Posted on 08/23/2007 12:54:32 PM PDT by lizol
Dresden vs. Auschwitz
By Aviva Lori
In February 2005, Dr. Gilad Margalit visited Dresden. The winter of 2005 was cold, but at the events marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied bombing of the city it was hot. Very hot. About 5,000 neo-Nazis descended on Dresden from all over Germany and from throughout Europe for the big demonstration on February 13, a Sunday.
It was a colorful, violent demonstration that sought to carve out territory in the streets and especially in the national consciousness. The massive physical presence of the demonstrators only heightened the growing recognition in Germany in recent years that the time has come to make it plain that the victims of World War II did not have a monopoly on suffering.
The questions of who suffered more and who is more to blame are not new questions in Germany, but they have been increasingly troubling the Germans. Responsibility and guilt feelings are no longer self-evident. Advertisement "It was a huge demonstration," Margalit recalls. "All the streams of this scene were there, from the wildest radicals - tattooed, skinhead thugs - to local members of parliament, well-dressed, pleasant-smelling people. They marched to commemorate the bombing raids on the city, which have come to symbolize the suffering of the entire German people. True, [the demonstrators] were a relatively small number out of a population of 74 million, but it took place in the light of day and with police protection. And they don't want to hear about the Holocaust."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
“Let the Germans live with the guilt. It’s the least they can do.”
The thing is, that they probably don’t want it anymore.
I seem to recall that the Dresden bombing was done to placate Stalin. The Germans were on the ropes, it was the tail end of the war. Dresden was a city of refugees fleeing from the communists. They weren’t all Germans. Kurt Vonnegut was one of many POWs kept there. Coventry England was bombed, but the difference was the English knew it was coming. The Brit. Gov’t. chose not inform the populous for fear that the Germans would find out that their code was broken. By the time Dresden was bombed most of the German Cities were in total ruin and their army was surrending to us in droves. Well, Stalin appreciated it.
We don't discuss it.
After we took Baghdad, we needed to have thousands of hard-core Fedayeen disappear - but they didn't because the place was crawling with journalists.
And so it goes.
That's not to say they couldn't have concentrated on the railways and other targets without firebombing...
Dude - we bombed Dresden in February of 1945. The war lasted a scant two more months. The will of the German people was completely broken at that time. The German army was completely broken. Everyone knew the war was over and Germany had lost.
Hindsight is 20/20. As Clemenceau put it, “War is a series of calamaties that result in victory.”
It lasted a scant two more months precisely because we did bomb Dresden.
We punctuated what was happening to the NAzis and German people with Dresden. Just like with the Imperialists we punctuated what was happening with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Japan, we avoided a very costly invasion by so doing. I believe we avoided equal hardships amongst the German people and their leadership by doing the same type of thing with Dresden.
Horrible thing, horrific thing...but as I said, it was the end points made regarding any will or desire on their part to have any fight or last stands.
And Dresden, dude, was like, totally the place through which to route troops to try to hold back the Soviets for a second shot.
Amen...see my post 29.
Note to the Germans:
If you don’t start no crap, there won’t be no crap.
Remember that at the time there was a lot of concern that the Nazis would establish the National Redoubt in the mountains of Bavaria and fight a protracted guerilla war that could have gone on for years.
I guess those 100+ Soviet Divisions crossing the German/Polish border had nothing to do with it...
(repost from an FR thread done many moons ago)
Check out what the city of Dresden says (at the URLs below).
The written text below is my (VOA’s) commentary...
1945 wasn’t the first time Dresden took it on the chin during a war;
this URL used to have an old print of the earlier destruction of
Dresden...looked a lot like the WWII destruction.
http://www.dresden.de/index.html?node=6972
Don’t let anyone tell you that Dresden was simply a place where
clocks, cameras and Baroque buildings were made.
It was also an industrial center
http://www.dresden.de/index.html?node=6981
Yes, the 1945 bombing raids didn’t need to be as extensive in
light of the military situation...but when the USA loses two generations
of men in two World Wars, it will be interesting to see how the
end is “punctuated”.
http://www.dresden.de/index.html?node=6986
It’s been a few years since I’ve been at the site, but they’ve sure
skinnied down their admission of Dresden having plenty of
industry in the WWII time-frame.
At least they are wise enough not to say “Vee vere not involved”.
The Nazis were begging for a Dresden and got exactly what they deserved.
If all the ~1500 V-2s launched into England had reached their targets accurately, they would have killed more than a quarter million British civilians.
The Nazis deserved 10 Dresdens.
“About 5,000 neo-Nazis descended on Dresden . . .”
New Nazis?! I’m thinking, wow, those guys are fags too—we
should like totally bomb those Nazi dudes again, fer sure!
Sure, if you love B.O.
This whole article is so ridiculous it's hard to know where to begin. Are you sure it didn't come from The Onion? I mean, it's just like reading that Pol Pot wants people to understand that he suffered, too.
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun."
- Tom Lehrer
The Soviet offensive had stalled mostly due to the troops being routed through Dresden.
One of the reasons why Zhukov held off on taking Berlin was because the Soviets were taking so many casualties on the southern part of the front they'd opened that he wanted to hold troops in reserve.
Dresden and its rail systems were a lifeline for the Nazis and delayed the fall of berlin.
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