No County today - military history thread.

Interested in history and it was my best subject at school but wars and battles were something i knew the outcomes of but zero interest in them. Just the thought of the millions of dead due to them leave me cold and for what at the end of the day. Any single person who has ever stopped a single war or battle trumps all those names whose fame is wriitten in blood of others.

Yep, Wellington was my number primarily for his expert strategy during the Peninsular War. Think you under-estimate Zhukov, although like so many others, Rokossvsky nearly made the list but only had 10 spots on the list. Agree about Patton. The nearest our American cousins got to my list were Civil War generals. On a different day, I could have added different people to the list, but that is the great thing about studying history, you learn summat new every time and as we were not there it is all about opinions.

Bomber Harris. Hero or villain ?

Like all miletary history it depends on which side was the winner in the end because they end up writing it. If the axis had won WW2 it woul be interesting who was on their list of war criminals.

Neither.

Definitely not a hero. I think you have to be in or near the battle to be considered thus. I don't really think many Generals mentioned above were heroes. They were normally pretty safe. 

Not a villain either. We had no choice in using our bomber threat. It was the only way we could affect German industry and will to wage war directly. And, ultimately, the Germans 'wrote the rules' early in the war. We just played better by them.

That's a difficult one. If we look at it using modern standards, then he was a terrible person.

What we do know is that Dresden, according to intelligence was a communications and rail hub where troops went through to get to the Russian front or the on going campaign in Italy, hence the reason for the attack. Throw in the Allied advance, the belief that there was a Nazi redoubt in Bavaria, the fear that Russia's advance would stall, the Nazis now had V2s which reached inner space and Churchill and his high command were worried about what the hell was going to come next, there were not enough infantrymen in the British or US armies (the US started to redeploy air force staff), the Nazis had started seeing Me 262s see service which posed a threat to the Allies air dominance ... And you end up in a situation where taking out certain hubs in Dresden and parts of an historic city become a very viable option in order to try and bring the end of the war that little bit closer. 25,000 deaths appears to be the accepted death toll, although misinformation from the Nazis, and still quoted by some people, was quoted as being 200,000. That's a lot of people for a night of raids.

BH knew that streams of German refugees into other already beleaguered cities would cause chaos within Germany, and its ability to fight on. BH had a blue book that had all sorts of info in it, intel, mission reports, photos of bombed out cities, it's no wonder he had become dehumanised seeing it everyday. It was probably quite shocking at first, but by VE Day it probably seemed quite normal.

Would I want him in charge of the social security system and or the NHS today? Absolutely not. But I'd have him in charge of the equivalent of Bomber Command today if we went to war. He understood his mission, he knew how to achieve it. Nuance is really important when looking at stuff like this. War today still involves killing other humans with ever increasing violence and efficiency, but it has far more laws and rules of engagement. In 5 years, the RAF had gone from targeted bombing and dropping leaflets in order to avoid bombing privately owned buildings to dropping as many bombs as it could get on to as many aircraft as it could get in to the sky on as much of an area as it could. That's some change of policy. Do I look down on BH and the crews of Bomber Command because they did it? No, not from my cosy life in 2024 with all of its fine morals and high standards. Calling BH a hero probably is unfair on those who lost their lives as a result of his decisions, but to call him a villain is unfair too. All in my humble opinion, of course

Aye. Also, something rarely mentioned by those trying to re-write history and paint the good guys with a black brush. The Germans DID have kit up in the air blowing bombers out of the sky. I think I'm right in saying the highest rate of casualties in WW2 was the US air crew then British air crew (Americans higher as they did daylight bombing raids).

And of course, had Hitler not arsed about with his magical weapons, the V1s the V2s and so forth (which did practically piss all), then the Germans could have put A LOT more into the air and possibly won that air battle. There's a documentary on Netflix or Amazon about why the Germans lost the war. Goes into forensic detail on some of the logistical f*ck ups that Hitler made. One of which was his 'terror' or 'revenge' weapons programmes. They reckon had he not bothered, he could have put 24,000 more Focke Wulf 190s into the air over German. 24,000 of one of the, if not THE, best fighter aircraft in World War 2. That might have spoilt a few days.

Thank God Hitler was absolutely f*cking rubbish at waging war.