4 ms·
Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden. Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war cr
by pluma 8y ago
Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden.
Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda.
The estimated death toll was around 25-30 thousand. During and after the war various revisionists and propagandists have blown up that figure to over 100 thousand. Additionally German nazis have built an entire tradition around it, "mourning the fallen" to exploit the incident as a display of nationalism and nazi sympathies.
There's no legal basis to single out the bombing of Dresden as a war crime within the context of the Second World War. I would say that it can be argued that some of the crimes nazis were charged with after WW2 also lacked a pre-existing legal basis but there was no expectation that the winning side would apply punishments consistently, sufficiently or even fairly.
So even if there were good reasons to categorise the Dresden bombings as a war crime in the context of WW2, it'd just be one of many alleged and proven war crimes that went unchallenged -- including other crimes (and "crimes") committed by the US, the Allies in general or any other involved military.
- 0x262d 8y agothis seems like a valuable point: the collective misremembering of WW2 as some sort of "noble war", at least by the Allies, should probably be completely reassessed. but it is tied in very closely to the non-empire myth, and so it isn't.
- slededit 8y agoWhat really was different was conquering territory and then giving it back to the governments in exile. Contrast this with the other players in the war who kept territory they acquired. Even the soviets who were on our side.
- 0x262d 8y agoland was given back to other imperialist states but not in actuality to territories under US control. the pattern has been establishment of neocolonial, subordinate client states since WW2, continuing to today in Venezuela. it’s true that we pretend not to have an empire formally but our winning WW2 in large part was about establishing the dominance of American empire.
- epmatsw 8y agoThe most recent Hardcore History episodes are about WWII from the perspective of Japan, and they’ve really opened my eyes a bit to just how much of their side of the story was left out of my education.
- Kaiyou 8y agoHi, I created an account to say this: my grandfather was there after the bombing and said that the numbers where heavily downplayed. They were saying 30k, when in fact, it was at least 75k, probably way more. It hurts me personally to have my grandpa indirectly accused as a revisionist, when he was personally there, thus this reply. I don't like it when numbers like these get changed because of politics.
- craftyguy 8y agoThis is the internet, just posting that something is true because your grandfather said it is does not make it true, literally anyone could use that as 'proof' for anything. You and OP are both going to need to produce more data/sources to support your differing claims.