Why was Coventry 'coventriert'?

[Bruce Dennis]

Tony, thanks for the reply but I'm still here, and still far from persuaded. Before addressing your insight into how this 'war crime' you describe could have happened without having "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.", please could you break the suspense and say why Lübeck was not a legitimate target?

Believe it or not, I am interested in this point if it can be proved.

Regards,
Bruce

By the way, neither of the books called Bodyguard of Lies that I am aware of were written by Knightley

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Don Pearson

Area bombing which included civilian areas was a means to the end of the war, whether it was only 5% effective or 100%.
Don

Area bombing was not even 5% effective, but rather minus 10% effective. Area bombing lengthened the war.

Every study in Britain, Germany, Spain, and Russia showed that after the bombers had gone home, the terror of the victims rapidly subsided and turned to resolve that they would not give in.

And when you take into account that area bombing absorbed over half the gross domestic product of Britain in an unproductive enterprise while leaving little for the navy (few landing craft for example) and for the army (no tank immune to the 88-mm for example), then you can say that area bombing was possibly minus 30% effective.

Bottom line, area bombing was a catastrophe for everybody except Hitler and his henchmen.

Tony

[tcolvin]

Bruce I can and do believe you are interested.

Apologies for getting Knightley's book wrong; I meant 'The First Casualty".

Harris targetted the Lübeck Innenstadt because it was overwhelmingly civilian and because it was flammable. Therefore it was an efficient target for his purpose of killing civilians.
This is not a legitimate reason for making the Lübeck Innenstadt a target. By the rules of law, the bombing of the Lübeck Innenstadt was prohibited since it did not contain a preponderance of war industries, and he did not take care to limit civilian deaths - on the contrary.
Therefore a war crime was committed.

Tony.

[Bruce Dennis]

Hello again Tony, your answer muddles the issue but doesn’t alter my point. The question was “Why was Lubeck not a legitimate target?”, not “Do you approve of the tactics/weapons used to attack Lubeck?”

Help me here, I am stuck on this point that could fundamentally alter the way I (and perhaps others on the forum) think about the conduct of the war. Few of us have any rosy illusions that the air-war by this stage hadn’t outgrown the model on which the rules had been devised, but this is different: you say that the leader of Bomber Command knowingly launched a bombing raid on an ineligible target. Please separate the subject of ‘tactics used’ from the more sinister allegation that bombing Lubeck at all was a crime, as defined by the rules in force on the day, and show what gives Lubeck this singular status. It really would help.

Regards,
Bruce

[tcolvin]

I'm sorry, Bruce, but I am obviously failing to engage fully in your concern.

To my view Lübeck's status can only be said to be singular because of its being the first British attempt at town destruction to break morale and make Germans cry Uncle. Dresden was perhaps the last in the series which ended after Churchill's belated change of heart.

To take your phrase and finish it.

Lübeck was an ineligible target because:
1. it was chosen to fulfill the February 15, 1942 directive from the Air Staff that “the primary object of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population, and in particular of the industrial workers”. The 1922 Hague Conference proposed; “In cases where the objectives specified in paragraph 2 (Aerial bombardment is legitimate only when directed at a military objective) are so situated that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment”. The military objectives specified by Harris were the port where iron ore was trans-shipped, and the U-boat yard or training station. But these were not targetted. The Innenstadt was targetted. The aircraft therefore had to abstain from bombardment, but did not and committed a crime.
2.it was a flammable mediaeval city vulnerable to incendiaries. The Air Staff chose Lübeck as an experiment. But Article XXIV, Para 1 of the 1922 Hague Conference, stated that, “Aerial bombardment is legitimate only when directed at a military objective”. No military objective was targetted.
3. Harris believed unshakably “that war was to be won by attacking the morale of an enemy population until its will to resist was broken”, (Grayling 'Among the Dead Cities', page 120). This contravened Article XXII of the 1922 Hague Conference; “Aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorising the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private property not of a military character, is prohibited".

Tony

[John Vasco]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

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.

Not an expert, Tony. No need for piss-taking.

Point 1. I do believe Luftwaffe bombers were over Britain as early as February 1940. Do check up on a certain, relatively famous, pilot who brought one down. I won't say who, because, you being an expert, will already know. Rather beats May 1940 by a few months, what?

Point 2. Go back and check your earlier posts. Unless you've edited them heavily, I do recall (I can't be arsed going back and quoting them ad-infinitum) you reference several meetings/conferences (I won't get into semantics, as you rightly mention earlier) in the decades before WW2 where the rules/principles (insert your own term if you wish) were set down. I do recall you appeared to set great store by some of the points agreed at said meetings/conferences. As for being real. I'm sure we at least agree war is a dirty business, and in war, all kinds of things happen, good and bad. The purpose is to win, and if that means you bomb the shit out of the opposition, and end up winning, then that's what happens. The problem being that Governments go to war, and the ordinary Joe ends up taking the shit and the deaths. And as for Coventry, I am continually amazed at the amount of bleeding heart stuff that one hears about it (and I'm not being callous when I say that). Ask most people about which city got hammered the most after London in 1940, for example, and you can bet Coventry will will come out on top by a comfortable margin. No way. It was my home city, Liverpool, which took the second biggest battering after London. And continued to do so into 1941, particularly in the May Blitz in 1941.

And trying to lure me into even commenting about these things:
"...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?..."
just doesn't work. You're just being a smart-arse again, like in the other thread.

You really do need to get your facts right before you post...

[Bruce Dennis]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

I'm sorry, Bruce, but I am obviously failing to engage fully in your concern.

I see.
Tony, it is nice occasionally to find someone is consistent, even if it leads to the odd difficulty. Allow me to explain my question again, and for the last time: I am not asking for what BC did, or what was wrong with their logic, or about the topography of the area, or anything else to do with the motivation of the C-in-C of BC. You said that Lübeck was not a legitimate target, and I ask what made it ineligible. It’s flammable structures do not make it an ineligible target. What the RAF chose to bomb it with cannot make it retrospectively an illegible target. It is not acceptable to quote the results of the raid to support your theory that a crime was committed when you are alleging that choosing the target was the original crime. Before the bombing, at the decision making stage, it was either (a) a legitimate target, in which case how it was bombed is the next subject, or (b) not a legitimate target, in which case any attack would be wrong. This is the point, and since it was central to your overall argument on the commission of a war crime, it is worth clearing up: show us the proof that BC had information establishing the ineligible status of this city before it was chosen as a target or accept that the head of the RAF was right to bomb it.

I will get off your back and drop the subject if you find your original statement impossible to justify.

I look forward to a clear answer on point, and hope it is not too difficult.

Regards,
Bruce

[Jan Gazda]

Tony,

what is your basis for the assertion about the half of Britain´s GDP being consumed by Bomber Command? Johnson and Floud in The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain, Volume III say that at its peak (in 1944) all Britain´s war related expenditures amounted to 53 % of its GDP. Given the manpower of the ground forces and navy and the physical quantities of armanents and equipment manufactured in 1944 it is highly unlikely that BC share could be anywhere above 20% of GDP.

Jan

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by John Vasco

Not an expert, Tony. No need for piss-taking.

Point 1. I do believe Luftwaffe bombers were over Britain as early as February 1940.
You really do need to get your facts right before you post...

Apologies for appearing to take the piss, John.
The tenor of your posts are, shall we say, forthright.
And I asked you questions, so what's this about my failing to check facts before posting?

Now to your point about GAF activity over Britain in February 1940.

A British bomber was over Wilhelmshaven on September 4, 1939, and attacked a military target in the harbour causing deaths of sailors and the Blenheim crew. Pilots, British, German and French, were under strict instructions to avoid civil casualties by every means after FDR's appeal to the belligerents. The RAF religiously kept to this instruction until 10/11 May 1940, according to Phillip Knightley.

You say this is incorrect? and LW bombers were over Britain "as early as February 1940"?
You imply they were bombing civilians, otherwise why mention it.
Are you referencing the He 111H of 1./KG 26 shot down on February 10, 1940?
But this bomber was not attacking civilians but raiding shipping in the Firth of Forth, and is therefore ineligible for the prize of who first bombed civilians.

So please tell us which GAF aircraft bombed civilians in Britain before the RAF did so on 10/11 May 1940.

This fact is important to your argument that "if you hit me in the face, don't be surprised when I knock you to the ground".
Who hit who in the face? Was it the RAF?

Tony

[Harri Pihl]

Tony,
This kind of discussion is pointless.