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Another good book to read is The Wages of Destruction, which deals with it kind of indirectly. It's a book about the economy of Nazi Germany, and also spends some time looking at the economy of Weimar Germany and how developments there laid the way for the nazis. One take away from that and other things I have read is that the economic harshness and impact of the Treaty of Versailles has been mostly either misunderstood or overstated, far more bitter points of contetion for German nationalists were the implications of the stab-in-the-back myth which posited that Germany had been forced to surrender and be humiliated by mutineers, republicans, socialists, Jews and profiteers whilst its armies were still undefeated on the battlefield. Economically Germany was mostly doing pretty good in the 20s thanks to generous American loans and investments in German industry. This also angered and humiliated German nationalists who saw this as trading away national sovereignty and pride for economic prosperity, which they saw as a poor bargain. As for Goebbles. Wasn't he an important figure in the left-wing (emphasizing the socialist) of the party and initially an opponent of Hitler? Him coming around to supporting Hitler was of pretty great importance in unifying and rallying the party around Hitler. Agnosticnixie posted:Admittedly my standards (anyone who volunteered for the Waffen SS, among other things) are iirc more extreme than the soviet union's. You do know that quite alot of foreigners in the Waffen SS late in the war "volunteered" by way of prison camps? The Hitlerjugend Division was essentially just a whole year of Hitlerjugend boys drafted into the organization, don't think they had much say in it. Anyway for much of the war, especially as you go near the end, there isn't really that much difference between the Waffen SS and the army in terms of war crimes. Though alot of Waffen SS formations did prove themselves to be quite brutal in regards to their treatment of prisoners of war and partisans, in general the war crimes they committed were the same as those committed by the army, even if they tended to be more infamous for brutality and sadism. The camp guards and einsatzgruppen were mostly normal SS and local sympathetic militias, not frontline soldiers.
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Feb 4, 2017 18:11
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The allies weren't going to kill their own leadership over war crimes no matter if they thought it was justified or not.
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Feb 12, 2017 01:30
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The bombing campaign did have an impact on German manufacturing, just not near as great as its proponents imagined or exaggeratedly reported. And the efforts later in the war to target oil production in Romania and synthetic fuel production were quite successful if I recall correctly. Though throughout the cost to bomber crews and planes was staggering, and area bombing and destroying morale became euphemisms for bombing what were largely residential areas. Immoral or not, and much of what happened in the war was immoral, you'd be a fool to disregard the bombing campaign as not having had any impact at all. Perhaps the most important impact it did have was to divert a very large proportion of the Luftwaffe towards defending Germany, as well as makign Germany expand considerable industrial and human effort towards air defence, the diversion of the Luftwaffe westwards was doubtless of great value to the Soviet war effort, especially their airforce which suffered staggering casualty rates at the hands of the Luftwaffe in the first few years of war. There's also the factor that bombing Germany was for a large portion of the war the only way Britain could strike at Germany, which possibly was of some importance in sustaining morale (though I would still argue the diversion of the Luftwaffe as the one important achievement of the bombing campaign).
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Feb 13, 2017 02:09
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Brainiac Five posted:Interesting how people at the time and immediately after concluded strategic bombing was useless for its intended purpose, but as the Cold War came into being strategic bombing became an extremely relevant and deadly weapon against Germany. It's almost as though the historical record shifted in order to downplay the role of the USSR, now our enemy, in fighting the Nazis. Interesting how this defense neglects to note how bombing shifted from a somewhat effective campaign against shipping and rail networks in the Ruhr to attempting to create firestorms, almost as though it became a deliberate campaign of mass-murdering civilians. Interesting how the bombing raids were not perceived as such by the USSR itself, since pressure to open up an actual second front continued right up until Overlord landed in Normandy. Interesting how both Harris and Spaatz resisted the use of their bombers in the preparations for Overlord on the Douhetist grounds that they could win the war by themselves. In order for a defensive measure to be necessary there has to be a credible threat to defend against. Heavy bombers with empty bomb bays and dropping propaganda leaflets are NOT a threat and would have been both a laughing stock, a source of nazi propaganda, and terrible for Allied morale (both civilians reading about it and air crews flying to Germany just to be shot at without offensive weapons). Tying up air defenses was never the stated goal of the strategic combing campaign. It just so happens that it did because, hey, the Germans did view the bombings of cities as enough of a threat that they had to attempt to defend themselves from it. Bomber Harris and others exaggerated the impact their campaign had on ending the war, but don't discard it as useless, because it simply was not. Terrible, yes, but that was kind of the point, evil as it may sound. As for the record. The Soviets weren't unappreciative of the bombing campaign, Stalin himself was pleased with photographs and reports of destroyed German cities. It also sated a wish among all the Allies that Germany deserved to be punished and feel the effects of the war she had unleashed. Now, a bombing campaign wasn't the same as opening up a new front and tying up and destroying German armies and liberating occupied countries. Something the Western Allies endeavoured to do from 1942 onwards, it just so happens that they weren't really ready for this seriously until 1944 (Africa and Italy were essentially sideshows). Harris didn't want to to provide bombers to Overlord because he was a believer in the doctrine that strategic air power alone was enough to decide a war (which wasn't really true until the development of nuclear weapons). It probably wouldn't have mattered that much though, because precision bombing of targets was largely impossible and in a ground support role heavy bombers are pretty ill-suited. In the instances the Allies did use heavy bombers to support ground operations they mostly just created very difficult terrain for the attackers and destroyed mostly unimportant towns.
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Feb 14, 2017 10:40
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Brainiac Five posted:The purpose of the strategic bombing campaign was outlined as 1) winning the war and 2) shutting down German/Japanese military output. It unquestionably failed at both. The war continued until the capture of Berlin, and output increased or remained steady until the actual physical loss of access to resources. In the case of Japan, it was American submarines and aerial attacks against shipping which physically cut off access to resources, which in the end required occupying territory astride the shipping routes to finally chop them off. Even the idea that strategic bombing encouraged civilian discontent was, according to the interviews the USSBS conducted immediately the war, false for Germany (it is unanswerable for Japan because the bombing campaign began after the war was obviously lost). It actually stiffened German support for the Nazi government. I did not say that the strategic bombing campaign fulfilled its overly ambitious goals, nor did any others. I actually said that the most important thing they accomplished was actually not one of their stated goals. And regarding Overlord what I admitted was the ineffectiveness of precision strategic bombing and use of bombers against fortified urban defenders. Someone disagreeing with you does not imply they are unable to handle dissent. Are you able to order the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in war, or imagine yourself in a position where you could decide something like that? Because I certainly cannot. e: Also if I remember correctly judging the economic impact from production numbers alone can be deceptive in the case of Germany as they were rather late in actually putting the economy on a proper total war footing. Compared to the Allies, Germany saw mostly only modest or marginal increases in production throughout the war. Though much of that has to do with there having been much more potential for expansion in military production in Britain, America and Russia. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 14:21
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Brainiac Five posted:So, it was an absurd sideshow of mass murder aimed at civilians. Both ineffectual and a war crime. I'm not sure I called you ignorant or talked down to you. I very much disagreed with much of what you concluded though. I never said it was ineffectual in terms of not having had an imapct on the war, I agree that it was less effective at achieving its pre-war goals of winning a war on its own and destroying an enemy's economy and will to fight, and that during the war the achievements in these spheres were exaggerated. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 15:38
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