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.
He has no idea of real suffering and he is becoming an apologist for the evil of hitler and the nazis. By pretending to "understand" the suffering of Dresden, he equates it with the Holocaust of an innocent Jewish population.
There is no comparison. The Germans deserved to know the horrors of a war they caused and the horrors of a murderous campaign which they, the Germans, brought onto the heads of an innocent people... the JEWS.
And, then we haven't even mentioned the other murdered victims of her hitler's death machine... the Gypsies, the handicapped, the prisoners of war, the Christians, the underground fighters, the political prisoners and all the others. Such evil, evil doings and yet some people still deny its magnitude and attempt to lessen its evil by rationalizations.
Why am I not surprised? I am only surprised that is allowed to be posted on FR.
Regards to you.
It's just like the good old days with Ghengis Khan.
So by your logic, virtually no one alive today voted for Roosevelt. What does that have to do with anything we are talking about? Are you saying they are DENYING that they voted for Hitler? If so, would you admit today that you voted for Hitler if you were they?
The "good Germans" get most of it!
You're projecting.
Almost all the German people alive today have been born since the war. They could not have voted for Hitler even if they wanted to!
Exactly. This was a period of, "Total War." Grant and Sherman reinvented it in 1864-65. Massive war against civilians was a tactic of Hitler. Britain and the US used the tactic against Dresden and Cologne. The US fire bombing of Tokyo (pre-Hiroshima) yielded more than 100,000 dead civilians. War can get nasty. It's been this way for all time. And it will happen over and over again..long after we are gone.
After all, "we" Americans voted for slavery.
You may want to be a bit more consistent:
Thank you. I have not one iota of sympathy for the Germans. They brought their deaths upon themselves by wanting to rule the world. We all finished what they started. Now they are crying about it.
We recently engaged in a discussion of Sherman's March to the Sea, you took high offense to my suggesting that this march was required to break the back of apartheid. I find you willingness to condemn the German's inconsistent with your response on the Civil War. Wasn't Nazism/Fascism morally equivalent to the culture of apartheid and the institution of slavery?
They were lucky. We were not ready for the nuke option. So we fire-bombed them. Total War. Tough $hit. The losers die.
Slavery was imposed on America by the Europeans who set up colonial empires here.
It took Americans less than a century to get rid of it.
We should be praised, not condemned, for our efforts.
We are talking history. The events of Dresden. At least I thought we were, you're going off in all directions and I'm having one ahelluv time trying to follow you.
What I want to know is WHY you are so concerned about who the HELL it was that started that madness??
The only thing that matters is that it was GERMANS that started those murders of the innocents and GERMANS who continued it! Understand?
Not apartheid. Call it what you will but it was not apartheid. Sherman did break the will of the South. Are you saying it was ok for Sherman to break the will of the people, but not for us to break the will of the Germans? Isn't that a double standard? Or you apply it when it meets your needs to apply it?
Don't drag Grant and Sherman into this. No southern civilian was murdered during the march to the sea. They burned houses, bridges, fences, cotton mills, and destroyed railroads. A few bummers stole the family silver. Thats about it.
Sherman thought the use of landmines was barbaric. He also was close friends, after the war, with CSA General Joe Johnson.
I don't think Himmler and Eisenhower went off and had a few beers after the war.
Germans are playing word game:
A Holocaust = "A sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames"
The Holocaust = Nazi extermination of European Jews.
To those of you who like to argue and agree with me, I must bid you adu. It's been interesting to say the least. Good night. Thanks.
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