[tcolvin]

I also have been tied up; apologies.

Two things need proving to answer Bruce and Don; that
- targetting civilians was a war crime, while
- Lübeck was a clear example of targetting civilians.
Contemporary comments will provide some response to Peter.

There were a series of conferences at the Hague in the 1890s.
The 1899 Hague Conference passed the Martens clause, which has retained its legal force to this day;
“Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity and the requirements of the public conscience.”
The Conference also agreed “to prohibit, for a term of five years, the launching of projectiles and explosives from balloons, or by other new methods of similar nature”.

The Hague Conference of 1907 renewed the prohibition of aerial launch of projectiles and explosives. It therefore remains in force to this day AFAIK.

The Hague Conference of 1922/3 attended by Britain, France, USA, Italy and Japan (Germany and Russia could not attend) - produced articles on air warfare that were not ratified. They do however spell out the implications of the Martens Clause which remains in effect.
Article XXII; Aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorising the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private property not of a military character, is prohibited.
Article XXIV;
1) Aerial bombardment is legitimate only when directed at a military objective ....
2) Such bombardment is legitimate only when directed exclusively at the following objectives: military forces; military establishments or depots; factories constituting important and well-known centres engaged in the manufacture of arms, ammunition, or distinctively military supplies; lines of communication or transportation used for military purposes.
3) The bombardment of cities, town, villages, dwellings, or buildings not in the immediate neighbourhood of the operations of land forces is prohibited. In cases where the objectives specified in paragraph 2 are so situated that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment. (NB that answers Don).
Article XXV. In bombardment by aircraft all necessary steps must be taken by the commander to spare as far as possible buildings dedicated to public worship, art, science....hospitals.......must be indicated by marks visible to aircraft.....

The League of Nations Disarmament Conference convened from 1925 to 1932, and included the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932 where most of the attending powers agreed that air attacks on civilians were in violation of fundamental principles, and so confirmed the previous understanding of the Martens Clause.

The proposal to outlaw attacks on civilians was protested by the RAF, in the person of Sir John Salmond. He said however that he was opposed to the bombing of civilians because 'no military advantage would accrue to a country that employs its bombing aircraft to terrorise rather than disarm its opponent”. (Which is ironic since that was what the RAF did during WW2).
The RAF objected to banning bombers because it was arguing for its (the RAF's) very survival. If bombing were banned, then the RAF knew it would be abolished and the non-bombing forces would be returned to the Navy and Army. The RAF therefore welcomed the collapse of the conference in 1934, which left it free to win the argument for building a strategic bombing force to kill German civilians.

So we come to Lübeck. Harris was told to use incendiaries, as the GAF had done at Coventry. But Harris refused and insisted on using some HE; “I do not agree with this policy (of using only incendiaries). The moral effect of HE is vast. People can escape from fire, and the casualties on a solely fire-raising raid would be as nothing. What we want to do in addition to the horrors of fire is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche, and to terrify Boche; hence the proportion of HE” (at Lübeck).

The target at Lübeck was the Innenstadt, the old town surrounded by water. You can see it in the satellite image. In the photograph you can see it burning. The quays where the iron ore was unloaded, and the U-boat yards, were located down-river to the north. They were not targetted or bombed. Does that answer your question, Bruce?

Can we not agree that Bomber Command's policy of attacking civilian housing at night in city centres was a war crime, and had been specifically prohibited on all the occasions it had been discussed from 1899 to 1934?

In response to Peter's cry for retaliation (“The only good German is a dead one", Lübeck "Bloody good job"), this was answered during the war by Vera Brittain quoting George Bernard Shaw; “The blitzing of the cities has carried war this time to such a climax of infernal atrocity that all recriminations on that score are ridiculous. The Germans will have as big a bill of atrocities against us as we against them if we take them into an impartial international court”. And Vera Brittain argued that retaliation in kind simply reduced the British to the level of the Germans, “and it is the perverted values of our enemies that made us fight them in the first place”.

Tony