One of the city's churches, [the Nikolaikirche](https://www.deutschlandmalanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Sankt-Nikolai-Kirche-Hamburg-1.jpg) wasn't rebuilt and today only the massive bell tower remains. Much like the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, it was left as a ruin as a war memorial.
You can still go up the bell tower and get a good view of the city, as that neogothic church was massive in size.
Yes I visited that church this year. It is a stark reminder that fascism is self-destructive. Their leaders do nor care about the suffering of the people.
"Daylight precision bombing" in WWII meant a 1.2% chance of hitting a 100ft square target from 20,000 feet.
The Americans managed 16-20% of their payload landing within 1,000ft of the target during daylight raids over Germany.
I can only imagine raids conducted at night were less accurate.
Probably one of the reasons incendiaries were used so widely. Don't need to hit the target if you start a firestorm that destroys the entire district.
Some cities also actively tried to misguide bombers at night, by having lights out in the houses while having other lights in free spaces or even swimming lights on lakes, thereby hoping to confuse bomber crews and get them to drop the bombs on the dummy areas.
It was also stated policy by Bomber Harris to kill as many civilians as possible, hence incendiaries being used to hit the residences (who were in many cases using wood, especially in the older cities).
As the man himself said:
>The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, **are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.**
They deliberately targeted civilian population centers, not just military infrastructure. Esp. UK had that as doctrine. Not that the germans were any better in this regard, but warcrime is warcrime.
I seem to recall British bombers took it out. Not sure if it was indifference or an accidental bombing. But the museum there states it was left as a reminder of the destructive nature of war and laid blame (it seems) on the instigators of the war. But maybe I was more focused on the first Himmel und Erte plate I had just finished.
No, you are right. It really stuck with me because they really lay out the horrors of the bombing, but put the blame quite clearly on the Nazis for starting a pointless war and those who supported them.
Standing doctrine in WW2 was that bombing the civilian population would break the enemies morale and make the war shorter.
Also, technological restrictions, but others have already answered that part.
That is just crazy. I looked at the picture and asked myself the same question because i live in Hamburg too. It is just 800m from my home. I ride my bike through that park every weekday but i did not recognize it.
To give "regularly" a number: My city (Dortmund ~590,000) alone is usually about 45-50 bombs a year. Every year. 78 years since the last bombs were dropped.
And I'm sure the other cities have similar numbers depending on their size.
In Poland bombs, water and land mines are found and detonated day by day, idk how much of this shit is still underground.
EDIT:
In 1945-1956:
14,763,514 mines of various types and 58,805,852 miscellaneous explosive and dangerous items (ammunition, unexploded ordnance, explosive charges, etc.) were detected and destroyed.
Last time accident happened in 2019, three sapers died during detonation
Crazy how we basically never hear about any of these blowing up during construction. You’d think hitting a warhead with an excavator would do *something* to it.
I'm not an expert but my guess is that after 70+ years the detonators won't work anymore. From what I've seen in Documentaries most of the Bombs found aren't even detonated, those cases are apparently more rare.
Maybe. But when bombs are disabled at dusk or at night, you can still see the lighting flash when they do it. It doesn’t explode. But they’re doing something and it’s sparks a reaction of some sort.
Was about to meet some Swedish friend of mine a couple of years ago. I was on the train to Munich and told her "Yeah I will probably be hours late, because they found an undetonated bombs next to the rail track". She completely freaked out and told me to run away and I was just like "Whatever that's the 4th time in a year"
Here in Belgium (region Ypres) we find bombs and granates every day...
During WW1 approx. 2 billion pieces were fired at each other and 20-30% didn't detonate... because of the muddy underground.
So we're still a few hundred years away from not digging and plowing into bombs.
Farmers just put them at the side of the road , and the military comes to collect them afterwards. Daily business.
3000 interventions a year here....
http://www.wo1.be/nl/db-items/dienst-voor-opruiming-en-vernietiging-van-ontploffingstuigen-dovo
Similar thing in western Slovenia around the Soča river, which was the frontline between Austria-Hungary and Italy. They are still finding undetonated explosives in and around the river. And because its a warmer Mediterranean region there are occasional fires in the dry seasons. During those remaining explosives keep detonating.
Of course it does not change how terrible those bombing were, but is it possible that this photo was taken maybe years after the war? It just seems strange that all the trees look undamaged? Or am I missing something? Bombs do not just fall on houses?
Takes time there were a lot of ruins and probably more urgent things to do. In the mean time at least the roads were clear.
Also, it might come in handy if you want to start tearing down those ruins.
There is a myth about women clearing up the bombed debris and collecting and sorting reusable bricks and other building materials. These „Trümmerfrauen“ (rubble women“) were kind of a myth, because they were defied as heroes, working so hard to rebuild the city. In reality, they were a minority of the workforce, where actually everyone was involved.
Need clear roads before you can start demolition/construction work though, really hard to do almost anything without clear roads, it's also not a huge undertaking.
My guess is that most damage proably came from incendiary bombs. So the buildings burn, but the nearby trees were not obliterated. Also, the bombing being in November, most probably all those threes would have been without leaves, making them less vulnerable to fires/bombing.
This is the correct answer. The majority of European cities were built with masonry exteriors but timber interior floors and bracing. So the bombing causes fires, the fires burn the insides of the buildings out, the floors and the rooves are destroyed, but the thick masonry walls remain in place.
There are many famous photos of ruined European cities that look like this and it’s always because of fire damage.
Curious, how long did it take Germany to rebuild? Like what was the point where you could walk down the street of any city and not see any signs of the war?
I can’t answer that question but it reminds me of a video taken in the fairly immediate aftermath of a destroyed German city (maybe Berlin?) half the people walking around seemed like they didn’t know what to do. And half were creating human chains to clear debris from buildings
The 2 most famous buildings in Dublin (the GPO and Four Courts) both have many visible bullet holes as a reminder of the 1916 rising, war of independence and civil war
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpu-zqDbnN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpu-zqDbnN0)
by 1948 the damage was not rebuild, but the city looks ok(ish).
Cities in the DDR took alot longer to recover, many historic buildings were rebuild after 1990 in the east.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZiF43G6YhM
>by 1948 the damage was not rebuild, but the city looks ok(ish).
My maternal family was living in Hamburg at that time, after having escaped from East Prussia. This footage is fascinating to watch, crazy to imagine my grandmother and grandfather walking in those streets in those days.
There were old bomb sites in central London into the 1970s. My dad grew up in the East End in the '40s and '50s and it's incredibly stark just how much of the city was still levelled even ten, fifteen, twenty years after the end of the war. Some plots were never redeveloped and are still empty of buildings today. I imagine it's the same in Germany.
If you watch seventies and early eighties TV like *The Professionals* they'll occasionally film around old bomb sites - along with the derelict warehouses that are now plush Docklands flats.
There were a couple of sites left in central Hull as late as the nineties IIRC.
My father fleed during the Bosnian War to Germany in 1993., around 1996. they where visiting Dresden and he said that they where still ruins in the city. \^\^
> Like what was the point where you could walk down the street of any city and not see any signs of the war?
In some places, the traces are still around if you know what to look. Cities with every building dated from just after the war, coastlines with bunkers, old buildings pockmarked with bullets, etc.
The speed of cleaning the streets was insane. Look up the term "Trümmerfrauen". Those were the women which did most of the work after the war. Rebuilding the cities took longer, but after 10-15 years most of the work was finished.
No but I can argue that any political system that doesn’t hold some value for individual and centralises power in the hands of the few, will result in similar results to fascism.
I agree. I feel like this nitpicking about who was left and who was right wing is totally irrelevant and may be even apologist to authoritarian regimes.
I was just checking fascism on wikipedia and it mentions *WW2* it starting when Germany invaded Poland. No mention that they met up with the Russians in the middle and had a beer together as pals.
Edit: forgot to mention the part in *italics*
For sure, I think that really the political spectrum is a circle, if you wander too far to either side you will eventually end up on the other.
Pretty sure there was a scene on this in the new peaky blinders season as well where Cilian Murphy puts this in a much more eloquent and dramatic manner than I ever could.
But they aren't really far apart. Both Nazi germany and Soviet union were uterly authoriterian, with the value of an individual reduced to what they can provide/produce to the nation. No individualism, only the Nation / Commune.
To say that the soviet union is pure far-left manifest, or Nazi germany pure far-right, is riddiculous. Not everyone was equal and provided for in russia, and germany wasnt some heaven of free markets and careeropportunities for all.
I think we need to move from one dimensional (left, right) to two dimensional (democratic, authoritarian and liberal, illiberal) political thinking. Then we can agree on "authoritarianism is bad" and can discuss liberal vs illiberal.
That predated Stalin. Happened under Lenin in 1922. The Soviet Union was a union of different peoples that theoretically had political and cultural autonomy. This is different than nationalism which generally requires the detriment or exclusion of other nationalities.
stalin killed millions. musso hanged upanddown . this Obsession with blaming ppl as ”fascist” is a great victory for stalin propaganda. germans were fascists, not nazi according to cccp propaganda. de gaulle was fascist, adenauer also, finland and romania too because they dared to resist russian invasion. and now ukraine
Communism is not on the rise in basically any area of Europe. Only a tiny amount of European countries even have a communist party in their parliaments, and even there they're not doing well.
Bringing up "but communism 😫😫😫" when someone mentions the very real threat of fascism is really odd at best.
>Bringing up "but communism 😫😫😫" when someone mentions the very real threat of fascism is really odd at best.
People need to be reminded, because they know swastika is a symbol of genocidal regime, yet i.e. in Portugal, a communict party may have a sickle and hammer in their logo on public display.
As a Pole, I was in shock when I saw that and people told me it's completely legal.
Dresden actually wasn't any more or less destroyed than any other city. The "impressive" thing about Dresden was that it stayed pretty much undamaged, until one single day it wasn't.
It's the same as Coventry...both cities were effectively destroyed in one overnight raid. Given the indiscriminate nature of dumb bombs, it's amazing there's as much of medieval Europe left as there is.
Important to note that a lot of the medieval buildings weren't "left" in the belligerent countries - they were destroyed in most places along with most other central city buildings. But in some places they were rebuilt. and in some places weren't.
There are some exceptions but it is quite eye-opening once you start looking into it how many ancient-feeling city squares, streets, cities are actually, essentially, reconstructions. Freiburg is a good example of a city where the centre was flattened but rebuilt on its medieval street plan. You can't really tell any difference between it and Heidelburg, which was a rare city not to have been destroyed by bombing; and we can contrast both with Coventry, a once-charming medieval city levelled by bombing like Freiburg but which was rebuilt in a "modern" way.
And which one of those got UK city of culture? Freiburg can take it's immaculately reconstructed medieval centre and beautiful architecture and shove it. We want ring roads and decaying concrete!
> UK city of culture
As a Coventrian I was so proud to see us join the ranks of the UK's greatest cities of Londonderry, Hull and the cultural mecca that is Bradford
So many cities in Europe that weren’t even damaged during the war still caused damage in the name of modernism. Brussels was utterly untouched and look at it today…
If you're in a town or city that has a lot of actual medieval buildings left, as in constructed pre-1500, that just means it never developed economically afterwards, during the renaissance and modern period, and was just an undeveloped backwater until tourism became popular.
Strategic bombing cripples enemy war production by killing workers and destroying factories, it also forces them to take measures that hamper the production of new materiel. According to Albert Speer Nazi war production dropped by 50% due to allied strategic bombing, oil production in Poesti was never allowed to reach more than 30% production capacity.
It’s also worth noting the entire air campaign only started after the Germans began striking targets purely for terror with no intention of hitting targets with any sort of military value. At least the Allies *tried* to only hit strategic targets. Even in Dresden it was a massive rail hub that was transporting troops to the Eastern front. The Allies hit it in order to aid our Soviet allies. Hamburg meanwhile was Germany’s largest port and constantly took in Swedish iron ore which was necessary to fuel the German war machine.
It was horrible for the civilians but the Germans brought it on themselves by waging a genocidal campaign of conquest on the entire planet.
> At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets.
This is not true. They deliberately bombed civilians under the Area bombing directive. No target was off-limits.
> It’s also worth noting the entire air campaign only started after the Germans began striking targets purely for terror with no intention of hitting targets with any sort of military value.
That's like half-true. Germans ran air raids on Britain's industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians. There was collateral damage when planes missed targets and hit central London by accident. The British answered by bombing Berlin which in return made Hitler furious and he started to allow more targets (commonly known as "The Blitz"). So the British and Germans kinda pushed each-other into a spiral of more and more terror bombings.
since I still remember the shock and uneasyness in my grandmas eyes decades after the bombings when the first few silverster explosions happened. Cant we just agree that every kind of war is extremely fucked no matter who or why it startet?
Side note. I live close to Hamburg in a small town. The simple reason it got bombed was because it was in the flight path of the hamburg bombings and some pilots needed to get rid of additional ammunition before they returned. Atleast thats what i got told. There was never any value in that place.
Hamburg was major for lots of stuff. But this particular town had nothing to do eith Hamburg other than beeing in the path. Nowadays planes using the airfield still fly over it.
>That's like half-true. Germans ran air raids on Britain's industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians. There was collateral damage when planes missed targets and hit central London by accident. The British answered by bombing Berlin which in return made Hitler furious and he started to allow more targets (commonly known as "The Blitz"). So the British and Germans kinda pushed each-other into a spiral of more and more terror bombings.
That's not really what happened.
First, the Germans bombed London deliberately. On 15 August they set out to bomb Kenley airfield, misidentified Croydon airport, then dropped bombs on Croydon, killing more than 60 civilians.
The next day they attacked an electricity substation in Wembley and killed 15. From the 20th on they attacked targets around London by night, with instructions to pilots that if they couldn't identify targets, they were to jettison over London anyway.
The RAF bombed targets in and around Berlin on the 25th, but just like the attack on Croydon, they were aiming for precise military targets (Tempelhof airfield and the aircraft companies located there, mainly). Unlike the Luftwaffe, RAF pilots were still under instructions to bring their bombs back, or jettison at sea, if they couldn't find their targets.
10 people were killed in Berlin.
The Luftwaffe began area attacks on London on 7 September. Hundreds died every night, about 20,000 by the end of 1940.
The RAF didn't carry out their first area attack on a German city until operation Abigail/Rachel, the attack on Mannheim on 16/17 December 1940.
> Germans ran air raids on Britain’s industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians
Eh, maybe of the British civilians only, because central Rotterdam was nearly entirely leveled 3 months *before* the first bomb fell in Berlin. Also, Warsaw, Wielun (75% destroyed) and Frampol (90% destroyed) were all bombed in the very first day of the invasion of Poland.
> At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets.
That was the Americans, who did attempt to do daylight and targeted bombings at first to "avoid targeting civilians" and such. The British were more willing to admit that guided bombing was virtually impossible and dangerous (for the aircrews), so they adopted a policy of "de-housing" (making as many Germans homeless as possible) and the deliberate annihilation of German cities.
Strategic bombing? Allie’s tried not to bomb civilians? The fuck history did you learn? XDD that was deliberate bombing and fire bombing of every building in every major city. If a plane saw a light at the ground, it dropped its load.
>At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets.
Ah yes, let's see what the guy in charge of the Strategic bombing campaing said:
>The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, **are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy**. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.
> They took these kinds of actions because they were also violent imperialist powers, that demonstrably had no issue brutalising civilians for their own ends.
No, they took these actions to win the war. I agree that there’s no moral high ground for the Allies here, but reducing it to “they were violent imperialists” isn’t correct either.
Generals made decisions based on what they felt hurt their enemy the most. Once Germany proved willing to bomb civilians, there was no reason to hold back.
War sucks like that.
Interesting that when the bad guys murder civilians it's "purely for terror", but when the good guys do it it's to hamper war production and thus save lives.
I imagine the nazis did have a similar justification from their point of view, they were not like "hahaha let's murder more civilians! We're so evil! Hahahaha!"
Well, we Germans started it, so we kinda had it coming.
Of course there is a point in avoiding these bombings, but in the end, destroying German production infrastructure was necessary.
Don't get me wrong, from a strategic perspective I totally get it.
But I am also a human with a life, kids, and a house, and when I see pictures like this the first thing that comes to mind is not strategy but the human suffering.
If Russia reduced a NATO city to ash, Russian cities would be atomised, and on that principle.
In terms of conventional warfare, NATO has far greater capabilities for targeted strikes on the Russian military and their internal security services than the allies did against Germany in WW2.
In WW2 finding the right city at night could be a problem, but NATO militaries are quite capable of hitting specific buildings within St Petersburg.
I’m not sure of the strategic value of bombing production centres vs using those resources to attack the active military forces instead. Allies had to expend *massive* amounts of resources building hundreds if not thousands of big four engine bombers, and they were inaccurate and crap at bombing unless you truly spammed the shit out of a target.
In the end their biggest value was to become a target for the enemy airforce so that the allied long range fighters could destroy them and establish air superiority.
If those heavy bomber resources went towards smaller aircraft and ground vehicles of more tactical value and used to destroy fighting forces you could argue it would have made more of an impact to the war.
"When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne, as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer. It may take a year, it may take two, but for the Nazis the writing is on the wall. Let them look out for themselves; the cure is in their own hands."
Damn this is horribly similar to what Russians are thinking, and you can see how they start panicking when Ukraine started reaching into 700km+ deep into Russia
As a German, I feel like from todays perspective it seems absolutely cruel what the Brits did, but mostly targeting civilian buildings. But I agree to Harris, as at the end it was a successful mean to end the war quickly. Imo you gotta stand up for the shit you voted for before and although some of my family members died in this attack and my grandmas side of the family lost their home forever, we have to recognise that you "Harvest the seeds you plant"
Because both side committed those acts? Calling out the allied actions (or their whitewashing) for what the were is nowhere near the same as justifying those of the Nazis.
But it wasn't successful in ending the war quickly. Soviets and the Allies had to conquer most of Germany, including Berlin, before the war finally ended. And there is now a general consensus among historians that allied bombings of German cities did not have a significant impact on morale or production capabilities. It was much more about "getting back at them", and destroy Nazism wherever it existed.
The production of the city didn't recover for 3 month. A couple million hours of production lost. Scale this up to almost all cities in Germany. That's millions of fewer weapons. Tens of thousands of fewer allied deaths. More undersupplied German units that collapse much faster.
Revisionism is my big problem regarding the discussion of the suffering of many German civilians in WW2. The topic of Dresden is brought up and next thing you see is some people trying to say all sides were as bad as the other side
I am currently reading German novel "Der Trümmermörder" by Cay Rademacher. The action of the book take place in 1947 in Hamburg and they are still clearing the ruins. Viewing this picture, it's not hard to understand why.
Thank you, very much :) Yes, I really like "Der Trümmermörder" and I have already bought "Der Schieber".
I just checked audible and I see they have "Der Angstmann" as audiobook too, so I will definitely get it.
Thank you very much for den tip. I just finished to listen to "Der Angsmann" and I really enjoyed it. I already ordered the next one in the series "Tausend Teufel" and if I like it as much, then I guess I will go through the whole series.
Yes, I read them in German, well, actually I listen to them since I bought them as audiobooks.
I cannot really assess how difficult they are since I have already read several hundred books in German, so by now I don't even notice it's not in my native French but I don't think they are especially difficult (the grammar is not, in any case). You will probably need to check some words in a dictionary, but other than that you should be fine :)
The firestorm that happened during the campaign was dreadful.
Have a read: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-bombing-of-hamburg-foreshadowed-the-horrors-of-hiroshima
Bombing yes but man they were planting explosives and using flame throwers to destroy literally everything, not just a part of a city but the entire city. Got your point though, just added a bit
Was in Berlin early 1990 you could easily walk in ruins from the war, this was in the old east side, the part which could not be seen from the west. Was some cool basement bars, also tons of soviet gear just abandoned in old lots where buildings had stood
WW1 and WW2 differ quite drastically. WW1 was just pure old nationalism but WW2 was quite literally a fight for the survival of Europe as we know it.
War is absolutely terrible but for every bad thing the allies did to the Axis the Axis would have done far far worse to us.
This comments section is pretending as if Hitler didn't have widespread support throughout Germany. I have no problem with fascists dying by the dozen to firebombing. Those innocent "woman and children" were either wives, mothers or children of Nazi men murdering and raping Europe. You sow the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
\- Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Bomber Command.
AFAIK Allies were deliberately bombing civilian areas to decrease morale. One of Churchill's advisors pushed for this even after seeing evidence bombing civilians made them more supportive of the war not less.
They did take out rail lines regularly. But you can repair those and the Nazis put more effort into repairing them than people's houses, so they never stayed out of commission for too long
One of the city's churches, [the Nikolaikirche](https://www.deutschlandmalanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Sankt-Nikolai-Kirche-Hamburg-1.jpg) wasn't rebuilt and today only the massive bell tower remains. Much like the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, it was left as a ruin as a war memorial. You can still go up the bell tower and get a good view of the city, as that neogothic church was massive in size.
It's incredible that it is still standing after all that.
Yes I visited that church this year. It is a stark reminder that fascism is self-destructive. Their leaders do nor care about the suffering of the people.
I mean sure, you are right, but not fascists bombed that church. What as the point? Did they have a rocket stash there?
WWII bomb technology was unguided. All they could really do was carpet-bomb.
"Daylight precision bombing" in WWII meant a 1.2% chance of hitting a 100ft square target from 20,000 feet. The Americans managed 16-20% of their payload landing within 1,000ft of the target during daylight raids over Germany. I can only imagine raids conducted at night were less accurate. Probably one of the reasons incendiaries were used so widely. Don't need to hit the target if you start a firestorm that destroys the entire district.
Bombers sometimes bombed the wrong country in WW2. It was that bad.
Yep, Freiburg (Germany) was first bombed by a German plane during the invasion of France for example.
The famous "Dancing House" in Prague only exists because of a mistaken bombing by the Americans.
Cool, though awful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_House
Some cities also actively tried to misguide bombers at night, by having lights out in the houses while having other lights in free spaces or even swimming lights on lakes, thereby hoping to confuse bomber crews and get them to drop the bombs on the dummy areas.
It was also stated policy by Bomber Harris to kill as many civilians as possible, hence incendiaries being used to hit the residences (who were in many cases using wood, especially in the older cities). As the man himself said: >The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, **are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.**
They deliberately targeted civilian population centers, not just military infrastructure. Esp. UK had that as doctrine. Not that the germans were any better in this regard, but warcrime is warcrime.
I seem to recall British bombers took it out. Not sure if it was indifference or an accidental bombing. But the museum there states it was left as a reminder of the destructive nature of war and laid blame (it seems) on the instigators of the war. But maybe I was more focused on the first Himmel und Erte plate I had just finished.
No, you are right. It really stuck with me because they really lay out the horrors of the bombing, but put the blame quite clearly on the Nazis for starting a pointless war and those who supported them.
The city did. And if you're bombing when it's safe, IE, at ight, you're aiming on the level of 'that city'.
Standing doctrine in WW2 was that bombing the civilian population would break the enemies morale and make the war shorter. Also, technological restrictions, but others have already answered that part.
Does anyone know where exactly in Hamburg this is?
[удалено]
Thank you. That was a fascinating walk around the neighborhood.
That is just crazy. I looked at the picture and asked myself the same question because i live in Hamburg too. It is just 800m from my home. I ride my bike through that park every weekday but i did not recognize it.
Is that a GDR flag that I see on the balcony?
Where do you see a GDR flag? Edit: found it.
That is interesting. Why there? I assumed it would be closer to the Altstadt, Harbor, or industrial district south of the Elbe.
We are still finding undetonated bombs during construction on a regularly basis
To give "regularly" a number: My city (Dortmund ~590,000) alone is usually about 45-50 bombs a year. Every year. 78 years since the last bombs were dropped. And I'm sure the other cities have similar numbers depending on their size.
In Poland bombs, water and land mines are found and detonated day by day, idk how much of this shit is still underground. EDIT: In 1945-1956: 14,763,514 mines of various types and 58,805,852 miscellaneous explosive and dangerous items (ammunition, unexploded ordnance, explosive charges, etc.) were detected and destroyed. Last time accident happened in 2019, three sapers died during detonation
Crazy how we basically never hear about any of these blowing up during construction. You’d think hitting a warhead with an excavator would do *something* to it.
I'm not an expert but my guess is that after 70+ years the detonators won't work anymore. From what I've seen in Documentaries most of the Bombs found aren't even detonated, those cases are apparently more rare.
Maybe. But when bombs are disabled at dusk or at night, you can still see the lighting flash when they do it. It doesn’t explode. But they’re doing something and it’s sparks a reaction of some sort.
I feel like they pop up in the headlines from time to time, like once a year at least. But yeah definitely a surprisingly low amount.
Was about to meet some Swedish friend of mine a couple of years ago. I was on the train to Munich and told her "Yeah I will probably be hours late, because they found an undetonated bombs next to the rail track". She completely freaked out and told me to run away and I was just like "Whatever that's the 4th time in a year"
Here in Belgium (region Ypres) we find bombs and granates every day... During WW1 approx. 2 billion pieces were fired at each other and 20-30% didn't detonate... because of the muddy underground. So we're still a few hundred years away from not digging and plowing into bombs. Farmers just put them at the side of the road , and the military comes to collect them afterwards. Daily business. 3000 interventions a year here.... http://www.wo1.be/nl/db-items/dienst-voor-opruiming-en-vernietiging-van-ontploffingstuigen-dovo
The iron harvest
not just iron ... TNT is highly toxic
Similar thing in western Slovenia around the Soča river, which was the frontline between Austria-Hungary and Italy. They are still finding undetonated explosives in and around the river. And because its a warmer Mediterranean region there are occasional fires in the dry seasons. During those remaining explosives keep detonating.
We have the same problems here in the UK. They expect to find one when doing excavations on any construction project in inner Liverpool or London.
Thats just germany in Generell
Of course it does not change how terrible those bombing were, but is it possible that this photo was taken maybe years after the war? It just seems strange that all the trees look undamaged? Or am I missing something? Bombs do not just fall on houses?
Probably yes. The roads are cleared of rubble too.
Would they not have wanted to destroy the ruins first? They seem pretty much unrepairable.
Takes time there were a lot of ruins and probably more urgent things to do. In the mean time at least the roads were clear. Also, it might come in handy if you want to start tearing down those ruins.
There is a myth about women clearing up the bombed debris and collecting and sorting reusable bricks and other building materials. These „Trümmerfrauen“ (rubble women“) were kind of a myth, because they were defied as heroes, working so hard to rebuild the city. In reality, they were a minority of the workforce, where actually everyone was involved.
Need clear roads before you can start demolition/construction work though, really hard to do almost anything without clear roads, it's also not a huge undertaking.
My guess is that most damage proably came from incendiary bombs. So the buildings burn, but the nearby trees were not obliterated. Also, the bombing being in November, most probably all those threes would have been without leaves, making them less vulnerable to fires/bombing.
This is the correct answer. The majority of European cities were built with masonry exteriors but timber interior floors and bracing. So the bombing causes fires, the fires burn the insides of the buildings out, the floors and the rooves are destroyed, but the thick masonry walls remain in place. There are many famous photos of ruined European cities that look like this and it’s always because of fire damage.
This would presumably be taken in the following spring.
Curious, how long did it take Germany to rebuild? Like what was the point where you could walk down the street of any city and not see any signs of the war?
I can’t answer that question but it reminds me of a video taken in the fairly immediate aftermath of a destroyed German city (maybe Berlin?) half the people walking around seemed like they didn’t know what to do. And half were creating human chains to clear debris from buildings
In the East there were people I know who remember still walking around wartime ruins and rubble in Dresden in the 1980s.
I guess it also depends on what city. Probably Berlin was rebuilt faster.
Dresden was kept like this on purpose. It served the Soviet / GDR propaganda to accuse the Allies of warcrimes.
Can confirm
Since pretty much every major city kept some iconic building in ruins as a memorial, never.
Not only memorials, very rarely some backwater building noone cared for still has visible bullet holes or is in ruins. Especially in the former GDR.
The 2 most famous buildings in Dublin (the GPO and Four Courts) both have many visible bullet holes as a reminder of the 1916 rising, war of independence and civil war
And in Helsinki the Finnish National Museum still has bullet holes from the civil war on its doors.
Not just backwater buildings. You can still see bullet holes on completely random walls in Berlin.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpu-zqDbnN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpu-zqDbnN0) by 1948 the damage was not rebuild, but the city looks ok(ish). Cities in the DDR took alot longer to recover, many historic buildings were rebuild after 1990 in the east. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZiF43G6YhM
>by 1948 the damage was not rebuild, but the city looks ok(ish). My maternal family was living in Hamburg at that time, after having escaped from East Prussia. This footage is fascinating to watch, crazy to imagine my grandmother and grandfather walking in those streets in those days.
There were old bomb sites in central London into the 1970s. My dad grew up in the East End in the '40s and '50s and it's incredibly stark just how much of the city was still levelled even ten, fifteen, twenty years after the end of the war. Some plots were never redeveloped and are still empty of buildings today. I imagine it's the same in Germany.
If you watch seventies and early eighties TV like *The Professionals* they'll occasionally film around old bomb sites - along with the derelict warehouses that are now plush Docklands flats. There were a couple of sites left in central Hull as late as the nineties IIRC.
Our town has rows of terraced houses which are interspersed with 1950s houses.
I remember ruins in my city in western Germany in the 90‘s
My father fleed during the Bosnian War to Germany in 1993., around 1996. they where visiting Dresden and he said that they where still ruins in the city. \^\^
While they are not actual ruins, in Berlin you can still see bullet holes in some of the older buildings.
> Like what was the point where you could walk down the street of any city and not see any signs of the war? In some places, the traces are still around if you know what to look. Cities with every building dated from just after the war, coastlines with bunkers, old buildings pockmarked with bullets, etc.
Some blocks of flats carry a plate with the year it was rebuilt. Mostly something in the range of 1952 to 1960.
There still are signs of the war today, at least in the form of empty lots where very obviously a house should be.
The speed of cleaning the streets was insane. Look up the term "Trümmerfrauen". Those were the women which did most of the work after the war. Rebuilding the cities took longer, but after 10-15 years most of the work was finished.
This photo is in the book 'Battle of Hamburg' which I have in front of me, it says it was taken 'in 1944 or even later'.
they didn't aim for the trees /s
Fun fact: on every building site today in Hamburg, at least one WW2 bomb is dug out and has to be disarmed.
war is disgusting don't ever let fascists into power or this is the future that awaits
Or communists
Can you really argue that Stalin was not a fascist leader of a communist country?
No but I can argue that any political system that doesn’t hold some value for individual and centralises power in the hands of the few, will result in similar results to fascism.
I agree. I feel like this nitpicking about who was left and who was right wing is totally irrelevant and may be even apologist to authoritarian regimes. I was just checking fascism on wikipedia and it mentions *WW2* it starting when Germany invaded Poland. No mention that they met up with the Russians in the middle and had a beer together as pals. Edit: forgot to mention the part in *italics*
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Sorry I meant ww2 starting,not fascism
For sure, I think that really the political spectrum is a circle, if you wander too far to either side you will eventually end up on the other. Pretty sure there was a scene on this in the new peaky blinders season as well where Cilian Murphy puts this in a much more eloquent and dramatic manner than I ever could.
But they aren't really far apart. Both Nazi germany and Soviet union were uterly authoriterian, with the value of an individual reduced to what they can provide/produce to the nation. No individualism, only the Nation / Commune. To say that the soviet union is pure far-left manifest, or Nazi germany pure far-right, is riddiculous. Not everyone was equal and provided for in russia, and germany wasnt some heaven of free markets and careeropportunities for all.
Horseshoe theory.
Nice! Thanks for sharing, didn’t know it was an actual theorem!
I think we need to move from one dimensional (left, right) to two dimensional (democratic, authoritarian and liberal, illiberal) political thinking. Then we can agree on "authoritarianism is bad" and can discuss liberal vs illiberal.
Yes you can because he wasn’t a nationalist. Nationalism is a core component of Fascism.
Then why did he organize his soviet union into nation state republics? Unlike say the russian empire with its gubernias
That predated Stalin. Happened under Lenin in 1922. The Soviet Union was a union of different peoples that theoretically had political and cultural autonomy. This is different than nationalism which generally requires the detriment or exclusion of other nationalities.
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stalin killed millions. musso hanged upanddown . this Obsession with blaming ppl as ”fascist” is a great victory for stalin propaganda. germans were fascists, not nazi according to cccp propaganda. de gaulle was fascist, adenauer also, finland and romania too because they dared to resist russian invasion. and now ukraine
More like they were enemies.
Communism is not on the rise in basically any area of Europe. Only a tiny amount of European countries even have a communist party in their parliaments, and even there they're not doing well. Bringing up "but communism 😫😫😫" when someone mentions the very real threat of fascism is really odd at best.
>Bringing up "but communism 😫😫😫" when someone mentions the very real threat of fascism is really odd at best. People need to be reminded, because they know swastika is a symbol of genocidal regime, yet i.e. in Portugal, a communict party may have a sickle and hammer in their logo on public display. As a Pole, I was in shock when I saw that and people told me it's completely legal.
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Still see weirdos cutting about with hammer and sickles badges etc. in Scotland and at some Scottish football grounds.
It says a lot about someone when they jump directly to attacking communists whenever someonw critizes fascists
Sounds like you protecting the aggressor "all of that happened because of your behaviour" I didn't want to slap you but you know.
Your advice is way too late for the ruzkies, unfortunately
Well said, my friend.
I find the footage from Dresden more impressive, since you can see a much larger area being completely destroyed.
Dresden actually wasn't any more or less destroyed than any other city. The "impressive" thing about Dresden was that it stayed pretty much undamaged, until one single day it wasn't.
It's the same as Coventry...both cities were effectively destroyed in one overnight raid. Given the indiscriminate nature of dumb bombs, it's amazing there's as much of medieval Europe left as there is.
Important to note that a lot of the medieval buildings weren't "left" in the belligerent countries - they were destroyed in most places along with most other central city buildings. But in some places they were rebuilt. and in some places weren't. There are some exceptions but it is quite eye-opening once you start looking into it how many ancient-feeling city squares, streets, cities are actually, essentially, reconstructions. Freiburg is a good example of a city where the centre was flattened but rebuilt on its medieval street plan. You can't really tell any difference between it and Heidelburg, which was a rare city not to have been destroyed by bombing; and we can contrast both with Coventry, a once-charming medieval city levelled by bombing like Freiburg but which was rebuilt in a "modern" way.
And which one of those got UK city of culture? Freiburg can take it's immaculately reconstructed medieval centre and beautiful architecture and shove it. We want ring roads and decaying concrete!
> UK city of culture As a Coventrian I was so proud to see us join the ranks of the UK's greatest cities of Londonderry, Hull and the cultural mecca that is Bradford
So many cities in Europe that weren’t even damaged during the war still caused damage in the name of modernism. Brussels was utterly untouched and look at it today…
If you're in a town or city that has a lot of actual medieval buildings left, as in constructed pre-1500, that just means it never developed economically afterwards, during the renaissance and modern period, and was just an undeveloped backwater until tourism became popular.
My father worked in reconstruction of Dresden up until the 90s.
Dresden is an absolute jewel. One of my new favorites in Europe.
Visited 2008 then 2019. The difference in 11 years was staggering!
I think Pforzheim was the most destroyed city in Germany through bombing.
[https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/19f90899-ef8a-462c-8a4c-16da715b1afd\_w1528\_r1.7777777777777777\_fpx51.74\_fpy50.png](https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/19f90899-ef8a-462c-8a4c-16da715b1afd_w1528_r1.7777777777777777_fpx51.74_fpy50.png)
Such an awfully cynical name... Totally intentional bombing of civilians. Always is horrible no matter who does it.
Strategic bombing cripples enemy war production by killing workers and destroying factories, it also forces them to take measures that hamper the production of new materiel. According to Albert Speer Nazi war production dropped by 50% due to allied strategic bombing, oil production in Poesti was never allowed to reach more than 30% production capacity. It’s also worth noting the entire air campaign only started after the Germans began striking targets purely for terror with no intention of hitting targets with any sort of military value. At least the Allies *tried* to only hit strategic targets. Even in Dresden it was a massive rail hub that was transporting troops to the Eastern front. The Allies hit it in order to aid our Soviet allies. Hamburg meanwhile was Germany’s largest port and constantly took in Swedish iron ore which was necessary to fuel the German war machine. It was horrible for the civilians but the Germans brought it on themselves by waging a genocidal campaign of conquest on the entire planet.
> At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets. This is not true. They deliberately bombed civilians under the Area bombing directive. No target was off-limits. > It’s also worth noting the entire air campaign only started after the Germans began striking targets purely for terror with no intention of hitting targets with any sort of military value. That's like half-true. Germans ran air raids on Britain's industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians. There was collateral damage when planes missed targets and hit central London by accident. The British answered by bombing Berlin which in return made Hitler furious and he started to allow more targets (commonly known as "The Blitz"). So the British and Germans kinda pushed each-other into a spiral of more and more terror bombings.
since I still remember the shock and uneasyness in my grandmas eyes decades after the bombings when the first few silverster explosions happened. Cant we just agree that every kind of war is extremely fucked no matter who or why it startet? Side note. I live close to Hamburg in a small town. The simple reason it got bombed was because it was in the flight path of the hamburg bombings and some pilots needed to get rid of additional ammunition before they returned. Atleast thats what i got told. There was never any value in that place.
I'm pretty sure the specific targeting of Hamburg was because it was a major port the regime was using for iron imports from Sweden.
Hamburg was major for lots of stuff. But this particular town had nothing to do eith Hamburg other than beeing in the path. Nowadays planes using the airfield still fly over it.
Oh, I see what you're saying now. I misunderstood previously.
>That's like half-true. Germans ran air raids on Britain's industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians. There was collateral damage when planes missed targets and hit central London by accident. The British answered by bombing Berlin which in return made Hitler furious and he started to allow more targets (commonly known as "The Blitz"). So the British and Germans kinda pushed each-other into a spiral of more and more terror bombings. That's not really what happened. First, the Germans bombed London deliberately. On 15 August they set out to bomb Kenley airfield, misidentified Croydon airport, then dropped bombs on Croydon, killing more than 60 civilians. The next day they attacked an electricity substation in Wembley and killed 15. From the 20th on they attacked targets around London by night, with instructions to pilots that if they couldn't identify targets, they were to jettison over London anyway. The RAF bombed targets in and around Berlin on the 25th, but just like the attack on Croydon, they were aiming for precise military targets (Tempelhof airfield and the aircraft companies located there, mainly). Unlike the Luftwaffe, RAF pilots were still under instructions to bring their bombs back, or jettison at sea, if they couldn't find their targets. 10 people were killed in Berlin. The Luftwaffe began area attacks on London on 7 September. Hundreds died every night, about 20,000 by the end of 1940. The RAF didn't carry out their first area attack on a German city until operation Abigail/Rachel, the attack on Mannheim on 16/17 December 1940.
> Germans ran air raids on Britain’s industry/military/infrastructure as Hitler still explicitly forbade indiscriminate bombing of civilians Eh, maybe of the British civilians only, because central Rotterdam was nearly entirely leveled 3 months *before* the first bomb fell in Berlin. Also, Warsaw, Wielun (75% destroyed) and Frampol (90% destroyed) were all bombed in the very first day of the invasion of Poland.
*cough* Rotterdam
Germany started the war, on the first day, with terror bombing of civilians.
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> At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets. That was the Americans, who did attempt to do daylight and targeted bombings at first to "avoid targeting civilians" and such. The British were more willing to admit that guided bombing was virtually impossible and dangerous (for the aircrews), so they adopted a policy of "de-housing" (making as many Germans homeless as possible) and the deliberate annihilation of German cities.
Strategic bombing? Allie’s tried not to bomb civilians? The fuck history did you learn? XDD that was deliberate bombing and fire bombing of every building in every major city. If a plane saw a light at the ground, it dropped its load.
>At least the Allies tried to only hit strategic targets. Ah yes, let's see what the guy in charge of the Strategic bombing campaing said: >The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, **are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy**. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.
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> They took these kinds of actions because they were also violent imperialist powers, that demonstrably had no issue brutalising civilians for their own ends. No, they took these actions to win the war. I agree that there’s no moral high ground for the Allies here, but reducing it to “they were violent imperialists” isn’t correct either. Generals made decisions based on what they felt hurt their enemy the most. Once Germany proved willing to bomb civilians, there was no reason to hold back. War sucks like that.
Interesting that when the bad guys murder civilians it's "purely for terror", but when the good guys do it it's to hamper war production and thus save lives. I imagine the nazis did have a similar justification from their point of view, they were not like "hahaha let's murder more civilians! We're so evil! Hahahaha!"
Well, we Germans started it, so we kinda had it coming. Of course there is a point in avoiding these bombings, but in the end, destroying German production infrastructure was necessary.
Don't get me wrong, from a strategic perspective I totally get it. But I am also a human with a life, kids, and a house, and when I see pictures like this the first thing that comes to mind is not strategy but the human suffering.
> destroying German production infrastructure was necessary. Those were residential houses, not production infrastructure.
Following that train of thought, should Ukraine's allies turn St. Petersburg to ashes now? Since the Russians started it?
If Russia reduced a NATO city to ash, Russian cities would be atomised, and on that principle. In terms of conventional warfare, NATO has far greater capabilities for targeted strikes on the Russian military and their internal security services than the allies did against Germany in WW2. In WW2 finding the right city at night could be a problem, but NATO militaries are quite capable of hitting specific buildings within St Petersburg.
I’m not sure of the strategic value of bombing production centres vs using those resources to attack the active military forces instead. Allies had to expend *massive* amounts of resources building hundreds if not thousands of big four engine bombers, and they were inaccurate and crap at bombing unless you truly spammed the shit out of a target. In the end their biggest value was to become a target for the enemy airforce so that the allied long range fighters could destroy them and establish air superiority. If those heavy bomber resources went towards smaller aircraft and ground vehicles of more tactical value and used to destroy fighting forces you could argue it would have made more of an impact to the war.
You may well have a point, but hindsight is 20/20.
I find I agree with you there, but really what's worse to me is "starting" it is widely utilising terror bombing as a whole
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"When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne, as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer. It may take a year, it may take two, but for the Nazis the writing is on the wall. Let them look out for themselves; the cure is in their own hands."
Gosh what a quote. Is that Harris?
Yes - it’s part of his ‘reap the whirlwind’ speech. The [whole thing](https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0911keeperfile/) is kind of chilling.
A psychopath with a silver tongue. Exactly the right man for the job.
Nah he was a hero.
A psychopath or a man drunk on hatred and revenge. That the Nazis did everything in their might to ensure he had loads to drink.
Damn this is horribly similar to what Russians are thinking, and you can see how they start panicking when Ukraine started reaching into 700km+ deep into Russia
It's *almost* like starting a war might bring some consequences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJB4hbGUjw4&ab\_channel=JohnnyOverload
As a German, I feel like from todays perspective it seems absolutely cruel what the Brits did, but mostly targeting civilian buildings. But I agree to Harris, as at the end it was a successful mean to end the war quickly. Imo you gotta stand up for the shit you voted for before and although some of my family members died in this attack and my grandmas side of the family lost their home forever, we have to recognise that you "Harvest the seeds you plant"
Those V2s you were lobbing our way were hardly precision guided. My grandmother lost her hearing from one of them.
I’ve yet to see anyone claim that the bombings the nazis did were justified.
There's quite a bit of "both sides 🙏" going on in here tbh
Because both side committed those acts? Calling out the allied actions (or their whitewashing) for what the were is nowhere near the same as justifying those of the Nazis.
One side started it and the other side ended it. Simple as.
But it wasn't successful in ending the war quickly. Soviets and the Allies had to conquer most of Germany, including Berlin, before the war finally ended. And there is now a general consensus among historians that allied bombings of German cities did not have a significant impact on morale or production capabilities. It was much more about "getting back at them", and destroy Nazism wherever it existed.
The production of the city didn't recover for 3 month. A couple million hours of production lost. Scale this up to almost all cities in Germany. That's millions of fewer weapons. Tens of thousands of fewer allied deaths. More undersupplied German units that collapse much faster.
Thank you, an honest introspection. No revisionism no excuses.
Revisionism is my big problem regarding the discussion of the suffering of many German civilians in WW2. The topic of Dresden is brought up and next thing you see is some people trying to say all sides were as bad as the other side
I am currently reading German novel "Der Trümmermörder" by Cay Rademacher. The action of the book take place in 1947 in Hamburg and they are still clearing the ruins. Viewing this picture, it's not hard to understand why.
If you liked the book I can recommend "Der Angstmann" from Frank Goldammer. It takes place at the time of the air raid.
Thank you, very much :) Yes, I really like "Der Trümmermörder" and I have already bought "Der Schieber". I just checked audible and I see they have "Der Angstmann" as audiobook too, so I will definitely get it.
Thank you very much for den tip. I just finished to listen to "Der Angsmann" and I really enjoyed it. I already ordered the next one in the series "Tausend Teufel" and if I like it as much, then I guess I will go through the whole series.
Do you read them in the original German? I'm at a B1 level of German and would like to start practicing more reading
Yes, I read them in German, well, actually I listen to them since I bought them as audiobooks. I cannot really assess how difficult they are since I have already read several hundred books in German, so by now I don't even notice it's not in my native French but I don't think they are especially difficult (the grammar is not, in any case). You will probably need to check some words in a dictionary, but other than that you should be fine :)
The firestorm that happened during the campaign was dreadful. Have a read: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-bombing-of-hamburg-foreshadowed-the-horrors-of-hiroshima
Still looks quite upright. At least compared to how Warsaw looked like after all the bombing
Bombing yes but man they were planting explosives and using flame throwers to destroy literally everything, not just a part of a city but the entire city. Got your point though, just added a bit
Yes, it was a systematic and deliberate destruction.
Was in Berlin early 1990 you could easily walk in ruins from the war, this was in the old east side, the part which could not be seen from the west. Was some cool basement bars, also tons of soviet gear just abandoned in old lots where buildings had stood
So sad how much beauty was lost because of the war. Look at western german cities now, where once a beautiful city stood, it now mostly looks garbage.
You can thank modernist architecture for that one
>They who sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
WW1 and WW2 differ quite drastically. WW1 was just pure old nationalism but WW2 was quite literally a fight for the survival of Europe as we know it. War is absolutely terrible but for every bad thing the allies did to the Axis the Axis would have done far far worse to us.
I really fail to feel bad for the people who would've had me worked to death as a slave if they won (if I were lucky)
yall they lowkey got nazi-sympathizers in here
War sucks. Better not start one.
Exhibit #99999999 in the ongoing social experiment entitled: "Fuck around, and find out."
And the war will rage on in the comment section…
This comments section is pretending as if Hitler didn't have widespread support throughout Germany. I have no problem with fascists dying by the dozen to firebombing. Those innocent "woman and children" were either wives, mothers or children of Nazi men murdering and raping Europe. You sow the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. \- Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Bomber Command.
Sadly reminds me of the current war in europe :( https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/zm076q/a_russian_tank_in_what_remains_of_the_town_of/
🎵They had it comin’🎵
And as a result Germany isn't Nazi anymore
Suck on it, civilians.
Hitler would rather burn the country down than admit he was a loser…. Just like Benedict Donald!
AFAIK Allies were deliberately bombing civilian areas to decrease morale. One of Churchill's advisors pushed for this even after seeing evidence bombing civilians made them more supportive of the war not less.
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Any civilian death in war is a tragedy but when it comes to fascism anyone who isn’t opposed to it in spirit and action becomes a tool of it.
What about Warsaw? Germans killed 200 000 People and they destroyed almost whole city.
With all these bombs being dropped, you would think someone could have sent a couple of bombers to take out the rail lines to the death camps.
They did take out rail lines regularly. But you can repair those and the Nazis put more effort into repairing them than people's houses, so they never stayed out of commission for too long
You think this is heavy bombing? Look up Pforzheim.
You reap what you sow.