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World War II-era bomb explodes in center of German town (Video 1:33)
Fox News ^ | 8-29-2012 | NA

Posted on 08/29/2012 2:04:06 PM PDT by servo1969

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To: crazydad
The Germans were licked and there were only refugees in Dresden. Did we really have to firebomb the city?

It's unfortunate that Fat Man wasn't ready in time for the European Theater. American lives might have been saved.

41 posted on 08/29/2012 10:51:19 PM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Emperor Palpatine

Just remember Pearl Harbor was a 7 pronged attack, with the majority of their attacks spent on the British and Dutch colonials from India to the Pacific and only followed after many years of very unjust Japanese conquest throughout Eastern Asia.

In some regards I suspect Roosevelt knew how to mobilize the national volition, although I never have concurred with his politics.


42 posted on 08/29/2012 10:58:03 PM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: dfwgator

He was even referred to as “Raving Roland” by the hierarchy.

His life’s ambition was to be Minister of Justice.....which was denied him because of a leftist past.

Even Hitler called Friesler “That Old Bolshevik Bigmouth”.


43 posted on 08/29/2012 11:35:54 PM PDT by Emperor Palpatine (I need a good stiff drink. How 'bout you?)
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To: Cvengr

Oh, I know.

I’ve read Prange and Goldberg’s books.

Farago’s, too.


44 posted on 08/29/2012 11:40:22 PM PDT by Emperor Palpatine (I need a good stiff drink. How 'bout you?)
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To: crazydad
Ok but was Dresden neccesary? Just a question. The Germans were licked and there were only refugees in Dresden. Did we really have to firebomb the city?

No.

45 posted on 08/30/2012 5:40:38 AM PDT by Fiji Hill (Deo Vindice!)
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To: Emperor Palpatine
I take it you somehow think movies are real life. How incredible.

Never argued there were zero resistors, just very very few. Thus my condemnation of their populace for supportive participation in the aggression and atrocities.

46 posted on 08/30/2012 5:58:58 AM PDT by X-spurt (It is truly time for ON YOUR FEET or on your knees)
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To: Mastador1

i manage a seniors property, we have 6 residents that were born in Germany pre-WW2. They have been very candid about life during the war. Most of what they remember is the hunger. They werent as afraid of the bombs as much as they were of not having food the next day. One resident summed it up for me who was forced into the Hitlerjugend, “you did what you had to do just to eat, you joined the military so your parents and sisters could eat.”


47 posted on 08/30/2012 9:09:38 AM PDT by Docbarleypop
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To: dfwgator
The German people needed to be taught a lesson that they cannot start wars without paying a heavy price. That did not happen after the First World War, and it lead to the “stabbed in the back” theory, that Hitler was able to exploit, all the way to gaining power.

As far as WWI is concerned, it was a conflict that the imperial powers of Europe were hoping and waiting for, clueless about how technology would change the face war forever. No side was more honorable than any of the others and no side "deserved" to be victorious (except maybe for the latecomers USA, but then again, the Lusitania wasn't exactly an innocent, purely civilian ship, either). It can reasonably be argued that WWI started as a war on terror where the entente powers sided with the terrorists.

It took you two (2) sentences to say what I bloviated on five paragraphs about.......

The decision to bomb Dresden was a complicated one, just like using the a-bomb on Hiroshima. And I think we owe it to history to tell the whole story. So five paragraphs are necessary, even five pages would only be a short synopsis. It's when you boil it down to "na-na-na-na-na-na" you sow the seeds of malevolence.

PS, even THEY expected this sort of thing...Look at Goebbels whipping up the crowd at the Berlin Sportspalast in 1944 asking if they're ready for total war......of course the crowd yells "Ja!"and "Heil!"

You do know the whole thing was staged and used for propaganda purposes, exactly because the average war-weary German didn't believe the bullshit anymore? Goebbels himself called the Nazi "extras" used for the Sportpalastrede idiots who would jump off a ten-storey building if asked to.
48 posted on 08/30/2012 10:07:46 AM PDT by wolf78 (Inflation is a form of taxation, too. Cranky Libertarian - equal opportunity offender.)
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To: wolf78

Your points are well-taken, but as I said before, any innocent blood is firmly on the hands of Hitler, not the Allies.


49 posted on 08/30/2012 10:13:59 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator
Your points are well-taken, but as I said before, any innocent blood is firmly on the hands of Hitler, not the Allies.

If it wasn't clear: I do agree. Otherwise pointing out the difference between WWI and WWII wouldn't have made much sense, either.
50 posted on 08/30/2012 11:35:11 AM PDT by wolf78 (Inflation is a form of taxation, too. Cranky Libertarian - equal opportunity offender.)
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To: wolf78

And don’t get me started on the evil that was the Versailles Treaty.....Clemenceau and company deserve some responsibility for sowing the seeds of the next war.


51 posted on 08/30/2012 11:39:06 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: Squantos
Then there is crap the resistance and other underground groups cached that pops up still to this day by mother nature or human nature.

When I was in Germany during my first enlisted tour there, I was priviliged to assist some old veerans with the removal of certain explosive ordnance from one of those exact same WWII caches, underground about halfway between Munich and Augsburg, not too far from the former Messerschmitt A.G. aircraft factory. The cache included several dozen MP44 and MP40 SMGs and ten or twelve wartime P-38 pistols, not a P.08 *Luger* in the bunch. The ammo for them was tested and found to be okay, and left right where it was. The old Panzerfausts, however, were disposed of. And, I suspect, were replaced with newer ones.

I'm sure they had all sorts of other novelties in other location.

A decade or so back when the Finns were trying to inventory and rationalize some of the military material that's accumulated their during their last three wars, they came up with all sorts of ordnance, including one Finn farmer with an 88mm Flak 18 in his barn, which he towed in behind his tractor, along with a couple hundred high explosive and antitank rounds for it.

52 posted on 08/30/2012 12:34:24 PM PDT by archy (I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!)
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To: Emperor Palpatine
Bingo......If your going to play with fire than expect to get burned!

My Uncle shuttled the troops to the shores of Normandy

A few years back I remember the Frenchy's bitchen about our troops being buried there.....This is the thanks we got after we saved the worthless arses.

Needless to say I was practicing my list of cursewords that day....It still p!sses me off!

53 posted on 08/30/2012 12:43:14 PM PDT by thingumbob (I'm a bitter clinger...I dare you to take my gun)
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To: dfwgator; servo1969
Just taste of the hellfire that people must have experienced who were on the receiving end of a WWII bombing run. Imagine hundreds of these all around you and never knowing where the next one will fall.



Yep. BTW, this is Warsaw 1945.

This is Grozny, 1990s.


54 posted on 08/30/2012 12:44:25 PM PDT by archy (I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!)
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To: dfwgator

And that idiot Wilson went along with him hoping the Old Walrus would support his League of Nations crackpipe-dream.

As usual, the French have a hand in royally screwing things up.


55 posted on 08/30/2012 2:26:46 PM PDT by Emperor Palpatine (I need a good stiff drink. How 'bout you?)
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To: archy

Did a few in Italy, Netherlands . Guam. Philippines and Germany over my career. Left a few myself in the Kuwaiti and UAE deserts ..... Ya just never know....... Old ones are impressive yet Saddassed Insanes troops had a buttload of new PSG-1’s, MP5SDA3’s etc...new in factory packages.

Those went missing quick ! .......:o)

Stay safe Archy


56 posted on 08/30/2012 2:45:13 PM PDT by Squantos
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To: Squantos
Left a few myself in the Kuwaiti and UAE deserts ..... Ya just never know....... Old ones are impressive yet Saddassed Insanes troops had a buttload of new PSG-1’s, MP5SDA3’s etc...new in factory packages.

Those went missing quick ! .......:o)

I left sterile hardware stored behind in Israel, where I hope to get back once more, and in Rhodesia, where I probably won't, and Serbia, where I just might.

Most of the nifty new stuff that I got my hands on that was off the books was in the hands of other qualified users, who were at least p[oilit enough to let my try out their goodies and familiarize wit tem a bit. The first Minimi/M240 SAW I ever fired was actually an Aussie F89A1 Minimi, and so on.

I tend to like the really neat historical relics of another age that because of efficiency or necessity, remain in real-world service. I did have a G36 carbine sort of stick to me last time I was let out of the cage. And yep, it made it home.

57 posted on 08/30/2012 3:49:12 PM PDT by archy (I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!)
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To: archy

Lots of our schools were improvised, modified tools in nature and as you suggest simple. Soap dish boomage to dremel tool / kitchen table stem guns. Favorite school I attended every chance was foreign materials intelligence school at Aberdeen MD . Like going to the Chicago Museam of Science and Industry.... You couldn’t see and experience everything in just one visit. Sino-Soviet, Warsaw Pact, NATO, bygone eras, unique and simple from handguns to artillery. Really enjoyed and used the lessons from that school as much if not more than my EOD related schools and experiences.

Chemical, Nuclear, biological, conventional ect... Not really work when you are allowed to earn a living doing what you enjoy. 40 years so far. Only a few more holes in me than I was born with so it’s all good .

Just a few more years and I’m going to start tinkering with rat rods full time. The kind that require a Tetnus shot to drive per se. Only way I want to get rusty in my old age.

Stay safe Archy ......


58 posted on 08/30/2012 8:28:17 PM PDT by Squantos
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