[Zionist Conspirator]

With the Left's adoption of Ahmadinejad (mach shemo!) as a "victim of America," it's probably only a matter of time before the Left extends its guilt for fighting Japan to Nazi Germany itself.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Ping for your interest.

[fso301]

For these type topics, this man's opinion always seems to come to mind

[Alberta's Child]

I tend to believe that the criticism of the Allied bombing of Dresden was valid -- primarily because the U.S. military denied any involvement in it for some years after the war was over. That's a curious stance to take if Dresden were a legitimate military target.

[zook]

I will never apologize for any act of the Allies during WWII. I believe the use of escalated terror bobming against Japan and Germany was entirely justified. I believe we need to return to that philosophy today if we want to win this war against Islamic totalitarianism.

Sadly, I don't think we ever will. The west has lost its spine, its will to fight a war for survival. Only those nations willing to defend themselves ruthlessly will survive. Who will it be?

[syriacus]

Thanks for posting this.

[MplsSteve]

Read the book "Dresden" by Frederick Taylor.

It was only written in the last 5 years or so. He makes many of the same points that Marshall de Bruhl made.

Though Germany was on the ropes, the Allies felt that Dresden still possessed a significant military-industrial capacity. The Allies also wanted to destroy the rail lines leading in and out of Dresden to keep the Germans from transferring troops from one front to the other.

I think that an argument could be made that the use of incendiary bombs was over-kill (no pun intended). The use of high explosives to accomplish the destruction of the rail lines and smaller factories should have been enough.

But then again, if you were a dead civilian, you probably didn't care whether you were killed by fire or bomb blast.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"...evangelical Christian left.."

Oxymoron

[streetpreacher]

3. Civilian deaths, while numerous, are greatly exaggerated by the activists. The chaos of war makes counting difficult, but casualties have been “estimated” at up to 250,000. De Bruhl argues that 25,000 is a more realistic figure, with 35,000 the maximum. At least 50,000 residents worked in producing war material.

Sounds like he's engaging in the same kind of rationale that holocaust skeptics are. Except I don't hear any Germans screaming "Never again"!

[geopyg]

I saw a sort little bit of the History Channel's "mail Call" and they were talking about the Air force and LeMay(sp?).

I guess he got frowned upon for firebombing Toyko and a bunch of other cities too. (Toyko firestorm was 12 miles wide and 4 miles deep they said). LeMay's proper response to the cricism was "Then they shouldn't have attacked us".

[MittFan08]

I might have a problem with Dresden against a less barbaric enemy, but I just can't bring myself to regret any horrible deed that was inflicted upon Nazi Germany. Yes, it was horrible, but Germany didn't seem to have any problem with starving out Leningrad or turning Warsaw to rubble.

[75thOVI]

Some years back, while I was driving a cab, one of my favorite passengers was a little old German lady. Very reticent and reserved but we got along. She noticed that I always had a book with me, history often as not, and usually military history. One day she poked at the cover of a book I was reading and said "Vor, vor, vy are you always reading about vor? I sort of casually remarked, "What have you seen of war?" She said "Dresden!" I said, "You win." If you have seen the footage on the History or Military channels you've seen the "snowflake" incendiaries. She described seeing them from a railroad underpass and watching the city burn. She had some great stories. She was a Luftwaffe veteran, and married a US artilleryman after the war. She always wanted to go home, she and her family were thrown out shortly after the war started, and was cut off after the war when her hometown was on the wrong side of the "Wall". It was a little town called Penemunde. She passed away just about a year before I stopped driving the cab. One of my greatest regrets in life is that I was never able to get her in contact with an author. She said nobody would be interested anyway. I think she was wrong.

[samm1148]

What is missing is that as distasteful as bombing civilians might seem it is those same civilians who back their regimes. Hitler came to power with the popular support of the German people (some of his ideas mirror those held by modern democrats).

Sure there was a secret police. But America of the 1700's threw off an empire that spanned the globe. The Soviet Union ended at the hands of Russians tired of waiting in line for toilet paper.

My point is that these empires only thrived because their people endorsed the despot. This modern notion of engaging hostile governments while holding the people supporting those governments blameless is just absurd.

Just like in that war; until someone with the stones to order bombings against Arab cities; the strongholds of terrorism, the home of their supporters, there is no point in fighting.

[Grizzled Bear]

During WWII it was considered common sense to bomb large population centers. You wanted to lower the population. That's where the soldiers and their support systems

It also insured fewer people to control during the occupation and rebuilding.

Before I get flamed; I didn't make the rules. I'm just telling it the way it was.

[COEXERJ145]

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a dozen other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

-RAF General Arthur 'Bomber' Harris

[arthurus]

I used to feel that Dresden was egregious and unnecessary but I have come to see that it was, in fact, necessary. Actions like Dresden may not have affected the course of the war itself but did affect the course of the peace. It was not only necessary to defeat the German army, it was necessary to defeat the German people, to stun them so that they were ready to accept any form of rule the Allies determined to impose on them. The result is modern Germany. The same can be said for Japan. Germany was part of Western Civilization and not unfamiliar with Western ways and still it had to be totally defeated in order to remold it into what it is today. We eschewed that principle in Iraq and because of that the country is doomed to incessant civil chaos until it comes again under the iron hand of absolute tyranny. It will be like that in Iran but it will be then a much more serious question, and we will fight Iran directly sooner or later. If later, then we will have to do it also to Pakistan, perhaps, and Saudi Arabia, etc. This thing will grow if it is not firmly squashed and the squashing will take progressively more effort and damage on the home front the longer we postpone the reckoning.

[montag813]

I wish Bush had done a Dresden on Fallujah instead of sending our boys door to door like Avon ladies and then investigating one of them for shooting a wounded terrorist when the MSM got it on tape. We should have killed another 2-300,000 Iraq civilians in this war and many more Afghans as well. MacArthur himself hung nearly 1,000 Japanese agitators in a relatively peaceful occupation. In Iraq we let Al Sadr murder Americans left and right and did nothing while pretending one idiot Arab stooge "PM" after another was "in charge". What a joke. We early on focused stupidly on trying to build a "democracy". We forgot that these are savages, and the enemy. Had we gone in with our bloodlust unchecked, nobody today would be whining out an "Iraqi quagmire".

[ArtyFO]

General Curtis LeMay had the right idea...Bomb 'Em Back to the Stone Age. He fire bombed Tokyo and killed more than were killed in Hiroshima and did much more damage.

[musicman]

IMHO, THIS guy's "neighborhood" (and his pal Mookie's Iranian "hideaway")

...should look like this Dresden pic

[ArtyFO]

It would be so easy to destroy Iraq or most middle eastern countries. Most of the population is heavily concentrated in cities, with vast unpopulated deserts. I think that if we had 5 thousand B-52's and 30 million dumb bombs, we wouldn't have to put 2 boots on the ground to defeat the entire region. Just bomb their mosques during their 5 daily prayer calls.

[Vietnam Vet From New Mexico]

Dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was probably the only way to end the war without an invasion of the home islands, and therefore saved millions of American and Japanese lives.

That said, I think the allied bombing campaign was a tragic error.

First, deliberately targeting civilians violates the basic principles of civilized war, and Christian morality. The fact that the Germans and Japanese did it (first or not does not matter) does not justify it. The Japs tortured our POWs, but we treated Jap POWs as a civilized nation should.
Second, it was not very effective militarily. German armament production increased in spite of the bombing. If the time, money and men poured into the bombing of civilians had been devoted to attacking true strategic targets, to tactical air support, or to better tanks, etc. the war would have been won sooner.