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To: TigersEye; LtdGovt

If you start terror bombing civilians, then you shouldn't be surprised if your opponent retaliates. Some may be surprised to learn that the British, not the Germans, started terror bombing civilians deliberately. The RAF Air Secretary admitted it in his book.

From: Advance to Barbarism: The Development of Total Warfare from Sarajevo to Hiroshima (Paperback)
by Frederick J. Veale (Author) on Amazon.com

". . . The accusation leveled against the Germans that they deliberately caused harm to civilians is refuted by the fact that the British started this breach of international law. Veale cites J.M. Spaight's book BOMBING VINDICATED to prove that the British started the deliberate bombing of German civilians on May 11, 1940 which Spaight called the "Splendid Decision." While the battle for France was being waged hundreds of miles from German civilians, the British, who should have focused their bombing to military targets such as bridge networks in France, instead bombed innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the Battle of France. In fact, Veale makes a good point that had the British concentrated their bombing on these bridge networks, destruction of these networks would have stopped Hitler's mechanized forces due to the lack of getting gasoline supplies. The German offensive would have stalled and would have been defeated."


18 posted on 02/21/2007 10:35:23 PM PST by Howard Jarvis Admirer (Howard Jarvis, the foe of the tax collector and friend of the California homeowner)
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To: Howard Jarvis Admirer
If you start terror bombing civilians, then you shouldn't be surprised if your opponent retaliates.

Right there your premise falls apart. We did not start bombing innocent civilians leading to the attacks on 9/11. Your moral equivalence is empty.

19 posted on 02/21/2007 10:39:29 PM PST by TigersEye (For Democrats; victory in Iraq is not an option.)
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To: Howard Jarvis Admirer
Some may be surprised to learn that the British, not the Germans, started terror bombing civilians deliberately.

Veale cites J.M. Spaight's book BOMBING VINDICATED to prove that the British started the deliberate bombing of German civilians on May 11, 1940 which Spaight called the "Splendid Decision."

Interesting. But another quote from Spaight's book goes like this...

JM Spaight's Bombing Vindicated.

"It could have harmed us morally only if it were equivalent to an admission that we were the first to bomb towns. It was nothing of the sort. The German airmen were the first to do that in the present war. (They had done it long before, too—at Durango and Guernica in 1937, nay, at London in 1915-18.) It was they, not the British airmen, who created a precedent for 'war against the civilian population'."

"As it was he [Hitler] chose to set a precedent for the bombing of centres of population in this war at its very outset and thereby prejudiced his position as the advocate of the mutual abandonment by the belligerents of the practice of strategic bombing. In short, it was he who really began the battles of the towns. He is probably very sorry now that he ever did so."


22 posted on 02/21/2007 10:52:22 PM PST by TigersEye (Intellectuals only exist if you think they do.)
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To: Howard Jarvis Admirer
Veale cites J.M. Spaight's book BOMBING VINDICATED to prove that the British started the deliberate bombing of German civilians on May 11, 1940 which Spaight called the "Splendid Decision."

Not only is the above "Spaight" quote a complete fabrication by Kenneth McKilliam it is incorrect in its stated facts.

Area bombing of Germany didn't start until the 15th December 1940, with a raid by 135 bombers on Mannheim. By then, the Luftwaffe had killed about 20,000 civilians in Britain, thousands in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, thousands in Norway and tens of thousands in Poland.

Indeed, tens of thousands of civilians had been killed by the Luftwaffe before the RAF dropped it's first bomb on Germany.

Some may be surprised to learn that the British, not the Germans, started terror bombing civilians deliberately. The RAF Air Secretary admitted it in his book.

Also not true. The first German bombs on London (in WW2) were dropped on Croydon on the 15th August, killing over 60 civilians. From mid August onwards the Luftwaffe began greatly increasing their night bombing of Britain, dropping bombs on all provincial cities and the outskirts of London.

The British were doing the same, bombing military targets in Germany. Like the Germans they rarely hit what they were aiming at. However, the low number of attacks, and orders to bring bombs back if the target couldn't be identified, meant the German civilian casualties were very low.

That pattern of low casualties changed for the British when the Germans greatly expanded their bombing from mid August, and leapt up when the Germans switched to area bombing from mid September. It changed for the Germans when the RAF began area bombing from mid December.

Your neo-Nazi propagada is old and tired. It has been researched and refuted into the ground on the web. You should be embarrassed to cut-n-paste it once again.

40 posted on 02/22/2007 12:47:53 AM PST by TigersEye (Intellectuals only exist if you think they do.)
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