Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire New Documentary on the 8th Air Force...

Whatever it took to bring both Germany & Japan to their knees was justified.
They were psychopathic regimes that had to be stopped at any cost.
If that meant killing them all, so be it.

The fire bombing of Dresden (which was undefended) was meant to be just that, to "terrorize" the population into submission. If you watch the documentary, General Doolittle was totally against it and was over ruled by none other than FDR himself. The documentary also bring to light all records of the fire bombing of Dresden and other non-military targets were expunged after WWII. UNLIKE Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these were completely unnecessary .

Bingo...murder

EXACTLY.

These were war crimes. No way around that.

A very good doc on the 8th is "The Cold Blue."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaynFMDdNsk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmwm4VPW7RY

I would attribute FDR's support of the Dresden bombing to both his being an anglophile (he probably used phrases like "in hospital" and "Doctor will see you now", as well as the so-incorrect "graduated prep school") and the almost hypnotic control that Churchill held over him.

The country got what they deserved. The 8th commanders job was to end the war as quickly as possible.

Reminds me of when your POS bud Slick Willie Clinton (our first black pres) was our POS POTUS and cut military spending drastically, up to 48% in many essential programs and justified it because there were no dangerous foreign enemies threatening the US or world piece.

When your bud Sean Hannity asked him about Osama Bin Ladens declaration of war on us in ( iirc) 1996, Clinton just laughed..
Thankfully, Bush worked overtime rebuilding the military you apparently lie about appreciating, just as Trump has had to do after your hero the Zero.enacted detrimental policies and financial cuts.

BTW, which former WW2 allies of ours did Slick Willey bomb to help the moslems defeat the Christians in central or eastern Europe, Gayghost?

The Nazis were elected by the populace of Germany :Economic distress contributes to a meteoric rise in the support for the Nazi party. As a result, the Nazi party wins the votes of almost 40 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag (German parliament) elections of July 1932. The Nazi party becomes at this point the largest party in the German parliament.

Public pressure drove the President of Germany to appoint Hitler as Chancellor: Adolf Hitler agrees to a coalition with conservatives. After months of negotiations, the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, will appoint Hitler chancellor of Germany in a government seemingly dominated by conservatives on January 30, 1933.

Twelve years later, the people of Germany had still not thrown Hitler out on his ear, despite the horrendous oppression perpetrated upon his own populace.

The people of Germany are every bit as responsible for the actions of the German Army as is the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or any of the rest of the extensive list of Japanese cities fire bombed in WW II responsible for the actions of the Japanese Emperial Army.

Shall we also name LeMay and the brave men of XXI bomber group as terrorists? The devastation of Japan was horrendous. It is called WAR for a reason. It is not supposed to be pretty. Lucky for us, War Criminals are decided by the winning side.

I attempted to make this list easier to read, but it did not transition well to the forum.

Name of Japanese city firebombed Percentage of the city destroyed Equivalent in size to the following American city
Yokohama 58 Cleveland
Tokyo 51 New York
Toyama 99 Chattanooga
Nagoya 40 Los Angeles
Osaka 35.1 Chicago
Nishinomiya 11.9 Cambridge
Siumonoseki 37.6 San Diego
Kure 41.9 Toledo
Kobe 55.7 Baltimore
Omuta 35.8 Miami
Wakayama 50 Salt Lake City
Kawasaki 36.2 Portland
Okayama 68.9 Long Beach
Yawata 21.2 San Antonio
Kagoshima 63.4 Richmond
Amagasaki 18.9 Jacksonville
Sasebo 41.4 Nashville
Moh 23.3 Spokane
Miyakonoio 26.5 Greensboro
Nobeoka 25.2 Augusta
Miyazaki 26.1 Davenport
Hbe 20.7 Utica
Saga 44.2 Waterloo
Imabari 63.9 Stockton
Matsuyama 64 Duluth
[bleep] 86 Evansville
Tokushima 85.2 Ft. Wayne
Sakai 48.2 Forth Worth
Hachioji 65 Galveston
Kumamoto 31.2 Grand Rapids
Isezaki 56.7 Sioux Falls
Takamatsu 67.5 Knoxville
Akashi 50.2 Lexington
[bleep] 80.9 Macon
Aomori 30 Montgomery
Okazaki 32.2 Lincoln
Oita 28.2 Saint Joseph
Hiratsuka 48.4 Battle Creek
Tokuyama 48.3 Butte
Yokkichi 33.6 Charlotte
Uhyamada 41.3 Columbus
Ogaki 39.5 Corpus Christi
Gifu 63.6 Des Moines
Shizuoka 66.1 Oklahoma City
Himeji 49.4 Peoria
[bleep] 24.1 Rochester
Kochi 55.2 Sacramento
Shimizu 42 San Jose
Omura 33.1 Sante Fe
Chiba 41 Savannah
Ichinomiya 56.3 Sprinfield
Nara 69.3 Boston
Tsu 69.3 Topeka
Kuwana 75 Tucson
Toyohashi 61.9 Tulsa
Numazu 42.3 Waco
Chosi 44.2 Wheeling
Kofu 78.6 South Bend
Utsunomiya 43.7 Sioux City
Mito 68.9 Pontiac
Sendai 21.9 Omaha
Tsuruga 65.1 Middleton
Nagaoka 64.9 Madison
Hitachi 72 Little Rock
Kumagaya 55.1 Kenosha
Hamamatsu 60.3 Hartford
Maebashi 64.2 Wheeling

Hitler was not elected

Murder of civilians is not excusable


To disagree would make someone what you all are claiming bad about the Nazis?

Soldiers sign up or are drafted and are trained and paid to die...to think civilians deserve the same fate...women, children, the elderly, speaks to many things. I won’t go into it further

Idaho...the German people were less responsible for Hitler than you and I were responsible for Obama

Slight misconception there. At the end, the Germans had to spend 40% of their economic potential trying to defend the Reich against the the 8th Air Force. That's what let the Russians beat them, or at least beat them when they did.

My cousin had a German exchange student a few years back. He was always complaining about Dresden. He said they were innocent people. My only response was so were the Jews.

I also met some pretty anti American college students in Tokyo that were letting me have it because my country nuked them 3/4 a century ago. One of them said in my country we have a saying and then rattled off something. I said in my country we say paybacks are a bitch.

It is rediculous that military leaders deliberately target civilians all the time and get away with it but when a soldier makes a bad call in the heat of battle and offs a civilian he goes to Leavenworth for decades.

Bb

Exactly the same! Hitler was selected by popular acclaim as was Obama. And no person in either nation did anything to change the situation.

Still no comment re Curtiss LeMay and the systematic destruction of Japanese cities! Is there a difference between Dresden and Tokyo? Or the other 65+ cities in Japan which were reduced to dust and ash along with their inhabitants.

Were we not as much at war with Germany as we were with Japan?

Today we call it "Shock and Awe". The desire is to convince the general population that war with us is not a wise choice. It is not 1650 anymore where two enemy nations line their soldiers up on a field and allow them to slaughter each other as a means of population control. The idea today is win the war with the least possible loss of life on your side. We do what it takes to accomplish that. "Total War". If you do not wish to participate in total war, don't start schitt with America.

And yes, I am well aware that often Rules of Engagement are placed upon our troops, and total war is disallowed. This is a mistake in my opinion.

I had an Uncle who fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and was just a few lines back in the column behind Patton when they walked into the first concentration camp. He would have disagreed about the Russians being responsible for the defeat of Germany.

They played their part. But so did we and the Brits. Russia would have never prevailed alone.

If the atomic bomb would have been ready earlier, would FDR have used it in Europe?

I had a dear friend who was a flight operations officer in the Eighth Air Force during WWII. He would sit and tell me stories that would blow your mind. A tail gunner blown out of the sky who had time to light and smoke a cigarette before he landed, a pilot shot down behind Russian lines and rescued by a tank column of Russian women, a bombardier missing his mark and taking out French castles, a last mission facing a ME 262.... amazing group of men!
GreggH

The 8th AF and the submariners in the Pacific had the highest loss rate of our forces in WW2.