Another thing to consider is that private collections are, in many cases, open to properly accredited researchers just as are the main collections held in storage by public museums. In both cases it is a justified policy as it protects valuable items from casual gawpers. If one is a serious researcher then a polite letter and reasons for wanting to view items backed up with a creditable research program will gain access. Used that several times myself. I can understand curiousity but considering costs, values both historic and financial etc. then it is best to ensure that items are protected. It is a very rare public display indeed that allows unfettered access to objects.

I can think of any number of reasons why a collector would be reluctant to display items. Things like proper public display conditions (expensive), insurance (both for the items and public liability), keeping the public from damaging them etc. etc. etc. I collect antique firearms and I have some interesting examples, if I do display any of them it is under quite strict conditions and never where they are kept.

I can understand that people are interested in seeing rare and interesting items and artwork but in the end they are property of the collector who has probably spent a lot of their own money acquiring them so they have every right to privacy. There are sufficient publicly owned items in public museums to satisfy public curiousity and interest.

The F35 will go into service before we become extinct. 😀

My problem with this argument, and particularly the Dresden issue, is why is Bomber Command held accountable in this way? Why is Bomber Command singled-out as the only command (Allied or Axis) at this, or any other, stage of the war that has to conduct itself towards a strategic goal yet without making any strategic error or causing any unnecessary casualties to the enemy?

And I agree with you on the subject of singling out Bomber Command in that way regarding Dresden. WW2 was indescribably brutal yet in a succession of terrible events of far greater magnitude from the industrially managed slaughter in Eastern Europe committed by the Nazis, the horrors of Japanese behaviour in China, the unimaginable brutality of the eastern front where both sides seemed to compete for the dubious honour of who could kill the most troops and civilians, whether their own or the enemy’s, through to the area bombing of civilian populations by both sides (which includes the two atomic bomb attacks) the fixation with Dresden is a puzzle.

The casualty figures are not by WW2 standards excessive, nor is the material damage inflicted. Perhaps, and this is I stress is just a personal thought, it is that the attack comes at a time when it was redundant in terms of any strategic benefit. At the time this was recognised but suppressed. But also there was a degree of post-war political influence involved as the Cold War was played out through propaganda that was desperate to restructure the wartime alliances into reasons for post-war hostility.

To many on the left as the nuclear threat grew, the only analogy that could be used as an example of the horrors that the peace movement was opposing was the destruction of a city like Dresden, which even the western allies came to admit was not a legitimate strategic target. In the emotionally charged Cold War days of east/west rivalry and left wing dissent in the west then it became the obvious choice as an example of the inhumanity of war. The left couldn’t use the far worse atrocities committed by Stalin or by the Russian armies as they ground the Germans into dust – Stalinist Russia and its Cold War successor after his death was the peaceful paradise to which the far left aspired. Now even a left wing person like myself recognises, and I might add being of a certain age, recognised at the time that that vision of Communist Russia was not only flawed but absolute rubbish. Stalinist Russia was far worse than Germany under the Nazis in its regard for human freedom.

So as I see it Dresden becomes an important point in a post war political campaign which the anti-Fascist elements in the west can grasp to prove that we were no better than we ought to be and that the halcyon vision of the peaceful just Communist workers paradise state was not the rubbish it really was. The nuclear attacks on Japan were used in the same way. They could say that we waged indiscriminate war against civilians while the peaceful people of Russia were only defending themselves – a specious argument I know but that didn’t stop people from making it. Also I suspect that within the post war reality of a not very deNazified Germany there was a natural resentment directed at those who had waged war against them and while they had Auschwitz and a thousand other obscenities we had Dresden. However all of that is very complex issue and what I have suggested in that brief outline could probably stock a library filled with discussions. 🙂

Actually and as usual, and as someone else as pointed out, this thread has gone off on the predictable tangent.

It is always an emotive topic however I would like to point out that nowhere did I condemn the Bomber Command crews, I also, I might add, support fully any efforts to recognise their bravery and sacrifice. Now if anyone of the people who criticised my comments can point out an example of where I said anything to the contrary go ahead.

What I did say and perhaps I wasn’t being clear was that a point was reached in the war when the area bombing approach ceased to have any positive strategic effects. As with the German blitz on Britain the morale of the German civilians was not being broken and from that point on any losses of Bomber Command personnel became unnecessary to the strategic objectives of the war. I also said that for strategic purposes the raid on Dresden in early 1945 was of no value. And the truth is that it was of no value – it was simply a sop to the Russians. Now that is not a condemnation of the crews that took part but a criticism of the decision that launched the raid. I don’t think there is anyone with any knowledge of the strategic value of Dresden that will dispute that.

I understand about arguments for total war, but those should never be allowed to supersede the primary purpose which is to use one’s strategic resources for specific tasks that actually result in success for the strategic aims a nation has. Total war is not a synonym for wholesale destruction of the enemy, it is a recognition that a nation’s resources must be used to gain that objective in the best and most cost effective way and with that comes the recognition that recognition of changing circumstances means that it is necessary to be flexible and change one’s strategic approaches when the situation dictates a change.

Also area bombing and the USAAF daylight campaign didn’t seriously disrupt German military production. The daylight attacks did have one great benefit which wasn’t their so-called pinpoint bombing ability which as we are all aware didn’t ever exist – it was the destruction of the Luftwaffe by the American long range fighters. The night area bombing campaign had little effect on the Luftwaffe other than to allow their night fighter aces to build up very large confirmed scores.

We know that the raids had little effect on German armaments production because our own post-war surveys tell us that. Yes the Germans did increase production using slave labour, but that is an extraneous issue because it is destruction of the actual means of production i.e. the factories that counts, not killing the workers. If our strategic bombing campaign had worked those factories would have ceased to exist however they didn’t they were just relocated to safer locations.

The part of the strategic bombing campaign that did work in the end was the destruction of German fuel production and the ongoing efforts to disrupt the means of getting that fuel to where it was needed. In a mechanized war it is fuel that that matters. Thousand of new tanks and fighters are no use if there is no fuel to power them, as the Germans found out. That, and the destruction of the Luftwaffe in the daylight air battles, is probably the best result of the strategic bombing campaign. None of that is a criticism or attack on the courageous efforts of the crews of Bomber Command, but simply recognition that perhaps we should have started earlier on achieving those strategic aims. That was also the debate during the war and it is one that continues.

For a time earlier in the war the bombing of Germany was the only direct means we had of bringing the war home to Germany but as we know the early efforts had little value except as morale boosters for our side. Yes it did by diverting war materials from offensive to defensive uses force the Germans into overstretching their resources, but that result, as far as Bomber Command is concerned, made a rod for its own back because of the concomitant escalation on both sides of resources needed to prosecute offence and defence. But as the overall effect of the area bombing was not seriously impeding German war material production, which our own post-war surveys confirm, then we do need to recognise that a point was reached when Bomber Command resources both scientific and material might perhaps have been used in different ways – certainly ways that would reduce the losses that were suffered by the command in the later stages of the war.

I suspect Moggy is referring to the 88mm anti-aircraft gun/Flugzeugabwhrkanone Rather than the Ju88 aircraft. Though I may be wrong.

Something I have edited my post to correct 😮

88 mm Flak guns, which were very effective anti-tank guns too.

But the Germans were never short of anti-tank guns, by 1944 on the eastern front they were short of the people to use them. The Russians were simply capable of putting more well-armed troops on the ground than the Germans.

I’ve always wondered why the Germans would waste so much effort trying to stop an offensive that was causing so little ‘morale crushing and strategic material destruction’?

As has been said, the thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the millions of rounds of ammunition and the millions of men (women and children) to man these defences.

On the, disastrous, Nuremberg raid the Germans put up two-hundred-and-fifty night-fighters, about one for every three bombers, and most of them shot-down precisely nothing on what was the blackest night for Bomber Command. That is an enormous effort in aircraft manufacture, avionics (radar), crew-training, fuel and so-on.

Why bother if the Bomber Command offensives were causing little ‘strategic material destruction’?

Essentially I agree with your assessment that the bomber offensives could have been better directed but what military campaign couldn’t with the benefit of hindsight; why does Bomber Command always come in for such criticism over Dresden? Why does Bomber Command have to meet some ‘ideal’ that other commands, or commanders, don’t?

Basically in regard to the need for the Germans to concentrate anti-aircraft resources you are ignoring the USAAF daylight raids as well. The same guns can be used both at night and in daytime. The Luftwaffe was defeated by the daylight fighter escorted bombing offensive in a process of simple attrition, not by badly targeted raids at night – German aircraft production figures confirm that as we are all aware. Also I think you are simply regurgitating our wartime propaganda which despite its home front morale boosting qualities was shown after the war to have been somewhat less than accurate.

However you like to see it, in fact the Dresden raid was unnecessary and only intended as a sop to Stalin’s complaints about how the Red Army was taking enormous casualties in its push into the eastern Reich. The Soviet Union’s profligate use of its own soldiers is a different issue, but whether we like it or not the big event was happening on the ground in the east – if the Russians had not pushed their offensive in the way they did Bomber Command’s efforts would not have given us the final victory. Or to put it another way if Dresden hadn’t happened it would not have altered the final outcome.

I am not condemning the crews of Bomber Command who, when all is said and done, were simply doing the job they had been given which was to attack Dresden. I am simply saying that at that stage of the war the attack was unnecessary – the German Army was being over run and the Luftwaffe was a spent force. Dresden remains an emotive issue, so do the atomic raids on Japan – the latter demonstrated finally for the Japanese command that they had no hope, but Dresden demonstrated nothing and achieved very little. As I said blowing up civilians in a military and political dictatorship like Nazi Germany has little effect on the leaders and their policies. But when the Russians got into the suburbs of Berlin that sure got Hitler’s attention.

It is not a matter of hindsight to argue that RAF Bomber Command’s resources could have been used in different ways – there was quite considerable debate about it in the last years of the war. If they had it may well have been that losses may have been reduced. Yes the Bomber Command veterans deserved their own campaign medal and yes that memorial was obscenely late in coming however I do think that WW2 did show us that there are limits to what conventional bombing tactics can achieve against civilian targets. British civilians didn’t break under the Blitz and the German civilians didn’t break under the air assault. The strategic objective of the war was to defeat Nazi Germany and that was achieved by the rather conventional tactic of breaking the military power of Germany, not German morale despite the prophecies by the German leaders after the first of the 1000 bomber raids.