I am reading a review of this book (thank you Instapundit), about Stalin and Hitler and their many and mutually supportive crimes, and I came upon a fact that was very surprising to me:
About as many people died in the German bombing of Warsaw in 1939 as in the allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
Here in Britain we remember, those of us who are the remembering sort, Winston Churchill’s metaphor-mangling talk of winds and whirlwinds, sewing and reaping. Relatively mild bombing of British cities by the Luftwaffe was followed later in the war by truly horrific bombing of German cities by the RAF.
But that original wind, in other parts of Europe, was windier than I had realised.
LATER: And here’s another little fact that pulled me up short:
In just a few days in 1941, the Nazis shot more Jews in the east than they had inmates in all their concentration camps.
Although, I am not clear whether that is inmates in camps at that time, or inmates in camps over the whole period. The former, I think. Either way, it is hideous. Not sure I want to read the entire book. I already get the general idea.
I’ve read so many comparisons of mass killing by the belligerents of WWII that I’ve forgotten the purpose of such comparisons. This year, a panel commissioned by the city council of Dresden estimated the deaths from the terrible bombing in 1945 at 25,000. By comparison, the Nazis killed 30,000 people, mostly civilians, on a single day in their suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. I can see the comparison but what use are we to make of it? I don’t see any moral equivalence between Bomber Command, defending their country by every means at their disposal, and Nazi Germany, who invaded Poland in the first place.
The only purpose I can imagine for such comparisons is to argue a phoney moral equivalence between the two belligerents, in support of an equally bogus moral superiority on the part of the one who draws the comparison. The purpose of ignoring the difference between the attacker and the attacked is to protect the delusion that oneself will never be either.
Oh I am sure it will get worse. I’ve read a lot more than I perhaps wish to remember. They were digging trenches and lining up the victims and shooting them, one group after another after another. This was enough to damage the mind of even the most dedicated Nazi… the high command had their meetings around that time to find more efficient solutions partly so as not to waste good soldiers…
I’m sure Perry, another student of WWII, would know about this rather evil bit of history as well.
I think it was Bomber Harris who came up with all that “sown the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind” stuff.
I rather like it.
Ah, scrub that. It’s from the Bible
But I think he used the phrase.
Just to point out that it wouldn’t be that hard to put the actual title of the book instead of the words “this book” for the hyperlink. Thus avoiding requiring opening a new page to make any sense of your article and the associated problems should the link change or be unavailable.
Almost as bad as “click here” hyperlinks.
I was actually wondering if the “this book” thing might be associate spam. The wwwviolentkicom at the end of the URL appears to be an associate ID associated with Glenn Reynolds. However, Glenn uses the name of the book in the link in the instapundit article so I’ll just put it down to poor HTML practices on Brian’s part :p
Bombing cities came about because the technology of the day (which had been oversold before the war) wasn’t up to hitting individual targets – or sometimes even finding the right city. Basel was bombed a couple of times on the mistaken belief it was Stuttgart.
As late as 1942, the RAF called a raid ‘successful’ if twenty percent of the bombs fell within six miles of the target.
Also, RAF bombers operating without escort fighters could only survive on night raids, which did nothing for accuracy.
Later, bombing civilians was rationalised as justified by the Nazi claim of ‘total war’, since the death of any German could then be said to have injured the war effort. One may be a little cynical about whether this was the real motivation or simply Bomber Command justifying its existence by doing the only thing it could do.
But I do think there was an essential distinction between strategic bombing and the Holocaust, in that bombing was a means to an end, not an end in itself. And I think the ‘end’ the Allies had in mind was far better than what the Nazis intended. That matters.
Incidentally, Harris ended the war as a lunatic, having his dead bomber crews in to tea and explaining to them why their deaths had been necessary.
Jack Olson, I think the point at comparative statistics is to try and overcome conditioned assumptions.
A leaflet we handed out at an Anti Nazi League rally in the late 70s read:
“RED HERRING?
NAZISM murdered 15 million people.
It was stopped 33 years ago.
MARXISM has murdered 120 million and is still at it.”
and it was rather successful at getting reality past the entrenched, unthinking, prejudices.
They were handed out outside a Russia exhibition at Earls Court, as well, with what seemed like almost lethal results.
Read up on Babi Yar–the Germans killed over 30,000 jews in two days.
Exactly. We can certainly argue over whether Dresden was necessary in the context of the wider war (arguments for which there was precious little time during the war itself), but there’s an essential moral difference between a free country under attack and an aggressive dictatorship.
I’m sure the author drew heavily on Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives which was an a-level set book when I was in school.
When still in my teens I read both The Scourge of the Swastika and The Nights of Bushido by Lord Russel.
Nothing I have read about the NAZIs since has come as a surprise.
All the comparative casualty figures are just post-facto self-justification.
Screw ’em. They started it, the foul beasts. Anything they got after that, they deserved, the whole damn lot of them.
And that goes for the Japanese, too.
The goal was not just to win the war, but to ensure that for generations afterwards, those belligerent nations would stop and think twice before embarking on similar reindeer games again.
Worked pretty well, too.
As we all know, all that matters is that the trains run on time. If both sides are otherwise morally equivalent, then efficiency becomes the only standard. Next time a train is late, curse Winston Churchill!
What’s this about Harris’ condition at the end of the war?
I could find this from a published source:
“Two years later, on 8 September 1976, Harris spoke again at Strike Command, this time formally when unveiling a plaque during ceremonies commemorating the wartime collaboration between his own Command and the Americans. His audience, including Ira Eaker and Jimmy Doolittle, heard him reiterate the achievements of the bombers as perceived by Speer and the military commanders of both sides. He particularly stressed that the major factor in the success of the Normandy invasion was the absolute air supremacy won by the Allies, and that the bombers had played a critical part in ensuring the victory at sea. He was, as always, listened to with rapt attention.”
Nothing there about dead people at tea.
Kim, collectivist descriptions do not fit with an individual-responsibility view.
With jingoist words you can slaughter a generation of the best and outwit them with their worst.
I find it hard to believe that the German medium bombers, which bombed for just one day and didn’t start a firestorm, managed to kill 25,000 people in Warsaw.
According to Wikipedia
1,150 bombing sorties by German aircraft were flown against Warsaw on September 25, 1939, in an effort to terrorize the defenders into surrendering. 500 tons of high explosive bombs and 72 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.
1,150 sorties pales into insignificance compare to say the Blitz, particularly when we consider that flights of Junker Ju52 (the transport plane) were included such numbers. It is know that many of the German bombs fell on their own front lines. For comparison the bombing of Coventry included 515 aircraft and killed 600 people. In both cases there was little or no fighter defence. However the Polish used anti-aircraft guns.
What we do know is that deaths in Warsaw up to the German victory was about 40,000 and that includes the fighting in and around the city. It seems more plausible to blame the majority of deaths on the ground fighting.
It occurs to me, that given the pre-existing belief amongst the Allies that strategic bombing was war winning on its own, it would have made sense for the Germans to overstate the effectiveness of the bombing to reinforce Allied foolishness.
Kim,
Come on.
Really? “The whole damn lot of them”? I’m not sure about that, and I doubt you are either.
I’m happy to stipulate that plenty of Germans were enthusiastic National Socialists. But plenty weren’t. The Nazis had an apparatus of repression for a reason.
My Auntie Flo had a Jerry inceniary land in her wardrobe while she was in bed. I have no sympathy for the Jerries whatsoever. Really, they deserved all they got and, frankly, a lot more that they didn’t. The Nazi regime existed and survived because the people supported it, unlike many true dictatorships.
Ghastly lot, the Germans, until they were re-educated by force. I feel no sympathy for them about Dresden at all. The only people in Europe who wanted a war in 1939 was the Germans, and they got what they wanted.
That’s not strictly correct.
Pre-war it was found that in ideal conditions, a high altitude bomber could drop bombs with good accuracy. ie the claim that bombardiers could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20000 feet. In addition there was the thought that bombers were supposedly fast and could fly in a self defence formation. The bomber would always get through.
Reality didn’t match the expectation and so an RAF that was trained for one sort of action was switched to night bombing for which they had neither equipment nor training. At that stage of the war there was a lot of leeway for each bomber crew and so each one planned it’s own route to target. Nevertheless they were expected to hit very precise targets. Up until 1941 The force commanders relied upon the returning crew’s verbal reports to determine the success or failure of each raid. In 1941 camera’s were fitted to aircraft to capture the bomb drop.
The Butt report was commissioned to find out what was really happening. It reported that “twenty percent of the bombs fell within six miles of the target.” (your words)
There is no suggestion in the Butt report that this was regarded as successful. In fact it was the disconnect between the claims of the RAF and those results that changed the policy to area bombing.
Wow, Ian. I take it you must be one of those libertarian collectivists?
TDK, thanks for the correction. I must have misremembered (it’s been a long time since I read the information).
PersonFromPorlock, no problem.
I was hoping that someone (Brian?) might respond to my earlier comment!
TDK,
I too have trouble believing that the casualties from the German bombing of Warsaw could come anywhere near those at Dresden. The book “Fire and Fury” is an interesting read on the Allied bombing campaign, and on thing that comes through from the stats on the numerous raids mentioned there is how surprisingly low civilian casualties were per bomber/ton of bombs dropped, except where a firestorm got underway. That said, the Warsaw figure becomes more credible if it is conflating loses from bombing, artillery, and the street fighting which apparently took place.
Speak English, and I might bother to respond. Read Orwell’s thoughts on political speech (or, to be correct, non-speech) first.
Tom, the word “hyperbole” comes to mind (or it should).
Not even the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (whose destruction I applaud loud and long) had a 100% casualty/fatality rate.
That’s the problem with nation-states: they apply aggression collectively, yet somehow when it comes time to pay the piper for the crime, we are supposed to punish only the individual instigators?
Bollocks.
I trust Ian B. is being ironic.
The trouble is that I am a bit unBritish when it comes to irony – I am not very good at it (not good at using it, or being sure it is being used).