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.
What's false is your scurrilous implication that my remark was anti-Semitic.
(1) Every penny that Germany has paid out in reparations is richly deserved.
(2) The reparations were paid in gold from the beginning because the Allies wisely anticipated that a highly inflationary German Central Bank might in the future choose to dilute the reparations to the point of worthlessness, just as the German government had done during the Depression that followed the previous war.
I am not certain if the Israeli government now chooses to accept payment in other currency, but anyone would have been crazy not to insist on hard money from Germany in 1948.
And yes, plenty of collaborationist governments have gotten off nearly scot-free, despite their complicity in the Nazi atrocities.
France especially is remiss in this regard.
Six millions of Europe's most productive citizens were dispossessed and murdered and the reaprations paid to date only scratch the surface of the total extent of the thievery.
You are sick!
The RAF sent 800 bombers on the night of Feb 23 and interestingly enough the USAAF sent another 400 B-17s the next day to give them another going over. The whole idea was to deliver a knockout blow so that Germany would immediately surrender. Unfortunately they chose to fight on for another three months.
Also remember that the allied forces in Europe were experiencing enormous casualties. One unit of the US army went through 50 Lieutenants from D Day to the surrender of Germany.
Please accept my apology for misreading your post. For what it's worth, I almost never accuse anyone of anti-Semitism (which has a narrow and very specific definition as far as I'm concerned) and am only concerned about some negative stereotypes, but clearly I was wrong to have responded to your post even in the latter sense.
A few weeks ago, someone posted about Jewish voters in Florida going out in their mink coats and diamond jewelry even in warm weather. That was why seeing the comment about "gold" set me off, because as you said, no one deals in gold these days even if it made sense after the war.
At the time, no one was truly sure that it wasn't.
After all, the Ardennes offensive had arisen in an area that the Allies thoight was pacified and demilitarized - the Wehrmacht was very successful in concealing ordnance and vehicles and escaping detection for months.
In February 1945 the Allies did not have the time or the troops to gingerly investigate Dresden. What they had was a strategically importnat city on nthe Elbe river, a main artery of eastern Germany, which would serve as an ideal staging ground for a new offensive.
The fact remains, Dresden would be intact today if the Nazi government had surrendered to the Allies and Dresden would not have been bombed as hard as it was under any circumstances if the Nazi government had not been launching strategically useless rocket attacks on the UK.
There was and is no military justification for bombing civilians. The allied could have bombed the railways, and not the inner city. In addition, everybody knew that the Nazis were never going to surrender, because they wanted the German nation to share their personal fate (death, suicide). He who continues to claim that it was alright to kill thousands of civilians shall explain me why the US Air Force did not the same with Baghdad 2003.
Do you have a link for the FL story?
Here was the quote. It wasn't a story, just a Freeper.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254146/posts?page=35#12
I also could have handled it better than I did since she said she was repeating something a friend told her, and it does no one any good to just take offense and complain.
I think this is an important point, if true. Were the railway centers located outside of the center of the city? Or, would it have been possible given the level of technology available during WWII, to disable the railways without bombing the entire city of Dresden?
By the way, lest it seem like I make a habit of this, I think these would be the only two times in 18 months of posting that I've tried to call people out on this kind of thing. It's not a posture I want to assume, because it is not constructive, it comes across as whiny, and I have at least a 50% failure rate so far. America is and has been the greatest country in the world for Jews, and compared to what my grandparents fled in Russia and the sort of prejudices other people experience this is trivial stuff.
Too bad it'll probably reopen as a mosque.
There was no such thing as precision bombing in the 1940s.
You simply saturated the target area.
The bombing of Dresden was not specifically targeted at civilians but at the city as a transportation hub.
The allied could have bombed the railways, and not the inner city.
You can't bomb a railway - i.e. you can't bomb an eight-foot wide target with dumb bombs at night from 4,000 feet. You need to go after stations, interchanges and rolling stock. Most of which were located in the central city.
In addition, everybody knew that the Nazis were never going to surrender, because they wanted the German nation to share their personal fate (death, suicide).
They surrendered six weeks after Dresden was bombed, didn't they? That's interesting.
He who continues to claim that it was alright to kill thousands of civilians shall explain me why the US Air Force did not the same with Baghdad 2003.
There have been some slight advances in technology in the past 60 years. The Allied bombers over Dresden didn't have infrared or GPS or smart bombs.
Additionally, the USAF was supporting ground troops who were pretty confident in their ability to totally crush the Iraqi ground forces. The Republican Guard was not exactly the Wehrmacht, after all.
Sure. The allied forces bombed the railways outside of cities and even trains to cut off supply ways, because they had the air supremacy. Dresden was a crime against humanity, organized by "Bomber Harris" who took personal revenge. This is not to be excused by the crimes of the Nazis, which nobody wants to justify.
Fact is, that Germany has apologized for its historical wrongs, and that no other country on earth has done so much to pay back the damage done to its victims. They´re building a football-field large memorial in the center of Berlin to honor the killed Jews in Europe during the Nazi era.
Fact is, too, that other countries have ignored their wrongs committed during WWII or justified those as heroic acts. Just because they were fighting for the good side, does that not mean that all were good. I think of the killing of German soldiers who have surrendered. Those boys were drafted just like the US Army soldiers who killed them.
Of course it was possible to bomb railways then. Your claim is ridiculous.
Germany surrendered 2,5 months after Dresden, and this is not interestíng, because the surrender was signed when the German army was almost dissolved and more than 80% of the Reich was occupied by the enemy. This is more a sign how useless the bombing of Dresden was, rather than proving its necessity.
My comparison between Dresden and Baghdad is aimed to those who claim that it was ok to use massive bombings on cities.
As to the USAF in Bagdad you might want to read the report the Lancet put out today ( most of which is rubbish), collateral damage happens even with todays advanced technology.
From a military standpoint the bombing of civilian targets is counter productive as the Germans found out when they swithched bombing RAF bases in southern England to bomb London in 1940. Had they persevered the outcome of the Battle of Britain might have been quite different.
"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing material out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves. I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction. "
Winston Churchill to Arthur Harris on March 28th 1945
However, I can say intelligently that when I travelled throughout western Europe 30 years ago, I found the Germans to be by far the friendliest and kindest people, to Americans, in Europe. (I'm comparing them here especially to the Dutch, who were snotty and condescending to me when they found out I was American; and the French, who of course are execrable. Even some Brits were pretty nasty to me simply because I was American.)
I lived in Berlin (working as an American for the British armed forces!), and fondly remember the many instances of kindness and generosity Germans showed toward me, an American stranger.
Emotions still run high, understandably, about the crimes of the Nazis. "Our side," the Allies, were indisputably on the right side -- but I agree with you, I believe Britain committed a crime against humanity in the bombing of Dresden (and the Soviets also committed terrible crimes). Our socialist enemies today, both within America and without, use Dresden as a stick to beat us. That rankles, and that probably clouds the judgment of some who are otherwise well meaning.
But I hope that anyone here who still rants about the "Krauts" reads the editorial from Bild posted at #59:
In fact Harris had a history of using indiscriminate bombing notably in Iraq in the 20's and 30's.
However there was a military objective, the fact that it was carried out without any regard to civilian casualties was part of the savagery of war. How far back should we go in all this apology business. Should the Queen apologise to the french for giving them such a beating at Agincourt. Henry V did a lot of terrorising during that ugly war. Should she apologise for terrorising the colonists during the war for US independence?
Nobody disputes that atrocities were commited by both sides during that war. Unfortunately if you start a war for what are later percieved to be bad motives you get little sympathy when you come out of it badly.
Personally I think the leaders of post war Germany did a good job of acknowledging the evils of the Nazi era in stark contrast to the Communist/socialist regimes of Russia and China - which even today have failed to atone for their enormous crimes against humanity.
I think you're right about the Queen Mother -- another decent English girl taken in by that 'German lot'. (Perhaps I am prejudiced slightly as the descendent not only of six veterans of the War for Independence, but (illegitimately) of John Lackland and (legitimately) of two of the barons who stood surety for Magna Charta)
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