Why was Coventry 'coventriert'?

[Bruce Dennis]

Tony, I am trying to understand your point but I’m struggling with the your emphasis on whether or not an area of the target was/wasn’t flammable: the only way I can follow the logic of your latest reply is if you believe a target should be spared because it would burn.

Bruce

[PeterVerney]

Re the Grauniad article.
I went to secondary school on Canterbury in 1943, about a year after the Luftwaffe had destroyed the town centre. From our school on the west of the high street up to the cathedral was a total wasteland, half of our school had been destroyed and the girls side was evacuated. We were taught in the patched up remainder and a collection of wooden huts. We also took shelter in concrete tunnels under the playground, the centrepiece of which was a barrage balloon which was hoisted up and down as the need arose.
I can remember my mother taking us out into the garden one night to see the glow in the clouds as Canterbury burned some 11 miles away.

[Bruce Dennis]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Burning out the Innenstadt would not and could not reduce the imports of iron ore by one kg, or damage or delay the building of one U-boat. BC knew this and thereby committed their war crime.

Tony, I wonder if you can tell me on what you base this statement? It seems to be another piece of information fundamentally at odds with my understanding of the situation.

Sorry for the delay in coming back to the thread, been a bit tied up.

Regards,
Bruce

[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

[Bruce Dennis]

Thanks Tony,

Originally Posted by tcolvin

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?

The above was in response to my question about your claim that bombing Lübeck “would not and could not reduce the imports of iron ore by one kg, or damage or delay the building of one U-boat.” I don’t think that is going to withstand scrutiny. Port capacity depended on two factors: the ability of the port to receive and handle ships (it’s berthing and unloading capacity); and the ability of the transport system behind it to move the unloaded goods away from the port area. This is not my opinion; rather, it is the definition of port capacity as used by the MEW and government departments (for example the Petroleum Department).

Lübeck was a legitimate target. Perhaps I am too pedantic about the point, but it seems to me that, if there was a reason why Lübeck should have been excluded from the ‘target list’, it hasn’t yet been stated: general statements about the horrors of bombing and more particularly Harris’s determination to use tactics giving maximum destruction should not be confused with the specific case that you raised when you said that Lubeck, a shipyard which produced 42 U-boats between 1939 and 1945, was not a legitimate target. Also, as explained before, it was the German end of a significant route of Swedish high-grade iron ore which was vital for armaments production. It was a part of the German war machine and I am surprised it wasn’t targeted earlier and more often.

Regards,
Bruce

[John Vasco]

1. If you hit me in the face, don't be surprised when I knock you to the ground;

2. Wars are not run on the principles set down in documents at Conferences. Get real.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Bruce Dennis

The above was in response to my question about your claim that bombing Lübeck “would not and could not reduce the imports of iron ore by one kg, or damage or delay the building of one U-boat.” I don’t think that is going to withstand scrutiny. Port capacity depended on two factors: the ability of the port to receive and handle ships (it’s berthing and unloading capacity); and the ability of the transport system behind it to move the unloaded goods away from the port area.
Bruce

But it does withstand scrutiny, and I hope we are not into semantics.
The destruction of Lübeck degraded neither the berthing & unloading capacity of the port, nor the capacity of the transportation system to move the unloaded ore. Nor did it affect Flender Werke.
And nor did Harris intend it to do so.
He intended to wipe out the Innenstadt.
Why I mention semantics is that Lübeck port might just as well have been called Travemunde Port or Porta Holsteinica for all the effect that the bombing of Lübeck had on the port of Lübeck.
Would a different name have solved our problem?
Harris himself said the port and yard were near Lübeck and not in Lübeck. Both were also near Travemunde and not in Travemunde.
I'm afraid I'm baffled by your post.

Tony

[PeterVerney]

Originally Posted by John Vasco

1. If you hit me in the face, don't be surprised when I knock you to the ground;

2. Wars are not run on the principles set down in documents at Conferences. Get real.

I couldn't have put it better myself John.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by John Vasco

1. If you hit me in the face, don't be surprised when I knock you to the ground;

2. Wars are not run on the principles set down in documents at Conferences. Get real.

John, as you are an expert in these matters, perhaps you could comment on the truth of the following letter by another distinguished expert, Phillip Knightley (author of Bodyguard Of Lies) in today's Guardian;

"The important point is not who bombed what and why, but who started it all. We did. On the night of 10-11 May 1940 the RAF bombed München-Gladbach without provocation from Germany. The raid did little damage and cost few lives, but it was thought important enough at the time to be kept from the British public because of its doubtful psychological effects. It was only revealed in 1944 when a former Air Ministry official, JM Spaight, wrote a book called Bombing Vindicated, and is not well-known today. Phillip Knightley London

If Knightley is right, and I suspect he is, but please confirm it, then perhaps you would like to revisit your point 1 above.

Re your point 2, I would ask you to point out where I have said that wars are run on the principles set down in documents at Conferences, and therefore why you say that I am being unreal.

And finally would you please explain what you are saying, or implying.
Are you saying that everything in war is justified?
For example was the Holocaust justified?
Was the shooting of British Commandos justified; or the killing of British aircrew who had been shot down and captured?
What exactly are you trying to say, John?

Tony.

[Don Pearson]

[quote=tcolvin;94033]



Are you saying that everything in war is justified?
For example was the Holocaust justified?
quote]

Linking the Holocaust to the war; experiments in extermination and the concentration camps existed without the war. The war only allowed the Holocaust to expand.

For that matter, comparing area bombing to the Holocaust is "apples and oranges". The extermination in camps had zero bearing on the outcome of the war. Area bombing which included civilian areas was a means to the end of the war, whether it was only 5% effective or 100%.

Don