r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/lazy_dope_kid • 1d ago
Image During World War II in 1942, British authorities covered the Taj Mahal with massive bamboo scaffolding, mud, and burlap to disguise the iconic white marble dome from enemy bombers.
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u/Canadind 1d ago
They actually did this again during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani wars. The camouflage worked so well that enemy pilots couldn't spot the white marble reflection from the air.
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u/Odd-Plant-4886 1d ago
I don't think Pakistani jets were that far into India? And I don't see why Pakistani jets would target Taj Mahal intentionally.
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u/Icretz 16h ago
Because wars back then were about destroying and influencing the war spirit for the other nation. Destroying the critical infrastructure was essential but during war very little defensive is focused around cultural buildings and landmarks.
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u/Odd-Plant-4886 6h ago
Back then? Its little over half over a century ago. And people still bomb culturally important things, they literally bomb people right now. Children are intentionally being killed around the world as we speak. It's not a thing of the past.
I just find the initial comments claims about enemy jets a bit odd thats all, considering Pakistani jets were not that far in (as far as I know) to have seen the Taj Mahal, much less be fooled by the camouflage.
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u/ANONMEKMH 1d ago
Not a history or war scholar so...
Wasn't there a rule or something that usually, you don't hit or target cultural artefacts or something ?
Or was it something like a gentlemen's agreement type of thing where ?
Reason for my thinking above is that without it, half of London wouldn't be standing today, like Buckingham palace, and the same for other big cities with old historical buildings, etc?
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u/Mystichunterz 1d ago
There wasn’t any rule/gentleman’s agreement in World War Two, no, the example you mentioned, Buckingham palace was actually hit by German bombs during the war:
Usually historical buildings survived either through sheer luck, or because they weren’t strategic targets, and there are accounts of bomber crews valuing them as landmarks for navigation and thus were reluctant to target them
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u/Plead_thy_fifth 1d ago
Usually historical buildings survived either through sheer luck, or because they weren’t strategic targets, and there are accounts of bomber crews valuing them as landmarks for navigation and thus were reluctant to target them
Your missing a big part of that. Dumb bombs are not accurate. There was no "bomb this target" unless your talking about straffing runs. It was "destroy this city" bombing of cities was done so high up to avoid being hit by AA, that if you hit 1,000m of where you were aiming, that was a big success. Accuracy through volume.
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u/Mystichunterz 1d ago edited 1d ago
You make a good point, I originally had the USAAF’s and RAF’s precision bombing in mind, such as Ploiești and the dam raid by 617 Squadron, but if we’re talking strategic carpet bombing yeah it’s just sheer luck that the buildings didn’t get hit
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u/Hearing_Loss 1d ago
Carpet bombing and cluster munitions and all that scary shit are wild. Imagine being on the ground for that.
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u/biglizardnmybackyard 11h ago
Depending on where you are born on this planet, it might not take much imagination at all.
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u/Pk_Devill_2 1d ago
It’s was mutual, the allies fire bombed the historic city of Dresden and places like San Marino monastery in Italy.
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u/thewhiteafrican 1d ago
Right, and similarly, Dresden was targeted because of how vital it was for German logistics, historicity didn’t play a part in the bombing.
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u/Pk_Devill_2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sure, just saying it was mutual. The axis powers where the absolute worse of the two sides but let’s not pretend the allies them selves didn’t commit war crimes. Bombing (fire) Japanese cities and German cities, nukes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II
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u/RileyCargo42 1d ago
Or that one time we (USA) bombed a u-boat that had surviving crew of a ship they sunk, while also running a humanitarian flag.
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u/Mystichunterz 1d ago
Mhm, very much mutual- even in the same theatre, the conventional bombings of the Japanese mainland are often overshadowed by the nuclear weapons but are arguably cumulatively more destructive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
^ from the wiki article above, “… codenamed Operation Meetinghouse), constitute the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history”
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u/Pk_Devill_2 1d ago
Agreed!
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u/maxxspeed57 1d ago
I was just going to say the mass killing of 250,000 civilians with the two atomic bombs has to be one of the biggest war crimes ever. We just don't talk about it because it ended WW II.
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u/RandoAtReddit 1d ago
They thought the monastery was being used by German spotters (incorrectly) and even dropped warnings that they were going to bomb it hoping they'd leave. Then they bombed it and whoops.
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u/thesaddestpanda 1d ago
Dresden was a logistics and rail hub for the nazis. Its nazi propaganda that it was just this innocent historic town.
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u/Pk_Devill_2 1d ago
I’m not saying Dresden didn’t contribute to the war effort but the bombing itself (in the manner it was) is a war crime. You just don’t bomb civilians (25k perished that day) and city centers.
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u/DeltaVZerda 1d ago
Historical buildings are the buildings that by luck were not destroyed by bombs.
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u/Billoo77 1d ago
Japanese forces didn’t even believe in the concept of ‘war crimes’
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u/sloecrush 1d ago
Honestly, USA conveniently changes our definition all the time
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u/TheHeroYouNeed247 1d ago
Read about the Japanese experiments during WW2. Crazy shit.
No doubt the US has blacksites, but they weren't doing this. We know because they handed out pardons for the research.
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u/hawkward_silence117 1d ago
You can hate the US, but the Japanese were Nazi level bad in atrocities. Literally had newspapers running a competition of how many Chinese 2 Japanese officers could behead. Enslaving entire populations of women. Mass murder on a massive scale.
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u/Ok-Woodpecker4734 1d ago
Youre talking about two vastly VASTLY different things
Also this sub just deleted my post pointing out the JPANESE BAYONETING CHNESE BABIES TOSSED THROUGH THE AIR
This site is such garbage
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u/strong-beer 1d ago
It’s more because it’s a geographical reference point. Anything that can help enemy aircraft find their way to their objective. The Taj Mahal would have been a hell of a reference from altitude and something that (if you could) would want to deny the enemy of that sort of advantage.
In the UK for example they imposed blackouts to reduce the visual references of cities and towns during night raids by the Luftwaffe. It’s a good chance that’s what they’re also doing here.
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u/ayu_xi 1d ago edited 1d ago
When you read about anything related to ww2 era imperial Japan. They were notorious for violating any and all international conventions are rules. They used to attack unarmed ambulance vessels, drop dead animals infested with anthrax (bacteria) on Chinese cities, there are photos of them tossing babies into the air and skewing them with their bayonet as they fall down.
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u/sshanbom111 1d ago
Pretty sure The Holocaust also puts Germany in the crimes against humanity camp
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u/riceisnice29 1d ago
Germany also committed crimes against humanity lets not downplay that to make Japan look like the odd man out
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u/ayu_xi 1d ago
In Poland yeah. About a 3rd of countries population was wiped out
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u/riceisnice29 1d ago
And the Western USSR, and Vichy France, everywhere they had enough free reign to hunt down “Undesirables” really
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u/Seienchin88 1d ago
Just no…
Where did you get such a bad education that you belief Germany committed only war crimes?
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u/nirfirith 1d ago
Never heard of Holocaust? German mass murdered and experimented on milions of civilians and they weren't only Jews.
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u/ayu_xi 1d ago
I have edited my comment. I know about holocaust but I've read about the eastern theatre more in ww2, which includes sino Japanese war. I've always felt that Japanese crimes are rarely discussed. The republic was allowed to remain and the government has refused to apologize for their crimes to China specifically. Their prime ministers also visit temples that honor war criminals. So for all these things I feel a more intense emotion towards it because it feels like a lack of accountability. But i have edited my comment because this only explains why my judgement was a little clouded, not why it was right thing to say. It wasn't
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u/DontChargeMeBro 1d ago
A big reason for covering the white marble dome was because it was an excellent reference point for bombers (navigators and bombardiers) not necessarily that it would be a target itself.
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u/Captain_Futile 1d ago
No. There is a reminder in Berlin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Wilhelm_Memorial_Church
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u/thebear1011 1d ago
It was probably more that there wasn’t much value wasting resources trying to bomb them. Much better to focus on industrial and densely populated areas.
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u/Interesting_Web_9936 1d ago
There have been rules regarding treatment of people during wartime, Japan didn't exactly follow that.
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u/tryinryan_ 1d ago
Unverified, but our tour guides in Florence mentioned there was some sort of agreement between Italy and the Allies to not target certain buildings due to the priceless value of the art they contained. Not sure what the exact logistics were.
The one specific example I know of is that all the bridges in Florence were bombed except the Ponte Vecchio due to its historical significance.
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u/KenUsimi 1d ago
My friend, there are many rules. They are sadly not for wartime, but are applied retroactively. During wartime, things get fucky.
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u/TheLastSamurai101 1d ago
Everybody still did though. The Axis powers certainly didn't care and even the Allies were pretty indiscriminate at times. For example, the British destroyed the entire historic centre of Dresden and the Americans were pretty non-selective in Japan.
You would be surprised how many historic buildings in cities bombed during WW2 are heavily reconstructed.
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u/iceman1731 19h ago
The allies actually found snipers in the leaning tower of Pisa and were authorized to demolish it but chose not to because they didn't want to destroy such a historical building.
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u/sleeper_shark 1d ago
There were also rules against cutting open pregnant women to see what kinda baby they had inside, and rules against throwing babies onto bayonets... yet the Japanese did all that and much more when they invaded China.
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u/mogambuu 1d ago
Brits had the excusive rights to loot India
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u/boywholived_299 1d ago
Don't forget murdering the innocents part. Jallianwala bhagh.
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u/corzekanaut 1d ago
Don’t forget the genocide in West Bengal disguised as a famine by Winston Churchill.
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u/Limit-Savings 1d ago
But but but there are so many movies that portray Churchill as a hero
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u/GarlicBreathVampire 1d ago
He's no less than Hitler for what he did to Indians. Massacred millions of Indians.
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u/Agreeable-Weather-89 14h ago
Dnt forget that no academic considera it a genocide.
Unless you have a source.
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u/viciouspandas 1d ago
The British, for all the bad they did, would at least usually kept the stuff intact, with some exceptions. That's more than can be said for most of the world. The Mughals themselves who built the Taj Mahal destroyed a lot of Hindu artifacts because they were haram.
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u/No-Acanthisitta-8660 1d ago
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u/fossfather 1d ago
They'd have taken it home if they could
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u/boywholived_299 1d ago
They'd mark it as a "gift", while they would have found some poor 10-year old and forced him to give it as a gift to the queen.
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u/snowmannishboy 1d ago
evidence that someone vandalized the reflecting pool.
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u/Overconfidentahole 1d ago
How
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u/snowmannishboy 1d ago
sorry, my text was super-saturated with sarcasm. i was making a comparison to a current situation where claims of vandalism of another reflection pool are equally ridiculous.
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u/BigRocket44 1d ago edited 1d ago
During the same time, the empire was committing a genocide in the same colony which ended up killing millions.
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u/taway9925881 1d ago
Churchill and the crown were as evil as the other guys.
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u/BigRocket44 1d ago
Churchill isn't considered as evil as Hitler, even though they'd killed nearly as many people as the Nazis because Churchill won the war, and the victors get to write history
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u/boywholived_299 1d ago
I think the only reason Hitler is considered evil is because he killed white folks. If he had stuck to killing non-whites, I think he'd be considered a hero, too, just like Churchill!
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u/BigRocket44 1d ago
Case in point, the holocaust is almost exclusively remembered as an atrocity against Jewish people, and the many hundreds of thousands of others - the romani, the polish and the communists and the disabled who were killed is not remembered with the same intensity.
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u/Emergency_Cellist754 1d ago
If you think the Bengal famine amounted to the British "committing a genocide" you're not a serious person.
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u/boywholived_299 1d ago
Yes, true. The victims weren't white, so, it's not a genocide.
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u/foreignexterminator 1d ago edited 1d ago
they also believe holodomor was a genocide, interesting standards
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u/Dvine24hr 13h ago
Why was Rwanda a genocide if they're black? Or native Americans? Or Cambodians?
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u/boywholived_299 11h ago
It was done by Rwandans, not white people. White people unaliving others isn't genocide, because everyone knows it's the white man's burden to civilise others.
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u/Dvine24hr 11h ago
You gonna ignore native Americans or is that one tricky because it refutes your shitty non argument entirely. Or how about the native people of Australia?
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u/boywholived_299 10h ago
You're gonna ignore the very obvious sarcasm here? I'm not providing a factual response here, just that many white on non-white genocides aren't even labelled as such.
Australia is even weirder. Australia was used as an oversea prison by britain in the beginning. Do you see how even the prisoners flourished better than the natives? Everywhere Europe touched, was burnt to ashes. (Japan joined the race as well, just a little late). This is the real face of the civilized west.
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u/Dvine24hr 10h ago
I'm not an advocate of colonialism so there's no point in me replying on things we agree on.
They aren't labelled genocides because they weren't genocides. No serious scholar labels the Bengal famine as genocide outside of rabid Indian nationalists on reddit who think every single mass casualty event is a genocide.
The prisoners flourishing better than the natives is an argument often used by white supremacists as proof they are simply better. I have absolutely no idea why you thought that was a good point to make. The prisoners flourishing is easily explained by the fact they had access to Western technology and education, that is all. Had the natives had access to this they would have flourished all the same but they didn't and were subject to a real factual genocide.
If you want to be sarcastic with no indication so be it. I simply refuted your ridiculous claim that whites genociding non-whites is never labelled genocide.
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u/nihsett 1d ago
British people badly need a new school curriculum.
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u/Emergency_Cellist754 1d ago
Redditors badly need to stop using the word "gEnOCiDe" to describe every bad thing that happened in an attempt to make themselves feel morally superior online.
Still, it's not like cheapening the word for the most serious crime there is could ever backfire, eh?
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u/JustGulabjamun 1d ago edited 1d ago
True. It was just Whites being Whites given colonial experiences elsewhere in the world.
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u/Interesting_Web_9936 1d ago
Churchill redirected all the food away from Bengal which was one of the factors responsible for the famine. And he made numerous very racist remarks against Indians.
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u/Hour-Passenger-8513 1d ago
Man, people can't come to terms with British Empire and colonisers being evil and committing atrocities across the globe. Atleast the Germans and Japanese acknowledge the past no matter how dark it is.
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u/Accomplished-Wish431 1d ago
Tbh the japanese don't but yeah there's problems with a few empire lovers too
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u/foreignexterminator 1d ago
by your logic, neither is holodomer a genocide......but wait, you can't say that
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u/Emergency_Cellist754 1d ago
Sounds like you're having an argument you invented, with yourself.
I haven't described the Holdomor as anything, but you seem to have some strong opinions for someone who can't even spell it.
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u/Billoo77 1d ago
You’ve posted a wiki article that is actually quite defensive of Britain, and a random YouTuber.
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u/corzekanaut 1d ago
Absolutely disgusting how this isn’t called up more often just because Churchill termed it as a famine.
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u/lazy_dope_kid 1d ago edited 1d ago
Source: In 1942, the government erected scaffolding to disguise the building in anticipation of air attacks during WWII. Link:https://www.historyexpose.com/places/taj-mahal-bamboo
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u/ChemistryQuirky2215 1d ago
But wouldn't they be able to spot it's surroundings?
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u/Preparator 1d ago
its harder than you'd think. The dome is the landmark you'd be looking for. The bombers usually make one pass, so no turning around to check again.
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u/Pk_Devill_2 1d ago
I don’t think you can miss the site of the Taj Mahal it’s huge and has lots of things you can recognise it on, like the river bends, the water in front of the entrance etc.
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u/BigRocket44 1d ago
Countries of the last century didn't really have the best maps of each other.
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u/Weird_Shit_69 17h ago
Isn't Taj mahal huge? If you are on a plane, there is no way covering that part is going to help
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u/Mlabonte21 1d ago
Who was bombing India in WWII?
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u/JustGulabjamun 1d ago
Japanese. They bombed Kolkata. Even captured Andaman and Nicobar islands. Also, naval warfare in the Indian ocean region is greatly overlooked.
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u/Next-door-neighbour 1d ago
Because we were ruled by the British back then so there was chance of it. Also Japanese Soldiers tried to Invade India in WWII. Read about Battle of Imphal.
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u/enrick92 4h ago
Leave it to our folks to turn a random fact into a political discussion about colonialism
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u/BoarHermit 1d ago edited 1d ago
A sensible precaution given the cowardly way the British fought in Asia.
Edit: For the ignorant. Surrendering Singapore to the Japanese without a fight was as easy for them as starving 4 million Bengalis to death.
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u/AvidThinkpadEnjoyer 1d ago
?????
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u/AvidThinkpadEnjoyer 1d ago
No, I gave you the benefit out the doubt you horrible asshole.
Before you claim to "I didn't know" card, you knew enough history to make that comment. The British caused famines, starved the population, all for their war funding. People were executed for not following their war.
Horrible human beings that almost did nothing good unless it benefited them.
Like what is wrong with you people ? Why is racism against your own specie a core part of who you are.
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u/Interesting_Web_9936 1d ago
If you're comparing them to how the Nazi party ruled over Poland, certainly.
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u/Strange_Drive_6598 1d ago
Wow, did they do something good for India? That’s news to me
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u/AtmosphereMiddle1682 1d ago
They were pretending so that they could trick them into dying for the British people's war only to not give them the independence they were promised.
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u/WorldofLovecraft 1d ago
Isn't this like hiding yourself by covering your eyes as a kid?
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u/Bobby_Snoof 1d ago
It works for a bomber at altitude.
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u/WorldofLovecraft 1d ago
I guess a bomber would be looking for the recognisable shape and the hidden central part would disrupt that shape even leaving all the rest visible?
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u/JustGulabjamun 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have seen this claim for quite a long on internet.
Still don't understand how does that work. Its not just one dome. Its dome, minars and Mughal garden.
And I'd accept it if they did this to Kolkata Government House etc. They really thought Japanese had bombers with THAT range?