[wideawake]

When are they going to have marches in Coventry?

[calex59]

Any idiot that thinks Germans suffered as much as their victims is just that, an idiot.

[gridlock]

Oh, cry me a FReepin’ river. You try to take over the World and exterminate all the Jews, bad things are going to happen to you. The NAZIs were as bad as it gets. Everything we did in Europe, and more, was easily justified.

[Northern Yankee]

And they don't want to hear about the Holocaust.

Those that ignore history are condemned to repeat it!

[2banana]

Actually - the allies bombing of Dresden was not the brightest thing we did in WWII. The city had no military significance and was bulging at the seems with innocent refugees.

And before I hear the - The German citizens deserved what they got answer - We just fought a war against Iraq. Can we fire bomb some cities there and kill a quarter of million people and just say they deserved it? If not - why? Saddam was just as evil as Hitler.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

“Toward the end of the war, the Allies bombed dozens of German cities. Dresden suffered the greatest losses. Between February 13 and 15, 1945, the city was pounded and all but destroyed. About 35,000 people died in the air raids. One result was to change the direction of the German discourse of guilt. Many Germans exchanged their feelings of guilt for the Nazis’ crimes into a feeling of suffering and victimization. “The narrative of suffering is deeply rooted in the Nazi conception, and even people who were not Nazis shared part of this narrative,” Margalit says. “The bombings were described as a great wrong inflicted on the Germans by the Allies, who were waging all-out war, a war utterly unlike that of the Germans.”

Is it not possible that the Allies really did bomb a civilian population without restraint?”

I lived in Bavaria for four years and visited Dresden when it was still in the DDR. The Commie travel guides played up the allied bombing of Dresden, when made me very angry since the Soviets treated the Germans as bad as the Germans had treated Soviet citizens, and that was very badly. Germans were moving West to escape the Red Army, preferring the Western allies.

I have questioned the need for the bombing of Dresden, which was not an industrial city, and was full of refugees.
However, Hitler had indiscriminately bombed London, including the more recent V-1 and V-2 rockets. Did bombing Dresden hasten the end of the war against Germany like the A-Bomb did against Japan. I am not sure about that, but if it saved allied lives, it was probably justifiable.

Certainly, the Dresden bombing should not be spoken in the same breath with the Holocaust, or even the starving of the Dutch People after they rose up during Market-Garden, or the Katyn Forrest massacre by Stalin.

[Jeff Head]

I will tell you the simple difference...if the Nazi regime had not risen to power (with the support of the German people at the time) and committed the agression and atrocities like it did at Ausschwitz and throughout Europe, the allies would NEVER have committed a bombing campaing like Dresden to break their will and defeat them.

There is no moral comparison or equivalence. The former occurred because tyrants and those who supported them committed violence and agression against innocent peoples and nations. The latter happened as the allies committed violence against the perpetrators and those nations, cities, and peoples who provided material and moral support in the all out war that World War II was.

It was hell...but it was unleashed on the hellions and their peoples. In the end, the German people and Japanese people wanted NO MORE. They were made over into good Germans and good Japanese by the horrific events. I know this for sure...had Hitler and Tojo succeeded, the hell on earth that would have resulted would have been many orders of magnitude worse...world-wide...than what occurred at Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki to put a stop to it.

We waged all out war to end what would have been a much more, continuing brutal reign of terror and killing world-wide had we not stopped it in the fashion that we did.

[GOPJ]

The Germans should feel guilt - they earned it - it's theirs.

Now and forever.

World War II Germany was a modern culture that acted worse than the lowest, creepiest bush tribe. ( No insult meant to primitive people). It wasn't a few bad apples acting on their own - it was the whole figgin culture.

Shame on them. Shame on all of them.

Let the Germans live with the guilt. It's the least they can do.

[Bringbackthedraft]

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.

[mojito]

The moral equivalence of this is both absurd and revealing. Apparently many Germans still do not regard the German Jews gassed at Auschwitz as German, although many were indeed citizens of the Reich. Some Germans ignore their history and embrace a false dichotomy in the vain hope of claiming the status of victim - and the bogus moral authority that accompanies it - in today’s pc world.

[Ikemeister]

Note to the Germans:

If you don’t start no crap, there won’t be no crap.

[VOA]

(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”.

[LibWhacker]

pleasant-smelling people

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.

[VOA]

for reference by the forum:

“The Dreden Legend”
by Rebecca Grant

in “The Air Force Magazine”, October 2004, Vol. 87, No. 10

http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2004/1004dresden.asp

(in pdf format):
http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2004/1004dresden.pdf

[Alouette]

Because of Dresden, the Germans were spared a Hiroshima.

War sucks. It sucks more for the losers.

[3niner]

You reap what you sow.

More people need to understand this.

[PoliticsAndSausages]

I did not have the impression that my fellow german countrymen would see suffering as some value you get when you balance out the individual suffering of groups, like the jews, the poles, the germans, etc...why should they be so stupid?

Anyway, I'm a bit surprised about how many of the germany threads on this board are WW2 related...it's been 60 years after all, you'd think there is more to report about. It's a bit tiring, commenting on your standpoint regarding WW2 and Nazism all the time.

[Joe Boucher]

There are a few cities in the Mid-east that should get Dresden treatment.
Ya hear me Mecca? How about you Damascus? Tehran ya paying attention there boy?

[Sprite518]

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.