why Allies did not bumb Wetzlar?

[vincenzo_maielli]

Because from 1933 to 1938, Ernst Leitz III and his daughter helped the jewish peoples to go in USA, for escape from the nazi persecutions. In the Wetzlar factory, the jewish people learned the photographic technic and job. At the end of this period learning, the Jewish peoples and their family arrived in New York city by ship. In the Big Apple, the responasbles of the New York Leitz, helped the Jewish photo technicians to find a job in the american photo factories or laboratoires. In early 1939 the GESTAPO kidnapped the doughter of Ernst Leitz III, for ceasing the Jewish exodus. This epoch is wrote in a USA Rabin book.

Another reason for save the Leitz factory is the strategic rule of the photographic industries for the civil reconstruction, after the war destroy (in Japan, too).

Ciao.

 

Vincenzo Maielli Bari Italy

[leon chang]

"Because there was no strategic importance to that location and there was no known military production, at least of any significance."

 

Maybe no weapon production, but it is said that the Luftwaffe (German airforce) used to mount Leitz lenses on their Messerschmidt to map hostile territory. Leitz produced superb glass for that time and the Nazis were interested in it.

[vincenzo_maielli]

Dear Leon Chang, you are wrong (i'm very sorry...).

The Leitz Wetzlar factory, as the Dresden Zeiss Ikon or Jaghee factory too, was very important in the german military strategy, for the contruction of the shot systems pointers in the ships, aircrafts and tanks, or for the periscopes for terrestrial or naval use (U BOOT), as the Nippon Kogaku (Nikon) or Asahi Optical (Pentax) in Japan. The real reasons are other, last but not least the build of a new German country against the Soviet enemy in the Cod War years.

Ciao.

 

Vincenzo Maielli Bari Italy

[bill_thorlin]

Perhaps they were worried about the after-market bottoming out rendering their investment worthless.

[vivek iyer]

Leitz escaped because W.Churchill in one of his long depressive bouts during the entire campaign and long after.

[Rich B NYC]

"Because there was no strategic importance to that location and there was no known military production, at least of any significance"

 

You mean other than Leitz being the primary contractor for the gunsight on the Panther tank? I'd call that significant and so would a lot of Sherman crews dodging 75mm shells.

 

I'm sure that there were reasons why Wetzlar remained pretty much unscathed, but that wasn't one of them.

[leon chang]

Vincenzo, what you say is true but this was done also thanks to the previous experiences where Leitz glass was used on German planes to map Bolsjewik territory.

[brambor]

Maybe because their targets were set by Peter Sellers.

[rdkirk]

>>I am a retired Air Force officer who served in Korea, and often wonder about the morality of bombing civilian targets. Even General LeMay, my hero, felt that he would have been tried as a war criminal if the Allies had lost the war. On his own initiative, he lauched the fire bomb raids against Japanese cities, which were more deadly than the atomic bombs. He did so because the US had gone to great expense to design and build the B-29.<<

 

And in fact, the Law of Armed Conflict as now taught to Air Force air crews and targeteers does, indeed, define the type of bombing done by the Allies during WWII as criminal (although not pointing specifically to them). One thing to keep in mind, though, is that with today's precision bombing, such deliberate targeting of civilian areas would be criminal.

 

And today's bombing is truly precise. 99 times out of 100, if we hit it, we were aiming at it; if we aimed at it, we hit it. If it was the wrong target, it was an error of target selection, not bomb precision. I was a targeteer, retired in 1999. Having started at the tail of the Vietnam war, I was utterly astounded by the precision of bombing in the Gulf War. There were some target selection errors. For one thing, we didn't realize immediately the deep extent to which Hussein's forces made dual use of military facilities.

 

>>You mean other than Leitz being the primary contractor for the gunsight on the Panther tank? I'd call that significant and so would a lot of Sherman crews dodging 75mm shells. <<

 

We can call everything and nearly anything strategic in some way.

 

However other factors are also involved in target selection, such as current air defenses, proximity to home bases, proximity to other targets, chances of success based on the confidence of target identification, chances of success based on the probability of target reconstitution, likelihood of successfully destorying one target compared to another, and priority of destroying that particular element compared to the need to destroy other elements (Panthers need ball bearings just to roll--but you can aim a Panther by deadeye, if necessary).

 

It may well have always been on the target list and just never rose to the top.

[bill_thorlin]

Rene - a classic response :)

[gerry_szarek]

My dad was a bombadier (sp) on the heavy, medium and final light bombers, his quote (we could hit a city but not much else). The only way they could guarantee hitting a target was put up a 100 planes flying in formataion and having everybody drop their load at the same time, the collateral damage was horrific. The fire bombing in Japan was very "effective" at wiping out the civilian population since they had virtually no bomb shelters.

 

Back to Wetzlar, I recall that the shareholders/company within the last 5 years or so paid out a big sum of money to the jewish slave labor.

 

Finally my guess as to why they were not bombed, priority was munitions, refineries, tank/aircraft production, fuel, troop concentrations and depots. You also need to remember that the bombers were grounded for months at a time due to BAD weather in England.

 

Gerry

[working camera]

Was Leitz part of IG Farben?

[greg lockrey]

For your information, Leica honored their guarantees and did repair work even during the war. Maybe that's way they didn't level Wetzler.

[george_b1]

Richard -

 

The German's Panther and Tiger tanks had a variant of the 88mm gun as primary armament. The US Sherman M4-A3e8 tanks had 76mm guns, while the light tanks were equipped with 75mm guns.

 

BTW: The Tiger gunsight has a spot (extremely small circle) for aiming up to 300 meters. The 88 gun tube was a "squeeze bore" design, and the 88 projectile was made with sabots to make full use of the squeeze bore. Muzzle velocity was well above the speed of sound - - a "hyper velocity" round.

 

George (The Old Fud)

[terry_rory]

craig hoehne Prolific Poster, mar 20, 2006; 08:37 a.m.

"Was Leitz part of IG Farben?"

 

I think it is well known by now that members of the Leitz family (and influential friends) were involved in getting many jewish people out of Germany before and during the war. Elsie Kuhn-Leitz was imprisoned by the Gestapo when it was discovered she had also been involved in smuggling jewish workers over the Swiss border and had fallen under suspicion when attempting to improve conditions for Ukrainian slave labourers that Leitz had allotted to them by the Nazi regime. Leitz family members and senior staff took great personal risk in these enterprises.

 

This is well documented and published in various books and articles (and websites) over the years.

 

http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/leica/

[eliot_rosen1]

"The damage the Allies wrought on German and Japanese cities was completely unprecendented. Destruction of the entire infrastructure of these countries was central to the Allies' strategy."

 

Compared to what! The final solution (9 million Jews, Catholics, and others gassed to death)?, the rape of Nanking?, the Bataan death march?, the annexation of most of Europe? the attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Stick to ocean physics. You obviously don't have the foggiest idea of what went on during WWII.

[roger_smith4]

"Eliot Rosen , mar 20, 2006; 02:22 p.m.

"The damage the Allies wrought on German and Japanese cities was completely unprecendented. Destruction of the entire infrastructure of these countries was central to the Allies' strategy."

Compared to what! The final solution (9 million Jews, Catholics, and others gassed to death)?, the rape of Nanking?, the Bataan death march?, the annexation of most of Europe? the attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Stick to ocean physics. You obviously don't have the foggiest idea of what went on during WWII."

 

Enough time has passed that there is no need to be an apologist for the appalling level of civilian casualties in World War II on either side of the conflict. The Allies' hands are bloody as well, even if you believe that their cause was righteous. I'd suggest reading John Dower's "War Without Mercy" as a start for understanding the brutality of the Pacific War. Bataan and Pearl Harbor barely register as footnotes in terms of casualties (and certainly civilian casualties), compared to the Japanese occupation of China or the decimation of the populations of the Phillipines, Okinawa, and other islands.

[summitar]

Some other comments: In Matanle's wonderful book on classic cameras, he shows posters that were used by the RAF to get British photographers to sell theis Leica's and Contax's to the RAF. In my year in Vietnam, 1966-67, the laser and TV guided weapons had not yet appeared. Fighter bomber pilots (F-105's, F-4's} were dependent on acquiring the target with their own eyeballs. They didn't want to in or above solid cloud cover: (1) can't find the target, (2) can't see the surface-to-air missiles coming at them. The Paul Doumer bridge in the north withstood many bombing attempts and created a lot of American POWs because it was hard to hit and well defended. The bridge came down on the first sortie to use laser guided weapons.

 

The Tiger tank employed an 88 mm main gun. The Panther used a 75 mm main gun which may have even better. They had very long barrels which produce very high velocities. Our Sherman tank was joke: the Brits called it the "Tommy cooker" or the "Ronson" (Lights first time, every time. The armor and gun were ineffective. The Brits upgraded the gun by using their excellent 17 pounder, equivalent to the 88. Didn't do anything for the armor, though. Our best tank, the Pershing, arrived at the end of war in very low quantities. The best cannon shot were made of tungsten, but the Germans needed it for machine tools. Interesting that the Germans did not use high octane aviation fuel for whatever reason. May I recommend the book "Overlord" writtne by the British Historian Max Hastings in 1984. Very heavy of weapon comparisons. The second best book, also by Hastings, is called "armageddon". Came out about 2 years ago.

[summitar]

It is hard to imagine the depravity and cruelty that sustained combat can produce under miserable conditions. I can't imagine it. I was an Air Force meteorologist. But as a very young lieutenant, I was stationed with an old warrant officer who had been a US Army grunt in New Guinea. He told tales of GI's taking Japanese scalps, and GI's using Japanese skins for wallets and belts. Recall Kipling:

 

And if you should fall on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,

And go to your death like a soldier.

 

Pretty grim. I much preferred this line from Kipling:

 

Ship me somewhere's east of Suez,

Where the best is like the worst,

Where there ain't no ten commandments,

And a man can raise a thirst.

[rdkirk]

>>But as a very young lieutenant, I was stationed with an old warrant officer who had been a US Army grunt in New Guinea. He told tales of GI's taking Japanese scalps, and GI's using Japanese skins for wallets and belts. Recall Kipling: <<

 

This why you hear civilians--not generals--talk of scrapping the Law of Armed Conflict. No general wants to command an army with no law at his disposal.

[marc_bergman1]

Here is a page that shows estimates of deaths in various countries during WWII.

<p>

<a href="http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2stats.htm">Death Statistics for WWII.</a>

<P>

As an aside my father was captured and sent to Stalag XIIA in Limburg, Germany. This is just down the road from Wetzlar from what I see on the map. This was in September of 1944.

<p>

I was stationed in Bitburg, Germany for the USAF from 1970 to 1972. We were able to get along better than the people on this forum.

[dan_fromm2]

Well, yeah, sure, Marc, you were under the civilising influence of the Bitburg AB photo club.

[geoffrey goldberg]

I recommend reading Manchester's long but engrossing history of the Krupp family to

understand some of these issues. While not directly related to Leitz and our bombing

raids, it does address the issues of the military industrial complex, and the intertwining of

commerce, business and diplomacy with an unparalleled accuracy and thoroughness. It

starts c. 1750 and goes through 1960's - and covers the dark side of German industry.

Not to suggest that Leitz is like that - far from it. But it also addresses our role in the war,

and how cumbersome it was to execute our initiatives.

 

On the issue of what we bombed and why, there is some interesting material out there. A

book was written some years ago on a small town of 100,000 people in Germany which

just made the British bombing list cutoff, and was pretty much destroyed. Ironically, its

strategic value was exagerated, as the industrial aspects were unfortunately mis-labelled

by faulty intelligence. But these things do happen in war, and still do.

 

Also, the Holocaust Museum in Washington has some pretty good documentation on the

American decisions not to bomb the camps or related activities. Whether this was driven

by resource allocation, concerns over bombing accuracy, or callousness will never really be

known. All are valid points.

 

However, between LeMay, Tokyo, Dresden, and our use of atomic bombs, there is enough

fault to go around. War is never clean.

 

Geoff

[OCULUS New York]

I thought that, after the obvious heavy industries, there were two specialty targets: ball bearings and lenses. I think Dresden and Oberkocken/Jena (Zeiss) took their hits. Leica made equipment for US and Brits; so maybe there was some cross-interest, rather than cross-hairs.

 

Cheers,

Ray Hull

[kelly_flanigan1]

How many Allied POW's were being processed thru the Wetzlar transit area? <BR><BR>What would the worth of zapping the Wetzlar optical production area be versus killing off 100 to 1000 POW's at the same time? <BR><BR>Would the later war in Vietnam be more favored in the USA if the USA bombed the POW camps? holding our own men?<BR><BR>Were the allied POW areas known to the USA public; if a sacrfice our own guys calculation was made? <BR><BR>How close was the Welzlar optical works to the allied POWs being processed?<BR><BR>Was the works bunched up; or spread all around the town, so not really one target?<BR><BR>It is interesting how most all above have ignored the negative impact on morale it is to bomb ones one soldiers as POW's being processed.