Clive Elliott Interview...

[ArtistsRifles]

Generally a reasonable reply but I would take issue with one part:

 

What about the fact that British, and American planes fire bombed a known civilian target and killed a few hundred thousand civilians (Of course im talking about Dresden).

 

When people talk about Dresden it's amazing how they forget to look back to a few years earlier at what happened to cities like Coventry, London, Plymouth etc. Up till this point in time Luftwaffe and RAF raids had been restricted to targets of military value - Hitlers Luftwaffe opted to change that. It is said that the first raid on London was the result of a navigational error but that when the RAF bombed Berlin in reprisal - which should have equalised/ended things - Hitler went into one of his famous ranges and ordered English cities obliterated. A dumb decision even by a madmans standards as it gave the RAF airfields the breather they needed to regroup and the rest is history.

When Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris made the statement "They have sown the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind" in essence he was saying "fair enough - the Germans want to change the rules on bombing cities - we'll play by their rules then".

The fact we opted to develop the heavy 4-engined bomber and the Germans didn't can be held up both as one of the reasons the UK stood for so long against the might of the Third Reich all alone and one of the reasons Bomber Command could do ten or a hundredfold to German cities what the Luftwaffe tried to do to the UK's.

I'm not saying this makes it right in any way ahape or form BUT in times of war it is the norm to play by the other sides rules - the theory being they can't complain when you kick their butts.

 

 

[Mark]

Mmmm! navigational error I could agree with as the JU87? was lost when the crew decided to ditch the bombs and head for home, as for the 4 engined bomber the Luftwaffe did have the Condor, which the silly blighters decided to use for patrolling the sea etc instead of attacking us at home

[saracenstump]

i think when it comes to re-enacting i think some people take the idea that all russian re-enactors must be communists,all germans are nazis, americans are the unfaulting heroes and the british were about somewhere.unfortunaly this is what some of the history books have led us to belive.in war things happen that no wished would,people are brainwashed into doing things that at any other time they would reel from in disgust but this is a fact of life.if you re-enact one part or side i feel this is a misrepentation of the history,these units existed and are apart of the whole,i feel that if you represent any unit you must as amark of respect to those you are portraying to be as accurate as possible but not to bring the politics back into it.if for example you had a jeep and started putting modern lights and accessories on it and passed it as wartime that would be a mockery.if you strive to kit it out with all the right kit and to make it as original as possible you get a totally different reaction,such is the case of most of these groups i think.unfortunatley these times are still in living memory so different reactions will be got.as for our hobby remember these vehicles are used in war for either killing or transporting people or equipment to harm others even jeeps!

people will never be totally happy with anything someone does or says.veterans are veterans whatever their nationality and have my respect whoever they are, that is why my vehicle wears a poppy to remember those who didn't return and i always have time for anyone who wants to talk to me.

as for peoples opinions they have the right to make their point and own decisions this is why we have freedom of speech so if someone wants to re-enact the other side it doesn't mean they are anyway that politically minded or they would'nt be allowed to join these groups so in my opinion these groups are nessercery to give a more realistic account,this doesn't mean going to the extreme,ie running around re-enacting war crimes!

so that concludes my opinion so hopefully i haven't offended anyone in the process

[ArtistsRifles]

Mmmm! navigational error I could agree with as the JU87? was lost when the crew decided to ditch the bombs and head for home, as for the 4 engined bomber the Luftwaffe did have the Condor, which the silly blighters decided to use for patrolling the sea etc instead of attacking us at home

 

 

I seem to recall it being a He-111 - don't think they used the Do-17's for night attacks and not sure if the JU-88 was in service then??

There's an interesting article here http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/about-blitz.htm

[Guest matt]

Ni Neil,

 

JU-88's were indeed in service during the Battle of Britain.

 

Matt.

[Snapper]

The Dresden thing will just not go away, will it? The Russians requested that the Allies attack eastern German cities including Berlin, Chemnitz and Dresden. These locations were combined by the War Cabinet and the Air Ministry to create Operation Thunderclap. Bomber Command had been hitting Berlin for some considerable time and it is now accepted that the Battle of Berlin was probably a draw at best for the British. Therefore Harris was presented with the targets he had to hit. He had no qualms about killing Germans, it was what he was paid for, and he was an advocate of bombing as a means of defeating the Germans even though his hope this could be done without a ground war in the west was hopelessly redundant and flawed in principal from the outset. So, the RAF bombed Dresden by night. a big force with the Command at almost full strength. A decoy plan to lure the nightfighters away was entirely successful. The weather was right and the Pathfinders worked perfectly and the city was devastated. It was textbook "end to end" stuff. There have been lots of reasons given for the attack, citing the transport and local munitions industries. There have been genuine and wild efforts to guage the casualties. Dresden was just another major city of the Nazi Reich, it was there to be smashed. Harris had inherited a bombing policy he admittedly supported. He did not dictate targeting decisions as such and in the case of Dresden he obeyed a direct order from Churchill's cabinet. Dresden was the culmination of years of effort and sacrifice to take the war to the Reich - to destroy their military industrial complex.

 

The bomber was Britain's only way of taking on the Germans for four years. By the end

900,000 German military personnel were on anti-aircraft duties instead of prosecuting the war elsewhere. 1.2 million men were working in reconstruction instead of in the factories. The entire aircraft manufacturing industry had been all but pushed into defensive aircraft production - as a tactical air force, a role it defined, the Luftwaffe was dead. 55,000 Bomber Command personnel died. I think it would be entirely wrong not to have sympathy for the German innocents, but they were actually victims of their system of government. It was said that the generals fought seven battles a year and the admirals seven battles a war; but Harris fought seven battles a week for three years. None of these facts make any of this "right" given the massive civilian suffering. I'm not sure I can add any gravitas by listing the cities the offensive is often labelled as a reprisal for. We could even start with Guernica. And if the Germans had won, their version of Nuremburg would have been equally conclusive but much more brutal for our leaders, civilian or otherwise. But surely we have no need to feel any guilt for the freedom our people won for us at such a cost. Needs as needs must. The bomber offensive was a war of terror against an unspeakably cruel State that happily waged war, genocide and enslavement on it's neighbours. Don't let modern day German "victim culture" gain any credence. It is a lie. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Degsy]

Well said Snapper.

[Mark]

You did not mention the "yanks" that bombed by day as well

[79x100]

Hear, Hear, Snapper.

 

As you have suggested, war crimes are usually perpetrated against the defenceless. The scale of Bomber Command casualties shows that their enemy was anything other than defenceless.

 

Lest we Forget.

 

Rich.

[ArtistsRifles]

You did not mention the "yanks" that bombed by day as well

 

 

Funnily enough - most of the documentaries on Dresden either fail to mention this - or gloss over it.......

 

Strange how this thread of Clives interview has really grown!!!!!!!!

[Jack]

Might have a point there Neil.

 

Time for us to post the next 'HMVF interview'.

 

 

[Snapper]

Sorry for leaving out the Americans. We can share the blame or the glory depending on a particular viewpoint. The recent 100 BG histories on this site make me sure where I sit on that one. Nuff said.

[hardyferret]

Glad to see, the general opinion on this witch hunt against the bogey men of bomber command is an insult Artistsrifles has summed this up in 'we followed the lead'.

Unfortunately many people do seem to forget it was Germany's expansionist foreign policy which started ww2.

If my memory serves me right the Luftwaffe happily bombed a neutral country namely Belfast in Ireland, with I think a greater loss of life than Coventry!!

Also why when I hear and read accounts of German's who lived through the third reich do they all deny either party membership or were against the nazi's?

Someone voted them in, and who were the 1000's who cheered and waved at Nuremberg??

Who applauded on kristalnacht when synagogues and Jewish homes and shops were looted and burned??

I know, know not correct question's but ones not fully answered.

And as for not knowing what was going on in the camps, troops have leave, and can't help themselves to brag or tell mum, wife,etc and this would have done the rounds.

I think while everything was going well France, the old enemy occupied, Britain supposedly finished, the communists being chased to Moscow, one could 'forget' the distasteful but necessary work that herr hitler, himmler and those polite, smartand very fit young men of the ss had to do for us and after the years of the weimar republic and raging inflation these were the people to blame?

Then the whole thing fortunately went t-ts up. And suddenly nobody wanted to be part of the gang.

The onset of the cold war and the need to to rebuild germany quickly ensured the de-nazification programme was in many cases a farce, Simon Wiesenthal in his search for justice against former nazis in positions of post war power had endless obstacles placed in his way by the new German state, which over the years let the whole thing slide away with precious few convictions

 

These are just my thoughts,

 

Regards Hardyferret

 

 

[Mark]

Not to mention the smuggling out of the top scientists to work on the "bomb" and denying all knowledge of their whereabouts, who was that I wonder??

[Snapper]

All good points. The German people were conned by their leaders and bought a lie. It is difficult to blame a people who were on the crest of a slump for not believing in promises which were often delivered to make the country a better place with belief restored. But the top cell of the Nazis wanted so much more and created a system whereby dissent and opposition was impossible. We do not know what it is like to live in a true police state in this country, a regime of a like not seen in the UK since the days of James I or Cromwell. But, the collective German suffering was in itself a means to an end to rid them and the rest of us of a conspiracy of pure evil. That it took too long and cost so much is the bleeding obvious. But to seek to cast blame onto our grandfathers is as much an insult to the anonymous British aircrew, soldiers and sailors (etc) lost achieving victory/liberation (call it what you like) as it perhaps is to the innocents burned to dust in the likes of Hamburg and Rostock. This is my last rant on this particular post.