Posted on 10/29/2004 7:16:19 AM PDT by Pikamax
Germany asks will Queen say sorry? Fri 29 October, 2004 05:44
By Alexandra Hudson
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans are waiting to see how the Queen refers to Britain's 1945 bombing of Dresden when she visits next week, now that they are speaking more of their own war-time suffering and breaking a long-standing taboo.
Just days ahead of the Queen's first visit since 2000, a row has erupted in the British and German press over whether the air raids were justified and whether the monarch should apologise.
Dresden was devastated in a firestorm which killed some 35,000 people just three months before the war's end. The fate of the eastern city has come to epitomise civilian suffering.
"Will the queen say sorry?" asked the country's largest selling newspaper Bild on Thursday.
The queen will host a concert in Berlin to raise money for Dresden's cathedral which lay in rubble for 50 years and is now a focus of German and British reconciliation.
"Such delicate gestures of reconciliation are probably too complicated for newspapers like Daily Mail and Daily Express to understand," wrote the Berliner Zeitung daily.
ANGER IN BRITISH PRESS
Talk of an apology has angered populist newspapers.
"Krautrage" said a headline in the Daily Star tabloid.
"Sorry, the Germans must never be allowed to forget their evil past," wrote columnist Simon Heffer in the Daily Mail.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman was quoted in Germany's Der Spiegel newsmagazine saying the Queen had not been asked for an apology. But she added: "The Queen is very conscious of the suffering of all people during the war."
The queen's three-day visit aims to focus on the future relationship of Britain and Germany.
On a visit to Britain two weeks ago German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he was amazed at the lingering portrayal of Germany in the British media as a nation of Nazis.
It was long considered unwise and even dangerously nationalistic for Germans to question whether Allied bombings were necessary or legitimate but German historian Joerg Friedrich did just that in 2003 in a best-selling book.
I'm personally getting a bit sick, between the Japanese wanting the US to apologize for Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Germans wanting Britain to apologize for Dresden...
They should, instead, learn the lesson from those acts, namely that aggressors can usually only be stopped by aggression in response.
Well, let me disagree with out being disagreeable, because perhaps the Brits do owe the Krauts and appology for Dresden (and Hamburg, too, for that matter). I say this because of the bombing strategy that Britian employed late into the war when it was no longer necessary. The RAF sent in their Lancaster pathfinders at night with incendiary munitions and, basically, the rest of the bomber command lined up on the flames and carpet bombed what was left. This was all going on while American B-17s and B-24s were doing the strategic precision bombing in daylight (and therefore exposed to more danger) with the famed Norden bombsight--the same one offered to the Brits, but turned down!
Germanys collective shame for WWII and their Nazi heritage seems to be taking a new direction; blame the winner for trying too hard.
Welcome to a new world.Kerry must be happy.
Oh, they apologized.
War Is Hell...
The International ministry of the cathedral springs from the very night of the bombing of Coventry by the German Air Force on 14th November 1940 and the terrible aftermath when the shocked citizens of Coventry gazed with horror on their ruined city and cathedral. Five and forty people died, almost 2000 houses were destroyed, the city centre was in ruins and the 14th century cathedral was destroyed by fire. Should we remember terrible disasters like Coventry?
She should tell them how sorry the Anglo - American alliance is that we've forgotten how to wage unconditional war against genocidal totalitarian cults, but that visiting Dresden has refreshed her memory just in time for the reduction of Fallujah.
They STARTED WWI and WWII, they're lucky we didn't whipe the whole place off the face of the earth to make sure they couldn't start the next WW.
To be in a position to ask for an apology you can't be the country that started the war in the first place.
Don't see what there is to apologize about. Again, ya starts a war, ya lives with the consequences. The Brits were entitled to do anything they wished to the Germans if they could pull it off.
If you start a war, make d@mn sure you win.
Well then I'm wrong about that then but I still consider them pompous self centered pricks to even think they might be owed an apology.
This one's easy! The Queen should say something like "We, the British people, are dreadfully sorry that the third reich made it impossible to defeat the Nazi madness without firebombing Dresden. For those innocent live taken in that bombing, we are sorry. For those Nazi combatants and their supporters that were killed - that is the fortunes of war."
Bombing strategies (of any kind) become "no longer necessary" when the other side surrenders.
Prior to the surrender, I support whatever bombing strategy the military wants to suggest.
Yes they have, and they've paid out gazillions in reparations. NOT that that makes up for even a single murdered person --just answering your question.
History buffs, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to stick my neck out and take an unpopular position here: I believe the RAF's utter destruction of Dresden was unnecessary and wrong.
Wasn't Germany --unlike Japan before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings-- on its knees before the bombing of Dresden?
Most of us here accept the necessity of bombing defiant Japan into submission, and that the atomic bombing actually saved both American and Japanese lives (compared to the bloodshed that would've occurred if we'd had to invade the homeland).
But Germany was already invaded and, for all practical purposes, defeated. Bombing Dresden was not going to save the lives of Allies and did not contribute to ending the war. (Again, if anyone knows better, please correct my history.)
You can if you're a Socialist who lives in a Utopian bubble.
I was visiting Wurzburg in 1981. Toured the Residenz that was bombed badly during WWII. The locals were still pissed off about that. And yet, no bad feelings about their Jewish neighbors who were divested of all property and gassed.
The Continent can be 'quaint' in so many ways.
Yes, my Mother was a telephone operator in London during the Blitz. I will never forget the stories she told me.
It is also important to remember how the Nazi's came to power and kept it. An important lesson to keep in mind during this election. Is the Reichstag burning?
You're certainly right about that.
Not only did the Nazis start the air war against civilian targets by carpet-bombing London, Birmingham, Coventry and other British cities, but even after they knew they had no chance of winning the war and were struggling just to keep Russian troops from taking Berlin, they still authorized V-2 missile attacks on British cities for the sole purpose of killing as many English civilians as possible.
The UK has absolutely nothing to apologize for - in fact the BRD should be thanking them for not being vindictive after the war.
I agree...
I was always sorry that only Dresden got the treatment... More German cities should have gotten it!
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