Posted on 06/25/2012 2:55:04 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The planned unveiling in London of a memorial to the 55,573 Royal Air Force Bomber Command airmen killed in World War II has sparked muted criticism in Germany, where many regard the Allied air raids that destroyed entire cities and killed over 500,000 civilians as unjustified and criminal.
Helma Orosz, the mayor of Dresden, which was devastated in an Allied attack in February 1945, criticized the plans for the monument when they first became public in 2010, and spoke to London Mayor Boris Johnson about it.
"The planned memorial triggered astonishment in Dresden and was judged critically by us in diplomatic terms," she told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "I am pleased that this exchange of views led to the monument now featuring an inscription commemorating the victims of the bombing war. The objections many people in Germany had to such a memorial have been taken seriously and I welcome this very much. It's a further gesture of reconciliation between Britain and Germany." …
The bombing raids were a response to German attacks on British cities and were stepped up massively in the summer of 1944 after the D-Day landings. Their aim was to destroy Germany's military machinery and to crush public morale.
Many Germans believe that Dresden, where up to 25,000 people were killed in the Feb. 13 raid that caused a firestorm, symbolizes the ruthlessness and pointlessness of a bombing campaign that failed to break their spirit or bring their industry to its knees. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
There is a small, Allied war cemetery not far from the Olympic stadium in Berlin. Went there once with the (ex)wife. Vast majority of the graves seemed to be allied air crews. The stones listed the unit and the names of the crew. The crew of one bomber had someone with my last name AND my wife’s maiden name. It was kind of spooky.
I guess cannibalism won’t be mentioned huh. There’s a new book coming out soon, and it touches on what Japanese troops did during the war. One of the claims is that in certain regions humans of specific nationality were used more or less as cattle. If it’s revealed to be true, that’s going to be a real eye opener.
First a flagpole and now Germany wants to dictate what kind of memorial the Queen of England should put on her land. I can’t imagine Edward III is resting peacefully.
London and Coventry are in no sense comparable to the systematic terror bombing unleashed on German civilian populations. Yeah, they started it. So what.
And now Germany, in its haste to remove itself as far as possible from its hideous crimes (while never completely answering the question of how an entire nation could allow such a monstrous machine to function so efficiently) is crying foul over a monument commemorating a group of young men who gave their lives trying to shield the free world from that hellish regime.
How do you say "Shut your knackwurst hole" in German?
Herr Goebbels asked for “Totaler Krieg” and he got it, in spades.
Take a look at the “estimated” civilian death figures. It’s been the neo-Nazis (including the NDP) that have pushed that figure as high as 500,000 (back during the war, the Nazi Party published the false figure of 200,000)—but Dresden city records estimated 25,000 civilian deaths at the time, and those have been corroborated by more reliable authorities.
Speaking as the son of a man who dug bodies out of the rubble of the Blitz, and later in the war flew fighter escort for a few of the thousand-bomber raids, I’d like to invite the Krauts to kiss my @$$.
They virtually reduced Warsaw to nothing but ashes. War is Hell, don't start them.
You started it. You lost. End of story.
Part of the reason for the rise of Hitler, was due to the fact that Germany itself, was largely untouched by the First World War, this made it viable for the “stabbed in the back” theory to gain traction amongst the German People....the Allies were not going to make that same mistake again, they made sure the German people would feel pain this time around, to make sure another Hitler would never rise from their midst.
The only reason Germany didn't burn London and every English city to the ground was the lack of ability not some sense of restraint.
In addition to being morally wrong to start the war, they were tactically idiotic in that they didn't have the strength to win it.
You forgot the Tuskeegee Airmen. While we all commend their heroic service while facing unbelievable discrimination at home, their story gets told more now than the raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi.
I had a grandfather (unfortunately no longer with us) who flew the Dresden bombing mission...he refused to talk about it afterward, even many years after the fact.
They intentionally starved the entire city of Leningrad during the seige (over 900 days).....I don’t care if they were Communists, any regime that did what they did to that one city alone, deserved everything they got.
I swear, when I read the word “Queen” in the headline I immediately thought of Freddie Mercury. When I read your comment, I about choked on my coffee. Thanks x, I needed to laugh today. Take care.
How are they “not comparable”?
Because the Nazis only had enough aircraft to concentrate on those two areas?
Not as if the Nazis wouldn’t have put up a thousand plane raid if they could have. A good analogy is the terrorists on 9/11. If they could have got their hands on a nuclear weapon, they would have used it. To argue otherwise is to support the thought process of “We wanted to kill some people, but only a limited number like 20.000. If we had wanted to kill 50,000, we thought that would have been too many.”
You see, the Nazis already showed us what they would do if they had the opportunity, Rotterdam, Coventry, London. They just didn’t have the resources, thank God for that.
When your enemy puts aside the rules of civility and resorts to unrestricted warfare, you do as well.
I would say that is “so what”. When someone starts a fight, they better finish it. WE finished it, not those pieces of crap who started it. Then, we get people who whine “Ooooohhh...the winners write the history. We were just as bad and evil as the Nazis.”
I lived with the results of that war with my father having been an Army combat veteran of WWII. Shell shocked all to h*ll all his life after the war; fought in N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Germany - they barreled up through Italy as fast as they could go, fighting ruthless Panzer divisions much of the way, into Germany, into Berlin about half an hour after Adolph committed suicide. - Germans are either at your throat or at your feet, neither of which are relationships I want. - So, they can kiss my you know what.
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