Was London under siege, or any British city for that matter?
You are being very hypocritical.
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Maybe because unlike Warsaw and Rotterdam, Essen, Berlin and lot´s of other German town were not under siege/attack by ground forces? The Hague Convention is pretty clear that defended means defended by one sides ground forces from the other sides ground forces.
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@Kurfürst:
Why do you even react to trolling like Did they have a wall and gates?
Was London under siege, or any British city for that matter?
You are being very hypocritical.
Maybe because unlike Warsaw and Rotterdam, Essen, Berlin and lot´s of other German town were not under siege/attack by ground forces?
So why all this whining about BC bombing German cities and towns?Originally Posted by Kurfürst View Post
Fortress is a legal term to define an enemy place or settlement defended by enemy forces. It is a term used to differentiate from open, ie. undefended cities.
Art. XXV. It is forbidden to attack or to bombard towns, villages, houses, or dwellings which are not defended.
And you did not pay attention to what I wrote!
Notice the absence of any british town? That´s why:
See? Milosh, Kurfürst, me, we were refering to two towns that were not british.
The short answer is that Hitler wanted to (re-)integrate these territories into the Reich.
Excuse me but who do you want to fool? Warsaw and Rotterdam were fortresses and thus perfectly legal targets by the standards of the time. Take a look at the 1907 Hague convention. SECTION II
HOSTILITIES CHAPTER I Means of Injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and bombardments, Articles 25 to 27.
With regard to the Baedecker Raids and the V-weapons mentioned by others, that was two to four years after the RAF had started the area bombing of German towns.
Kurfurst
You said
The simple facts are that Germany used area bombing of cities as a means to try and force defenceless opponents to surrender ...
The shop owner was Gutted but Cod do nothing about it
How do you re integrate countries into a reich they were never part of in the first place.
If you read back into German history pre WWI you will find a fine developed civilized and cultured nation.
The short answer is that Hitler wanted to (re-)integrate these territories into the Reich.
On the side note I guess he had as much justification for that - meaning: right of the stronger one - as there was for a British Governor in India, or you can start thinking about how did the 13 colonies got attacked at Pearl Harbour and the Philippines. Because the last time I checked, those are not exactly native British or American soil either... to put it bluntly, the Hitler gave up colonizing the Third World, because it was already taken, and colonized Eastern Europe instead. On the second side note, it might be a given for us today that Poland and Czechoslovakia are independent nations, but they were part of the Holy Roman Empire and its before that for centuries.
On the longer note, I suggest you read upon a bit on Polish-German-Russian relations between 1920-1939, or Czechoslovakian state policy towards ethnic minorities of the defeated WW1 powers. You might find interesting things. Poland for one attacked both Germany and Russia after WW1 (got beaten back) and was happily participating in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Speaking of the latter, the Slovaks were quite happy to have their independent state instead of being a Czech-run province under a nice common name.
Care to post some detailed examples of such raids, with backing evidence about what were the issued targets?
Like I did when I was asked to do so by Adler?
Otherwise it counts as an opinion, rather than a fact. Opinions are fine. Everyone has them.
Luftwaffe Terror Raids : WarsawAt the onset of World War II began the tactic was used on Warsaw and other Polish cities (September 1939). One historian writes, "The bombing of Warsaw early in the war made it clear to the Allies how Hitler intended to fight his war. What he threatened the Czechs with he carried out on the Poles. It was to be Schrecklichkeit ('frightfulness') with no regard for the civilian population."
O RLY? Show me Czechoslovakia or Poland on the map please in say, 1850. Or in 1798. Or in 1914.
That's flattering. Then the British Empire declared war on them, and they all the sudden ceased to be such a fine developed and cultured nation, and become the barbaric Huns, right?
So tell me, was the British Army at the gates of Hamburg? Had Monty his artillery trained at the Wehrmacht troops dug in inside the town? Again, the typical argument of an apologist, who deliberately misinterprets the relevant passages of the Hague Convention.
The simple fact is that BC began large scale area bombing of cities with attacks on Berlin in August 1940. A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing.
The moral of the story is that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...