Jan, I agree in part with what you are saying. I personally don’t view the Allied bombing campaign as a war crime, although I believe it was a crime against humanity judged by today’s standards.Jan-Hendrik wrote:Sorry Andre , but I think you are misunderstanding me totally .
I do not justify anything , from our humanistic point of view that had been all extremly terrible , but , if we want to judge about Terror bombing or war crimes we cannot take those standarts for judgement . That does not work and that would be what you labeled as "double standard" .
That can only be done by critical analysis of what hat happened , what was ordered and what were the standards of warfare in that particular time
And , yes , if we are following your point of view Dresden would have been one of the largest war crimes of WW2 . But I think that would go to far , or simply , it would take too much time to elaborate the escalation of air warfare in WW2 , as much as this has been already done by the experts .
Jan-Hendrik
I think your comment…
…infers that you believe Guernica was a legitimate target for the Luftwaffe to destroy. To state that Richtofen wasn’t concerned with “possible” civilian deaths is also a little disengenious, on your part also. He knew perfectly well that the force he was sending out with the payloads they were carrying, civilian deaths were not a possibility but a certainty, and hence intentional.There were 2 Btl. in the city and other 23 Btls on the way to Guernica . Richthofen got the order to prevent their retreat . So he did , yes , not concerning much about possible civil casualities , but who did , especially in Spanish civil war .
My argument is that the ferocity and length of bombing combined with the lack of reconnaissance, and the type and quantity of munitions used, demonstrates that the Luftwaffe intentionally killed civilians.
The argument shouldn’t only be confined to Guernica either. Germany and the Luftwaffe demonstrated throughout the war that they intentionally targeted and killed innocent civilians, starting with the indiscriminate bombing of Polish towns and cities in 1939 through to their use of terror weapons (V-1 and V-2) against the British population in 1945.
Regards,
Andre