Posted on 02/13/2017 4:33:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
Dresden's mayor has used the event to remind participants of the brutalities of war, even in the 21st century. During World War II, Allied forces firebombed the German city of Dresden, leaving 25,000 people dead.
Around 12,000 people on Monday gathered in Dresden and joined hands to form a human chain in a message of "peace and reconciliation" marking the anniversary of the deadly firebombing of the city by Allied forces towards the end of the Second World War.
The act aimed at reminding the participants of the brutal bombing, considered one of the Allied forces more controversial acts during the war.
"In this world, several conflicts are being carried out in a warlike manner and human rights are being trampled on," said Dresden Mayor Dirk Hilbert.
"This suffering affects us directly in a globalized world," he added, placing a white rose on a memorial of the controversial attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
The Gallipoli landings.
The return of Russian POW's to Uncle Joe's tender mercies.
His abandonment of ACM Harris and Bomber Command in the closing days of the war when it suddenly became politically incorrect to recognize their courage and dedication.
Blame is on Hitler...not the Allies.
Cry me a river.
A British friend of mine noted that the British never show postcards of bombed out London to tourists, but the Germans keep doing it. It is like there is a Nazi socialist undercurrent of anger about losing the war.
Perhaps they could gather in remembrance of the destruction by Merkel.
F' the Germans. As you said, every city in Germany should have burned. After what they did to neighboring countries and to helpless innocent Jews. Even today, Germany is hiding much of what the Nazis did. I watched some recent documentaries about hidden Nazi tunnels in mountains, that the authorities are preventing investigators from exploring. Some that got opened got closed off to investigators. It's been reported that many thousands of concentration camp prisoners were herded into the tunnels and sealed inside. U.S. Army forces freed only a fraction of prisoners, most persons on the German prisoner logs were never found. Germany doesn't want the tunnels opened.
- Sir Arthur Harris
Controversial? Dresden was a transportation hub for equipment heading east and was bombed at Stalin’s request.
It’s always struck me as unfair that Harris never got the honours accorded to so many Generals etc.
They wanted total war, the Allies obliged.
To say the people of Dresden were totally innocent is not an accurate statement.
The thinking was if the civilians were working in the factories they were aiding the Nazi war effort.
Under the concept of total war the objective was to destroy your enemies ability to wage war. The civilians were making the planes, tanks, bullets, etc for the Nazi war machine.
Dresden was a major transportation hub. Part of the reason for the bombing was to impede German troop movements to the Eastern Front and to cause confusion among German civilians fleeing the Russians.
After the Battle of the Bulge the Allies realized it was going to be a tough road to Berlin. We have to recall a good number of the Nazis fought on till the very end. There was the rumor of a National Redoubt where fanatical Nazis were storing weapons, supplies, etc in a last ditch effort to hold out. Fortunately this did not transpire. What we did not know though was which house or which village would the Nazis fight for. If airpower could kill the enemy and Allied soldiers survive, I'm ok with that.
The Nazis used Dresden as propaganda against the bombing raids. Sadly, some of the Allied media ran with the story.
However, in the earlier raids against Berlin, Stuggart, Hamburg, and all of the other major German cities there was no such questioning in Allied media circles. There was a war to win.
Germany started the war by bombing civilian targets and continued throughout the war where possible.
The Allies finished the War in complete domination.
One key point to remember.
When Germany bombed cities in Poland, Denmark, etc...they did not help those countries rebuild. They exploited them.
When the US and UK bombed German, Italian and Japanese cities we DID help them rebuild.
Actually they did. After the defeat at Stalingrad Gobbels organized the Total War campaign in 1943. He held a big rally asking the German people if they wanted Total War. They're answer: Yes.
Not that they had a choice in their answer.
Are they going to meet ten years from now to celebrate the remembrance of the destruction of modern day Germany by the Muslim invasion brought upon them by Merkel and the EU?
I remember from the star trek episode “A taste of armageddon” where there was a very sanitary war being conducted between two planets.
All battles were fought by computer simulation. When casualties were calculated, people would line up to voluntarily be killed in disintegration machines. Failure to comply means real missiles start arriving.
The theory was this would preserve the cities and cultures of the two species.
However, the war had been in effect for hundreds of years.
Kirk shows up and says “Screw this! War should be messy, if it isn’t, there’s no reason to end it, is there?!”
He prevents people from entering disintegration chambers on one of the planets. The other planet freaks out and calls. They quickly end the war because neither side, as it turns out, wants “real” damage.
Only a sci-fi story, but an interesting concept.
WWI & II were comparitively short to our extended conflicts of today, with all their UN approvals and ROE.
Here’s what the Int’l Churchill Society has to say about the idea that Dresden was payback for Coventry:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/myths/134-churchill-bombed-dresden-as-payback-for-coventry
He was never someone I respected.
I thought that mentally he had gone off the deep end before I started trying to read his books and articles.
I suspect that he is an acquired taste. Like limburgher.
Didn’t like Saberhagen either.
I keep hearing 25,00 dead and other much higher numbers. But statistics show that six Lancasters and one B-17 were lost. A Lancaster carried 7 and a Fortress carried 10-11. So the number should be somewhere around 60 depending on how many successfully bailed out. This is well below the hundreds of thousands often claimed. I hope this helps.
While I agree with you about the “total war” thing, and also agree that war is hell, the Allies managed to incinerate a lot of people fleeing the Soviets. I’ll let others debate whether Dresden was a legitimate military target or not . . . nonetheless, a heck of a lot off innocents died.
Of course that’s the kicker when we are speaking of regimes that Paul Johnson described as being run by criminals.
The situation of the German people becomes a little clearer when you hear that early applicants to the SS had to prove an act of cruelty against the German people themselves. You kept any objections to the Nazi party to yourself.
Yes indeed they did. Wonder if there is any memorial for the city of Coventry, UK (a UK city which also had little to no military value as a target) which was allowed to be bombed without putting up a massive aircraft/fighter defense by Churchill (the British having broken german codes knew in advance) rather than reveal to the germans that the UK was reading all of their communications (Bletchley Park).
Truly wonder if there is a Coventry memorial day. Hard times of war— and incredibly difficult decision for Churchill.
The kind of "innocent" referred to in the context of murder, would be "innocent of capital crime" and "non-combatant".
A just military policy will try to minimize this, but cannot totally eliminate it. We all understand that.
However this does not justify a City=Target strategy in which a city or an extensive geogrphical area is wiped out together with all its inhabitants.
Intentional indiscriminate slaughter is a war crime whether or not it is ever prosecuted as such.
But I ask again: can you offer a reasonable definition of murder, that is, the kind of killing we must not do?
Sincere question here.
A just military policy will try to minimize this, but cannot totally eliminate it. We all understand that.
It seems to me there is a big difference, between innocents killed in war, and innocents killed in a civilian crime action of some sort.
If we are saying that that we should not have bombed German cities, because of innocent civilians there, then would we have won World War II in the manner we won it? Perhaps the war would have been longer, with even more casualties on both sides?
Which leads me to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While many innocents died in those bombings, the war ended without us having to launch a conventional military invasion of Japan. Which in the long run may well have saved more lives on both sides, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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