Talk:Bombing of Dresden/Archive 5

message: In redoing the death toll numbers, I have relied very heavily on the relevant section (The Bombing of Dresden in 1945) of the Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans, who is Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge. He describes himself in it as:
: a recognized authority on modern German history and have been teaching and researching it for the last thirty years
and his bio (given here) bears that out. That, plus his institutional affiliation, lead me to believe that he is trustworthy, and that his reports on both the raw data, and the conclusions of other historians, can be trusted without viewing them myself.
The report section contains detailed discussion of the original German civil records, plus reports on the latest research of German historians - whom I think we can rely upon not to perpetrate a whitewash of the Allies. So I think all that gives us a fairly reliable picture. Here are some relevant excepts from Evans' writings:
: The most authoritative book on the Dresden raids is by Götz Bergander, published in 1977 after almost two decades of research. Amongst his aims was to combat the many myths and legends which had come to surround the attacks. One such myth was the strafing of civilians and refugees by Allied fighters during the attack .. Bergander points out that although other authors have cited witnesses for such an attack, Irving's is the last account in which any credence is given to the story. He then proceeds to disprove Irving's assertion that such low-level strafing of civilians took place, either by night or by day. 
and:
: In 1977 Bergander's book appeared, which after painstaking research and sound reasoning came to the conclusion that the number which "came nearest to the truth" was 35,000, even if he did not exclude the possibility of it being a few thousand more. .. Many historians accept the 35,000 figure. .. : In 1994 research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert was published, using a previously unused source, which convincingly reduced Bergander's figure of 35,000 to 25,000. This figure can be regarded as close to definitive.
I was relying on these, plus Evans' reports of the German civil records (to be found in the same section) when I re-wrote the paragraph on the death toll. Alas, his report is structured for the purpose of commentary on Irvine's book, so it's not organized well for the purposes of producing this article, but the data is there nonetheless if one takes the time to read the entire section.
I have gone with the figures of 25,000-35,000 for the current historical
"likely range" as a result of considering the research quoted above. Richeirt's number is what I was referring to in preferring "the lower part of this range". I consider that 25,000 may possibly be a bit low (which is why I used the "lower part" language, rather than baldly saying "lowest number"), when considering that the registered burials (21.3K) plus bodies found post-war (1.9K) reach almost this number, without considering those whose bodies were totally consumed in fires (whose numbers we can only guess), etc. Equally, the final tally of missing (25,000) will undoubtly not include some refugees who were not reported as missing, and who were also killed. However, it is also possible that the number of "totally destroyed" or "never found" bodies is small, and that Reichert is completely correct in his calculations. If I had to pick one or the other, I would go with Reichert, actually.
I close with the following excerpts from Evans (at the end of that section):
: Few would now wish to defend the Allied bombing raids on Dresden on 13/14 February 1945. No-one would want to underestimate the terrible cost they wrought in terms of human life and suffering, or ignore the wanton destruction of some of Europe's most beautiful and significant buildings, whose reconstruction is still not complete more than half a century later. But the way to reach a reasoned judgement on these events is not to falsify the evidence, which is already horrifying enough: all that does is to obscure the issues. Irving's manipulations and exaggerations have merely got in the way of a proper discussion of these events, rather than assisting it.
with which I completely agree. The truth is troubling enough, there's no need to exaggerate it. Noel (talk) 21:16, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The death toll

message: I would be careful with that RAF page on Dresden. It claims that:
: it is accepted that the number was greater than the 40,000 who died in the Hamburg firestorm and the Dresden figure may have exceeded 50,000
but this is almost certainly incorrect (see above). It may have been put together from consulting various secondary sources, rather than carefully researched. Noel (talk) 21:35, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Bomber Command casualties were 6 Lancasters lost, with 2 more crashed in France and 1 in England.
I think you can rely on RAF figures for tonnage of bombs dropped etc, but as you say they have to rely on secondary sources for victim numbers. I think the article http://www.earth-lights.net/dresden/Dresden_Bombing_Document.htm (one of the sources in the References section) is interesting because it looks at the number killed as a %age against other German cities and the numbers come out similar to the ones your are suggesting. Philip Baird Shearer 23:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Source reliabality

message: However as no Axis personnel were tried at the post-war Nuremberg Trials for participating in the decisions on, or execution of, assault by aerial bombardment on defended enemy territory, it is not possible to state categorically that that aerial bombardment on defended enemy territory during World War II was a war crime.
:This argument is tenuous though, as the Allied air attacks were far more numerous and ferocious than those of the Axis; the Luftwaffe was typically used to aid ground campaigns. Moreso, whether the Allies were guilty of indiscriminate bombing of German residential areas is the true question, not whether air bombardemnt in general constituted a war crime. Merrick  16:17, 23 Dec 2004 -- Moved from article for discussion
How was the bombing of inland British cities anything to do with a ground campaign? What about the V1 and V2 attacks waged on London and later on  Antwerp when there was no chance of a German land counter attack? The number and ferocity of the attack has nothing to do with the legal question of if aerial bombardment on defended enemy towns was a war crime. (see  Hague IV; October 18, 1907 Art 25,26,27). 
Germans who committed war crimes were tried and found guilty of them even if the Allies had performed similar acts. The most notorious example of this was the conviction of Karl Donitz, who was tried and found guilty of of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for which no one in the US Pacific submarine campaign was ever tried.  However the fact that there were no prosecutions, for aerial bombardment on defended enemy territory, suggests that legal opinion of the time was that it was not a crime during World War II. Philip Baird Shearer 20:43, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Aerial bombardment

message: In reviewing the changes to the "Was the Dresden bombing justified?" section, which described the Allied bombings as "far more numerous and ferocious", I immediately wondered what the actual casualty numbers were for the results of German attacks. Alas, despite the size of my WWII and aviation reference library, I have little that I can find on British losses (have yet to search for Warsaw, Hague, etc numbers).
Hough and Richards Battle of Britain gives (pp. 304) "By the end of the month [of October 1940, I think - it's not certain from the text], over 13,000", but it's not clear from when they started counting - the start of the Battle, the start of the London attacks, or what. And I have nothing for November, up until the end of the Blitz with the withdrawal of the Luftwaffe for the Russian invasion. Barker, The Thousand Plan (pp. 22, paperback) mentions "over 40,000" for British civilian air raid casualties, but doesn't say over what period. Anyone know of any source with detailed and full numbers? I've checked all my general WWI histories, but no luck.
Interestingly, Walter Boynes, Clash of Wings (pp. 88) records that the numbers of German bombers on the November, 1940 raids were quite sizeable (and considerably larger than I would have guessed): 469 on Coventry, and 700 on Birmingham; the May, 1941 raid on London used 550. It's true that these were all He-111 and their similarly-sized sisters, whereas the Dresden raid was 4-engine bombers, but in the first British "thousand-bomber raid" (Cologne; May, 1942), 2/3 of the force (about 910 total) were roughly similar 2-engine machines (principally Wellingtons (496), but a few Hampdens (71) and Whitleys (23)).
Also, I haven't considered the V-1/V-2 offensive (which killed quite a few people, particularly the V-1 offensive against the Dutch ports), as those follow the Allied raids. Noel (talk) 18:24, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Data for comparison

message: I think that the war crime aspect is a red herring. What is needed is a paragraph on the moral justifications and criticisms.  By this stage in the war, thanks to Ultra the Allied air forces would have known the likely number of casualties that a raid like this would inflict. Should that have been taken into account when discussing targets at Yalta? If so why wasn't it? Philip Baird Shearer 22:18, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the war crime aspect is a red herring, so I'm not sure why there is resistance to admitting it is a war crime.  The moral question is more important, because it helps us understand why it might happen again.  The leaders knew exactly what they were doing and can be presumed think they were making the right decision at the time.  The bombing of innocent civilians was easy and justified at that point in the war because the decision had already been made, earlier.  The bright moral line was the decision to engage in total war, the primary component of which is conscription.  Once the leaders are already responsible for having coerced millions of their own innocent civilians, resulting in more than a million casualties and hundreds of thousands of their deaths, frankly what do enemy civlian lives mean?  Of course, our total war was justified by their total war, conscription justifying conscription.  So, to not go too far back in revisionist history, such as the Treaty of Verseilles, the original moral failing may have been in the late 1920s when leaders failed to sign on to Gandhi and Einstein's attempt to eliminate conscription, or in the 1930s when there was a failure to pre-emptively strike at Hitler when he violated the treaty and started building the most destructive WMD in history, a large conscript army.--Silverback 22:46, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moral Justification