Joe
re: Dresden was not much of a military target. It was a city to which great number of civilian refugees fled, swelling the number of civilians in the city far above normal
the alternative wouuld be to bomb outside of the city but that would add to already heavy losses of allies bombers
re: I think it was a mistake, since the outcome of the war at that time was pretty much decided.
true but people were still dying. Is not it similar Hiroshima? War was all decided by then the question was how many peopel would die to finish it and if Russian troops, that were coming from west, would occupy Japan.
re: it saved some, but it's not like Stalin was too concerned about Russian lives
true but that was not about Stalin, a monster in his own right, but rather about Russian people who 30 years probably lost more than a quarter of it's population already.
re: he instead sent 300,000 of thousands of Russian soldiers to their death, for no reason,true and he sent 3 times that many to death because he wanted kiev to be liberated before October revolution day. Zhukov's plan was simply to go around it.
But again it is not about Stalin.
re: No excuse for luftwaffe targeting civilian targets. They were aimed as much as inflicting terror and demoralizing the opponent as actual physical damage inflicted. The US and British have done a lot of bombing raids earlier in the war, some against civilian targets, for the same reason.
not exactly the same reason though, Hitler wanted to reduce Russian population as he did not need that many of them.
I do not accuse all the Germans, in fact mu uncle would not survive until the end of war if german family would not give him some food and shelter for few days. Regardless of that it was a military taget and allies took heavy losses while bombing the city. If it would be just civilians as in the case of germans bombers shooting at columns of refugees then there would be no ally losses.
re: Dresden stand out as something out of proportion, and probably unnecessary
maybe it could have been handled differently with less loss of life to civilians, I do not know, but I do know that it was a military target
-Albert |
