the legends that some German cities were spared from bombing in WWII for some emotional reasons

[Rumpel]

@ the legends that some German cities (Heidelberg, Baden-Baden etc ....) were spared from bombing in WWII for some emotional reasons or other .....

those legends exist in Germany

Have you ever heard of them?
Do you think they are true?

 

[Rumpel]

I have heard of some of those legends - and wonder what you think about them

 

[Lycanthrope]

I voted in the affirmative, only because in war targets are often selected or avoided for emotional reasons.

Kyoto was considered as a potential target for the atomic bomb by the US military in WWII but was ultimately removed from consideration because it viewed by some as a cultural center of Japan.

 

[Rumpel]

an example

Heidelberg, unlike most German cities and towns, was spared from Allied bombing raids during the war. A popular belief is that Heidelberg escaped bombing because the U.S. Army wanted to use the city as a garrison after the war, but, as Heidelberg was neither an industrial center nor a transport hub, it did not present a tactical or strategic target. Other notable university towns, such as Tübingen and Göttingen, were spared bombing as well. Allied air raids focused extensively on the nearby industrial cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

The U.S. Army may have chosen Heidelberg as a garrison base because of its excellent infrastructure, including the Heidelberg–Mannheim Autobahn (motorway), which connected to the Mannheim–Darmstadt–Frankfurt Autobahn, and the U.S. Army installations in Mannheim and Frankfurt. The intact rail infrastructure was more important in the late 1940s and early 1950s when most heavy loads were still carried by train, not by truck. Heidelberg had the untouched Wehrmacht barracks, the "Grossdeutschland Kaserne" which the US Army occupied soon after, renaming it the Campbell Barracks.

Heidelberg - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[LouC]

@ the legends that some German cities (Heidelberg, Baden-Baden etc ....) were spared from bombing in WWII for some emotional reasons or other .....

those legends exist in Germany

Have you ever heard of them?
Do you think they are true?

I have heard of those legends, I am not aware enough of the depth of them to offer that I believe them or disbelieve.

That is why I voted OTHER.

I have no yYes or No opinion because I must admit, while I am not clueless, I am not informed enough.

 

[Rumpel]

For me it is an emotional issue.
I was born in Baden-Baden shortly after the war and my mother told me later as a child that instead of bombs the allied planes had dropped leaflets saying that Baden-Baden would be saved

 

[LouC]

For me it is an emotional issue.
I was born in Baden-Baden shortly after the war and my mother told me later as a child that instead of bombs the allied planes had dropped leaflets saying that Baden-Baden would be saved

Psychological warfare.

Bombs on one city, only paper on another, in hopes of turning the citizenry against each other.

 

[Rumpel]

I have done some research on this matter and I think I know the answer to this question.
But I will wait for some time yet before I cast my vote.

 

[Rumpel]

Sorry ....

Just saw that the option "yes, I have heard of those legends" is missing because of some technical error.

Sorry.

 

[Juin]

I have done some research on this matter and I think I know the answer to this question.
But I will wait for some time yet before I cast my vote.

I am inclined to disbelieve that any was spared for emotional reasons. The Allies had their own huge daily casualties from the war, so it is hard to imagine that there was that kind of concern for the other side. At least not from Bomber Harris.

 

[Rumpel]

@ Baden-Baden:

BADEN-BADEN: SUMMER CAPITAL OF THE BELLE ÉPOQUE​

Last year, Baden-Baden was finally added as a UNESCO World Heritage site as one of eleven ‘Great Spas of Europe’.

What I find particularly exciting about Baden-Baden is that many of the buildings of that time are still standing, whether the spa buildings themselves, the theaters, hotels and restaurants, or other prominent buildings in the town. Why is that? Rumor has it that during World War 2, the U.S. Air Force mistook Baden-Baden for Schaffhausen in Switzerland, which was widely destroyed by bombs. Baden-Baden was lucky and suffered only minor damage from the war.

Baden-Baden: Summer Capital of the Belle Époque - Bürgerleben

How the spa town flourished during the Belle Époque, what a spa day was like back then, about famous guests and destinations of that time that still exist today - this and more is told in the article.

www.buergerleben.com

 

[Rumpel]

At least not from Bomber Harris.

Surely not!

 

[Rumpel]

@ Baden-Baden

 

[Rumpel]

 

[Grand Mal]

I am inclined to disbelieve that any was spared for emotional reasons. The Allies had their own huge daily casualties from the war, so it is hard to imagine that there was that kind of concern for the other side. At least not from Bomber Harris.

There was no sentimentality toward Dresden. My ex-mother-in-law told me about it and the way she described it it sounded like the whole city was like some elaborate Baroque cuckoo clock. There were POWs there, too, but the Allies firebombed it anyway.

 

[Rumpel]

@ Churchill and his aunt

Hi, All:

Just read that a widely-circulated rumor at the time was that Dresden
wouldn't be bombed 'cause Churchill had an aunt there. I also saw the
"General Hospital" episode of "Black Adder Goes Forth" which turned on
the joke about British aristocrats having German relations.

Churchill's Aunt in Dresden?

soc.history.war.world-war-ii.narkive.com

 

[iguanaman]

Psychological warfare.

Bombs on one city, only paper on another, in hopes of turning the citizenry against each other.

LOL So the dead are going to rise up in the bombed cities to attack the unbombed ones? The U.S Govt. was counting on a zombie apocalypse?

 

[Rumpel]

@ Dresden

DRESDEN AND THE HORROR FROM ABOVE​

In Monday's Style section story on the bombing of Dresden, the city should have been described as being in eastern Germany, and the city of Leipzig was misspelled. Also, a photo caption inaccurately translated the name of the Church of Our Lady. (Published 2/15/95)
By Ken Ringle
February 13, 1995
Fifty years ago tomorrow, Benjamin L. Olsen, who now lives in Bethesda, climbed into the cockpit of his B-17 at a field near Bedford, England, and took off on what would become one of the most controversial missions of World War II.
As one 23-year-old pilot among more than 10,000 airborne warriors with the same destination, he knew little about it. He was only a tiny part of the giant Allied war machine hammering the final nails in the coffin of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
But what he would help wreak in his nine-hour round-trip flight to Germany's southeastern corner would be the greatest devastation inflicted from the air by either side on any European city. He was headed for a place called Dresden.
The firebombing of Dresden, which began 50 years ago today, is all but absent from the debates in classrooms and newspapers and on television screens these days over the moral costs and quandaries of World War II. The controversial script for the Smithsonian's ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit barely mentions it. Anti-nuclear critics tend to ignore it altogether.

Yet the destruction of Dresden remains perhaps the most needless and avoidable tragedy of the war against Germany and Japan: a casually chosen, gratuitous horror that contributed little to ending the war and incinerated between 35,000 and 100,000 people together with a global treasure trove of baroque art and architecture.
When the Japanese city of Kyoto, heavy with military industry, was designated the prime target for the first atomic bomb, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson stepped in and saved it because of its beauty, its history and its art. The "Florence of the Elbe," on the other
hand, was erased haphazardly, with no apparent forethought.
"I have never been able to make any sense out of {the decision to bomb} Dresden," said military historian John Keegan last week from his home outside London. "It seems to belong to that frenzy of violence in the last months of the war when the Allies were moving area' bombing into highest gear, intent on reducing the whole of Germany to an inert corpse."

University of Pittsburgh historian Robert P. Newman, author of an upcoming book on Hiroshima, agrees. "To my mind Dresden was an atrocity in a way Hiroshima was not," he said. "The Japanese were clearly defeated but refused to surrender, and there was a real chance a major shock like the atomic bomb could bring them to their senses and end the war, as indeed it did. But there was no excuse for bombing Dresden, even in hindsight. It was wholly irrelevant to the outcome of the war."

If Hiroshima and Nagasaki tend to divide historians by generation and ideology, Dresden has tended to unite them, with scholars of both the right and left debating the whys of its destruction but generally united in declaring it a needless loss.

"He who has forgotten how to weep," wrote Gerhard Hauptmann, "relearns it at the death of Dresden."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/02/13/dresden-and-the-horror-from-above/f3fbb0c6-5305-4221-b789-cbe1091a4f6c/

 

[Rumpel]

Apocalypse in Dresden, February 1945​

What happened in Dresden in February 1945 was apocalyptic.

Apocalypse in Dresden, February 1945 | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

What happened in Dresden in February 1945 was apocalyptic.

www.nationalww2museum.org

 

[Rumpel]

Heidelberg again:

Histories of the bombing campaign against German cities in WW2 often mention that German civilians towards the end of war were prey to fantastical rumours that such-and-such a city "is being spared" because a senior Allied leader once holidayed there, or has a distant relative there or plans to set up his post-war HQ there. Such stories speak of the ignorance and fatalism that prevailed in the late phase of WW2 Germany. The most famous and deluded example is Dresden, supposedly spared (up till the point when it was firebombed) because Churchill's aunt lived there.

But were there any genuine cases of German cities receiving specially lenient treatment by Allied bombers for personal or other unusual reasons?

Were any German cities spared by the Allies for personal or idiosyncratic reasons?

Histories of the bombing campaign against German cities in WW2 often mention that German civilians towards the end of war were prey to fantastical rumours that such-and-such a city "is being s...

history.stackexchange.com

 

[WanderingListener]

LOL So the dead are going to rise up in the bombed cities to attack the unbombed ones? The U.S Govt. was counting on a zombie apocalypse?

No. Survivors in bombed cities, or unbombed cities that aren’t safe, flee to the safe cities placing immense strain on that cities infrastructure.

 

[Grand Mal]

Apocalypse in Dresden, February 1945 | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

What happened in Dresden in February 1945 was apocalyptic.

www.nationalww2museum.org

The American author, Kurt Vonnegut jr. was a POW in Dresden that night. He wrote about it in his book Slaughterhouse 5. Luckily for the prisoners they were kept in underground ex-slaughterhouses, hence the title.

 

[Rumpel]

Some more interesting points are there:

Were any German cities spared by the Allies for personal or idiosyncratic reasons?

Histories of the bombing campaign against German cities in WW2 often mention that German civilians towards the end of war were prey to fantastical rumours that such-and-such a city "is being s...

history.stackexchange.com

When stopped by a German soldier, Private Lichey who spoke fluent German and served as the group’s translator, held up a white flag and explained, “We are representatives of our division commander. We bring you his offer to spare the city of Rothenburg from shelling and bombing if you agree not to defend it. We have been given three hours to get this message to you. If we haven’t returned to our lines by 1800 hours, the town will be bombed and shelled to the ground.”[3] The local military commander Major Thömmes gave up the town, ignoring the order of Adolf Hitler for all towns to fight to the end and thereby saving it from total destruction by artillery. American troops of the 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Division occupied the town on April 17, 1945, and in November 1948 McCloy was named Honorable Protectorate of Rothenburg.

Were any German cities spared by the Allies for personal or idiosyncratic reasons?

Histories of the bombing campaign against German cities in WW2 often mention that German civilians towards the end of war were prey to fantastical rumours that such-and-such a city "is being s...

history.stackexchange.com

 

[iguanaman]

No. Survivors in bombed cities, or unbombed cities that aren’t safe, flee to the safe cities placing immense strain on that cities infrastructure.

How many survivors were there in Dresden?

 

[Bok Tuklo]

The American author, Kurt Vonnegut jr. was a POW in Dresden that night. He wrote about it in his book Slaughterhouse 5. Luckily for the prisoners they were kept in underground ex-slaughterhouses, hence the title.

“The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons.”

From Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut