".... I think those who claim Dresden as a war crime should really look at Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry before the throw their stones too hard..."
I believe BombTaxi is 100% on this.
Coventry was much more than just a UK industrial city - it was/is very historic (Coventry cathedral et al) and, I believe it was referred to as England's WOODEN city. WOODEN.
This the Germans knew very well - if not from their history books, then from their Hitler Jung boy scout field trips to England before WW2
.
German 'city-bombing' was primarily a terror-weapon, not a
strategic weapon disrupting coal barge traffic
.
In Coventry the LW succeeded in doing what it failed to do with London.
The scale is different, I grant, (also 2 years of war have passed) but the comparison is BC Dresden and Berlin and LW Coventry and London. Nothing was done to the Germans by the Allied air forces that hadn't already been done by the LW to their opponents.
With the greatest respect for tomo pauk - comparisons between WW2 and the recent Baulkan conflict(s) are misleading and unhelpful.
There
is a
moral basis for establishing war crimes - although I personally don't think it works
, but then Prohibition didn't work either
.
Proud Canadian
MM