Posted on 08/23/2007 12:54:32 PM PDT by lizol
"I hate Dresden Nazis."
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.
Hardly, the German army was barely over failing to relieve Budapest (Operations Konrad I-III) and managed to witdraw from that in fair order.
Either success in that operation, or a successfull repulse of the Soviet offensive at Seelowe Heights, could very well have knocked the Soviets out of the war, they were on their last legs themselves with regard to manpower. At the very least they would have created the possibility of the Germans running the war into late 45 or 46, a possibility that in retrospect we can belittle, but at the time, when you're in the fog of a conflict in which the opponent appears to be able to pull technological and logistical hat tricks out left and right, you're not going to take ANY chances with...
Coventry has nothing to do with it. One war crime doesn’t justify another in retaliation.
Absolute horsesh*t.
The firebombing of Dresden took place in February of 1945.
"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"
-National Socialist propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, in his famous Sportpalast speech, on 18 February, 1943
The 1930s and 40s Germans (the leaders at least, and the people to the degree that they supported those leaders) got precisely what they wanted. They asked for total war, they purposed total war, they supported total war, they planned total war, they implemented total war, and they got total war. They just didn't plan to themselves end up on the hard end of the stick. Sorry, Fritz, but that's the risk you run when you decide to just go out and beat the Scheisse out of and murder millions of other people.
And I'm not saying there weren't plenty of innocent, decent German citizens. But on the whole, the German people of that generation made the mistake of following a brutal, murderous thug - and they paid the almost inevitable price for making that decision.
Dresden was payback for Coventry. Early in the war, Germany decided to destroy the harmless city of Coventry, England. While the Brits had already broken the Enigma code and knew full well what the German air force intended, they could do nothing about it without revealing that they had broken that key German code. Consequently, Coventry was destroyed. That was a war crime that had to be addressed. But in wartime, there are no courts of proper appeal (war is, in fact, the total absence of rules, law and judicial order). Payback was really the only way to address that crime. Payback was deserved; it was delivered. Period.
You can go shave your head now
***************************
Student of revised history?
Besides ball bearing plants and tank machinery, there were other legitimate war targets in Dresden = where some 35,000 (not the quadruples number being touted) were killed = less than were killed in the Blitzkrieg of Germany on civilians in Gt. Britain in 1940
>< from the link:
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/02/60-years-ago-tonight-dresden-firestorm.html
"There were a large number of precision engineering companies headquartered in Dresden, many of which made instruments for the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Zeiss-Ikon manufactured precision optics in Dresden, much of which went in the later years of the war to sights for antiaircraft batteries. There was the previously mentioned hydrogenation plant. Many of these plants used Jewish slave labor in the later years of the war, when worker shortages were accute. Next, Dresden was an important rail transportation hub for all of Saxony and eastern Germany.
Finally, there were a number of military barracks in and around the city. By any criteria used at the time, Dresden was a legitimate military target.
"
on Tuesday, February 13, 1945, with Hitler's death and war's end less than three months away, Dresden's luck finally ran out. On the night of Shrove Tuesday, in two raids, a total of nearly 800 RAF bombers dropped 2,690 tons of incendiaries and high explosives on the capital of Saxony. 244 Lancaster bombers hit the city center between 10:13 PM and 10:28 PM, pummeling it with 881 tons of bombs, 43% of which were incendiaries. By 11:00 PM, the early stages of the firestorm were becoming evident. But worse was in store. 550 more bombers were on their way, guided to their target by the light of the fires raging in Dresden, which were visible 50-100 miles"
Awww, and did you think it was mostly the big bad Americans? And if some of those RAF pilots didn't feel too bad - maybe they were remembering all the innocents, and family, who died from the bombs rained upon Gt. Britain = in cities which truly didn't have any military significance 0 and In which far more innocents were killed.
In addition, the people of Dresden had had many warnings for months to get their children out and advised to do the same themselves. They chose to ignore it. "
In answer to your inane remark on "Can we firebomb some cities" in Iraq ... "If not - why? Saddam was just as evil as Hitler"
Ah, we have never been at war with the Iraqi people - We liberated them from a brutal tyrant who brutally murdered tens of thousands of his own people, etc. And We removed the tyrant = He is gone. "He's dead, Jim." That's "why" we wont "fire bomb" and "kill a quarter of million people" in Iraq.
I do not post this as an answer direct to you as I wouldn't presume, by your post, that you have the capacity or honesty to recognize the truth...but just because, for the other readers, your upside down thinking needed to be addressed.
If we had indeed done so early on (Fallujah after the hanging of dead burnt bodies of US contractors from that bridge comes to mind) Iraq would have been fully pacified by now.
The Germans were just lucky that we beat their asses before we had the atom bomb ready.
Bingo!
‘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.’
Same reason the British didn’t warn America about Pearl Harbour. We knew you were going to be attacked from broken codes but we needed to force liberal America out from isolationism and into the war. In wartime you have to break a few eggs. . . .
Agreed. It was not my point to say or indicate that the allied commanders considered Ausschwitz specifically in their thinking or planning, only to say that the entire war machine and planning by the Nazis produced the total war they ended up getting...and richly deserving.
Screw Nazi Germany. Those POS’s oh us for all the lives and money they took from us. They are on the same level as Communist as far as I am concerned.
My theory is that Hitler didn’t think the Allies would be ruthless enough, and probably did feel he could hold out for awhile.
After Dresden, Hitler realized that indeed the Allies were capable of fighting fire with fire, and he gave up on any plans for a National Redoubt, or other forms of long-term resistance, he knew the jig was up.
Dresden was not a war crime by even the most ridiculous stretch of the imagination.
The Nazis used Coventry to test something they wanted to try out - the Allies bombed Dresden for a specific strategic purpose: ending the ability of the Nazis to continue the war.
Dresden saved the lives of at least 100,000 Americans and certainly of more Germans than leaving it alone would have.
No, I didn't think you had. Just pointing out what Pferdsheisse the statement was. :-)
Well, I was actually talking about every germany thread ending in a WW2 - Nazi discussion, also those that started with a totally different topic...
Well, I know that quote...anyway, I don’t think the crimes of the nazi era are in danger of being forgotten. Also, I doubt that the next world war will be the west fighting each other everywhere...the international order has changed too much for that. Germany’s military is nowhere near the shape to start some world war again. Panzer warfare is somewhat dated. And funny enough, most people are that kind of history buff when it comes to germany.
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