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>After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged. >What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, ... It would only have been a war crime if the
by simonh 4y ago
>After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged.
>What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, ...
It would only have been a war crime if the city was undefended. Since Dresden had AA guns and fighters defending it those attacks were not war crimes. Bear in mind the same test was applied to german bomber attacks, no germans were convicted for the bombings of Coventry or London, so there was no inconsistency in the way bomber attacks by the two sides were treated.
- sofixa 4y agoThat logic seems very flimsy. Every city had AA guns and fighters protecting it. In the same way that massacring a bunch of civilians in a village that was defended by armed soldiers is still a war crime. For a counterpoint, Alexander Löhr was hanged in Belgrade after the war, in part because of the bombing of the city he commanded.
- simonh 4y ago>That logic seems very flimsy.... Maybe, but that was the legal standard at the time. I've no idea what the charges and evidence were levelled at Löhr beyond the few lines in Wikipedia, except that his fate seems richly deserved for numerous reasons and it seems likely many of them had a perfectly valid legal basis. If there were any lapses in legal nicety, I shed no tears over the matter.
- nl 4y agoIt wasn't the legal standard at the time. The defense used was generally that there were legitimate military targets (eg arms factories).
- simonh 4y agoFrom the Hague Convention of 1907 regarding ‘the Laws and Customs of War on Land’: Article 25 The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.
- nl 4y agoThis was not considered to restrict aerial bombardment as early as the first world war, drawing on precedent based on naval bombardments which could target undefended facilities provided they were of a milirary nature. Article 2 of the Hague Convention No. IX of 1907 on naval bombardments in time of war allowed naval forces to fire on certain objects even when the locality concerned was not defended. [snip] Generally speaking, it was possible to observe a steady shift, for bombardment to be permissible under inter- national law, from the requirement that a locality be defended to that of the presence of a military objective. 5 By the time the First World War ended, therefore, the law of air warfare had virtually lost its sole codified basis: the prohibition on dropping explosives from aircraft had become invalid and Article 25's field of application had turned out to be extremely narrow. It had been replaced by the very imprecise prin- ciple of the "military objective" If you continue reading that document it becomes clear there were multiple attempts the codify the rules (eg the Washington Conference talks, the Hague Commission of Jurists) none of which were ratified. However, the 1922/23 "Hague Rules of Air Warfare" (which were not ratified) are notable in that the discard the idea that defense makes any difference and switched entirely to the military objectives view, with carve-outs to try to protect civilians and monuments. https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/S0020860400071370a.pdf https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/S0...
- simonh 4y agoSo they made it easier to justify attacks, and harder to prosecute such attacks as war crimes? In any case as to legitimacy[0]: In 1946 the Nüremberg International Military Tribunal stated with regard to the Hague Convention on land warfare of 1907: "The rules of land warfare expressed in the Convention undoubtedly represented an advance over existing International Law at the time of their adoption ... but by 1939 these rules ... were recognized by all civilized nations and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war" (reprinted in AJIL, Vol. 41, 1947, pp. 248-249). The International Military Tribunal for the Far East expressed, in 1948, an identical view. [0] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/195 https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/195
- 4y ago
- nl 4y ago> It would only have been a war crime if the city was undefended. There's no treaty or legal doctrine arguing that. That seems to be something you've made up. The generally accepted argument for strategic bombing being a war crime is that it targets civilians which is outlawed by the Geneva Convention. AFAIK that had never been tried in a court but that's the logic. The "it was defended" argument isn't a factor in any legal discussion I've seen.