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that "the civilian death toll per sortie is historically low".
Would that be the "sorties" dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima?
Would that be the Blitz of London?
Would that be the bombing of Dresden?
Was the Dresden bombing a war crime? This is still being debated in the German parliament as recently as last year.
(See Wikipedia article on Dresden, portions below)
The nature of the bombing of Dresden has made it a unique point of contention and debate. Arguments for and against the bombing being a war crime come from all across the political spectrum and are supported in a variety of ways.
Günter Grass, the German novelist and Nobel laureate for literature and Simon Jenkins, the former editor of The Times, have both referred to the Dresden bombing as a war crime.<61><62> The historian Max Hastings said in an article subtitled, 'the Allied Bombing of Dresden', "I believe it is wrong to describe strategic bombing as a war crime, for this might be held to suggest some moral equivalence with the deeds of the Nazis. Bombing represented a sincere, albeit mistaken, attempt to bring about Germany's military defeat."<63>
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, wrote: Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil genocides in history. But the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes and, as Leo Kuper and Eric Markusen have argued, also acts of genocide."<64> Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn write in their book "The History and Sociology of Genocide" (page 24) that " definition of genocide also excludes civilian victims of aerial bombardment in belligerent states. In this we differ from Jean-Paul Sartre and Leo Kuper."<65>
Neo-Nazi politicians in Germany promote the term the "bombing holocaust" or holocaust of bombs to describe the Allied aerial bombings, especially for the Dresden raids.<66><67> Holger Apfel is the leader of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (German acronym NPD) in Saxony and a member of the Saxon Landtag. In a speech to the parliament of Saxony on January 22, 2005 Apfel said that Allied bombing of Dresden was a "Holocaust of Germans". This was said under parliamentary immunity but Udo Voigt, the chairman of the NPD, repeated the allegations outside the parliament where he was not protected by parliamentary immunity.<68><69> Many German mainstream political opponents consider the NPD's use of firebombing as an attempt to advance neo-Nazi causes by exploiting the intense sentiment surrounding the bombing - not only to win votes, but also as propaganda to place Nazi crimes in a more relativist context and show a moral parity between the Allies of World War II and the Axis. Some Germans had considered the term a violation of German law which forbids Holocaust denial, but in April 2005 the Hamburg public prosecutor's office decided that Udo Voigt's description of the 1945 RAF bombing of Dresden as a "holocaust" was a constitutionally protected exercise of free speech since defamation of was not the prime aim of the argument. Hannah Cleaver writing in the Daily Telegraph makes the point that "Strictly speaking, the word 'holocaust,' which comes from the ancient Greek for 'burnt', might seem apt for Dresden, much of it immolated by the fires started by the RAF's incendiary bombs. But its primary meaning is now so closely linked to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews that such etymology appears to be in bad taste."<69>
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
The Hague Conventions, addressing the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. Despite repeated diplomatic attempts to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not updated before the outbreak of World War II. The absence of positive international humanitarian law does not mean that the laws of war did not cover aerial warfare, but there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws. For details on the obligations of the belligerents of World War II engaged in aerial bombardment see aerial area bombardment and international law in 1945.
THE CASE FOR BOMBING AS A WAR CRIME
Regarding the Allied decision to target Dresden, some proponents of the war crime position argue that an awareness of the devastation known to be caused by firebombing and the effect on the civilian population below was greater than that justified by military necessity and establishes their case on a prima facie basis. This goes without even mentioning that Dresden did not have a military garrison, that most of the industry was in the outskirts and not in the targeted city centre, had no air defense and the cultural significance of the city.
In addition to Stanton, the aforementioned president of Genocide Watch, Simon Jenkins contends that a mass assault against civilians simply constitutes a crime against humanity.<73> Michael Zezima, an anti-war activist and writer of a leftist contingent, supports a similar view, LIKENING THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN TO OTHER SHOCK AND AWE CAMPAIGNS NOTED FOR THEIR LACK OF REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE.<74>
In Fire Sites, German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich posits that Winston Churchill's decision to bomb Germany between January and March 1945 constitutes a war crime, because he claims that the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose.
(Back to Wikipedia)
Countering the claim that Dresden was a significant military target, Friedrich's earlier book, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 focuses on the evidence showing that the German forces were in full retreat by February 1945. He argues that the impact on civilians was out of all proportion to the military goal, reiterrating the argument that the Allied forces were aware of the destruction caused by incendiary bombs. Friedrich also argues that the Allies had known that future attacks were likely to cause ever increasing numbers of civilian deaths.
In Der Brand, Friedrich also suggests that by 1945, the German air defense had collapsed. As for the counter claim that the nationalization of the air-defense system, the Kammhuber Line, meant Dresden was defended, and therefore, a permissible military target, a closer examination is necessary. Given the state of the Luftwaffe after December 1944, the ability for routine air patrols was severely reduced due to fuel shortages.<81> Furthermore, the Allies were completely in control of the air,<81> and Germany had committed all of its fighters originally dedicated to air defense at the Battle of the Bulge<82> Concerning grounded anti-aircraft capacity, it took an average of 16,000 88 mm Flak shells to bring down a single Allied heavy bomber.<83><84> Thus, the meaning of "defended" is disputable - much like the phrase "war crime."
(End of material from Wikipedia on Dresden)
Typically in war, the loser gets convicted of war crimes; the winner doesn't.
Anytime a military bombs a crowded civilian area in hopes of hitting some itinerant(i.e, traveling from place to place), terrorists/insurgents I am confident, speaking as a lawyer who is familiar with the principles of international law, one can successfully argue the case that the attackers must prove they in fact not only killed the itinerants, but did so in a significantly high proportion to the civilians that were killed or injured. And if the defense argues that no one could accurately account for the deaths/injuries resulting from each bomb/rocket/missile, or prove whether they in fact killed any actual terrorists, then the defense admits it cannot prove its own case.
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