difference...unless one is a propagandist.

[@cwinowich]

another thing I feel like I shouldn't need to add but I will incase people who know nothing of the world wars are reading this, I don't understand why the couple of these guys are pretending like Britain was in a war for their very survival and "had to do it". Germany did not even want to be fighting Britain, and would have happily made peace with them, Germany also had no way to cross the channel and actually invade Britain, and by the end of 1941 when these guys are claiming Britains survival was so desperate they had already decisively won the battle of Britain in the air as well. So there really was hardly any threat whatsoever to Britain, not to mention the USA would not allow Britain to fall even if germany somehow had a way to bring the war to them (which they didn't). So these guys arguments are just off on so many levels, of course the bombing of civilians was unjustified. It was born out of hatred and the desire to kill and destroy, and out of ignorance and nothing more.

[@ralphbernhard1757]

What was the "return on investment" for the Allied war machine? What was the value of a policy of killing "enemy" civilians. How much "bang for the buck" did it result in. Google, download and read: BRITAIN 1939 - 1945: THE ECONOMIC COST OF STRATEGIC BOMBING One can spend a few hours reading this....OR...I'll condense it into a few short lines for those who are too lazy. Sending out soldiers with orders to kill civilians was (and still is) ineffective. Sending out soldiers with orders to kill civilians was counter productive. Sending out soldiers with orders to kill civilians was stupid.

[@lenircotia]

Excellent! And this is the question of today, of digital warfare. Should a military use drones in combat? A soldier sitting somewhere in Europe, steering a drone over Syria or somewhere far away and killing people. Killing people without facing them is psycholgically easier than looking them into the eye while one pulls the trigger.

[@magisterhpp]

At the time it was also forbidden and totally unmilitary/ *unthinkable* for a state not ruled by psychopaths. In WW1 soldiers who murdered civilians in a refugeecamp by strafing them with machinegun fire and handgranates were considered to be war- *criminals* already. Therefore an incriminating *neutral official report* was made up *by Dutch civil servants* in Dresden at the time, but this is concealed by USUK intelligence, in common collusion with SS/SA Mann and high treasoner of The Netherlands being a socalled 'Abwehr' V-Mann with special status "Prince" (Bilderberg) Bernhard zur Lippe Biesterfeld, also indicated as a socalled government infiltrated adapted compensated psychopath. _Psychopaths seek, by any means necessary, to achieve positions in government where their dreams can be brought to fruition. The greater the scope of the psychopath’s influence, the greater harm done._ This concealment has to be considered *illegal/state-criminal* and the victims are terrorised until this day and still going on, *mis* using state power. Durty, durty, durty (indeed not just dirty)!!!

[@TheDudeKicker]

Discussing the effectiveness or lack of, is a separate question. It was either was moral or it wasn't. Additionally, the decision on doing something or not is also a separate question from the morality of it.

[@internetenjoyer1044]

you cant look at the morality of a war action without looking at it consequences

[@ramstacp]

@@internetenjoyer1044 that’s ridiculous. Of course you can

[@TomBruhh]

@@ramstacp It depends. If you could win/end the war overnight with one attack which kills 10,000, why would that be less moral than not doing it and letting the war continue for several more months/years in which the death toll would reach much higher than 10,000. I know Tywin Lannister is hardly the face of morality, but I think the following statement holds a lot of weight: "Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner." (In relation to a massacre at a wedding dinner if you didn't know)

[@TomBruhh]

@TheDudeKicker Are there any moral actions in total war? Really the only moral action in war is to not engage in the war, but when your enemy is committing genocide and conquering the entire continent, can you really justify not fighting to stop that?

[@McIntyreBible]

50:00, question time.

[@alexandercoelho2179]

Hindsight should be used to evaluate the future not the past

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Bombing German factories was counterproductive in 2 main ways. 1) German "factories" was not what limited German production, but rather the lack of raw materials. 2) after WW2, the new "alpha" Washington DC actually needed both Germany and Japan (the losers) as much as they did GB, France and their empires (the winners). So that by opening up the markets in the US sphere of interest, Germany and Japan quickly recovered, and with a completely modernized economy, quickly overtook GB. There was no alternative, because if not, both would have fallen to communism. GB, and Empire was seen as a rival, and was "cut down to size". London no longer had the "leverage" to stand up to Washington DC, and were *overpowered.* Note, overpowering does not necessarily mean war. Economic warfare is an old established method. "At the end of the war, Britain, physically devastated and financially bankrupt, lacked factories to produce goods for rebuilding, the materials to rebuild the factories or purchase the machines to fill them, or with the money to pay for any of it. Britain’s situation was so dire, the government sent the economist John Maynard Keynes with a delegation to the US to beg for financial assistance, claiming that Britain was facing a *"financial Dunkirk”.* The Americans were willing to do so, on one condition: They would supply Britain with the financing, goods and materials to rebuild itself, but dictated that Britain must first eliminate those Sterling Balances by repudiating all its debts to its colonies. The alternative was to receive neither assistance nor credit from the US. *Britain, impoverished and in debt, with no natural resources and no credit or ability to pay, had little choice but to capitulate.* And of course with all receivables cancelled and since the US could produce today, those colonial nations had no further reason for refusing manufactured goods from the US. The strategy was successful. *By the time Britain rebuilt itself, the US had more or less captured all of Britain’s former colonial markets, and for some time after the war’s end the US was manufacturing more than 50% of everything produced in the world. And that was the end of the British Empire, and the beginning of the last stage of America’s rise."* [globalresearch(dot)ca/save-queen/5693500] So after WW2 while the British population and economy were being squeezed like a lemon by US banks, were having their Pound crushed by the US dominated IMF, were being refused the mutually developed nukes to act as a deterrent against the SU's expansion, were still on war rations till way into the 1950s, and lost the Suez Canal in a final attempt at "acting tough" and imposing hegemony over a vital sphere of interest...and going under... So the London lords woke up one morning, only to discover that their "best friends forever" had stolen all their markets. And that's how "leverage" works. Washington DC: "I've taken over almost all your markets now. What are you going to do about it?" Sad reality? There was nothing London *could* do about it. Washing DC had more leverage to impose, and they took over from their former colonial masters.

[@bolivar2153]

When did they run out of materials?

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 I didn't write "run out of materials", I wrote "lack of materials". What does "lack of" mean?

[@bolivar2153]

@@ralphbernhard1757 Well, if they didn't run out of material, then production never exceeded supply of material (I wonder why?). Therefore, material was _not_ the restricting factor, was it? Surely even you can figure that out? "30 years studying history" and you can't deduce something that simple yet? Maybe in another 30 years ...

[@ralphbernhard1757]

@@bolivar2153 At 25:30 mins "..but how much stronger would Germany have been?' That is not a rhetorical question. The objective of the rhetorical question is to place an opposing view under pressure, by asking a question to which would reveal a weakness in the opposing side's logic. In this case, it not a successful example of rhetoric, because the answer is simple. *German production was limited by resources.* No Bauxite = no aluminum No Nickel = no armor No Chrome = no high grade steel No tungsten = no tools No rubber = no tires for trucks No oil = no mobile warfare. German production would *not* have been significantly higher, because they did not have the raw materials, or access to those places in the world which had these resources. Anybody who states that 'German production would have been higher', should also follow it up with a full assessment of where the extra raw materials for a higher production would have come from, and more importantly, the oil to fuel the weapons of warfare (tanks, planes, artillery tractors, etc.) Evidence for the above? WW1. There was no strategic bombing, and the Allies outproduced Germany/Austria-Hungary easily. German production came to a standstill around early 1945, when advancing ground forces cut off the last remaining connections to the sources of raw materials.

[@bolivar2153]

@@ralphbernhard1757 "Evidence for the above? WW1. There was no strategic bombing," WW1 Germany - Pretty much stuck within her borders and heavily subject to the Entente blockade. WW2 Germany - Continental power, in control of the vast majority of Europe and it's resources So : No comparison No strategic bombing? Tell that to the citizen's of London who were subjected to German strategic bombing from 1915 onwards.

[@heidemassato5177]

As someone who was almost not here because of a bombing when my pregnant Oma was almost killed near Heilbronn, I can understand from that side. I also know people (ordinary civilians) in other countries who were affected by Nazi Germany. No, we should not target civilians on ANY sides. Which in WWII more than a lot of civilians were killed by all sides involved.

[@georgerix3224]

What about all the places the Luftwaffe bombed, London, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Leningrad....was that ok?

[@scanida5070]

We’re not in Kindergarten anymore where it’s just “Tit for Tat”. We’re talking about human lives here! Furthermore Germany’s war criminals were trialed but those of the allies never were. Even Japan got away with literally EVERYTHING.

[@bolivar2153]

@@scanida5070 No one, from any nation, or either side, was tried or convicted of any "crime" related to the bombing campaigns carried out during the Second World War, for the simple fact that under the rules and conventions of war in force at the time, it simply wasn't a crime. A war crime is "an act that constitutes a serious violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility." From the ICRC (with regards the laws of air warfare) "[...] it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property, as the Conventions then in force dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war."

[@northeastrailway.]

@@scanida5070 Japan had 2 atomic bombs dropped of it... I'd say they got away with nothing. What they dished out we gave back 100 fold with 2 blows, crushing the Japanese empire, forcing them to their knees. That was their war crime trial.

[@cwinowich]

man that speaker all the way on the left is a genius