Plans for the Luftwaffe if the war continued ...

[GrauGeist]

No, Pat Buchanan is a Holocaust denier and as such, shouldn't be part of any rational/historical discussion. When in Washington, he worked to block convictions/deportations of former Nazi party members that had blood on their hands, like Klaus Barbie and others.

He has repeatedly stated that there was no Holocaust, as the Germans simply were not able to exterminate as many people as records and witnesses indicate. At one point, he actually laughed (on camera) when explaining that there was no way that diesel exhaust could have caused the death of 850,000 people at Treblinka.

He as a piece of sh!t.

 

[tomo pauk]

Thanks for that, Dave.

 

[stona]

Perhaps non of these extreme things would have happened had there not been carpet bombing of civilian centres.

Here is a review in "The Spectator" of Richard Overy's book the bombing war:
Hitler didn't start indiscriminate bombings â€" Churchill didÂ* » The Spectator
"Overy dismisses the long-held belief 'firmly rooted in the British public mind' that Hitler initiated the trend for indiscriminate bombings. Instead, he says, the decision to take the gloves off was Churchill's, 'because of the crisis in the Battle of France, not because of German air raids [over Britain].'

You need to read the book, as I have done, not just a review. The move to large percentage incendiary loads, essential for city busting, carpet bombing, area raids, call them what you like, was first made by the Germans. The British soon followed suit and later, much later, took it to another dimension. They did not do this in 1940 at the time of the Battle of France. All bombing at night by the RAF was indiscriminate and largely of entirely innocent country side during this period. For the first three years of the war British monthly casualties to bombing were consistently higher than Germany's (also from Overy's book). It was only in 1944/5 when the allied campaigns were ramped up to entirely new levels that this was reversed. I'm sure that relatives of the 417 people killed and 19,000 building owners dispossessed in Bath in April 1942 had little sympathy.

Your comments about von Braun are as naïve as the allied prosecutors views on Albert Speer. You however have had the benefit of seventy years of hindsight to reflect on what decent fellows they were.
Kubrick and Sellers had only had twenty years when they came up with Dr Strangelove, substituting mein Fuhrer for Mr President in a Freudian slip.

If you wish to invest in Overy's book make sure you get the original British print version as the US version is missing the first two years and a couple of hundred pages.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Juha]

N...
As I have pointed out Forced Labour was a 1944 phenomena, it seems to have been mostly absent in 1943. Foreign workers of any kind were officially banned by order of the Fuhrer from involvement in either the Fi 103 (V1) and EMW A4 (V2) program for security reasons. So von Braun would have seen nothing in 1943 and much of 1944. There was no forced labour at Peenemunde where the research and initial production was developed...

I really don't want to get too involved to this kind of conversation in which the POV of some are so evident but how you explained the fact that when RAF bombed Peenemünde in August 43 at least 70% of the victims were foreign workers, mostly Poles?

 

[parsifal]

French POWS, of which there were over 300000 were kept in Germany and made to work for food in all manner of industries from June 1940 to close to the end of the war.

My first boss was captured in Crete May 1941, Was forced to work against his will in Schweinfurt from the beginning of 1942. He was part of the 6th Div. Many of the captured servicemen weree even forced to man AA guns at times according to him. As an aside, ghe was one of the footsoldiers in the intelligence war. He was contacted by a Belgian working for some diplomatic corps in the vatican. Each month he would come and see my boss, who had to provide information on train movements for the month. The SS eventually caught the belgian and publicly tortured him as an example to everyone.

I would have no problems in describing all of that as slave or forced labour.

Germany was using slaves and forced labour from the very earliest days of the war

 

[stona]

The idea that forced/slave labour was a 1944 phenomenon is idiotic and I don't know why we are gracing such contentions with replies. It flies in the face of all known facts and laws passed by the Nazis to enable the subjugation of entire 'non-German' peoples to a modern form of slavery in territories occupied by them.

Von Braun joined the NSDAP in 1937, something he lied about under oath to his American captors. He told them, and maintained later, that he was somehow forced to join the party in 1939. In 1940 he joined the SS, but of course that was just a fraternity of like minded people like the Boy Scouts.
These men all lied about their past, minimising their involvement. Albert Speer built his entire post war life around the lie that he was ignorant of the 'Final Solution', though he graciously accepted responsibility as a member of the government that carried it out, until eventually it was shown hat he had heard Himmler's speech at the Posen conference. He too posed as a 'decent' man.

Cheers

Steve

 

[kool kitty89]

Von Braun joined the NSDAP in 1937, something he lied about under oath to his American captors. He told them, and maintained later, that he was somehow forced to join the party in 1939. In 1940 he joined the SS, but of course that was just a fraternity of like minded people like the Boy Scouts.
These men all lied about their past, minimising their involvement. Albert Speer built his entire post war life around the lie that he was ignorant of the 'Final Solution', though he graciously accepted responsibility as a member of the government that carried it out, until eventually it was shown hat he had heard Himmler's speech at the Posen conference. He too posed as a 'decent' man.

What does truth or lies prove in any case like this? Any decently pragmatic person had to weigh when honesty makes sense and when it doesn't ... that certainly would have been true for anyone working with the Nazis that didn't universally share the philosophical beliefs. (in plenty of cases, joining the party was simply means to an end given they had power and -even if one opposed or was apathetic towards their cause- needed that affiliation to forward their own designs, whatever those might be) It's not that much more of a stretch than Harry Truman's affiliation with the KKK.

I'm not passing judgment one way or the other here, just pointing out that lying or intentionally manipulating others ... particularly a government system or bureaucracy ... especially one you don't trust (or shouldn't be trusted) can certainly be the most sensible position to take. Same for lying to gain sympathy with those you don't trust understanding the truth.

On the other end, you have true, even naive idealists that were so trusting in others sharing their high ideals that they were torn apart and greatly disillusioned when they discovered being open and truthful was exploited by those they trusted and used as weapons against them. Oppenheimer ended up a broken man after his experiences during FBI inquiry ... and that was a direct result of his naive trust and idealism being exploited.

 

[Milosh]

As I have pointed out Forced Labour was a 1944 phenomena, it seems to have been mostly absent in 1943.

Not according to this, http://www.nathaninc.com/sites/defa...ced Labor Under the Third Reich, Part One.pdf

 

[GrauGeist]

Mittelbau-Dora - Mittelbau-Dora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Forced labor for V1 and V2 production from mid-1943 onward by order of Hitler to Himmler to accelerate the programs.

Prisoners at Dachau were used in the Munitions factories and at the flight-testing/research center (such programs as high-altitude, g-forces, crash-testing to see how much the human body could endure before death)

Prisoners from Mauthausen were used in the quarries

Prisoners at Buna-Monowitz were used in the chemistry labs and production facilities

Prisoners from Auschwitz worked at the Siemens factory

Prisoners were used at every possible level of skill in every conceivable industry.

All from 1940 onwards, various dates by various locations...all heavily documented by the Nazis because the SS had to transfer, allocated, assign and guard the prisoners. It required building camps, transporting prisoners, feeding them, clothing them. It required assembling guard units with a chain of command as well as documenting the personnel's pay records, medical, leave and so on and so forth.

It's not some "rumor" or conspiracy...it's a cold, hard fact that this disgusting chapter in human history existed.

 

[stona]

Oppenheimer ended up a broken man after his experiences during FBI inquiry ... and that was a direct result of his naive trust and idealism being exploited.

I would argue rather that Oppenheimer was a victim of his own liberal and highly intellectual views and his close association with people of similar and more extreme socialist views at a time when such things were anathema to certain American politicians. The nasty, narrow minded and paranoid attitudes and world view of those politicians held great sway at the time and they were thus were empowered. US (and other western security forces) have often operated beyond their legal and constitutional remits and Oppenheimer was just one of many victims of a paroxysm of anti 'red' paranoia.

On another tack I find the greatest flaw in Overy's argument about German bombing in the early stages of the war to be the idea that the Luftwaffe was hitting specific military or economic targets. The RAF claimed to be doing the same thing, but neither air force could do it. The Germans did come closest in 1940 until their 'beams' were negated by British counter measures, at which point Luftwaffe crews were encouraged to imitate the British system that the Germans called 'Koppelnavigation', using electronic aids in conjunction with traditional navigation techniques. Unsurprisingly their results became about as bad as the RAF's.
British bombing was so inaccurate that the Germans could not work out what it was trying to achieve. It did however cause ever mounting calls for a German retaliation and caused great inconvenience.Local civil defence organisations were encouraged to get people into shelters whenever the alarm sounded as British bombers 'drop their bombs planlessly, just anywhere.' A Security Service report of September 2nd 1940 summed up the impatience of the German people. 'It is high time something serious was done about measures of revenge threatened for months.'
Unfortunately the Luftwaffe couldn't deliver accurate strikes anymore than the RAF. There are telling transcripts of secretly recorded conversations between Luftwaffe prisoners held at the Trent Park interrogation centre. This between a Major and Lieutnant.

M: Knickerbein is accurate enough for night work, so that I can simply drop the bombs at that moment.

L: But if you drop the bombs at that moment, then if you are at a height of 6,000 metres the bomb wil drop 11/2 Km further in front won't it? It doesn't drop vertically.

M: It doesn't make any difference with such targets.

L: Well then it can't be so accurate.

M: No, good heavens, as I have said, it is so difficult even to get to the point of intersection...

L: But why don't our bombs drop accurately?

M: You are just told to take the centre of the town and you must each find your own targets
My bold.

Another Hauptmann was overheard complaining that 'Goering should be told that we can't hit the target. We must tell him what we have to put up with here...'

Generally crews just dropped their bombs in the areas of cities where fires could be seen, and that is pretty much exactly what an area raid looks like.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Koopernic]

double post

 

[Koopernic]

There is a vast difference between setting some guidance beams through an astride industrial targets that encompasses civilian habitation and actually making the human beings the target themselves. Terms such as "Area Bombardment" and "Dehousing" That is What Lindeman and Churchill did. They took every opportunity to expand bombing away from military targets to targets within cities and then rather than to focus on economic targets to make the human beings within the cities themselves the targets rather than having them as collateral damage. Every element of propaganda was also used to incite the British people to a sense of revenge including the claim that a stick of bombs that a lost Heinkel He 111 obviously quite accidentally dropped on London (causing no harm) was deliberate.

The degradation of accuracy that occurred with jamming did not cause massive civilian casualties. Targeting residential suburbs did that. The jamming inevitably would have been eliminated as a new systems unknown to the defender and more difficult to undermine come in to use.

Hitler didn't do it, the Luftwaffe didn't do it, the Germans didn't do it. Churchill and Lindemann did, they did so before the Butt report and just as a new generation of navaids and blind bombing systems were coming on line.

RAF inaccuracy wasn't a matter of relatively greater humanitarian consideration it was a matter of over confidence, even hubris as well as the radio horizon and lack of practice and training.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt it runs through a lot of Allied military historians. That is human nature. Overy is trying to come to terms with it.

Without Area Bombardment there would be no V1 or V2, at least not inaccurate unguided ones. Both these weapons were brought forward and implemented with relative unrefined guidance systems in the wake of the deadly 1943 fire bombing of Hamburg which killed up to 60,000. It was this raid that also triggered the massive expansion of forced labour programs in an desperate attempt to build up the Luftwaffe's defences, initially of PoW who were kept in general Concentration Camps.

If developed to their fullest form the V1 and V2 would have brought masses of misery of a magnitude equal to Area Bombardment, they were fortunately 6-9 months too late.

Now there is the claim that the use of incendiaries in Luftwaffe raids is an indication of Area Bombardment and the targeting of human inhabited housing. I've worked in factories. Factories burn very well and incendiaries and fuel bombs are very good at spreading them. They will destroy cabling in machinery for instance and burn down files, drawings, and flammable parts.

Another bizarre thing I have read is the British (Lindeman) disbelief that a guidance beam might exist. The Lorentz company was selling the things commercially.

The Knickerbein 'transcript' is absurd. Its either fabricated or the participants are naïve bordering on moronic as the intersection point of the beams was placed ahead of the flight path to account for bomb trail. Knickerbein was more a navigation system that arose out of the FuBL blind landing system. X-Geraet used multiple beams to provide datum points that allowed a bidirectional clock to calculate true ground speed and make a correction.

As far as Oppenheimer goes: he was consorting with the same kind of people that the Betrayers of the proximity fuse and hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was a risk. Teaching the SU to make more powerful and smaller bombs that would kill Americans. Aiding a country or rather ideology which without the excuse of blaming Hitler had killed tens of millions is not my idea of an idle threat, especially since the fringe element like to joke about firing squads come the revolution. (Boasts of Stalin Like purges helped start the Spanish civil war). Oppenheimers talents were not needed, there were plenty of people that could do his line of work. he was worth the risk.

It should be a matter of pride that the United States aggressively ferreted out the various white ants that had sloppily been allowed into American government by the sloppy Roosevelt Administration. and fellow travellers that ultimately were tolerated in Britain in the form of the likes of Philby, Burgess and Mclean (latter Blunt) who lead to the deaths of hundreds of allied agents post war and got of Scott free. Democracies don't work without transparency and that most definitely includes collusive communist and their sympathisers who are known to have acted together to mislead the American government and people in a number of areas. It's plain dishonest and they have no right to be working in the position they do.

 

[stona]

There was a difference in doctrine which predisposed both the British and Americans to attacking what both usually euphemistically called the 'body' of the enemy's capacity to make war. German doctrine had a different use for its bombing forces.

In 1939/40 the British were not attempting to 'de-house' German workers or in fact to intentionally attack the German civilian population anymore than the Luftwaffe was targeting Polish, Dutch or British civilians. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened to Paris had it not been declared an open city.
You seem to have a sliding time scale. I have never denied that cities rather than specific military targets became the objectives of Bomber Command, with the inevitable civilian casualties to follow. Harris would write that acreage destroyed was far more important than specific factories hit. This developed as a direct result of the RAF's inter war doctrine on bombing.

The British were well aware of problems with bombing accuracy before the war. In 1938 trials showed that 'high level' bombing by day only 3% of bombs were 'likely to hit the target'. The results prompted Ludlow-Hewitt (then C-in-C Bomber Command) to say in September 1939, just a month before the Munich crisis, that any attempt to bomb Germany 'might end in a major disaster'. There may be some irony in the fact that the only bomber force in the world committed to a bombing offensive at some point lacked the means to carry it out, but it knew it couldn't do it. It tried nonetheless, with inevitable results.

If you care to visit or contact our National archives then WO 208/3506 'X-Great interrogations' will reveal many more such conversations. They might reflect poor Luftwaffe training rather than some kind of strange conspiracy by the British to fabricate conversations, the transcripts of which were anyway secret at the time.

An idea of the problems facing the Luftwaffe are demonstrated by the bombing of Dublin, capital of the neutral Republic, on 2-3 January and again on 31st May 1941 by aircraft intending to attack Belfast. 34 Irish citizens were killed in Dublin, but this pales against the 700 British subjects killed in Belfast during the April 15th raid.
If at least some crews found it difficult to navigate to the correct city it beggars belief that they could really hit individual installations and facilities within a city, whatever the intent might have been. Dublin is about 100 miles from Belfast.

Cheers

Steve

 

[stona]

Double post.

Steve

 

[razor1uk]

Delete this post please, the infamous... Google Chrome Crashing Double Post Faliure effect.

 

[razor1uk]

I can't believe a man as intelligent as Von Braun would have ever associated with Nazis at all, but we might be generous and say he was so blinded by his ambition to advance his rocketry theories he didn't care what devil he had to hitch himself to. He certainly had no problem looking the other way to ignore the thousands of forced workers murdered while producing his rockets.
He no doubt would have "overlooked" a few million starving Germans just as easily.

I can definately believe that whatever he knew of what things he had heard of, that so long as it wasn't him or his own immediate family, he wouldn't really care at all - that was the mindset of the times for many back then remember from that culture, that he 'blinded by ambition for space flight and rockets' is a suitable and seemingly totally acceptable excuse for many looking back to the past, be they more modern persons, or their older selves.

It is just as well as the the last name of Nasa is Agency, and not Instutute, (for the 'publically acceptable' face of sweeping many heinous pasts under a carpet).

 

[GrauGeist]

It is just as well as the the last name of Nasa is Agency, and not Instutute, (for the 'publically acceptable' face of sweeping many heinous pasts under a carpet).

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

It's been called that since Eisenhower established it in 1958...NASA superceeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)

 

[kool kitty89]

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt it runs through a lot of Allied military historians. That is human nature. Overy is trying to come to terms with it.

Without Area Bombardment there would be no V1 or V2, at least not inaccurate unguided ones. Both these weapons were brought forward and implemented with relative unrefined guidance systems in the wake of the deadly 1943 fire bombing of Hamburg which killed up to 60,000. It was this raid that also triggered the massive expansion of forced labour programs in an desperate attempt to build up the Luftwaffe's defences, initially of PoW who were kept in general Concentration Camps.

I'd think any decent, objective historian would note the horrors perpetrated by each country during the war ... particularly those done ad broad tactics and strategies at the command level (or standardized doctrine) rather than more remote or individual war crimes.

Another reason I tend not to get into political/ideological discussions in most technical or alternate history discussions is simply how ugly everything is and how people tend to like to take sides or emphasize one group being worse than the other. (I'm all for informing and sharing information as well as correcting misconceptions, but heated arguments tied to personal feelings or bias or bitterness or family history or cultural ties, political ties, religion, etc just tends to make a mess of things)

That said, if there's a good argument to be made for Bomber command concerning themselves less with collateral damage (be it quality of life or actual life of civilians) or outright targeting civilians as a primary war strategy, then by all means, make that argument and compare and contrast with the likes of American, German, Russian, and Japanese offensives.

As far as Oppenheimer goes: he was consorting with the same kind of people that the Betrayers of the proximity fuse and hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was a risk. Teaching the SU to make more powerful and smaller bombs that would kill Americans. Aiding a country or rather ideology which without the excuse of blaming Hitler had killed tens of millions is not my idea of an idle threat, especially since the fringe element like to joke about firing squads come the revolution. (Boasts of Stalin Like purges helped start the Spanish civil war). Oppenheimers talents were not needed, there were plenty of people that could do his line of work. he was worth the risk.

Like I said, Oppenheimer was a victim of his own naivety, that goes beyond his decision to represent himself and not seek further legal counsel and extends to his actions during and prior to the war as well. Idealism is all well and good, but naivety and ignorance are extremely dangerous. Failure to understand the connections between active members of the American communist party, or those involved with other socialist groups and Soviet communists was certainly an example of that. Oppenheimer's ignorance to the greater political and world situation made him dangerous ... he was a good scientist, but far from politically competent. One could argue he wasn't paranoid or careful enough in general, but it seems more the lack of interest in remaining informed on the world at large and politics along with tact in dealing with such that plagued him. (hence the entire thing being a shock -as well as how aggressive the FBI investigators and interrogators were)

Honestly, in the context of not expressly knowing of the association or direct sympathies with the USSR, the logical/reasonable standpoint to assume for anyone regarding idealized socialism and related progressive social/economic movements and groups would be to assume that they did NOT aspire to the heavily flawed, overly violent, aggressive, anti-intellectual, anti-religious, totalitarian regime of the USSR, or its stifling, paranoid, ignorant, and often just objectively inefficient government, economy, and leadership. (not getting into the entire regions rather violent history complicating matters, or relatively recent transition from peonage and caste, among other issues -the USSR should have been -and certainly is, historically- a shining example of how NOT to set up a functional socialist/communist state ... at least if you have any remote interests in actual equality and freedom)
But I should stop there lest I get into a broader, rambling philosophical discussion. (and it's the anti-intellectual bit that hits me more personally ... expression and religious freedom would be close to that as well)

I could see some of the claims/arguments being leveled against Von Braun to have some similarities there in as far as (possibly) being outright naive or at least uninformed or oblivious to the specifics of certain things as well as quite possibly outright apathetic about others. (or if not apathetic, considering them acceptable compromises given the alternatives)

 

[stona]

It's the misunderstanding of time scales that frustrates me. In the British 1939 Western Air Plans the bombing of Germany amounted to no more than the limited bombing of industrial targets in the Ruhr. This was actually considerably less ambitious than German plans to bomb British industrial installations and ports (in support of a blockade).
Both sides soon escalated the attacks. The decision to attack the centre of industrial areas, intentionally targeting housing and German workers, was not taken by the British until 1941.
The reasons for the escalation, and its the escalation that explains the disproportionate civilian casualties IN ALL BOMBED STATES, differ in historical detail from case to case and can hardly be explained in a forum reply. There was however a common process, dictated by technical frustration at poor accuracy and navigation and high losses, as well as a political frustration at a lack of results. This in turn led to air forces becoming anxious that perceived failures might have a deleterious effect on their claims for resources. Finally there was a slow erosion of the moral constraints that might have acted to minimise the damage to civilian targets.

The results of this for the Luftwaffe are reflected in the 18,261 people killed in the UK by its bombing between September and November 1940, whatever the intention might have been. This figure is far higher than equivalent German victims of the RAF during the same period and indeed until much later. The Luftwaffe might not have been deliberately targeting the civilian population of Britain, but it was doing a good job of killing it.
It is easy for those from a nation that has never been bombed (or even attacked on home soil, except in the awful tragedy of 9/11) to underestimate the effect that this level of civilian casualties can have on the moral compass of a nation that sustains them.

As far as incendiaries and their ability to ignite and burn large areas of a city, a tactic as old as warfare itself, by April 1941 the Luftwaffe was typically delivering, by weight, a 1:1 ratio of incendiary and explosive ordnance to its British targets. It was a lesson not lost on the RAF.

Cheers

Steve

 

[kool kitty89]

It's the misunderstanding of time scales that frustrates me. In the British 1939 Western Air Plans the bombing of Germany amounted to no more than the limited bombing of industrial targets in the Ruhr. This was actually considerably less ambitious than German plans to bomb British industrial installations and ports (in support of a blockade).

I thought we were expressly talking about the bombing that commenced during and after the Battle of Britain, and the shifts in strategy and doctrine during that period.

The reasons for the escalation, and its the escalation that explains the disproportionate civilian casualties IN ALL BOMBED STATES, differ in historical detail from case to case and can hardly be explained in a forum reply. There was however a common process, dictated by technical frustration at poor accuracy and navigation and high losses, as well as a political frustration at a lack of results. This in turn led to air forces becoming anxious that perceived failures might have a deleterious effect on their claims for resources. Finally there was a slow erosion of the moral constraints that might have acted to minimise the damage to civilian targets.

This is a huge factor ... escalation of conflict (and outright senseless destruction) tied to vengeance driven retaliation is pretty much the key disadvantages to 'terror' and 'morale' strategies, or accidental/collateral civilian damage and death resulting from mistakes or practical limits in technology.

One of the largest (if not the largest) strategically detracting aspects of the German shift to city bombing in the latter part of the BoB was the morale effect it had on the British populace and leadership, making Germany into a much more easily hated, much more willfully opposed enemy and a stronger point to rally national pride and defiance. Granted, the same was true for the British bombings of Germany. And granted, the shift to City bombing in the UK was in part an act of Desperation (as well as retaliation), but not a very sound strategic move at all. (establishing air superiority over the channel may not have been logistically practical either, but it at least was at least a less impossible goal with more useful benefits and less severe consequences ... same for disabling the Chain Home network and the short-sighted decision to abandon such attempts, but the BoB in general is another topic entirely)

Regardless of that, it really takes cold, calculating leadership to overlook petty revenge and retaliation and focus on the pure, most practical, effective, efficient strategies at hand, and even tougher is managing both that level of cool calculation AND persuasive politics to not seem weak or dispassionate to the public (or other leadership). Hitler (and much of Nazi leadership) was quite obviously not the former ... even if he was quite capable at public persuasion and rallying.

On that matter though, I'm not actually familiar with Udet's planning and strategies during the Battle of Britain, aside from general frustration, depression, and extreme dispondence leading up to his suicide. Did he have particular misgivings (even from a purely military perspective) for the shift from targeting Fighter Command?