Posted on 02/13/2020 7:17:08 AM PST by C19fan
During the final months of World War II, from February 13 to 15, 1945, Allied forces bombed the ancient, cathedral city of Dresden, in eastern Germany.
The bombing was controversial because Dresden's contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other German cities — though it was a key transport junction and used by German forces to defend the country against Soviet forces approaching from the east.
Before the huge air raid, it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, however, it was a smouldering ruin — 2,400 tons of high explosives and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. An unknown number of civilians, somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000, were dead.
British rifleman Victor Gregg was one of hundreds of men being held as a PoW in the city by the Germans. On the 75th anniversary of the start of the bombing, this is his eyewitness account of the devastation he left behind.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman
Go back to DU, troll-boi.
Speak 4 yourself, lib.
Finally, someone points that out. I can't believe I'm reading these sob stories about innocent civilians. IT WAS AN ALL OUT NO HOLDS BARRED SURVIVAL WAR THAT GERMANY, ITALY, AND JAPAN STARTED. I'm glad the Allies devastated those totalitarian pricks and yes, their civilian enablers.
I'm with Patton who believed we should have kicked Russia's ass when we had the chance. I so tired of revisionists as they try to look so intellectual while they parse every little thing in history. Personally, I think we should have made Iraq a US protectorate territory after that win, while returning Aftganiscrap into their beloved 7th century shithole.
Why is it we are the only nation through history that always gives back the spoils of war? Hell, we could own Germany, Italy, Japan, Iraq, and other countries we've liberated through our childrens' blood.
USA! USA! THE most successful, most envied, generous, liberty example this rock has ever seen.
God yes, that’s true. Anyone who’s been in a war will tell you that “only” another two or three weeks is an eternity.
My father was hospitalized after having been wounded on Okinawa, but he would have been healed in time to take part in the invasion of Japan if that had been needed. He had no doubt that Truman was right to use the atomic bomb.
Oh, great! Dog whistle to all the ‘Lost Cause’ posters to invade this thread.
Oh, great! Dog whistle to all the ‘Lost Cause’ posters to invade this thread.
We ARE the good guys, dumbass. This nation has done more for the World through our short history than all others combined. Sheesh.
“A whole nation in the East was driven to battle. Men, women, and even children are employed not only in armaments factories, but in the war itself...
We have to respond with similar measures if we do not want to give up the game as lost...
Do you believe with the Führer and us in the final total victory of the German people? Are you and the German people willing to work, if the Führer orders, 10, 12 and if necessary 14 hours a day and to give everything for victory? Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?”
Joseph Goebbels, Sportpalast speech February 18, 1943
“This is just Nazi sympathy porn, trying to deflect away from what they did in the east.”
None of my posts defended the Nazis in any way. That is the deflection on your part after being unable to defend the mindset of the Dresden raids and how strikingly similar it is to the ISIS mentality.
So let’s repeat.
Dresden had no military significance in February 1945. Like every other city in Europe, it had a rail system.
The bombing raid was specifically planned to kill as many civilians as possible. It was not designed to damage the rail system. It was designed to kill as many men, women and children civilians as possible for the sole reason that they were germans.
And you defend this with your heart and soul.
ISIS and the rest of their kind believe they are war with the infidel west. As such, they believe they are allowed to kill as many infidel men, women and children civilians as possible for the sole reason of being infidels.
You broached on several valid points. I agree that pressing the war at that time was the right thing to do. I question the necessity of Dresden. Some on Ike's staff argued against the bombing, at least on the scale that it eventually took . Ike gave the approval, as a nod to Churchill and retribution.
Retribution goes beyond pressing the war and that was my real point.
Prior to '45 Germans (not Nazi's), through diplomatic channels, did seek to negotiate with Churchill, an end to the war (an end that included taking Hitler out). These attempts were rejected by Churchill. It was too late to negotiate, Germany would need to be destroyed first, was the response.
There are 60,000,000 Americans who have been murdered in the womb (in this short history) who would probably disagree with your assessment.
During an interview long after the war’s end, “Bomber” Harris was asked whether the fire bombing of Dresden was moral. He responded, “Name me one act of war which is “moral”. Is sticking a bayonet in an another man’s belly moral?” He makes the point, as did Gen. Sherman, that war is an anomie, a vacuum in which normal ethical standards do not exist, and no act of war can be justified as moral unless it shortens the war.
What the f*ck has that got to do with this war thread? Are you assuming I'm Pro-choice because I'm okay with collateral damage in all out war? I am Pro-life.
I really hope that "Captain" in your handle does not stand for any current or past military rank. If so, it saddens me that a military officer or Veteran would make such a leap in reasoning.
The entire country would have never had any military significance had Germany minded their own business instead of amassing a global threatening military and murdering millions of innocent people. What do you think would have happened if we would have lost?
We were the good guys. I think you are struggling with that fact.
If we’d had the nukes then, we’d have used them. Sympathy only extends to innocent children of the enemies; the adults were culpable for allowing such a regime to remain.
“The Battle of Hamburg,” published in the 1980s, provides similar descriptions of the destruction there.
Horrific.
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