Posted on 04/12/2005 4:46:09 PM PDT by SJackson
German prosecutors have provoked outrage by ruling that the 1945 RAF bombing of Dresden can legally be termed a "holocaust".
The decision follows the refusal by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office to press charges against a Right-wing politician who compared the bombing raids to "the extermination of the Jews".
German law forbids the denial or playing down of the Holocaust as an incitement to hatred.
So delicate is the subject of the slaughter of Jews under Hitler that any use of the word "holocaust", or comparison with it, faces intense scrutiny and sometimes legal action.
But prosecutors have declined to pursue further the case of Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-Right NPD, who likened the RAF's raids to the Nazis' "final solution".
Rudigger Bagger, a spokesman for the Hamburg public prosecutor, said the decision took into account only the criminal, not the moral, aspects of the case.
But he cited as a legal precedent a ruling by the federal constitutional court that favoured free speech in political exchanges, if defamation was not the prime aim of the argument.
Holger Apfel, the NPD's leader in the Saxon regional parliament, caused a scandal in January when he shouted down a commemoration of the Dresden bombing, prompting many others to walk out in disgust.
His outburst was covered by parliamentary privilege but Mr Voigt applauded and repeated the statements elsewhere.
Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, criticised the decision by prosecutors not to take action. He said the statements were incitement and allowing them to stand opened the door to further such comments.
"Morally, I have no understanding of this," he said. "One can ban such remarks if you use the law consistently. It is questionable whether statements that are clearly incitement come under freedom of expression."
Although the NPD is despised by other parties, German politicians reluctantly accepted the ruling.
Dieter Wiefelspüetz, the interior spokesman for the Social Democrat Party described the phrase "holocaust" in the context of Dresden as an "exploitation of the victims". But he supported the decision not to prosecute.
Attitudes towards the Allied bombing campaign, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, are changing. Estimates of the death toll in Dresden in February 1945 hover at about 35,000. All the same, some historians claim that as many as 500,000 people were killed in the raids.
Strictly speaking, the word "holocaust," which comes from the ancient Greek for "burnt", might seem apt for Dresden, much of it immolated by the fires started by the RAF's incendiary bombs.
But its primary meaning is now so closely linked to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews that such etymology appears to be in bad taste.
Dresden was considered a railhead for re-inforcing the Ostheer.
Your making this stuff up, Right?
See post #44 above!
"May 7, 1945 German government issues unconditional surrender to Allied forces."
"On August 6 and 9, 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by the first atomic bombs used in warfare."
Semper Fi
"Well, OK, whatever the Russians were doing they sure lost a lot of people doing it."
I think we all lost a lot of people, don't you?
"United States industry was focused on supporting them in doing it too. Their tanks were made in Detroit (although they cast their own guns). Their ammunition was manufactured in Louisville. The engines for their trucks were manufactured in Indianapolis. The bread they ate was made from wheat grown in Kansas and Nebraska. The pork in their Spam came from hogs raised in the American Corn Belt. Their clothes were made out of American cotton and wool, and the shoes on their feet were built in small factories all over the American Midwest and South set up for just this purpose, and the leather in those shoes was from American cattle."
Your knowledge of history is vastly superior to mine. I did not know the above details, thanks for the education.
"WWII was a war of total mobilization in the United States. We didn't do it by ourselves."
I would never claim the USA accomplished this victory by itself, but base on the information you provided above, we were obviously instrumental in this victory in more ways than one.
I't just torques me when the Germans or Japanese start whining about what a bad deal they got from the USA. My only response to such whining is "BITE ME".
Just one of my many hot buttons you know...
Joe's signature is on my diploma.
We had a lot of guest lecturers who had lived it on the ground.
While in the service I got to know our training brigade's Sergeant Major. In WWII he was a Captain assigned directly to work with Russians on the Trans Siberian ~ moving stuff from America to the front the long way. He was quite an interesting guy and boy could he play chess!
Never did more that 1/3 of Germans vote for the Nazis in an election that wasn't completely rigged. While it is inexcusable that the German people did not try more actively to stop what was happening, the facts do not back up the idea that the Germans were some sort of innately evil people.
Up until the point before the 1930's, Germany was considered one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe. They were one of the first to emancipate the Jews and give them full political rights, and antisemitic parties routinely lost heavily at the polls. When the Conservative party adopted an antisemitic plank to its platform, its vote total went down significantly. Parties that existed solely as antisemitic parties combined got no more than a few percent of the vote. Even for the 1/3 of the people that did vote for the Nazis in the post WWI, antisemitism played not much of a factor in most people's votes. Most people were voting on the Nazis' economic promises, and antisemitism was played down by Hitler because he was afraid of what the Germans' reactions would be.
It is unacceptable what the Nazi regime did and what the German people allowed them to do in WWII. Abosolutely reprehensable. But it is equally reprehensable to wish that we used a nuclear weapon on the country for no reason at all other than revenge. Killing people for the sake of killing them is absolutely disgusting and no better than what the Nazis did. As for Dresden, the military significance of the bombing is dubious at best. There were little if no military targets of value, but there were thousands upon thousands of civilian refugees. Yes, the Nazis killed millions, but does that mean that we should in turn kill civilians as well? Russia killed millions of Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Georgians, Armenians and others. Does that mean that we should have nuked Moscow or St. Petersburg in 1946?
I hate the Nazis, but I dont hate the Germans. I hate communists, but I dont hate the Chinese or the Russians or the Cubans. The people of all these countries were coopted by their regimes, just as the Germans were by the Nazis. Germany had to be defeated. It had to be defeated completely. But should we have tried to exterminate the 'evil' Germans just as they exterminated the 'evil' Jews? Hell no.
Joe's signature is on my diploma.
We had a lot of guest lecturers who had lived it on the ground.
While in the service I got to know our training brigade's Sergeant Major. In WWII he was a Captain assigned directly to work with Russians on the Trans Siberian ~ moving stuff from America to the front the long way. He was quite an interesting guy and boy could he play chess!
Name calling...neener neenr neenr. I've been called a lot worse by a lot better.
Grow up.
Name me one war, just one, where no innocents have been killed? You need a reality check on the true consequence of war.
Bomber Harris had his motives ~ and he kept them to himself.
Some analysts suggest bombing Dresden was a total waste of resources that could have been better used in taking out some of the railroads that led to the Nazi death camps.
Guess a lot of this stuff depends on your concerns.
Frankly, if we'd simply held off D-Day for a year, we'd had atom bombs and there'd been no need for an invasion. I have several relatives who'd have lived quite long lives without D-Day.
Learn to read .... and open your mind. Google Taylor and read some of the on-line interviews he has done. His book is now available in paperback. READ IT. Then you will see that your statement on the book is false. Your statement that I am "over my head" is also false. That is two false statements. I was also enlisted before getting my comission from West Point. After you learn to read .... learn how to count.
What part of that do you not understand?
There is a difference between understanding that innocents suffer and die in war and actually delighting in the death of innocents, like Lion in Winter.
Masses of innocent civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, suffering the consequences of ill will on an incomprehensible scale. It happens all the time. It will happen again.
Amen! Civilians will die in war - that is an unfortune fact. And if the deaths of civilians is necessary to win, then so be it. But that doesn't mean that we should target civilians to lower morale, even if the other side is doing it. It is immoral and disgusting.
You are the only one to have hinted at the real goal and perniciousness of this result. It is to dilute the actual Holocaust.
I hadn't intended to get in any big arguments on this thread, and I don't like arguing with Freepers (unless they're trolls or unusually stupid, and Im not trying to call you either). Let's just forget the whole thing. Maybe I will read that particular book some day, but I have a big shelf of books I haven't read already. Can't we all just get along? :>)
In war your opponent must detest the very idea of war. Dresden was to break their will to continue Hitler's war.
60%!
Without American industry placed in the service of the Russian war effort the Germans would have acquired the USSR, and with it the natural resources and oil of Siberia.
Some Russian kids died for us you know.
I was taught about that by Joseph Sutton (referenced elsewhere in an earlier post). I grew up about a mile from Naval Ordinance in Indianapolis. That's where they made the Norden Bombsight. They made other stuff there as well. Boy Scouts regularly visited the Allison engine factory where you could see the engines they built for airplanes used against the Germans by the Brits, the Russians and ourselves.
Almost all the adult males in my family (both sides) served in the war, and all the women worked in war industries or government agencies devoted to the war effort.
It was total mobilization of a kind that's almost unimagineable.
LOL!! : ^ )
I think I've named enough of the local war industries to indicate the seriousness of that little problem.
Makes me wonder why Bomber Harris wanted to demoralize the guys building Norden bombsites. Maybe he wanted to have the war continue on a bit longer than would otherwise be required if pilots could hit their military targets?
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