[crazydad]

I appreciate your writing that. It is a very good input into the Dresden Raid. I totally understand what you are saying. Yes the Germans did not know what total war was until the bombs started teaching them what they had wrought on themselves. Thanks again.

[Cronos]

you know, I moved to Poland 2.5 years ago and before that, for the 7 years that my wife and I were together, I joked that everything for Poles seem to be BTW and ATW (before The War and After The War) -- but only when I came here did I realize just how true that is

Poland lost 20% of it's population and lost 40% of its territories in the east and was physically moved west to the Oder-Neisse.

Every street in Warsaw has a sign here and there that says "at this spot in xy 1944, Nazis killed x number of Poles"

And the Jews were eliminated from Poland by the Nazis -- now my first encounter with this was Leon Uris' Mila 18. This is not quite true to fact -- many of the American jews and gentiles were quick to criticize a land they had not been to. In contrast Polish Jews like Szpilman (The Piano player) etc. were far more realistic

But to my point, the elimination of one entire section of the population has caused a trauma.

10% of pre-war Poland was Jewish. Everyone had Jewish friends or shopkeepers or dentists or doctors or employers or employees. And suddenly, all of that disappeared. A way of life disappeared

Pre-war Poland had Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians (Ukrainians and Belarussians), Tartars, Jews, Armenians etc.

But then the war and Stalin's ethnic shuffling made an artificially "pure" state.