I Refuse To Fly WW2 CoD German Aircraft. Why?

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by winny

Sadly that's what it took to get Germany to finally surrender, to blame the British for fighting back in the exact same way as they were attacked seems unfair.

Uhm, it was Britain who did declare war on Germany, refused German peace offers during the war (several times in fact), and it was Britain who started bombing German cities.

To put it like the poor British were 'forced' to fight back against an agression is pure BS.

They had a choice in the matter. It was the Brits who choose war, and it was the Brits to choose to wage that war by targetting the enemy cities and civillian population itself.

Don't blame it anyone else. Britain was not 'attacked' and Britain was not fighting 'back'. Britain wanted to fight and it wanted to fight in this rather dirty way. At least be a man about it.

In 1939 the German army was firing 30,000 shells a day into Warsaw. What's the difference between that and dropping bombs on a city? They also continuously attacked the city from the air. That set the tone for WW2.

It set nothing - an army besieged a city and took it. There's hardly anything special about it. Bombarment of a besieged city is permitted under the rules of war, within some reasonable limits - some sort of military advantage from the bombardment, some sort of restraint from pointless destruction IS required, however.

It set the tone for war propaganda perhaps, but certainly not for the conduct military operations. The French and British militaries were well aware of that fact, but of course their propaganda sold a different picture to their public.

Don't think for a second that if Germany had the Bomber force that the allies had that they wouldn't have done the same thing.

Uhm, they didn't. They had quite a serious bomber force and in fact dropped more bombs until about the end of 1943 than the RAF and USAF combined.

The difference was not capacity, but doctrine. Germany did not have 'bomber barons'. They didn't believe in terror bombings unlike Harris, save a small minority in the LW (the most vocal being v. Richthofen). Most of the German leaders, including Hitler and Goering, Speer etc. thought terror bombing is ineffective and wasteful and the bombers are to be used for better effect against the industries and operational bombing (communication and transportation). Moral reasoning hardly played a role, they simply did not believe it was worth it.

Don't get me wrong, there was no glory in Dresden or Hamburg, but that was where the world was at. To judge it using today's standards, the whole bloody thing was wrong.

I agree that its wrong to apply today's rather soft standards to the 1930s/40s. Racism and racist remarks for example for pretty much general, and openly communicated by even top politicians. Unthinkable today. But mass murder was mass murder even back then, as it was even in the middle ages. That does not mean people didn't get away with it, but they were not trumpheting about it either.