Who started bombing civilians first:Germany or Great Britain

[Barrington James]

Hello ..I sent the following to a friend of mine, a retired history teacher. His reply to me follows. What now? It seems to me that Spaight would not have confessed if Germany had started the bombing war...What do you think of his accusations?

My letter:

The war Hitler was tricked into...

The following is from Spaight's The Splendid Decision. Compare with the above, ch. iii, p. 74:
"Adolf Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets reluctantly after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets... It gave Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield and Southampton the right to look Kiev, Kharkov, Stalingrad and Sebastopol in the face. Our Soviet allies would have been less critical of our inactivity if they had understood what we had done... Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement confining the action of aircraft to battle zones."

BJ


His reply:
BJ –it is really sad that all of your sources continue to spit out garbage !!!!!! -- the Nazis bombed Warsaw, Wieluri, Frampol, and Kamieniec in Poland killing thousands of Polish civilians in September 1939, they bombed 14 cities in France, including Lyons, between May 9 and 10, 1940 and their bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940 resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Dutch civilians --- we have not even bothered to mention their attack on Belgrade ---all in direct violation of the Hague Convention concerning the targeting of civilians—British raids on German targets with civilians were in retaliation after the bombing of Scapa Flow in Britain on March 16, 1940 and on London on August 24, 1940 –it was only after the German bombs fell on London did Churchill order the bombing of

[hermod]

His reply:
BJ –it is really sad that all of your sources continue to spit out garbage !!!!!! -- the Nazis bombed Warsaw, Wieluri, Frampol, and Kamieniec in Poland killing thousands of Polish civilians in September 1939, they bombed 14 cities in France, including Lyons, between May 9 and 10, 1940 and their bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940 resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Dutch civilians --- we have not even bothered to mention their attack on Belgrade ---all in direct violation of the Hague Convention concerning the targeting of civilians—British raids on German targets with civilians were in retaliation after the bombing of Scapa Flow in Britain on March 16, 1940 and on London on August 24, 1940 –it was only after the German bombs fell on London did Churchill order the bombing of

The attacks by the Royal Air Force (RAF) on German cities began with the attack on Wilhelmshaven on 5 September 1939.

On 11 May the British Cabinet decided to unleash the Bomber Command on the air war against the German hinterland. The following night British planes aimlessly dropped bombs for the first time on residential areas of Mönchengladbach-Rheydt. And from then on made such attacks on cities in the Ruhr area night after night. Up to 13 May 1940, i.e. two days later,the German side registered a total of 51 British air attacks on non-military targets plus 14 attacks on military targets such as bridges, railway tracks, defense and industrial plants. The first carpet bombing of a German city was in the night from 15 to 16 May 1940 in Duisburg. After that the RAF committed repeated air attacks on German cities. The night of 24th August 1940 - bombs meant to be dropped on the Thames haven oil storage depot and on the Short's factory at Rochester, by mistake or simply because they were randomly unloaded in order to escape fighters, fell on the City of London and nine other districts inside the Greater London limit. Incendiaries lit fires in Bethnal Green, and St Giles' Church in Cripplegate was damaged. Oxford Street department storeswere damaged. Nine people were killed and 58 injured.


http://fr.scribd.com/doc/87187334/Churc ... ties-First

British historians are so ridiculously blind as soon as WW2 is concerned that it's better to laugh at them...

"In no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results." - Harry Elmer Barnes. American Historian

About the bombing of Polish cities, court historians should learn to discriminate civilians killed during wars and civilians targeted during wars. But do they really care?

And the Germans offered the Poles to surrender Warsaw 2 or 3 times (don't remember how many times) before bombing that city. Proof they wanted to avoid as many civilian deaths as possible. It was probably the same with other Polish and non-Polish cities.

[Mkk]

It was indeed Germany who first bombed civilians in general - see e.g the bombing of Wielun on September 1st 1939. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Wielu%C5%84

However that's a different issue then what is often portrayed in the media, i.e which country [Britain or Germany] bombed eachother first: in this case, it was the UK who started that bombing war.

[Hannover]

Wielun and the numbers alleged in the Wiki are pure propaganda.

It killed an estimated 1,300 civilians, injured hundreds more and destroyed 90 percent of the town centre. There were no military targets of any importance in the area.[1]

Complete nonsense.
Look at the picture they provide, the actual damage was fairly minimal. Wielun was a military target and there was some minimal collateral damage, but clearly not an intentional civilian target.

Polish historian Jerzy B. Cynk, author of The Polish Air Force at War. The official history 1939-1943, wrote about the events: "Numerous direct support missions were also flown, with the heaviest attacks directed against the Polish cavalry and troop concentrations at Wielun."[9]

At 13:00 a German dive bomber wing, I./StG 2 led by Major Oskar Dinort via Nieder-Ellguth, were directed against this unit, followed a few hours later by Schwarzkopff with sixty Ju 87 Stukas of I./Sturzkampfgeschwader 77[8] Weather conditions were unfavourable during the day, with a visibility of only one kilometre and a practically closed layer of fog at 50 metres altitude.[10] Fog, mist and poor visibility thwarted many of the Luftwaffe's sorties planned for the morning of the first day of the invasion.[10] The dive bombers, facing intense anti aircraft fire, inflicted heavy losses on the Polish cavalry, and the advance was turned into a rout by 90 Stukas.[8] On their return home, four of the German Junkers Ju 87 bombers were shot down by the Polish 36 Academic Legion Infantry Regiment stationed nearby.[8] Three waves of attacks were carried out during the day.[8] The town was captured by the German Army on the first day of the invasion.[8]

Just another fabrication that is easily debunked.

- Hannover

[Hannover]

See this recent thread:
new book: 'Britain 1st to bomb civilians indiscriminately '
and excerpted from another thread:

More on the British initiation of terror bombings of civilians here:
Hannover @ banning political parties / more attacks on German democracy
With a list of German towns, cities where the civilian population was illegally terror bombed long before German retaliation.

- Hannover

excerpts:

http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/Churchill/ ... plies.html

..........the British, by their own admission, initiated unrestricted bombing of civilian areas ought to merit for them membership in the select society of "war criminals." The unbelieving reader need only consult the testimony of the British officials J. M. Spaight and Sir Arthur Harris, for incontrovertible proof of this charge.99 A decision of the British Air Ministry made on May 11, 1940, to attack targets in Western Germany instituted the practice of bombing purely civilian objectives. This "epoch-making event," as F. J. P. Veale correctly describes it, marked an ominous departure from the rule that hostilities are to be limited to operations against enemy military forces alone.100 Spaight, former Principal Secretary of the Air Ministry, makes the following amazing comment on the decision of May 11, 1940:
Because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic bombing offensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May 11, 1940, the publicity it deserves. That surely was a mistake. It was a splendid decision.101
But the "great decision," the "splendid decision" of May 11, 1940, which was ultimately to cost the lives of millions, including thousands of Mr. Spaight's own countrymen, was to have an even more grisly sequel, for, according to Sir Charles Snow who had charge of selecting scientific personnel for war research in Great Britain in World War II, F. A. Lindemann, a Cabinet member and confidant of Churchill, produced in early 1942 a remarkable Cabinet paper on the subject of the strategic bombing of Germany:
It described, in quantitative terms, the effect on Germany of a British bombing offensive in the next eighteen months (approximately March 1942-September 1943). The paper laid down a strategic policy. The bombing must be directed essentially against German working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space round them, and so are bound to waste bombs ...102
One wonders if it was the cultivated humanitarianism inherent in this decision to assure the death of more working class Germans per bomb which entitled the Allies, and in particular the British, to sit in moral judgment on German leaders at Nuremberg in 1946!
99. J. M. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated (London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1944) and Sir Arthur Harris, bomber Offensive (London: Collins, 1947).
100. F. J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Apppleton: C. C. Nelson Publishing Company, 1953), p. 122.
101. Spaight, op. cit., p. 7.
102. C. P. Snow, Science and Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 48.

Letter to PBS on fraudulent 'documentary' about the 'Blitz'

Dr. A.R. WESSERLE
16 March 1981
PBS Television "The Blitz"

Sirs:

Rarely have I come across a television broadcast more vicious in intent and more warped in execution than your recent "Blitz on Britain." As a survivor of the mass air raid executed against my native city of Prague, Bohemia, on the Christian Holy Day of Palm Sunday, 1945, by the Anglo-American strategic bomber force - a raid that maimed or murdered thousands a few seconds before the conclusion of the Second World War - I say this:

1. There can be no comparison between the brutality of the Anglo-American bomber offensive, on one hand, and the minimality of the German-Italian efforts, on the other. As the commander of the British strategic air offensive, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris shows in his Bomber Offensive (Macmillan, New York, 1947) 23 German cities had more than 60 percent of their built-up area destroyed; 46 had half of it destroyed. 31 communities had more than 500 acres obliterated: Berlin, 6427 acres: Hamburg, 6200 acres; Duesseldorf, 2003; Cologne (through air attack), 1994. By contrast, the three favorite targets of the Luftwaffe: London, Plymouth and Coventry, had 600 acres, 400, and just over 100 acres destroyed.

2. Anglo-American strategic bombers, according to official sources of the West German government in 1962, dropped 2,690,000 metric tons of bombs on Continental Europe; 1,350,000 tons were dropped on Germany within its 1937 boundaries; 180,000 tons on Austria and the Balkans; 590,000 tons on France; 370,000 tons on Italy; and 200,000 tons on miscellaneous targets such as Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland. By contrast, Germany dropped a total of 74,172 tons of bombs as well as V-1 and V-2 rockets and "buzz bombs" on Britain - five percent of what the Anglo-Saxons rained down on Germany. The Federal German Government has established the minimum count - not an estimate - of 635,000 German civilians were killed in France, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Czecheslovakia, and elsewhere.

3. Both Germany and Britain initiated air raids on naval and military targets as of 3 September 1939. However, when the British attacks on port installations in Northern Germany ended in disaster, with a devastating majority of bombers downed - the Battle of the German Bight - Britain switched over to less costly night air raids on civilian targets such as Berlin and the Ruhr industrial region. By contrast, Germany replied in kind only in the winter months of 1940/41, a year later. Observers indubitably British, such as the late Labour Minister Crossman, the scientist and writer C.P. Snow, and the Earl of Birkenhead, have demonstrated that it was not Germany but Britain that, after May, 1940, unleashed an official policy of unrestricted and unlimited raids on civilian populations under its new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and his science advisor, Dr. Lindemann. Professor Lindemann, the later Viscount Cherwell, coolly calculated that, by using a force of 10,000 heavy bombers to attack and destroy the 58 largest German cities, one-third of the population of Germany would be "de-housed." The assumption, of course, also was that out of those 25-27 million homeless at least ten percent - 2.5 to 3 million people - would be killed. On this score alone, Winston Churchill and his advisors deserve to rank among the maddest mass murderers in history. In fact, as West German records show, 131 German towns were hit by heavy strategic raids. Only the courage of the Luftwaffe pilots, the effectiveness of the air defense network and the strength of the fire fighting organization worked together to prevent a bloodbath to the extent envisioned by the Prime Minister.

4. Blood baths did occur when conditions were right. When the Anglo-American bombing policy reached its first grand climax in a raid on Hamburg that stretched over several days and nights in July, 1943, a minimum of 40,000 to 50,000 civilians burned to death. With the defensive power of the Reich worn down in the second half of 1944 and in 1945, the Anglo-Saxons indulged in ever more massive extermination raids against Europe. Communities of little or no military value, even if attacked previously, were now pulverized, preferably under conditions of the utmost horror. Christian holy days, and dates and sites of famous art festivals were select occasions for raids. Many of the most beautiful cities of Europe and the world were systematically pounded into nothingness, often during the last weeks of the war, among them: Wuerzburg, Hildesheim, Darmstadt, Kassel, Nürnberg, Braunschweig. Little Pforzheim in south-west Germany had 17,000 people killed. Dresden, one of the great art centers and in 1945 a refuge for perhaps a million civilians, was decimated with the loss of at least 100,000 souls. Europe from Monte Cassino to Luebeck and Rostock on the Baltic, from Caen and Lisieux in France to Pilsen, Prague, Bruenn, Budapest and Bucharest reeled under the barbaric blows of the bombers.

5. Nor did the extermination raids stop with Europe. Cigar-chomping General Curtis LeMay demonstrated in. the Far East that record kills could be achieved without resort to atomic weapons. By applying the lessons learned in Europe to the wooden architecture of the Asian mainland and Japan he raised "fire storms" which surpassed even those of Hamburg, n Japanese civilians were killed through bombing. Millions of others fell victim to it, from Mukden, Manchuria, to Rangoon, Burma. It goes without saying that LeMay and his colleagues could not have carried out their campaigns of mass annihilation without the backing of the highest political leaders in the land. In fact, the United States Government had placed orders for the immediate development of four-engined, superheavy, very-long-range bombers (the XB 15, the B-17, the XB 19, the B-24 and the B-29) starting in 1934. Thus, the Roosevelt Administration had begun to lay plans for offensive, strategic, global war back in 1933, the year of its inception. With the later exception of Britain, none of the other "large" powers followed suit: neither France, Italy and Germany, nor Soviet Russia and Japan the latter with extensive holdings in the Pacific. These are sobering facts. PBS, with its record of fine programming, has much to lose if it insists on presenting biassed reports such as "Blitz on Britain" or "UXB." If you care to tap the unplumbed depths of sentimentality, envy and hatred, start a comic strip. In the meantime, we'll change channels.
Give poor Alistair Cooke, who has been mightily discomfited of late, a much-needed respite.

Sincerely, Dr. A.R. Wesserle

Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 381-384.

In addition:

“As early as 1953 H.M. Stationary Office published the first volume of a work ‘The Royal Air Force’, 1939-1945 entitled ‘The Fight at Odds’, a book described as “officially commissioned and based throughout on official documents which had been read and approved by the Air Ministry Historical Branch.” The author , Mr. Dennis Richards, states plainly the destruction of oil plants and factories was only a secondary purpose of the British air attacks on Germany which began in May 1940. The primary purpose of these raids was to goad the Germans into undertaking reprisal raids of a similar character on Britain. Such raids would arouse intense indignation in Britain against Germany and so create a war psychosis without which it is impossible to carry on a modern war. Mr Dennis Richards writes: “If the Royal Air Force raided the Ruhr, destroying oil plants with it’s most accurately placed bombs and urban property with those that went astray, the outcry for retalliation against Britain might prove too strong for the German generals to resist. The attack on the Ruhr, in other words, was an informal invitation to the Luftwaffe to bomb London “. p. 122

This passage merely confirmed what Mr. Spaight had so incautiously disclosed in 1944 in his by then forgotten book ‘Bombing Vindicated’. The popular belief that Hitler started unrestricted bombing still persisted and is, in fact, widely held at present day.

The third and last phase of the British air offensive against Germany began in March 1942 with the adoption of the Lindemann Plan by the British War Cabinet, and continued until the end of the war in May, 1945. The bombing during this period was not, as the Germans complained, indiscriminate. On the contrary, it was concentrated on working-class houses because, as professor Lindemann maintained, a higher percentage of bloodshed per ton of explosives dropped could be expected from bombing houses built close together, rather than by bombing higher class houses surrounded by gardens.”

source: ‘Advance to Barbarism - the Development of Total Warfare’, by F.J.P. Veale, p.184-185

[Balsamo]

Indeed, the Germans did start bombing cities.
But the laws of war tolerate bombing cities as long as they are under siege or on the frontline, which was the case with Warsaw or Rotterdam.

It has to be recognized that the RAF was the first to target cities or civilian targets, behind the frontline, and thus broke the laws of war. It was a great move though as it ignited the blitz campaign against London and Coventry, and thus saved the RAF. it also gave a strong signal that Britain was not ready to enter peace talks, as a message to the USSR.

It would also make Hitler getting obsessed with bombers, and later the V1 or V2, and make him disregard the fighters and other sol-air missiles...
Also note, that although unlawful and illegal, those first bombings were merely symbolic and should not be compared with the criminal bombing campaign of 1942, etc. The first bombing of Berlin made 13 victims , IIRC.

[Gerry1211]

Germany was chopped up in 1919 with whole German areas annexed to other countries. Poland did not exist before 1919. Hitler's sole intention was to unify Germany again. Hitler was negotiating with Poland to get whole tracks of German land back, When that did not succeed he asked for a freeway to Danzig(German) Gdansk (Polish) he would be content with that. When the British learned of this they informed the Polish not to agree and that IF Germany challenged them THEY Britain and France would declare war on Germany. The following day Hitler started to bomb Poland....none of which had anything to do with Britain NOR France. Carpet bombing of German cities followed (a war crime) after which Germany started bombing London. The Netherlands was neutral in WW2 as it was in WW1. But on May 10th, 1940 Hitler invaded the Netherlands with tanks crossing the border and German Paratroopers lading in the west. A small group of Dutch resistance fighters fought at the Grebbeberg which eventually resulted in the German ultimatum that if the Grebbeberg resistance did not cease, the City of Rotterdam would be bombed. The resistance stopped and the assumption was that the bombing of Rotterdam was called off. Supposedly it was, however there supposedly was a glitch in the communications and the City was bombed.......Less than 900 people died and about 30,000 people became homeless.

Hitler needed the Dutch shore from which to fire his V1 and V2s for London.

As someone who survived Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, survived 3 bombings of my hometown on March 19, 21 and 23rd, 1945 by the USAF and spent all my learning years in bombed out schools, I have yet to learn why the British and the French found it necessary to declare war on Germany who until then had not been a threat to them whatsoever, while the Soviets invaded Poland as well, yet they were the allies. The British only bombed at night and flew over my home direction Germany, 300 to 400 at a time, air raid sirens howling, search light scouring the sky and streams of anti aircraft firings lighting up the sky. After the war ended I could not sleep for weeks because of the stillness. The USAF only bombed during daytime.

[Mkk]

I have done further research into this and have changed my above opinion.

In general - it was Germany. They bombed numerous targets in Poland, such as Frampol, which didnt have much military significance.

Between Britain and Germany - it was Germany. The UK did attack some targets from May 1940 on in which civilians were killed, but this was not intentional. Bombing accuracy was very poor at that time. The original documents only mention military targets:

To authorise the Chief of the Air Staff
to order Bomber Command to
carry out attacks on suitable
military objectives [...] in
Germany; and that these attacks
should begin that night with
approximately 100 heavy bombers.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e9zn ... s.&f=false

For September 1940:

In view of the indiscriminate nature of the German
"bombing attacks, the orders with regard to pilots bringing
back their bombs should be relaxed . It is not the
intention that pilots should bomb a t random or that they
should never bring back their bombs, but every attempt
should be made t o bomb alternative or last resort targets
if i t is impossible to locate the primary target .

http://ukwarcabinet.s3.amazonaws.com/do ... 8-0001.pdf [page 36]

So even in September they are clearly talking about attacking targets, not just randomly dropping bombs anywhere in Germany.

More information: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=199639

[Mkk]

Gerry1211, you said:

Poland did not exist before 1919

Ofcourse Poland existed before 1919. It had existed for a thousand years before 1919.

A Polish state had not existed for 120 years before 1919. Then the Polish state was reborn with the areas that had historically been the core of it, with the exception of Gdansk [Danzig] which became a free city state.

Carpet bombing of German cities followed (a war crime)

There is no international law or precedent in legal history to declare that bombardment is a "war crime" during WW2. Noone has ever been convicted of the "crime" of bombing, either on the Axis or Allied sides to my knowledge.

All of the major countries engaged in bombing* during WW2, therefore I guess it was seen as an acceptable form of warfare.

* Allies: Obvious

Germans: Obvious

Soviets: e.g Taliinn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of ... rld_War_II

Japanese: e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing

[Hannover]

Mkk said:

There is no international law or precedent in legal history to declare that bombardment is a "war crime" during WW2. Noone has ever been convicted of the "crime" of bombing, either on the Axis or Allied sides to my knowledge.

Give me a break with the "bombardment" canard. That is a base strawman. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations was / is a war crime, and that is exactly what the British did first and was then continued by the Allies on an enormous scale. The point of this thread is who started it. After months & months of pleas by the Germans to the British to stop the terror bombing, the Germans were given no recourse but to retaliate on a scale incomparable to the Allies deliberate mass slaughter of civilians.

This topic has been covered repeatedly, ex:
A big reason why the 'Allies' need the 'holocaust' storyline

- Hannover

[hermod]

MKK, do you pretend not to understand the difference between human collateral damages in military bombings, human targets in genocidal bombings and human targets in fair retaliation bombings (caused by Churchill's genocidal bombing policy) or is that just a deliberate posture because you're British?

[EtienneSC]

Here is an interesting video on Lancaster bombers in 1944:

"Even from four miles up, the holocaust is appallingly impressive." (40.40 mins)
It is interesting to contrast the amount of surviving color evidence for a mission against civilians to the lack of evidence for the holocaust.

[Barrington James]

Too bad the British didn't consider the lives of the young men who were to fly these flying coffins. Once fatally hit by enemy gun power the chances that anyone would escape from the doomed plane was 1 in 7. The gunners' chances of escaping the plane at this time were almost zero for they normally had to be helped out of their gun positions even in the best of times. Robin Neillands has written an interesting book ( aside from a few foolish statements about the holocaust, an initiation that almost anyone who hopes to publish a book in the West has to do) , called The Bomber War, in which he states that over 100, 000 young men lost their lives flying such horror machines.

[Nessie.]

........
His reply:
BJ –it is really sad that all of your sources continue to spit out garbage !!!!!! -- the Nazis bombed Warsaw, Wieluri, Frampol, and Kamieniec in Poland killing thousands of Polish civilians in September 1939, they bombed 14 cities in France, including Lyons, between May 9 and 10, 1940 and their bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940 resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Dutch civilians --- we have not even bothered to mention their attack on Belgrade ---all in direct violation of the Hague Convention concerning the targeting of civilians—British raids on German targets with civilians were in retaliation after the bombing of Scapa Flow in Britain on March 16, 1940 and on London on August 24, 1940 –it was only after the German bombs fell on London did Churchill order the bombing of

Interesting, especially when you look at the Hague Convention 1907

Article 25 - The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.
Article 26 - The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities.
Article 27 - In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes. It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand.

So, were the towns and cities of Guernica, Warsaw, Wieluri, Frampol, Kamieniec, Lyons, Rotterdamn and Belgrade all defended when the Nazis bombed them? If so how?
Were warnings given?
What was done to spare the buildings that were considered protected?

[Nessie.]

Indeed, the Germans did start bombing cities.
But the laws of war tolerate bombing cities as long as they are under siege or on the frontline, which was the case with Warsaw or Rotterdam.

It has to be recognized that the RAF was the first to target cities or civilian targets, behind the frontline, and thus broke the laws of war. It was a great move though as it ignited the blitz campaign against London and Coventry, and thus saved the RAF. it also gave a strong signal that Britain was not ready to enter peace talks, as a message to the USSR.

It would also make Hitler getting obsessed with bombers, and later the V1 or V2, and make him disregard the fighters and other sol-air missiles...
Also note, that although unlawful and illegal, those first bombings were merely symbolic and should not be compared with the criminal bombing campaign of 1942, etc. The first bombing of Berlin made 13 victims , IIRC.

What law of war tolerates bombing cities under siege or on the front line?

Was Warsaw on the front line when it was first bombed on 01 September 1939? The troops did not get there till after the 8th, a week later.

What makes a bombing raid symbolic and the other criminal?