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 ...
Yeah. Entries on the long list of reasons they were the bad guys. Being the good guys carries some burdens. Churchill made the RAF change bombing tactics shortly after Dresden. It didn’t sit well with him. I agree.
I think the message was sent, if you do to us, we’ll do unto you.
And there was a lot of motivation to make sure Germany was utterly destroyed to avoid a recurrence of the ‘stabbed in the back’ nonsense that brought Hitler to power in the first place.
The core structure was pretty simple. RAF command felt they could demoralize the German people and get them to force surrender. Kind of a tall ask in a dictatorship. And it never really manifested, if anything it increased civilian backing, an attack like that made it easier to see the Allies as the bad guys, somebody that needed to be fought against. Keep in mind too German civilians didn’t really know how their side was fighting the war, again life in a dictatorship. They didn’t know the bombing resembled what had been done in London and Coventry. Of course all RAF command had to do was look at their civilian reaction to see how the plan really wasn’t going to work. England sure didn’t surrender after those bombings. It was a brutal attack that didn’t achieve the goal, and upper command decided not to do that again.
A few keyboard warriors certainly aren't going to influence my thinking merely by repeating a dogmatic statement over and over.
Particularly not certain posters who have repeatedly demonstrated on other threads that they do not really grasp the concept, importance and methodologies for providing logistical support for field units.
Their assertions are tenuous enough, but the posting history of many of them casts a pall of dubious value to any critique they offer about military matters.
It's not likely due entirely to being a lifelong civilian, I have met too many officers who somehow got into the command structure without a real grasp of logistics either.
Vonnegut was physically in Greater Dresden when the city was firebombed. (He doesn't have the qualification that the members of the Keyboard Warrior Class do, (of course), but he was physically present on the ground during the bombing.)
Anybody here who suggests for even a moment that the Allies went overboard in targeting a population center is labeled outright. So we have to refer to someone who has some more street cred. Vonnegut was an American, he had fought the Germans in combat, he was Jewish, and yet, he managed to see humanity in the innocent victims that "Christians" themselves can't seem to find.
The ultimate moral authority here is Natural Law; murder is intrinsically evil. "Yeah but they started it" might work for those still in the bar at closing time, but it doesn't stand up to reason; the idea that the Germans (or Japanese) were barbaric so we had to burn them to death doesn't make any objective sense at all.
Anyone from Pope John Paul II to Donald Trump to the millions of people who were publicly stating that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a Very Stupid Thing to Do are all too familiar with these lines.
But the truth of these words does nothing to deny the existence of a Natural Law we are obliged to follow.
Exactly. This war we are in has lasted how long? It’s because we play “nice”. Our enemies snicker and sneer at our generosity. At this rate, our patient enemy will destroy us.
In one hour, the great Satan was destroyed”....
The Americans were the good guys who could never do anything wrong, the "Krauts" and the "Nips" were the bad guys who could never do anything right, and that's all there is to it.
Just please don't bring up anything that might indicate that our hands were not as clean as I grew up believing them to be. < /s>
“There is only one reason for that kind of timing for a bombing of the middle of a populated city: kill civilians.”
So? War is Hell.
Did anybody yet recognize that nuking two cities and bombing Dresden was Democrat Presidents that did that?
There were bodies found in the shelters that were untouched by the flames; the cause of death was asphyxiation. The raging fires at street level and in the buildings above left the "sheltered" with no more oxygen to breathe. (They wouldn't know it until it was too late, but hunkering down in the shelters would cost many people their lives.)
Follow that logic to its natural end, and you would be forced to justify nineteen terrorists crashing planes into buildings; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
“you would be forced to justify nineteen terrorists crashing planes into buildings”
That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
“Follow that logic to its natural end, and you would be forced to justify nineteen terrorists crashing planes into buildings”
Since you’re so dumb, I thought I’d explain it to you: The 19 terrorists were predominately Saudi Arabian citizens and we were not at war with Saudi Arabia.
I don’t know what makes you so stupid, but it really works.
But hey, "war is hell", right? < /s>
“...Anyone from Pope John Paul II to Donald Trump to the millions of people who were publicly stating that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a Very Stupid Thing to Do are all too familiar with these lines.
But the truth of these words does nothing to deny the existence of a Natural Law we are obliged to follow.” [Captain Walker, post 186]
Anybody who uses leading capitals (Very Stupid Thing, Natural Law) is arguing from authority. Such arguments have no place in a discussion of reality. Long-distance psychologizing via chatboard post is an iffy thing, but my experience indicates that those who resort such arguments are more interested in bludgeoning or frightening the rest of us into submission, than they are in any meaningful analysis of the real situation.
“Vonnegut was physically in Greater Dresden when the city was firebombed...he managed to see humanity in the innocent victims...The ultimate moral authority here is Natural Law; murder is intrinsically evil...the idea that the Germans (or Japanese) were barbaric so we had to burn them to death doesn’t make any objective sense at all.” [Captain Walker, post 185]
I will risk the ire of forum members by admitting that I deem Kurt Vonnegut Jr to have been a talented author. I cannot remember many pages of his that I’ve read which did not evoke new insights, or at least novel ways of looking at the situation.
None of which can excuse the fact that he was a squishy Leftist who blamed the United States for the miserable state of the world. Renders his judgment suspect, on this or that governmental action or public policy.
Little of which has any bearing on what he said concerning Allied air attacks on Dresden in February 1945. Was it unpleasant? Yes. Horrifying? Yes. Messy? Chaotic? Yes and yes. And whatever unpleasant adjectives you care to add.
But we cannot take the personal experiences of junior Allied prisoners who had the bad luck to be present during the strikes as valid critiques of the Allied air strategy.
“...It’s not likely due entirely to being a lifelong civilian, I have met too many officers who somehow got into the command structure without a real grasp of logistics either.” [MrEdd, post 184]
It pains me to admit I found the state of consciousness of a dismaying number of senior officers to be pretty shaky as well.
I spent 24 years and 7 months on active duty, almost all of it (outside tech training and higher ed) closely tied to strategic targeting and related aspects. As a technical officer, I was required to stand up to quite a selection of senior leaders, telling them that their exalted rank and unshakable willpower did not grant them a license to violate the laws of physics. They did not always accept it gracefully.
I’m going to do rhetorical violence to another sacred cow of a lot of forum members: namely, the conceit that civilian employees of DoD don’t do much. The offices I was assigned to would have gotten little done if our civilians hadn’t been on the job. As the only people present possessed of anything like an institutional memory, they were forever saving us junior staffers from reinventing the wheel. And saving the bacon of mid-level supervisors who should have known better.
Or emphasizing a point...
Referring to your post, I would point out the obvious: one can use psychology to put on airs on an internet site without any use of capital letters at all.
Did he become a "squishy Leftist" before or after his experiences in the Second World War? It's not a rhetorical question; Army NCOs as a rule aren't known for being "squishy Leftists", and it's fair to think his experiences in February 1945 had something to do with this.
Little of which has any bearing on what he said concerning Allied air attacks on Dresden in February 1945. Was it unpleasant? Yes. Horrifying? Yes. Messy? Chaotic? Yes and yes. And whatever unpleasant adjectives you care to add.
I'll add "murderous" and call it a night.
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