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 ...
The UK responds with: Coventry and London.
My dad was a Bataan Death March and 4 year death camp survivor. In any invasion the POWs would have been the first to be shot to free the guards up for defense.
Those who were not there haven’t a clue.
Wow, 10 cents!?
Where did you get it? My wife want to get me an upgrade?”!
LOL. As if you were?
Ah yes, another military expert chimes in (in hindsight).
Yeah, go polish your Maltese Falcon. Always fascinating to hear Germans prattle on about innocent civilians. I guess it can be a bitch to get back what you give out
And they are as silent as a whore in Church about the conditions in the Concentration Camps, the Death Camps, the rounding up of innocent people and shipping them to them in rail road boxcars with no food or water. Not a peep about the Germans bombing Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Stalingrad, Coventy. Or the systemic slaughter of Eastern Europeans especially Jews by German Special Units. They are also mute about the Germans starving to death over a million Russian POWs. People who live in glass houses should not throw bricks.
This was a bombing designed specifically to make sure everything manufactured in Dresden wasn’t manufactured anymore and to ensure that Transportation of goods through the transportation hubs in Dresden didn’t move through there for as long as possible and because Germany had been bombing the living crap out of allied cities for so long nobody but enemy sympathizers cared about any German lives lost by that point.
But do go on with your little rant.
.....”Both were military actions designed to force the enemy to surrender. Which they did”....
Had Japan not outright refused to surrender (twice) neither would have happened.
Big talker? Sorry it’s just a statement if fact. You clearly do not understand the nature of war.
If you don’t sew the wind, you won’t reap the whirlwind. The bombing of Dresden was not a military necessity. But once the war starts one never knows where it is going to go.
Hamburg was fire-bombed too earlier in the war.
Mitsuo Fuchida, a Japanese captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and a bomber aviator in the Japanese navy before and during World War II. He is perhaps best known for leading the first wave of air attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
“You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they’d die for the Emperor ... Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary ... Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know.”
Also a little known factoid. But at that time we did not yet have special smart bombs that could locate only those Germans carrying a nazi party card and carefully avoid the people who didn’t support Hitler.
EXACT what a trained ISIS member would say!
/s
Similarly, despite the near total collapse of the Wehrmacht in June - August 1944 which brought Allied armies close to the German border in both East and West, Germany refused to collapse. Instead, after the assassination attempt in July, the Nazi Party and SS were given complete control of the German state and free rein to use terror against both German civilians and soldiers who were considered 'defeatist.' In addition, Speer redoubled his efforts to organize what remained of German industry to support the war effort. For example, in the fall of '44 allied aircraft were destroying or disabling 1,200 German locomotives per month. Speer ramped up the repair/replace capacity to 6,000 per month.
As a consequence, the war in Europe would drag on for another 9 months. During each of those months the German murder machine continued to work-- prisoners moved out of France, Poland and Hungary continued to be murdered. For example, the slave laborers killed in the V-1 and V-2 programs alone more or less match the number of Germans killed in Dresden.
The US and Britain considered that all available means were needed to bring the war to a conclusion as swiftly as possible, and had promised the Soviets to provide as much military action as possible in the East. So Dresden was fire bombed.
Yes it did, and the lack of fuel at the front was vastly exacerbated by the changes in bombing command which began to hit railroad yards and bridges and yards full of construction equipment and power plants.
Things beyond just factories which were not specifically military but which were directly required to supply and support the military.
And after 9/11, so could you smell the acrid, burned bodies in NYC. Or maybe it was the combination of rubble and plastic/wires, etc. I’m not sure; but it was strong and uncomfortable.
The notes left behind would rip your heart out.
No I wasn’t there. But I’m not stupid enough to be walking around telling the guys who were that the war was basically over in February of 45. That would be you.
Like so much of the Second World War, a consequence of dancing with the Devils (plural because there was more than one).
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