Reading about Guernica brought me by pure chance back to the Wikipedia page about the September 1st, 1939 Luftwaffe attack on the Polish border town of Wielun. Suffice to say, I was quite surprised. I had referenced that very same page in an article in May 2011 where I lamented the railroaded view of history among some German academics and what effects it has on their students. Just go ahead and compare the two, then grind your teeth.
It's ridiculous. We have three referenced academic sources (British, German, Polish!) independent of one another declaring that the operations hitting Wielun were tactical in nature and aimed against Polish forces spotted by recon the day before. We have near a third of the Luftwaffe's modern divebombers operational on that day taking part in that attack. We have multiple sources reporting bad visibility on that day, including 50+ meters high ground fog and clouds.
And what does the new article claim as "truth"?
That Wielun was an act of deliberate terror bombing! And who is sourced for that accusation? Guess what, it's the guy who wrote the Die Zeit article I referenced in the original post. Yes, the journalist who proved his utter lack of military and technological knowledge back then (that seems to be par for the course for the majority of journalists anway). He's an authoritative source now all of a sudden, but not three military historians. If I wasn't so disgusted I'd be amused by this.
As for "terror bombing": Half the value of terror is with propaganda (your own, and that of the enemy). Terror has to sink in, terror has to demotivate not the victims themselves but the others (hence, Goebbels played down the preliminary numbers he got from Dresden). The location of terror has to remain accessible, primarily for the defenders (as a rallying cry; the attacker simply needs it in enemy hands so that he can point at a searing wound). Vielun was captured around 16:00 hours on the first day of fighting and made no headlines, at all.
German forces committed more than their fair share of atrocities and crimes during WWII. But Wielun wasn't one of them. Stuff like this pisses me off. Going by the knowledge available to the actors on that day, it was a legitimate military target. Even Göring's Luftwaffe was not so complete batshit crazy as to use a full third of the available modern short-range close air support airplanes with the intent of "terrorboming" against a strategically irrelevant small border town - definitively not on Day 1 of the war! For any other military a mishap based on the lack of information age technology would be a foot note in any conflict. But since Germans did it, it has to be sinister. It has to be terror bombing...
And what does the new article claim as "truth"?
That Wielun was an act of deliberate terror bombing! And who is sourced for that accusation? Guess what, it's the guy who wrote the Die Zeit article I referenced in the original post. Yes, the journalist who proved his utter lack of military and technological knowledge back then (that seems to be par for the course for the majority of journalists anway). He's an authoritative source now all of a sudden, but not three military historians. If I wasn't so disgusted I'd be amused by this.
As for "terror bombing": Half the value of terror is with propaganda (your own, and that of the enemy). Terror has to sink in, terror has to demotivate not the victims themselves but the others (hence, Goebbels played down the preliminary numbers he got from Dresden). The location of terror has to remain accessible, primarily for the defenders (as a rallying cry; the attacker simply needs it in enemy hands so that he can point at a searing wound). Vielun was captured around 16:00 hours on the first day of fighting and made no headlines, at all.
German forces committed more than their fair share of atrocities and crimes during WWII. But Wielun wasn't one of them. Stuff like this pisses me off. Going by the knowledge available to the actors on that day, it was a legitimate military target. Even Göring's Luftwaffe was not so complete batshit crazy as to use a full third of the available modern short-range close air support airplanes with the intent of "terrorboming" against a strategically irrelevant small border town - definitively not on Day 1 of the war! For any other military a mishap based on the lack of information age technology would be a foot note in any conflict. But since Germans did it, it has to be sinister. It has to be terror bombing...
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