Talk:Aerial bombardment and international law

October 2013

This edit had a comment "Add more information. FYI, there was no specific customary law passed specifically relating to aerial warfare which made no one violated *specific* customary law. Also, the article needs an update on the trials as well regarding aerial bombing." to what does it relate (and mean)? PBS (talk) 13:54, 13 October 2013‎ (UTC)

Updates and expansion August 2013 to January 2014

@XXzoonamiXX: I have left the changes you have been making to accumulate in this article, and I think it is now time to comment on them and probably make some changes:

1. It is "1907 Hague Conventions" plural not "Convention" singular. This is just the same as the Geneva Conventions because the Hague Conventions were à la carte and nations could choose which of the fourteen they signed. There was one conference and that can be termed a convention, but there fourteen treaties each of which is a numbered "convention".
2. Why change the convention quoted from Hague II to Hague IV?
3. "there was no international prohibition against indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in defended places, a shortcoming in the rules that was greatly exacerbated by aerial bombardment."
   • This introduces a falsehood, there were international prohibition against indiscriminate bombardment of civilians, as distinctions was already recognised at that time.
   • It also introduces a POV "a shortcoming in the rules".
4. "civilians became extremely vulnerable and were inevitably collateral targets" collateral targets is a contradiction in terms.
5. "favor" is American spelling this article is in British English
6. This article is termed "Aerial bombardment and international law" it is not about aerial bombardment. The World War I additions are simplistic to put it mildly. For example the Zeppelins bombed Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn, not indiscriminately but because British troops embarked there for the continent. As this is about "Aerial bombardment and international law" and not "Aerial bombardment" these additions are not desirable as they bloat the article and to bring in a balanced POV would need to be increased considerably so this article should remain focused and such details left to articles about aerial bombardment.
7. "Jefferson Reynolds in an article in the The U.S. Air Force Law Review" why remove "in the"?
8. "The German bombings of Guernica and Durango in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese aerial attacks on crowded Chinese cities during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937–38 attracted worldwide condemnation,"
   • The source is only for the resolution condemning bombing from the air for which there is no military necessity because of the "horror of the bombing of civilian population[s]". What is the point of this detail, particularly the POV slant of "crowded Chinese" and are you sure that it was because of the German bombings? As the resolution makes no comment on the perpetrators of atrocities why should this artilce?
9. "In 1939" to "At the start of World War II in 1939" needs a source for precisely when the decelerations were made, as the sources I have only say in 1939.
10. "However, this was not honored as belligerents of both sides in the war adopted a policy of indiscriminate bombing of enemy cities. " this is a simplistic distortion of what was there before. Also hundred of cities were bombed, in an article such as this that is about the legal aspects there is no need to create a partial list which is bound to be biased and inconclusive.
11. "massive destruction of non-military targets inflicted during" POV
12. "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity" This was already a war crime under the Hague conventions "To destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;"
13. "due to the absence of positive or specific customary international humanitarian law prohibiting illegal conducts of aerial warfare in World War II,..." This is not true there was customary and humanitarian laws covering the conduct of aerial warfare in World War II
14. addition of the Einsatzgruppen Trial I see no purpose served by this whole entry as it did not change in any way international law regarding aerial bombardment.
15. " This issue was addressed because drafters of Protocol I pointed out historical examples such as Japan in World War II who often dispersed legitimate military and industrial targets (almost two-thirds of production was from small factories of thirty or fewer persons or in wooden homes, which were clustered around the factories) throughout urban areas in many of its cities either with the sole purpose of preventing enemy forces from bombing these targets or using its civilian casualties caused by enemy bombardment as propaganda value against the enemy." This is a POV from the point of view of Americans. Not all industry is zoned before a war because one day the country will be at war. For example the British do not consider that they were any way responsible for the fact that industry was dispersed throughout Coventry for historical reasons, nor likewise that the Germans were responsible for a similar dispersal in Dresden. Protocol I says nothing like this the actual wording is in Article 51.7 "The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations."

It is my intention to edit the article to address the points above but I am willing to discuss the changes here before I make any and have numbered the points to make referring to them easier. -- PBS (talk) 13:21, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Text removed from the article (Einsatzgruppen Trial)

Text removed from the article (Einsatzgruppen Trial)

In the Einsatzgruppen Trial, the German defendants argued that the bombardment from the air of civilians was just as equally and morally bad as the shooting of civilians by combatants on land. They also stated that if Allied indiscriminate air attacks on German and Japanese cities were legitimate in ending the war, so were the killing of the Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust and therefore should be exonerated from the charge of killing civilian populations by land forces. The American military tribunal rejected this argument by drawing a distinction between an act of legitimate warfare, namely the incidental but unavoidable injury to civilians through aerial bombardment of military objectives and the premeditated killing of all members of certain categories of civilians in occupied territory: A city is bombed for tactical purposes: communications are to be destroyed, railroads wrecked, ammunition plants demolished, factories razed, all for the purposes of impeding the military. In those operations, it inevitably happens that non-military persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to those same railway tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women, and children and shooting them. It was argued in behalf of the defendants that there was no moral distinction between shooting civilians with rifles and killing them by means of atomic bombs. There is no doubt that the invention of the atomic bomb has added a preoccupation and worry to the human race, but the atomic bomb, when used, was not aimed at non-combatants. Like any other aerial bomb employed during the war, it was dropped to overcome military resistance. Thus, as grave a military action as is an air bombardment, whether with the usual bombs or by atomic bomb, the one and only purpose of the bombing is to effect the surrender of the bombed nation. The people of that nation, through their representatives, may surrender and, with the surrender, the bombing ceases, the killing is ended. Furthermore, a city is assured of not being bombed by the law-abiding belligerent if it is declared an open city. With the Jews, it was entirely different. Even if the nation surrendered, they still were killed as individuals. It has not been shown throughout this entire trial that the killing of the Jews as Jews in any way subdued or abated the military force of the enemy, it was not demonstrated how mass killings and indiscriminate slaughter helped or was designed to help in shortening or winning the war for Germany.

The arguments presented by this section do not deal in a coherent way with the issue of area bombardment. It was an argument put forward to discredit the defence of some of the most odious crimes committed by the Nazi regiment. But because it was an American trial, there is no mention of strategic bombing or the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure such as described in the British dehousing paper. If this issue is to be addressed then there is a clearer source that can be quoted:

"Berlin, London and Toyko were not bombed because their inhabitants were German, English or Japanese, but because they were enemy strongholds. Accordingly, the killing ceased when the war ended and there was no longer any enemy."

• Taylor, Telford (28 March 1982). "When people kill a people". New York Times.

Telford Taylor was Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. -- PBS (talk) 17:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

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