Posted on 04/12/2005 4:46:09 PM PDT by SJackson
"In war your opponent must detest the very idea of war. Dresden was to break their will to continue Hitler's war."
Why didnt we just kill every german POW or murder every German in the Rhineland ? What about just killing the little kids under 10 years old or burning the Grandma's (at the stake of course)?
That would have really made them detest war.
/sarcasm off/
RE the Norden bombsight: I read that the Norden bombsight was regarded as such an advanced weapons system that it was a top secret, but technical personell examining shot-down German bombers discovered that the Germans actually had a better bombsight than we did. Oh, well.
I wrote a couple of papers on Ryan's books. One was on A Bridge Too Far, shortly before the movie came out. I sat in the theater telling my friends what was going to happen next until they told me to shut up.
The Norden bombsight was probably based on the exact same technological advances as the German bombsight. The difference, however, was that we built more of them, and for each and every plane. Germans had some advanced stuff but their industrial development was not sufficient to produce very much of it in mass quantities. Their tanks, for example, were much better. We, on the other hand, had many times the number they did.
True. Much of the German equipment was un-necessarily over-complicated, or over-engineered, as we say now. They could have built many thousands of regular medium tanks with all the resources they used to build less than 2,000 Tigers of all types.
Another good book I like is, Voices of Valor, D-Day: June 6, 1944. I recieved both books as a Christmas gift from my daughter, she knows her MOM (me) likes war stories. My dad served in the Pacific in ww2, and Korea, he was a medic. He wasn't too keen talking about the things he saw and I never pressed him. He had his reason's and that was good enough for me.
I take it you're a pacifist?
OK ... deal ... Good Luck to you!
Thanks. Back at ya!
What about just killing the little kids under 10 years old or burning the Grandma's (at the stake of course)?
Please. In war innocents die. That is the very nature of war. For Germany to be screaming FOUL over Dresden is hypocritical at best, twisted to say the most. They got what they were giving.
I once found myself (while in the Infantry) standing on the West German side of the border across from Czechoslovakia as the Russian Army moved an immense column of tanks, trucks and troops down a border road ~ this was that 1968 Invasion meant to shut down the Dubchek revolution.
They ground to a halt. Russians coming out of their permanent barracks in East Germany and Poland didn't seem to be prepared to make serious repairs to tracked vehicles.
You stand there awhile, unprotected, in front of a tank playing wiggle-waggle, and you pretty much reconsider this stuff.
I about crawled out of my skin when that young man in Tieneman Square played wiggle-waggle with the tank. Not too many folks can relate to that one, though.
What you should say is that it was up to the Germans to defend their own country, not us.
The fire bombings of Dresden and Hamburg have been recognized as being worse than the nuke attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for years, in terms of human casualties.
It's all sturm und drang, you might say, as long as they remain safely ensconced behind their monitors.
I call them the Chardonnay Corps.
An "X-treme tsunami"
But the casualties and suffering of Dresden don't come anywhere close to Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka. That is what they want to co-opt, not the atom bombs on Japan.
What you should say is that it was up to the Germans to defend their own country, not us.
Defend their country then, or now? I don't understand. If your talking about then, they did. At the end,the Hitler youth and the old men were defending their country. If you're talking about now, we need to get out and let them sink on their own.
Which in their turn fall short of the 20 million Russian casualties on the Eastern front.
It's pointless to minimize another group's suffering just because it doesn't rise to the level of your own. WWII was a tragedy for just about everyone involved.
Radiation continued to kill for years after the bombings in Japan. I know a couple of doctors who went there with Scripps Institute to work with the bomb victims. Pretty grim stuff ~ lot of women and children involved.
Very true, very, very true. Especially since hitler started the war and had so much popular/cult-like following.
Really? I didn't know that.
Your posts on this thread have been excellent.
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