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Berlin Experiences/Mythbusting Berlin
Were The Allied Bombings Of Germany War Crimes? – Mythbusting Berlin
Few subjects trigger the kind of heated debate regarding the Second World War as the Allied bombing of civilians and destruction of cities...
Berlin Experiences · 07/12/25 · 42 min read
“It is a strange kind of patriotism to wish upon your country its destruction.”
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, German journalist & anti-Nazi resistance fighter
At the start of the Second World War, US President Roosevelt had implored the European powers to restrict their air attacks to military targets and minimise civilian casualties. A plea Roosevelt no doubt already knew was obsolete before it was even publicised – a gentleman’s agreement issued on the edge of an abyss.
The Luftwaffe and Italian Airforce had already shown its true colours in the skies above Spain – and as the German aerial attacks on Poland would soon confirm: civilian populations were not off-limits – they were more often than not the intended target.
What followed was a terrifying, reciprocal escalation. The Nazi Blitz on British cities was not just answered; it was eclipsed, with RAF Bomber Command perfecting its ‘area bombing’ into a science of industrial-scale destruction. Turning German cities like Hamburg, Berlin, and Dresden into smouldering ruins. This doctrine of incineration, honed in Europe, then eventually exported to the Pacific by the United States to be unleashed on Japan with devastating finality.
Whether these attacks on civilian populations could be said to be criminal can be assessed now in the comfort of retrospection. At a time where, regardless of the conclusion, nothing can change the decisions of the past.
But to ask whether the bombings during the Second World War were legally – or morally – wrong is not to question the history of the conflict; it is to attempt to tell its entire, brutal story.
“We are bombing Germany, city by city, and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for you to go on with the war. That is our object. We shall pursue it remorselessly. City by city; Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg – and the list will grow longer and longer. Let the Nazis drag you down to disaster with them if you will. That is for you to decide…We are coming by day and by night. No part of the Reich is safe…for people who work in (factories) and live close to them. There we hit your houses, and you.”
British pamphlet dropped on Germany (1942) – attributed to head of RAF Bomber Command, Arthur Harris
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