In February 1945, the Allies, led by Sir Arthur Harris and Bomber Command, destroyed the historic city of Dresden, killing 25,000, most of them civilians. For the 75th anniversary, Sinclair McKay, author of a recent book on the bombing raid, and A.N. Wilson discuss whether it should be regarded as a ‘war crime’.
SINCLAIR MCKAY It was an atrocity. But I hesitate about war crime because war crime is a legal term and not a moral one. It is a legally defined concept.
A.N. WILSON Certainly at one stage of 20th-century history it was a crime to deliberately kill non-combatants and civilians who weren’t in the line of fire for warfare.
MCKAY Indeed, but there are then a number of follow-on questions that come with the label war crime. Who would you accuse of having committed this crime? Who would be held most responsible? Who would stand trial at that tribunal?
WILSON One of the greatest columnists that The Spectator ever had was Auberon Waugh, who would say what a pity it was in 1945 when they had the Nuremberg Trials not to have put Churchill on trial and to have hanged him for this and the bombing of the other German cities.
MCKAY Well the other point that I was going to bring up about the term ‘war crime’ is that the people in Dresden feel uncomfortable that there was so much focus on their city and not other German cities that were bombarded horrifically as well. Every-where from Hamburg to Lübeck, from Essen to Hanover to Cologne, Magdeburg…
WILSON In Hamburg there were pregnant women running along on fire, getting into the canal which was on fire. The whole place was an inferno. Harris started with Lübeck and he chose that…
MCKAY He chose it in 1942 as a sort of laboratory for bombing. Lübeck had no military significance whatsoever.
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