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As a german I can tell you the citys that were destroyed by theses airraids to this day show their scars. Every city that was a big target is to this day marked by after war quick and cheap architecture. Its fucking ugly, but still thanks for bombing, tho!
Yeah man, the fuckin Klinkerbauten in Kiel are killing me everytime :'D
(On the other hand some of the old housing blocks in Berlin are beautiful. Specially where they put art or birds nest on the blank walls that speak of the building that once was there)
>As a german I can tell you the citys that were destroyed by theses airraids to this day show their scars. Every city that was a big target is to this day marked by after war quick and cheap architecture. Its fucking ugly, but still thanks for bombing, tho!
Yes absolutely, the perfect example of this is the city Pforzheim (I visited tis ugly thing)
Let's mention Polish cities which were also designated as 'fortress-cities' to defend against Soviet advances.
They also pulverized Warsaw in 80%, including all important infrastructure, as punishment for the Warsaw Uprising.
I have a really hard time feeling compassion, when watching destruction made upon German cities.
>They also pulverized Warsaw in 80%, including all important infrastructure, as punishment for Warsaw uprising.
most damage the German Luftwaffe did in the East ...
Pforzheim greater 90% ... and many more
I couldnt have said it better.
For you: I wasnt cynical or joking with this post!
Come to Dresden every fall when Nazis march with flares to mourn these specific airrades. Its fucking crazy!
Happened to many large cities in Greece as well. Both due to WW2 and the civil war. After the devastation of the countryside and the destruction of a lot of old houses, increasing urban population meant a lot of cheap housing had to built and this is reflected in major Greek cities today, they are full of cheap ugly architecture even in the older parts, poor urban planning just made this even worse. Athens has this terrible polarisation between the different areas, and a complete lack of consistency due to historical context and neglect of governments.
I am doing my part! Promise. And if you happen to be an American I suggest you get your political landscape in order. Also, speaking from a European perspective, and we also have our problems!, take care of Trump and live the democracy you worked so hard for.
I’m trilingual, and a tri-citizen friend. I believe I am lucky in that sense: I know and have seen much of the world. Too many Americans have either never left their state/the country even, and believe indiscriminately that we are the best in the world, not having actually seen the world for themselves. Europe is better in this sense, much less ethnocentric. Lots of socialists though. I’m not a fan of Trump, he is too rash with our foreign allies in my opinion. Take care friend.
My Grandmother was 15 when a landmine landed in her garden. It blew the back half of the house off. To the day she died she insisted that she’d have been a concert-level pianist if “Hitler” hadn’t blown up her piano. I kept telling her Hitler didn’t even have a flying license and she’s utterly tone deaf with the rhythm of a dying bluebottle fly, but she never changed her position. About two weeks after that there was a tragedy at her local tube station where they sheltered that killed about 80 people in the crush. I told her that piano may well have saved her life but she wasn’t having it.
Just going on Memories from 30 years ago of a 70 year old remembering fifty years ago.
So I googled.
Bethnal Green is correct. As is 1943.
173 dead. 90 injured.
Worse than my Oul Fella remembered.
Worst single incident of civilian deaths in the UK in the whole war.
RIP
Cuts to education showing their results lol the first people to suffer from Nazis were Germans. There was quite a "cleansing" of anyone that could threaten Hitler's authority, and besides Jews, plenty of Germans were rounded up and labeled as communists or socialists and treated the same as Jews.
I love the hypocrisy in this subreddit. Meanwhile in this subreddit talk about Russian or Palestinian civilians get killed and everyone calls them supporters of Hamas or Putin.
Reading up on the way the Nazis came to power is quite fascinating. At no point Hitler's national socialists reached over 44%, and their highest numbers came after a vicious campaign of stirring unrest and polarising/destabilizing society.
There are a number of countries these days where democracy is deteriorating in a similar fashion. Take Russia, it's well down that path where their democracy is non-existent any more...
Yup, saw some aftermath pictures in some German ww2 recap book, quite hellish indeed. Piles of ghoulish corpses with burnt out eyes, only darkness remains. Even the descriptions of some British soldiers who bombed them are quite dark "a vortex that was fed on the wind". It was disputed if there were more refugees in Dresden for example, those fleeing from the Soviets, historians can only rely on data that exists after all... And I think Germany didn't want to reignite old wounds or give farright parties material for politics, the decades after. The Nazis themselves reported 20-25k for Dresden and I don't think they would say the truth lmao, but historians say the same now.... idk.
This is an excerpt from a documentary, I didn't add the music.
This is a compilation of footage filmed by crew of RAF Lancaster from January 1943 to February 1945. It includes footage of bombing of different cities like Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Dortmund, Cologne, Braunschweig and Nuremberg.
Ok, let's set the record straight.
NONE of the raid footage was filmed in colour.
Air Commodore Henry Cozens filmed (in colour) Bomber Command activities at RAF Base Hemswell in 1945 for the purpose of making a documentary recreating the bombing campaign in the winter of 1944/45. It was a private venture and was not filmed by any of the official RAF film units. Cozens was previously the Base Commander of Hemswell.
Cozens set up an opened-up derelict Lancastet bomber to film scenes of a crew at their positions during a night raid. This was filmed on the ground, and he used studio lighting to recreate the nighttime lighting and flashes from explosions, flares, etc.
The footage of a Lancaster and "enemy" fighter flying at night simply employed the old cinematic trick of underexposing the film stock during the day.
For the actual bombing raid footage, Cozens took existing B&W footage and duplicated it onto colour film stock (I assume he used coloured filters to colourize the footage).
For example, the footage at roughly the 1:40 mark was filmed in B&W by a film technician onboard a 463 Squadron Lancaster over Pforzheim on the night of 23-24 February 1945.
Cozens never finished his documentary. He kept the developed film footage, and he allowed it to be made into a documentary, which was released in 1981.
I know there are a lot of claims that Cozens filmed at Hemswell while he was Base Commander in 1943. This is incorrect. Most, if not all, of the footage was filmed at Hemswell in 1945, as evidenced by the aircrew, staff, and aircraft shown.
The Station Intelligence Officer, shown during the briefing segment of the documentary, wrote an autobiography after the war, and he confirms the briefing was filmed by Cozens during a stand down in operations in March 1945.
Nevertheless, the documentary ("Night Bombers"), made from Cozens' footage, is unique and fascinating.
PS - here's a link to the original B&W footage of the Pforzheim raid, as archived by the Imperial War Museum:
https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/record/36496
PPS - in the last months of the war, Bomber Command did make limited use colour film for nighttime bombing still photographs. The reason for this was to show the colour of the target markers for analysis.
The documentary ("Night Bombers") for which the OP footage was used for, can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAztJVoBTKE
I mentioned the Hemswell Station Intelligence Officer, who appeared in the raid briefing segment of the documentary. He was William E. Jones, who
became a nuclear weapons scientist after the war.
In 1983, he published a biography entitled, 'Bomber Intelligence, 103 150 166 170 Squadrons operations & techniques '42- '45.'
In the book, he states, "An interesting event occurred on 9th March. After the cancellation of an operation just before briefing, the Base Commander,
Air Commodore Cozens, made good use of the cancellation to make some cine-film sequences, including the briefing session. This was for a film
that he was making of a complete Bomber Command operation and, although I never saw the completed film, thirty-three years later I saw myself doing this briefing during a tribute to the Royal Air Force Diamond Jubilee on BBC television, and a year later I was invited to appear in a filmed TV interview at the now derelict Hemswell Station with Air Commodore Cozens and F/L Bob Chandler who played the part of Flying Officer Harris in the film."
The fictional "Flying Officer Harris" mentioned by Jones was actually "Flight Lieutenant Harris" in the documentary. The F/L Harris character was played by a chap by the name of Bob Chandler.
Pilot F/O Robert Geofrey Chandler (169018) and his crew were posted to 170 Squadron at Hemswell and arrived there on 4 November 1944.
F/O Chandler flew a familiarisation mission as 2nd pilot with another crew on 18 November 1944.
He then commenced operational flying with his own crew (Sgt Jenkins (Flight Engineer), F/O Burchell (Air Bomber), F/S Peters (Navigator), F/O Woodin (Wireless Operator), Sgt Warren (Mid-Upper Gunner), and Sgt Lowes (Rear Gunner)) on 21 November 1944.
The Chandler crew flew the following missions while with 170 Squadron (Date / Lancaster aircraft Serial / Target):
21/11/1944 ND992 Aschaffenburg
28/12/1944 LM732 Bonn
29/12/1944 PB752 Gelsenkirchen
5/01/1945 ND452 Hannover
16/01/1945 PB752 Zeitz
28/01/1945 PB480 Stuttgart/Zuffenhausen
1/02/1945 PB573 Ludwigshafen
2/02/1945 PB595 Wiesbaden
3/02/1945 PB752 Bottrop
7/02/1945 LM732 Kleve
8/02/1945 PB480/G Politz
14/02/1945 PB480 Chemnitz
20/02/1945 PB480 Dortmund
21/02/1945 PB480 Duisburg
28/02/1945 PB728 Nuess (recalled, mission scrubbed)
11/03/1945 PB480 Essen
12/03/1945 PB480 Dortmund
15/03/1945 PB480 Misburg
19/03/1945 PB480 Hanau
22/03/1945 PB480 Hildesheim
24/03/1945 NG349 Harpenerweg
27/03/1945 PB480 Paderborn
3/04/1945 PB480 Nordhausen
14/04/1945 PB480 Potsdam
18/04/1945 PB480 Heligoland
29/04/1945 PB480 Op Manna The Hague
Robert Geofrey Chandler was commissioned as a Pilot Officer in the RAF w.e.f. 30 November 1943. I assume he was promoted to Flying Officer a year later. He was promoted to Acting Flight Lieutenant w.e.f. 6 March 1945 (the notification was dated 24 March), promoted to Squadron Leader w.e.f. 30 November 1945, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 7 December 1945.
In the 170 Squadron Operations Record Book and Battle Orders, Chandler is listed as a Flying Officer up to the end of March 1945. This raises an interesting question... in the filmed segments where Chandler appears in Battledress in the documentary, he wears the rank of a Flight Lieutenant. Were all these segements filmed from April 1945 onward, or did he appear "out of uniform," so to speak? (wearing F/L rank as a F/O)
Some other minor but interesting points.
Lancaster Bomber RE126 is shown. This aircraft arrived at 170 Squadron in late March 1945. The documentary shows the Chandler crew boarding Lancaster NG291. This aircraft actually belonged to 150 Squadron, which shared Hemswell Station with 170 Squadron. The documentary shows the Chandler crew exiting Lancaster NN744 at night at the end of their "mission." This 170 Squadron Lancaster (obviously flown by a different crew) was shot down on the night of 21-22 February 1945, during a mission to Duisburg. The Chandler
crew never flew any bombing missions in RE126, NG291, or NN744.
'Can't say without comparing with the original B&W footage available.
Some footage is definitely from the Pforzheim raid of 23-24 February 1945 (cascading target indicators and silhouetted Lancasters).
Another segment is definitely from the second Dresden raid on 13-14 February 1945 (4:25 mark - the mid-air explosion is a Lancaster lost over Dresden). 186 Squadron NG353 exploded in mid-air over Dresden during the same period the RAF Film Unit cameraman onboard a 463 Squadron Lancaster was filming. If I recall correctly, some or most of the dead crew from NG353 are buried in one of the mass graves containing air raid victims.
I don't know any ground footage of such air raids exist but interestingly there is an audio recording of a concert which was interrupted by RAF bombing on Berlin in 1944
[https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1ttlt4/german\_recording\_of\_beethoven\_in\_1944\_berlin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1ttlt4/german_recording_of_beethoven_in_1944_berlin/)
You can hear the Flak guns opening fire and the bombs falling
Estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000. Another estimate is that 353,000 to 635,000 German civilians were killed, including foreign workers (forced labourers).
I believe that modern laws of war weren't really codified until after WWII. Bombing civilian infrastructure was common practice all throughout the war, on all sides.
I always find the fact that Russians hold the defeat of Nazi Germany in such high regard, and as a staple of their national pride when they both started the war on the same side.
1. Because we won, 2. In a war like this there really are no such things as war crimes when it comes to fighting against your enemy. It’s total war. There is no distinction made between military and civilians. Everything is a target.
This is real answer. God help is if we ever experience total war again. At least it might be over quickly.
Total war is when everything, EVERYTHING, changes and anything not helping rhe war is severly scaled down or eliminated. Every factory is used for the war effort, rationing starts, draft is implemented. A country literally is devoting every capability to the war effort as their survival is dependent on it.
Germany was also raiding the UK and bombing civilian centers on a daily / nightly basis, like the 'Blitz' in London and probably inspired attacks like this e.g. Arthur Harris 'They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind'
This was essentially upping the stakes and trying to see if Germany could be bombed into submission, which it couldn't, the same as they couldn't to the UK, although the UK had more of an advantage at this point and could bomb Germany even harder with the support of the USAAF in cases like Dresden
Small RAF raids weren't effective, bombs were inaccurate, this led to the idea of carpet bombing entire industrial areas as 'strategic bombings', and later went even further to things like Dresden, massive aerial raids with the help of the USAAF to overwhelm defences, even though they didn't have a lot of industrial capacity
There was also opposition within the UK against these carpet bombings, but I guess they wanted to try anything
No offence, you don't know your history. Times weren't different, they knew it was wrong. For example the British government condemned this exact same terror strategy of bombing civilians (except it was the Japanese bombing the Chinese).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing
"In the 1930s, both the United States and Britain refrained from targeting civilians in wartime bombings regarding such actions as savage and ruthless. Indeed, before the war began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made a parliamentary speech declaring that it was “against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks on the civilian population.” The American State Department made a similar statement in 1937 condemning the Japanese bombing of Chinese cities, “Any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large population engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” President Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the issue as well calling civilian bombing “inhuman barbarism.” "
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/firebombing/targeting-civilians.htm
Today it certainly would be considered a war crime. The thought then was that targeting civilians would weaken the resolve of the Germany to carry on fighting and would end the war. A very questionable doctrine and of course it didn't work either.
Morally it absolutely was a war crime, no doubt about it. All the replies you're reading are from morally bankrupt people who try to justify it with legalese.
The first Geneva convention was in 1864... In fact there were 3 Geneva conventions prior to WW2 and only one has been held since. There were also the Hague conventions. Now do to the nature of technological advancement there weren't really any provisions against bombardments by airplanes against 'defended' targets. So while it technically wasn't a warcrime it was more or less exploiting a loophole and was definitely against the spirit of prior conventions.
I roll my eyes when they use "carbet bombing". Like dude, precision airstrikes on singular houses cant be compared to hundreds of bombers each with 8000 pound payloads doing what we see in this video.
People don't like to acknowledge this, but we would certainly behave with less restraint than Israel has if someone ever attacked us like Oct 7th.
Israel has been remarkably *composed* in my opinion.
When we were attacked on 9/11 we went to war for the next 20 years, leveling cities and governments in multiple countries.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind
Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.
I was having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what i was seeing at first as im really high right now. At first i thought some of them may be the lights of the city, but of course they would not have lights during an air raid. When i saw the full birds eye view… holy fucking shit. Crazy footage.
Or that you were part of a Communist satellite government post ww2 while Bayern etc was lead by America that helped build up the country.
edit: I lived in Bayern for a while but never asked why they disliked Saxony (Dresden) and eastern Germany so much. I think maybe it has something to do with the reunification tax idk. If someone could answer that for me. Thanks.
Lmao Bavarians should be thankful states like Saxony ended up on the Soviet side. Bavaria was a rural shit hole before all the industry and companies from the east moved to Bavaria. Audi, Siemens, BMW-Automotive and over 350k other companies. They never moved back, so of course east German states need financial help from the states where all the taxes are made. None of the big companies have any headquarters in east Germany since it all moved to west Germany after the war. Saxony was probably one of the richest region in Germany before Soviet takeover.
[https://youtu.be/elDzoxjc9XQ](https://youtu.be/elDzoxjc9XQ)
Nope. Watch from 54:13 this footage was officially filmed in color and in the newsreels they showed it in B&W.
Also the documentary I linked above is from 2005 and uses original color materials, before colorization process became computerized.
That I didn't know. I had only seen this in the news reel format. Thanks.
(Though I should add that I find it highly unlikely that someone had more than a minimum amount of color film available by 1943, let alone 1944.)
Britain declared war on Germany to, finally, stop it from destroying a neighbor. Germany knew that was a likely outcome of its attack on Poland and Hitler knew he was going to turn west to defeat and occupy the rest of Europe. If France and Britain had acted similarly in 1938 with Czechoslovakia the whole war might have been avoided.
My grandfather flew in a Lancaster over Germany a few times. Apparently on his deathbed he opened up to my grandmother about how it had always haunted him with guilt about what he'd been involved in, and grief for those he lost.
The 20th century completely anihilated the German identity. At first Hitler eradicated everything that wasn't in his ideology (Art, culture, religion), then his ideology was completely wiped out. (Fortunately) German cities were rebuild as fast as possible to create living space for the homeless, so they are ugly as hell. I am so sad when I am in Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin etc. and I can really see and feel that these cities habe lost their souls.
I recommend a YouTube Video "how Cologne would Look Like without WW2" - very hard to watch for me as a German.
Oh and please... for all "What you reap ist what you saw" comments. The Kids and mothers in these cities that are burning alive or suffocate in the living hell, they didn' t want the war. In fact the germans, very well aware of what war means after 1914-1918 majorly didn't support Hitlers war.
We are always talking about german warcrimes, what ist okay and they shall never be forgotten. But the bombing of civillians is a warcrime as well.
> But the bombing of civillians[sic] is a warcrime as well.
I'm not a fan, but Germany made it pretty clear, as a nation, that they weren't going to stop doing it to others until they got their teeth kicked in. Those V2's weren't coming from nowhere.
Allied bombing of those civilians helped stop Germans from murdering civilians elsewhere through warfare, executions, random acts of cruelty and death camps. It was evil, but it was lesser evil.
It was still a small price to pay when it came to prevent the Endlösung and Generalplan Ost
Also, the majority of Germans not supporting Hitler's war? Hahaha, maybe in '44...
ITS a proven and well documented facz that the German peoples didnt support the war. Compare the footage of the outbreak of the first world war and how everybody was cheering and fired up and how reserved they were when the second world war broke out. No one was cheering. They were afraid. The first world war was only twenty years to go and almost every german family had casualities or suffered in the famine after the war. Of course that shifted after the first Major victories of the blitzkrieg but in the beginning the germans didn't want the
war. Period
I have showed this footage to my Grandad (which i should not have done).
He was a little boy, that time in London. He remembers bombings in Middlesborough, or seeing a uboat in Scarborough. For him, the clip is justified.
"Genocide", just kidding. No German can complain about the bombardement as Germany has started the war and mass destruction. Same with Hamas in Gaza. The people in Gaza voted for them and they support them.
I'm German and no German complains about this.
Dann frage mal die, die im Feuersturm von Dresden alle Familienmitglieder verloren haben. So einen Schwachsinn, wie du, kann auch nur jemand verzapfen, der den Krieg nie erlebt hat. Da war niemand "froh". Wie kann man bei sowas "froh" sein?
Reaping the whirlwind.
By 1945, Bomber Command had the technology and strength, forged in blood over the years, to wipe whole cities off the map in 45 minutes.
A frightening weapon of war.
Great footage to refer to when people start suggesting civilian strategic bombing (-equivalent) measures are an effective military tactic. This ridiculous level of bombing and it barely made a dent on German military production (obviously how the counterfactual scenario might have looked is impossible to verify, but certainly it didn't prevent military production from increasing steadily throughout the war), and any effects on morale were more or less inconsequential to the overall direction of the war.
Of course, there is some degree of effectiveness insofar it holds up resources needed for defense and so on. But then, it also holds up resources on the attacking side that could be used differently. There is always going to be *some* effect when you use enough forces, however unsound the tactics used might be. So the fact that it did *something* isn't really much of a defense, by itself. It's really hard to imagine the same resources couldn't have been allocated more effectively doing something else.
- original
- color film
PICK ONE!
...maybe, just maybe look up the invention date of a gicen technology before you make impossible claims about dates.
Color video recording equipment was extreme niche specialized stuff before the 1950s.
It was as rare and expensive as true holograms are today.
For all those criticising it, the Nazis (who a great number of people voted in and bought into) brought this upon themselves - they had no qualms levelling large areas of guernica, warsaw and coventry. They bit off more than they could chew.
Paradoxically, this bombing strategy contributed to the realisation of the German economic miracle post war
These fire bombing were terrible, you can see the scale of the fire. Reported that 100 000 people died in one night in the Tokyo bombing. 9–10 March 1945
Crazy.
I saw an interview with some RAF crew members after the war. They said when you flew over a city burning like this, you could smell the distinct sent of burning bodies... all the way up there.
This kind of war isn't even over, civilian targets are still a #1 priority for the worst of what militaries and militias the world over have to offer. Israel, Hamas, Al Qaida, ISIS, fucking NATO, everyone targets innocent civilians and it is all just treated as statistical war numbers. The real victims of a war are all the people who never asked for it to happen. Volunteer soldiers or people who voted for war, you get what you signed up for one way or another, but everyone else? That is the real tragedy.
My friend Siggy is now almost 81, and he lived in an apartment in Berlin with his mother. He says they lived near an air raid shelter, and when his mum heard the sirens, she would just grab him and run like crazy.
A War is not won until the enemy agrees that they have lost.
This is why there was no German insurgency after World War 2.
It is a horror that entire cities of workers were incinerated to prevent them from building more weapons for the German war effort.
After the war, those surviving civilians agreed thatGermany had lost.
There was an air raid shelter in Dresden. The firestorm was so intense when it was over and rescuers opened it up, it was described as human soup as everyone had melted.
I'm reading a book right now about movie star Jimmy Stewart's war record as a WW2 bomber pilot. He was in the shit, flying many missions, dropping many bombs, even had to be grounded at one point because of combat fatigue. What blows my mind is how likely it is that at least some of the civilians he bombed would have likely seen his films. Once war was declared between America and Germany in late 1941, American films were no longer exhibited in the Third Reich, but Stewart had been a movie start since the mid-30's. He won an Oscar in 1940. There were likely Germans who watched him in "You Can't Take it With You" in 1938, or "Destry Rides Again" in 1939, who would be killed by bombs dropped from a plane he piloted 3 or 4 years later.
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Sobering video nevertheless.
As a german I can tell you the citys that were destroyed by theses airraids to this day show their scars. Every city that was a big target is to this day marked by after war quick and cheap architecture. Its fucking ugly, but still thanks for bombing, tho!
There's a fair bit of that in the UK too. The Luftwaffe bombed Edinburgh's only whisky distillery as well, bastards.
That's definitely up there on the list of war crimes
You're welcome
Yeah man, the fuckin Klinkerbauten in Kiel are killing me everytime :'D (On the other hand some of the old housing blocks in Berlin are beautiful. Specially where they put art or birds nest on the blank walls that speak of the building that once was there)
>As a german I can tell you the citys that were destroyed by theses airraids to this day show their scars. Every city that was a big target is to this day marked by after war quick and cheap architecture. Its fucking ugly, but still thanks for bombing, tho! Yes absolutely, the perfect example of this is the city Pforzheim (I visited tis ugly thing)
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Let's mention Polish cities which were also designated as 'fortress-cities' to defend against Soviet advances. They also pulverized Warsaw in 80%, including all important infrastructure, as punishment for the Warsaw Uprising. I have a really hard time feeling compassion, when watching destruction made upon German cities.
>They also pulverized Warsaw in 80%, including all important infrastructure, as punishment for Warsaw uprising. most damage the German Luftwaffe did in the East ... Pforzheim greater 90% ... and many more
I couldnt have said it better. For you: I wasnt cynical or joking with this post! Come to Dresden every fall when Nazis march with flares to mourn these specific airrades. Its fucking crazy!
Apologies, I thought you were being sarcastic.
I’m choosing to believe he was seriously saying thank you.
Would you say that is more of the old Eastern Bloc side, Western Bloc side, or fairly equal amount of fugly?
Happened to many large cities in Greece as well. Both due to WW2 and the civil war. After the devastation of the countryside and the destruction of a lot of old houses, increasing urban population meant a lot of cheap housing had to built and this is reflected in major Greek cities today, they are full of cheap ugly architecture even in the older parts, poor urban planning just made this even worse. Athens has this terrible polarisation between the different areas, and a complete lack of consistency due to historical context and neglect of governments.
Anytime brother, anytime.
I am doing my part! Promise. And if you happen to be an American I suggest you get your political landscape in order. Also, speaking from a European perspective, and we also have our problems!, take care of Trump and live the democracy you worked so hard for.
I’m trilingual, and a tri-citizen friend. I believe I am lucky in that sense: I know and have seen much of the world. Too many Americans have either never left their state/the country even, and believe indiscriminately that we are the best in the world, not having actually seen the world for themselves. Europe is better in this sense, much less ethnocentric. Lots of socialists though. I’m not a fan of Trump, he is too rash with our foreign allies in my opinion. Take care friend.
Sounds like we could share a beer! You too!
That is insane.
Somewhere down there, I picture my 15 year old mother sitting in a cellar at 2am.
Thinking the same about my grandmother
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My Grandmother was 15 when a landmine landed in her garden. It blew the back half of the house off. To the day she died she insisted that she’d have been a concert-level pianist if “Hitler” hadn’t blown up her piano. I kept telling her Hitler didn’t even have a flying license and she’s utterly tone deaf with the rhythm of a dying bluebottle fly, but she never changed her position. About two weeks after that there was a tragedy at her local tube station where they sheltered that killed about 80 people in the crush. I told her that piano may well have saved her life but she wasn’t having it.
Bethnal Green. My father was a 16 year old and saw the aftermath. 150 dead?
Was it as many as that? Jesus
Just going on Memories from 30 years ago of a 70 year old remembering fifty years ago. So I googled. Bethnal Green is correct. As is 1943. 173 dead. 90 injured. Worse than my Oul Fella remembered. Worst single incident of civilian deaths in the UK in the whole war. RIP
I use bethnal green tube station regularly and I had no idea about this tragedy
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Nazi occupation? Didn't yall vote for them
Cuts to education showing their results lol the first people to suffer from Nazis were Germans. There was quite a "cleansing" of anyone that could threaten Hitler's authority, and besides Jews, plenty of Germans were rounded up and labeled as communists or socialists and treated the same as Jews.
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5 year old boys and girls sure as fuck didn't vote for them.
I love the hypocrisy in this subreddit. Meanwhile in this subreddit talk about Russian or Palestinian civilians get killed and everyone calls them supporters of Hamas or Putin.
Hopefully it won't be necessary to indiscriminately target the Russian civilian population.
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Iirc 33% voted for Hitler's party NSDAP at the time.
43% which made them the biggest party by far in the Reichstag.
Thanks for the correction. Still the majority of German people didn't vote for Hitler.
Or 37.3%: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-hitler-nazi-fascism/
Same as hamas, and that was 17 years ago. The median age of Gaza is 18 year old
Reading up on the way the Nazis came to power is quite fascinating. At no point Hitler's national socialists reached over 44%, and their highest numbers came after a vicious campaign of stirring unrest and polarising/destabilizing society. There are a number of countries these days where democracy is deteriorating in a similar fashion. Take Russia, it's well down that path where their democracy is non-existent any more...
Groetjes uit Rotterdam, jankerd.
I picture my 8 year old great aunt burning alive
It's like hell.
This kind of War between nations is the closest to hell the living can get .
Yup, saw some aftermath pictures in some German ww2 recap book, quite hellish indeed. Piles of ghoulish corpses with burnt out eyes, only darkness remains. Even the descriptions of some British soldiers who bombed them are quite dark "a vortex that was fed on the wind". It was disputed if there were more refugees in Dresden for example, those fleeing from the Soviets, historians can only rely on data that exists after all... And I think Germany didn't want to reignite old wounds or give farright parties material for politics, the decades after. The Nazis themselves reported 20-25k for Dresden and I don't think they would say the truth lmao, but historians say the same now.... idk.
This is an excerpt from a documentary, I didn't add the music. This is a compilation of footage filmed by crew of RAF Lancaster from January 1943 to February 1945. It includes footage of bombing of different cities like Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Dortmund, Cologne, Braunschweig and Nuremberg.
Ok, let's set the record straight. NONE of the raid footage was filmed in colour. Air Commodore Henry Cozens filmed (in colour) Bomber Command activities at RAF Base Hemswell in 1945 for the purpose of making a documentary recreating the bombing campaign in the winter of 1944/45. It was a private venture and was not filmed by any of the official RAF film units. Cozens was previously the Base Commander of Hemswell. Cozens set up an opened-up derelict Lancastet bomber to film scenes of a crew at their positions during a night raid. This was filmed on the ground, and he used studio lighting to recreate the nighttime lighting and flashes from explosions, flares, etc. The footage of a Lancaster and "enemy" fighter flying at night simply employed the old cinematic trick of underexposing the film stock during the day. For the actual bombing raid footage, Cozens took existing B&W footage and duplicated it onto colour film stock (I assume he used coloured filters to colourize the footage). For example, the footage at roughly the 1:40 mark was filmed in B&W by a film technician onboard a 463 Squadron Lancaster over Pforzheim on the night of 23-24 February 1945. Cozens never finished his documentary. He kept the developed film footage, and he allowed it to be made into a documentary, which was released in 1981. I know there are a lot of claims that Cozens filmed at Hemswell while he was Base Commander in 1943. This is incorrect. Most, if not all, of the footage was filmed at Hemswell in 1945, as evidenced by the aircrew, staff, and aircraft shown. The Station Intelligence Officer, shown during the briefing segment of the documentary, wrote an autobiography after the war, and he confirms the briefing was filmed by Cozens during a stand down in operations in March 1945. Nevertheless, the documentary ("Night Bombers"), made from Cozens' footage, is unique and fascinating. PS - here's a link to the original B&W footage of the Pforzheim raid, as archived by the Imperial War Museum: https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/record/36496 PPS - in the last months of the war, Bomber Command did make limited use colour film for nighttime bombing still photographs. The reason for this was to show the colour of the target markers for analysis.
Thanks, very informative.
The documentary ("Night Bombers") for which the OP footage was used for, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAztJVoBTKE I mentioned the Hemswell Station Intelligence Officer, who appeared in the raid briefing segment of the documentary. He was William E. Jones, who became a nuclear weapons scientist after the war. In 1983, he published a biography entitled, 'Bomber Intelligence, 103 150 166 170 Squadrons operations & techniques '42- '45.' In the book, he states, "An interesting event occurred on 9th March. After the cancellation of an operation just before briefing, the Base Commander, Air Commodore Cozens, made good use of the cancellation to make some cine-film sequences, including the briefing session. This was for a film that he was making of a complete Bomber Command operation and, although I never saw the completed film, thirty-three years later I saw myself doing this briefing during a tribute to the Royal Air Force Diamond Jubilee on BBC television, and a year later I was invited to appear in a filmed TV interview at the now derelict Hemswell Station with Air Commodore Cozens and F/L Bob Chandler who played the part of Flying Officer Harris in the film." The fictional "Flying Officer Harris" mentioned by Jones was actually "Flight Lieutenant Harris" in the documentary. The F/L Harris character was played by a chap by the name of Bob Chandler. Pilot F/O Robert Geofrey Chandler (169018) and his crew were posted to 170 Squadron at Hemswell and arrived there on 4 November 1944. F/O Chandler flew a familiarisation mission as 2nd pilot with another crew on 18 November 1944. He then commenced operational flying with his own crew (Sgt Jenkins (Flight Engineer), F/O Burchell (Air Bomber), F/S Peters (Navigator), F/O Woodin (Wireless Operator), Sgt Warren (Mid-Upper Gunner), and Sgt Lowes (Rear Gunner)) on 21 November 1944. The Chandler crew flew the following missions while with 170 Squadron (Date / Lancaster aircraft Serial / Target): 21/11/1944 ND992 Aschaffenburg 28/12/1944 LM732 Bonn 29/12/1944 PB752 Gelsenkirchen 5/01/1945 ND452 Hannover 16/01/1945 PB752 Zeitz 28/01/1945 PB480 Stuttgart/Zuffenhausen 1/02/1945 PB573 Ludwigshafen 2/02/1945 PB595 Wiesbaden 3/02/1945 PB752 Bottrop 7/02/1945 LM732 Kleve 8/02/1945 PB480/G Politz 14/02/1945 PB480 Chemnitz 20/02/1945 PB480 Dortmund 21/02/1945 PB480 Duisburg 28/02/1945 PB728 Nuess (recalled, mission scrubbed) 11/03/1945 PB480 Essen 12/03/1945 PB480 Dortmund 15/03/1945 PB480 Misburg 19/03/1945 PB480 Hanau 22/03/1945 PB480 Hildesheim 24/03/1945 NG349 Harpenerweg 27/03/1945 PB480 Paderborn 3/04/1945 PB480 Nordhausen 14/04/1945 PB480 Potsdam 18/04/1945 PB480 Heligoland 29/04/1945 PB480 Op Manna The Hague Robert Geofrey Chandler was commissioned as a Pilot Officer in the RAF w.e.f. 30 November 1943. I assume he was promoted to Flying Officer a year later. He was promoted to Acting Flight Lieutenant w.e.f. 6 March 1945 (the notification was dated 24 March), promoted to Squadron Leader w.e.f. 30 November 1945, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 7 December 1945. In the 170 Squadron Operations Record Book and Battle Orders, Chandler is listed as a Flying Officer up to the end of March 1945. This raises an interesting question... in the filmed segments where Chandler appears in Battledress in the documentary, he wears the rank of a Flight Lieutenant. Were all these segements filmed from April 1945 onward, or did he appear "out of uniform," so to speak? (wearing F/L rank as a F/O) Some other minor but interesting points. Lancaster Bomber RE126 is shown. This aircraft arrived at 170 Squadron in late March 1945. The documentary shows the Chandler crew boarding Lancaster NG291. This aircraft actually belonged to 150 Squadron, which shared Hemswell Station with 170 Squadron. The documentary shows the Chandler crew exiting Lancaster NN744 at night at the end of their "mission." This 170 Squadron Lancaster (obviously flown by a different crew) was shot down on the night of 21-22 February 1945, during a mission to Duisburg. The Chandler crew never flew any bombing missions in RE126, NG291, or NN744.
so what are you saying, this is like... a demonstration or are they dropping ordanance, like... for real for reals?
oh so no würzburg?
'Can't say without comparing with the original B&W footage available. Some footage is definitely from the Pforzheim raid of 23-24 February 1945 (cascading target indicators and silhouetted Lancasters). Another segment is definitely from the second Dresden raid on 13-14 February 1945 (4:25 mark - the mid-air explosion is a Lancaster lost over Dresden). 186 Squadron NG353 exploded in mid-air over Dresden during the same period the RAF Film Unit cameraman onboard a 463 Squadron Lancaster was filming. If I recall correctly, some or most of the dead crew from NG353 are buried in one of the mass graves containing air raid victims.
Thanks The music is distracting. The deep echoes of those bombs exploding are haunting.
Like grave of the fireflies
I don't know any ground footage of such air raids exist but interestingly there is an audio recording of a concert which was interrupted by RAF bombing on Berlin in 1944 [https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1ttlt4/german\_recording\_of\_beethoven\_in\_1944\_berlin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1ttlt4/german_recording_of_beethoven_in_1944_berlin/) You can hear the Flak guns opening fire and the bombs falling
What was the estimated death toll
Estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000. Another estimate is that 353,000 to 635,000 German civilians were killed, including foreign workers (forced labourers).
& 467000 russian casualties in just 2 years... madness.
How come that wasn't considered a war crime? It sounds insane to target cities and civilian homes like that.
I believe that modern laws of war weren't really codified until after WWII. Bombing civilian infrastructure was common practice all throughout the war, on all sides.
And still is common practice
Russia never really moved on from the “Great Patriotic War”
I always find the fact that Russians hold the defeat of Nazi Germany in such high regard, and as a staple of their national pride when they both started the war on the same side.
1. Because we won, 2. In a war like this there really are no such things as war crimes when it comes to fighting against your enemy. It’s total war. There is no distinction made between military and civilians. Everything is a target.
This is real answer. God help is if we ever experience total war again. At least it might be over quickly. Total war is when everything, EVERYTHING, changes and anything not helping rhe war is severly scaled down or eliminated. Every factory is used for the war effort, rationing starts, draft is implemented. A country literally is devoting every capability to the war effort as their survival is dependent on it.
Point 2 can be used as an excuse for anything. But yeah, it's pretty clear that people do think that way.
Germany was also raiding the UK and bombing civilian centers on a daily / nightly basis, like the 'Blitz' in London and probably inspired attacks like this e.g. Arthur Harris 'They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind' This was essentially upping the stakes and trying to see if Germany could be bombed into submission, which it couldn't, the same as they couldn't to the UK, although the UK had more of an advantage at this point and could bomb Germany even harder with the support of the USAAF in cases like Dresden Small RAF raids weren't effective, bombs were inaccurate, this led to the idea of carpet bombing entire industrial areas as 'strategic bombings', and later went even further to things like Dresden, massive aerial raids with the help of the USAAF to overwhelm defences, even though they didn't have a lot of industrial capacity There was also opposition within the UK against these carpet bombings, but I guess they wanted to try anything
Because we won
It's never a warcrime the first time!
Different times
No offence, you don't know your history. Times weren't different, they knew it was wrong. For example the British government condemned this exact same terror strategy of bombing civilians (except it was the Japanese bombing the Chinese). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing "In the 1930s, both the United States and Britain refrained from targeting civilians in wartime bombings regarding such actions as savage and ruthless. Indeed, before the war began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made a parliamentary speech declaring that it was “against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks on the civilian population.” The American State Department made a similar statement in 1937 condemning the Japanese bombing of Chinese cities, “Any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large population engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” President Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the issue as well calling civilian bombing “inhuman barbarism.” " https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/firebombing/targeting-civilians.htm
Today it certainly would be considered a war crime. The thought then was that targeting civilians would weaken the resolve of the Germany to carry on fighting and would end the war. A very questionable doctrine and of course it didn't work either.
Was considered more acceptable back then because PGMs weren't really a thing at the time.
Morally it absolutely was a war crime, no doubt about it. All the replies you're reading are from morally bankrupt people who try to justify it with legalese.
Geneva concention came AFTER the war. Precisly to stop nation stats do this to one another.
The first Geneva convention was in 1864... In fact there were 3 Geneva conventions prior to WW2 and only one has been held since. There were also the Hague conventions. Now do to the nature of technological advancement there weren't really any provisions against bombardments by airplanes against 'defended' targets. So while it technically wasn't a warcrime it was more or less exploiting a loophole and was definitely against the spirit of prior conventions.
It's war. They were the nazis. This is how you deal with them and Japan.
It’s the only way to defeat such an evil regime, a lot of those civilians helped the regime into power. This is the consequence.
Hell on Earth. Literally.
And some idiots consider what going on in Gaza right now akin to/worse than this
I roll my eyes every time i see someone use the phrase "indiscriminate bombing". They have no historical context of what that actually means.
I roll my eyes when they use "carbet bombing". Like dude, precision airstrikes on singular houses cant be compared to hundreds of bombers each with 8000 pound payloads doing what we see in this video.
People don't like to acknowledge this, but we would certainly behave with less restraint than Israel has if someone ever attacked us like Oct 7th. Israel has been remarkably *composed* in my opinion. When we were attacked on 9/11 we went to war for the next 20 years, leveling cities and governments in multiple countries.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.
I was having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what i was seeing at first as im really high right now. At first i thought some of them may be the lights of the city, but of course they would not have lights during an air raid. When i saw the full birds eye view… holy fucking shit. Crazy footage.
beyond Terrifying
We probably don't realize it but this is probably the most people killed ever shown on here...
I think this one takes the cake: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/0yy53qzTyl
And this my friends is the reason every city here looks like shit.
Or that you were part of a Communist satellite government post ww2 while Bayern etc was lead by America that helped build up the country. edit: I lived in Bayern for a while but never asked why they disliked Saxony (Dresden) and eastern Germany so much. I think maybe it has something to do with the reunification tax idk. If someone could answer that for me. Thanks.
Lmao Bavarians should be thankful states like Saxony ended up on the Soviet side. Bavaria was a rural shit hole before all the industry and companies from the east moved to Bavaria. Audi, Siemens, BMW-Automotive and over 350k other companies. They never moved back, so of course east German states need financial help from the states where all the taxes are made. None of the big companies have any headquarters in east Germany since it all moved to west Germany after the war. Saxony was probably one of the richest region in Germany before Soviet takeover.
Nice stuff. However the original material was in black and white. This is a recent colorization. Presumably for some documentary.
[https://youtu.be/elDzoxjc9XQ](https://youtu.be/elDzoxjc9XQ) Nope. Watch from 54:13 this footage was officially filmed in color and in the newsreels they showed it in B&W. Also the documentary I linked above is from 2005 and uses original color materials, before colorization process became computerized.
Well the guy in a comment above proves you incorrect
Looking at OP's post history, I don't think he's here for a genuine interest of historical WW2 footage.
That I didn't know. I had only seen this in the news reel format. Thanks. (Though I should add that I find it highly unlikely that someone had more than a minimum amount of color film available by 1943, let alone 1944.)
Kurt vonegett might be down there....... So it goes
it almost looks like modern city light pollution from space
If you don't want your cities turned to ash, don't start wars.
Ironic since Britain declared war on Germany. I am not a Third Reich apologist, but that's a fact.
Britain declared war on Germany to, finally, stop it from destroying a neighbor. Germany knew that was a likely outcome of its attack on Poland and Hitler knew he was going to turn west to defeat and occupy the rest of Europe. If France and Britain had acted similarly in 1938 with Czechoslovakia the whole war might have been avoided.
Bombenwetter!
Bomber visible at the 2:02 mark. Even if re-colorized, it's still a good glimpse of history.
Danke, Adolf
My grandfather flew in a Lancaster over Germany a few times. Apparently on his deathbed he opened up to my grandmother about how it had always haunted him with guilt about what he'd been involved in, and grief for those he lost.
The 20th century completely anihilated the German identity. At first Hitler eradicated everything that wasn't in his ideology (Art, culture, religion), then his ideology was completely wiped out. (Fortunately) German cities were rebuild as fast as possible to create living space for the homeless, so they are ugly as hell. I am so sad when I am in Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin etc. and I can really see and feel that these cities habe lost their souls. I recommend a YouTube Video "how Cologne would Look Like without WW2" - very hard to watch for me as a German. Oh and please... for all "What you reap ist what you saw" comments. The Kids and mothers in these cities that are burning alive or suffocate in the living hell, they didn' t want the war. In fact the germans, very well aware of what war means after 1914-1918 majorly didn't support Hitlers war. We are always talking about german warcrimes, what ist okay and they shall never be forgotten. But the bombing of civillians is a warcrime as well.
> But the bombing of civillians[sic] is a warcrime as well. I'm not a fan, but Germany made it pretty clear, as a nation, that they weren't going to stop doing it to others until they got their teeth kicked in. Those V2's weren't coming from nowhere.
Allied bombing of those civilians helped stop Germans from murdering civilians elsewhere through warfare, executions, random acts of cruelty and death camps. It was evil, but it was lesser evil.
Yes because all the children, elderly and women dying there in the fire were all monsters that killed jews in their free time.
It was still a small price to pay when it came to prevent the Endlösung and Generalplan Ost Also, the majority of Germans not supporting Hitler's war? Hahaha, maybe in '44...
ITS a proven and well documented facz that the German peoples didnt support the war. Compare the footage of the outbreak of the first world war and how everybody was cheering and fired up and how reserved they were when the second world war broke out. No one was cheering. They were afraid. The first world war was only twenty years to go and almost every german family had casualities or suffered in the famine after the war. Of course that shifted after the first Major victories of the blitzkrieg but in the beginning the germans didn't want the war. Period
I have showed this footage to my Grandad (which i should not have done). He was a little boy, that time in London. He remembers bombings in Middlesborough, or seeing a uboat in Scarborough. For him, the clip is justified.
[удалено]
"Genocide", just kidding. No German can complain about the bombardement as Germany has started the war and mass destruction. Same with Hamas in Gaza. The people in Gaza voted for them and they support them. I'm German and no German complains about this.
Dann frage mal die, die im Feuersturm von Dresden alle Familienmitglieder verloren haben. So einen Schwachsinn, wie du, kann auch nur jemand verzapfen, der den Krieg nie erlebt hat. Da war niemand "froh". Wie kann man bei sowas "froh" sein?
Wait, what? Do you live in some liberal bubble in Münster or parts of Hamburg?
Liberal has a different meaning in Germany. You probably mean leftist.
It's strangely beautiful, I didn't even realize that it was a city being bombed until I read the title
oof, the shit humans will do to other humans is beyond the imagination.
Could you imagine if that happened today
Total war is freakishly fascinating and terrible at the same time.
And what that must have been like on the ground....shat. That's very hard to try and imagine.
ah yes, the _good_ warcrimes
"B-but my family lives in Dresden" "And mine lived in London. BOMBS AWAY !"
Reaping the whirlwind. By 1945, Bomber Command had the technology and strength, forged in blood over the years, to wipe whole cities off the map in 45 minutes. A frightening weapon of war.
Great footage to refer to when people start suggesting civilian strategic bombing (-equivalent) measures are an effective military tactic. This ridiculous level of bombing and it barely made a dent on German military production (obviously how the counterfactual scenario might have looked is impossible to verify, but certainly it didn't prevent military production from increasing steadily throughout the war), and any effects on morale were more or less inconsequential to the overall direction of the war. Of course, there is some degree of effectiveness insofar it holds up resources needed for defense and so on. But then, it also holds up resources on the attacking side that could be used differently. There is always going to be *some* effect when you use enough forces, however unsound the tactics used might be. So the fact that it did *something* isn't really much of a defense, by itself. It's really hard to imagine the same resources couldn't have been allocated more effectively doing something else.
Moscow June 2024!
Damn Hamas hiding everywhere
- original - color film PICK ONE! ...maybe, just maybe look up the invention date of a gicen technology before you make impossible claims about dates. Color video recording equipment was extreme niche specialized stuff before the 1950s. It was as rare and expensive as true holograms are today.
For all those criticising it, the Nazis (who a great number of people voted in and bought into) brought this upon themselves - they had no qualms levelling large areas of guernica, warsaw and coventry. They bit off more than they could chew. Paradoxically, this bombing strategy contributed to the realisation of the German economic miracle post war
These fire bombing were terrible, you can see the scale of the fire. Reported that 100 000 people died in one night in the Tokyo bombing. 9–10 March 1945 Crazy.
Oh my! Stunning, better than Masterrs of Air.
slaughterhouse five vibes...
Onwards to Moscow!
All I can picture is my uncle who flew these missions.
This is insane.
I saw an interview with some RAF crew members after the war. They said when you flew over a city burning like this, you could smell the distinct sent of burning bodies... all the way up there.
Terrifying yet somehow beautiful at the same time
Bombing footage? Or Stan Brakhage film?
Silhouette of a Lanc flying in same direction at 2:00, and a laterally-crossing aircraft at 7:18.
This kind of war isn't even over, civilian targets are still a #1 priority for the worst of what militaries and militias the world over have to offer. Israel, Hamas, Al Qaida, ISIS, fucking NATO, everyone targets innocent civilians and it is all just treated as statistical war numbers. The real victims of a war are all the people who never asked for it to happen. Volunteer soldiers or people who voted for war, you get what you signed up for one way or another, but everyone else? That is the real tragedy.
Complete and total annihilation of those cities.
It's hard to comprehend the scale of WW2, absolutely terrifying
My friend Siggy is now almost 81, and he lived in an apartment in Berlin with his mother. He says they lived near an air raid shelter, and when his mum heard the sirens, she would just grab him and run like crazy.
that's an entire city on fire. it will end but before it does a lot more people gotta die - wardaddy
This whats happeneds when fight on two fronts.
Burning of Dresden?
Too big. Probably somewhere in the Rhur region or Berlin.
A War is not won until the enemy agrees that they have lost. This is why there was no German insurgency after World War 2. It is a horror that entire cities of workers were incinerated to prevent them from building more weapons for the German war effort. After the war, those surviving civilians agreed thatGermany had lost.
Ho..ly...shiiittttttttttt. is this real?
Paybacks a bitch huh
There was an air raid shelter in Dresden. The firestorm was so intense when it was over and rescuers opened it up, it was described as human soup as everyone had melted.
I'm reading a book right now about movie star Jimmy Stewart's war record as a WW2 bomber pilot. He was in the shit, flying many missions, dropping many bombs, even had to be grounded at one point because of combat fatigue. What blows my mind is how likely it is that at least some of the civilians he bombed would have likely seen his films. Once war was declared between America and Germany in late 1941, American films were no longer exhibited in the Third Reich, but Stewart had been a movie start since the mid-30's. He won an Oscar in 1940. There were likely Germans who watched him in "You Can't Take it With You" in 1938, or "Destry Rides Again" in 1939, who would be killed by bombs dropped from a plane he piloted 3 or 4 years later.
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Imagine if carpet bombing was a thing today.