Godišnjica savezničkog bombardovanja
Several years ago I got in contact with a military historian, USAAF veteran who actually flew mission over Belgrade on April 16th. 1944.
I did not open my cards right away but enquiried about the flight procedures, target acquisition. I checked flight manifests and orders of the day and found very little, like major bombing raid never happened.
I asked him how is it possible that there is so little information of the raid and is there a possibility that the records were edited. His explanation was that Belgrade was not a primary target but target of opportunity for bombers returning from Ploesti oilfields. He also told me that he remembers Belgrade as a town in silver crosshairs (Sava and Danube rivers). Also, that it was impossible to hit the target with precission, errors were up to 2000 ft and that’s why carpet bombing with 1000 lbs bombs was done.
I took the map of Belgrade and drew circles from railways and bridges. Some civilian targets could be understood as aiming errors but the majority can not. Dense populated areas were deliberately chosen.
The question is – why?
My next message was straightforward and I requested clarification. I asked if Belgrade was indeed a target for bombers returning from Romania, why ordnance inscriptions „Happy Easter“ were written when Romanian civilians celebrated Easter a week earlier, April 9 and why it was written in Serbian? Could it be that Belgrade April 16th was a primary target? If Belgrade and other Serbian civilian targets were secondary target for bombers returning from Romania, how is possible that Belgrade was bombed until September and Ploesti fell in Red Army hands in August?
Our correspondence abruptly stopped. I got no response from him. For someone who lived in totalitarian state and learned to read the cues, it was more than enough.
This story has not been told yet.
You might find the backgrounder below interesting for further research .
B.
Mass Murder: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Urban Bombing
War is hell and Hitler started WWII. He persuaded his followers that their
„moral superiority“ excuse them from being human and having mercy towards their victims.
Almost 60 years later, we struggle to answer the question: was it the
universal crime or it is crime only because Hitler lost the war?
Schrecklichkeit, “we’ll meet again” way
„We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where,
Don’t know when,
But I know
We’ll meet again
Some sunny day.“
-Vera Lynn, singer, 1942
When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister May 10 1940, he appointed
Frederick Alexander Lindemann as his adviser. Soon Lindemann air doctrine
followed, an adaptation of ideas of Italian fascist general Giulio Douhet.
Inflict maximum casualties to civilians to break morale of the men fighting
on the front. The crown jewel of Lindemann doctrine is fan-patterned
firebombing of Dresden. (Firebombing is newspeak for achieving effects of
atomic bomb by conventional explosives.) Dresden had no industry. It was
cultural center protected by treaty between Germans and Britons.
Air Marshall “Bomber” Harris summed it up: „Whenever the fact that our
aircraft OCCASIONALLY (emphasis BP) killed women and children is cast in my
teeth I always produce this example of the blockade, although there are
endless others to be got from the wars of the past. “
Up to 2 million German civilians were killed “occasionally” in British area bombing
and American “precision bombing” of German cities.
„They reaped what they sow“ one may rightfully say. But what about others?
Civilians in occupied Europe were also “occasionally” targeted, especially
on Christian religious holidays. They were bombed, although they did not
follow Hitler’s murderous path, even when fought against Hitler and were
recognized as allies.
During only one such air raid, USAAF air raid on Belgrade, (Orthodox Easter
Sunday, April 16 1944) more than 2000 Serbian civilians were killed, two
times more than Luftwaffe killed in Rotterdam, 4 times more than Luftwaffe
killed in Coventry. Damage to German occupying forces was insignificant.
USAF boasted that U.S. bombers equipped with the „top secret“ Norden bomb
sight could drop a bomb „into a pickle barrel.“
What happened? Official USAAF history explains that Belgrade residential
quarters were bombed by navigational error. But it does not explain why
more than 6000 Serbs were killed in Nish and Pirot, some 200 miles away. Nor
it explains why, if the target was indeed Romania, “Happy Easter” greetings
found on unexploded ordnance were written in Serbian. Gratitude for saving
500 American Airmen behind enemy lines, perhaps.
By comparison, the railroads leading to death camps – Dachau, Auschwitz,
Belsen, Jasenovac and many others were not destroyed. Death factories worked
full time. Protection of ENIGMA secret.
Nazi production for military was unharmed also.
Hiroshima could be understood as an effort to shorten the war. Regardless of
historical evidence stating otherwise.
But how to understand Nagasaki August 9 1945 11:02 A.M.?
And how to approve it?
Lindemann doctrine continued to live after WWII.
Rolling thunder over Viet Nam, secret bombing of Cambodia 1970, precision
bombing of shelters in Iraq 1991.
Schrecklichkeit, humanitarian way
„I think no power to your refrigerator, no
gas to your stove, you can’t get to work
because the bridge is down – the bridge on
which you held your rock concerts — and
you all stood with targets on your heads.
That needs to disappear at 3 o’clock in the
morning.“
— Lt. Gen. Michael Short, US Air Force Commander, May 12 1999
Demonization and dehumanization of victims is part of Schrecklichkeit, Nazi
way, „we meet again“ way or humanitarian
way.
Perceived moral superiority over victims also.
Napalms did not incinerate Vietnamese, only “gooks”, “Charlies” and “me love
good”.
Cluster bombs were not murdering children and old people on marketplaces in
Serbia, it was humanitarian intervention.
“Do you still wanna be a Serb” read inscription on unexploded ordnance.
The same question could be sent back.
We have seen jingoist support for those crimes here on this list as well, in
form of „humanitarian“
moralism from “uebermensh” position.
And this list is dedicated to prevention of Genocide !
My family had been bombed by Luftwaffe in 1941, by USAAF and RAF in 1944 and
by
USAF, RAF and Luftwaffe in 1999.
The difference? Hitler’s Luftwaffe did not use plutonium laced depleted
uranium ammunition.
Nazis did not pretend to be humanitarians and there was no CNN in Hitler’s
time.
Professor Rubinstein, please rest assured, no one will charge elderly G.I.
generation for war crimes over skies of Germany and Japan
They WON the war. No one will charge their Generation X grandsons for what
they did over skies of Serbia and Iraq. Maybe in this
moment,as you read this.
For that reason, please reflect on message Professor Rummel sent.
Were Germans and Japanese not humans?
Is it difficult to say after sixty years: Yes, it was war crime, but
War is hell and we did not start it.
We should fight to prevent wars, not fight to prevent the truth coming out.
Professor Rummel, firebombing of Hamburg, Darmstadt, Heilbronn, Kassel,
Magdeburg Würzburg, Wuppertal, Weser, and Dresden was done by “alliance of
democracies”. Alliance of democracies are not deterrent for criminal mind.
The same as “alliance of democracies” was not deterrent to prevent
contamination of the Balkans with nuclear waste, to prevent use of cluster
bombs on civilian targets, destruction of water supply, electrical grid It
was not to prevent ‘navigational errors” such as bombing of passenger
trains, bridges and hospitals.
Nowadays, wars are fought from 15,000 ft against the enemy and from all
media towards
own population. Supporting it is just another way to pull the cluster bomb
release trigger.
Please think about it.
Bob Petrovich
—————————————————————————-
BACKGROUNDER
[1] the „primary object“ of the bombing „should now be focused on the
morale of the enemy civil population and in particular, of the industrial workers“
Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic, Air Offensive Against
Germany: 1939-1945
[2] Bomber Offensive, Air Marshall Harris.
Greenhill Press; ISBN: 1853673145
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853673145/qid=996644244/sr=1-1/ref=s
c_b_1/104-7599668-2197567
[4] „in air operations against production the weight of attack will
inevitably
fall upon a vitally important, and not by nature very amenable, section of
the community-the industrial workers, whose morale and sticking power
cannot be expected to equal that of the disciplined soldier.“
– John Slessor quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command (1979)
[5] .“ In reality, an estimated one-half of U.S. bombs were
dropped through cloud cover or at night where the average bombing error was
about three miles off target. And of those bombs dropped in daylight under
clear conditions, at most half fell within one quarter mile of the target
point (John Ellis, Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second
World War [1990].
[6] „High-ranking officers sent official messages to one another which
caused the record to suggest that AAF [Army Air Forces] practice fitted with the
official policy. Yet these officers knew this was not the case…. [U.S.
deputy air commander] Anderson and his colleagues were protecting the image
of the AAF from historians and other investigators.“ -„American Military
Ethics in World War II, The Bombing of German Civilians,“ Journal of
American History, September 1980
[7]“Once in England the censors held up my report that the Eighth Air Force
had bombed Germany through a solid cloud cover. This was politically
sensitive;
our air staff maintained that we were practicing only precision bombing on
military targets. But the censors released my story when I pointed out
the obvious–Germans on the ground and the Luftwaffe attacking bombers
knew the clouds were there.
The truth was not being withheld from Germans but Americans.”
Walter Cronkite, Newsweek, February 25, 1991
[8] The effect of firebombing:
„People died within seconds of being subjected to the unimaginable heat,
dying from oxygenlack, carbon monoxide poisoning, even incandescence“ (Chaz
Bowyer, Air War Over Europe [1981]..
Dresden Death toll:
The Americans and British have tried to reduce the figure to 60,000, which
is absurdly low, while „the German Federal Bureau of Statistics in Wiesbaden
claims that it was 600,000“ (Janusz Piekalkiewicz, The Air War: 1939-1945
[1985]).
The reason for bombing Dresden
„I feel that our air forces are the blue chips with which we will approach
the post-war treaty table, and that this operation will add immeasurably to
their strength, or rather to the Russian knowledge of their strength.“
General David Schlatter, Eisenhower’s deputy chief of air staff
[9] The effects of humanitarian bombing of Serbia
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/EUR700182000
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/
UNEP http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf/missions/photos.html
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