Talk:Hugo Sperrle

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Germany Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Biography: Military This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles This article is supported by the military biography work group (assessed as High-importance). Military history: Aviation / Biography / European / German / World War I / World War II This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status: Referencing and citation: criterion met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met Associated task forces: /  Military aviation task force Military biography task force European military history task force German military history task force World War I task force World War II task force Aviation: Biography This article has not yet been checked against the criteria for B-class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar and style: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following code to the template call: | b1<!--Referencing and citation--> = <yes/no> | b2<!--Coverage and accuracy   --> = <yes/no> | b3<!--Structure               --> = <yes/no> | b4<!--Grammar and style       --> = <yes/no> | b5<!--Supporting materials    --> = <yes/no> assessing the article against each criterion. This article is supported by the aerospace biography project.

An article called "Bomber Boys: Good men doing an ugly job" by Patrick Bishop, in BBC History magazine Vol 8 no 3, March 2007 page 17 first paragraph, states that:

Hugo Sperrle, commander of the German Air Fleet Three, was not charged at the Nuremberg trials with war crimes relating to the Blitz, for fear of drawing attention to the damage done to German cities.

Patrick Bishop who writes in the Daily Telegraph has written a book called "Bomber Boys: Fighting back 1940-45" that is scheduled to be published in April 2007.

If someone has time I would really like to know more about this decision, as it could show that no one was tried for aerial bombardment for Allied political expediency and not legal considerations that there was no chance of a conviction on such charges --

Here is a paragraph from Jörg Friedrich about his book the Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 in a piece entitled "Afterword for American and British readers

No interviewer with the English-language press failed to ask if it was not Hitler who started both the war and the bombing of cities. "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." If only that were true! A characteristic of air wars is that those who sow the wind do not reap the whirlwind and those who reap the whirlwind did not sow the wind. One of the sowers was certainly Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, who as commander in chief of German Air Fleet 3 led the bombing of London and Coventry. Tens of thousands of British citizens died by his hand. In 1948 he stood before the U.S. military tribunal in Nuremberg. His prosecutor was the great American international law scholar and historian Brigadier General

Charles Portal

or Hugo Sperrle had run amok through Berlin or London with a machine gun, then Taylor would of course have charged him for the action. At least that is what he later wrote. According to the legal position in Nuremberg, it was not the willful killing of noncombatants that determined the crime, but the direction of fire. The horizontal fire of a machine gun is illegal; the vertical direction of the bomb munitions, on the other hand, is legal.

--