Just watching a programme on the bombing of Hamburg in WW2

Jesus. Can't remember them telling us that bit in school.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II

 

Which channel?

 

Sorry, on Sky Plus. Working my way through World War II: The Complete History. About 10 episodes in now

 

Can't remember them telling you about it or about what happened?

 

OK mate cheers. I'm a big historical fact fan myself especially little known about ones and the ones they try to hide

 

Telling us about it at all. Although to be fair i remember being told about Dresden so I'm being slightly over dramatic

 

45,000 Hamburg civilians killed in one week, compared to 60,000 British civilians killed in the whole 6 years of war. Not for a second undermining the suffering of the Blitz, but that is staggering

 

Fire bombing, scary stuff, war time is beyond comprehension though.

 

Yep, indiscriminate carpet bombing of civilians. It can be argued that this is the manner that the Germans chose to fight the war, but it's still a hard one to reconcile.

 

Not a lot compared to the 6m jews or 20m Russians the Nazis killed

 

True.

 

It's probably the most obvious thing I will ever say but war is ******* horrible.

 

Valid point, but saying we weren't as bad as the Nazis isn't much of a consolation. As Redstar says though its easy to judge in hindsight, but we are pretty good at forgetting our war crimes

 

not true. Around 3.5 million Russian POWs died in Nazi captivity out of around 6 million total casualties. It was Stalin who killed 20m of his own people.

The 6m Jews, Poles, Gypsies, disabled etc.. was always a conservative estimation.

 

There was an element of evil on every side, we just happen to be on the side that won.

Don't believe for one minute that what you read in mainstream books, learnt at school or what is portrayed on a documentary is what actually happened.

 

Stalin did undoubtedly kill millions of his own,,,but read autobiographies from German soldiers and most will tell you the Germans...The Wehrmacht,as well as the SS murdered there way across Russia until they were stopped..Henry Metelman who appeared on the World at War said the only reason it wasn't quite as bad in retreat was because they didn't have the time.

 

sorry double post

 

The original post said compared to the holocaust/POW deaths the bombing deaths by the Allies pale into insignificance.

Is that 20m during the war ? (So to speak)

 

No, through his whole tenure, starting with a state sponsored famine in the early 20s. I was just (humbly) correcting Sadbrewer's inaccurate figures. The figures don't compare if you count the Holocaust as part of the war. Some don't, I look at it separately to a great degree. It started before the war and would doubtless have continued in some form if a world war had not broken out. The Allies waged their war with Germany regardless of Holocaust figures - the scale of which wasn't realised until after the war ended. Out of up to 3m German civilian casualties, only 180,000 were German nationalised Jews. The Russians too committed dreadful atrocities. There is a humanitarian question about how the war was won, it's why Bomber Harris is a controversial figure.

 

I don't think the figures are inaccurate..or at least no more inaccurate than most estimates,in the absence of books to hand I'll quote WikI( I know!!) Russian Combatants between 9 and 14m...Russian civilians 12 to 17 million....had allied bombing not played a part in the utter destruction of German manufacturing and infrastructure the Russian..and most other nations casualty figures would have increased massively.