Dresden deserves to be remembered

UK Telegraph ^ | 02/13/2013 | Tom Chivers

[Kid Shelleen]

It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.

[SMARTY]

“I don’t know, and can’t know, whether the Dresden attack was militarily justified. Nowadays it would be morally unthinkable, of course...”

I thought that military materiel was stored in Dresden? Wouldn’t that make it a target?

[KC_Lion]

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

Remember, O L-rd, The Children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem who said, "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation."

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed. How happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Psalm 137:1, 7-9

Do You Know What That Means?

[IbJensen]

This was as cruel and inhuman as humanity can sink; however, this can never excuse what was perpetrated on Dresden. Those burned alive in that attack were innocent of what was going on in the death camps manned by the scum of German and Eastern Europe society.

I expect we’d find a few Obama idiots who would gladly do that to America’s Conservatives.

[muawiyah]

Actually, after substantial research on the matter I fail to see how bombing Dresden did any good at all.

That Germany hasn't fought any wars in recent years is due to a great number of factors, most of all the American armament and feeding of the Russian Army ~

[VanDeKoik]

It was a terrible event. Maybe completely unnecessary, but I’m looking back from the safety of 2013, so I just don’t know what I would do in the same place.

But they did have it coming to them. That I cannot deny.

[IbJensen]

It has nothing to do with an excuse for the firebombing of Dresden.

[cuban leaf]

Slaughterhouse Five.

[cripplecreek]

Folks will just have to forgive my lack of sympathy for those who allowed, encouraged, or participated in events that led to the war.

[CodeToad]

So? Germany started the war. If a nation doesn’t like war then they shouldn’t wage war. War is about killing every single person identified with the nation and destroying everything in that nation until that nation ceases to exist or unconditionally surrenders.

Dresden had it coming in spades.

[cuban leaf]

I’ve always seen it as Germany’s Hiroshima.

[miss marmelstein]

I think British people are very interested in this subject. I had a conversation with two English friends recently abut this subject. We were talking about Hiroshima and they were condemning it. I said: that's fine but just don't bring that up with your average member of the “greatest generation” - they think it ended the war and saved countless American lives. From there, we went to Dresden which one condemned and one supported. Then they fought about poor Bomber Harris’s reputation. Finally, we ended with the bombing of Coventry - which both thought was horrible but not as bad as Dresden - because, get this: Coventry’s architecture was not as important as Dresden.

But you couldn't say my pals weren't interested...

[Cyber Liberty]

I always imagined things would have gone differently in Dresden had the Germans not fired V2 after V2 after V1 into London for the years prior. But what do I know?

[KC_Lion]

So you don't know what Psalm 137:1, 7-9 means.

How about this one instead.

Exodus 15:3

The L-rd is a Man of War.

[BlueLancer]

The book, “Dresden - February 13, 1945” by Frederick Taylor, published in 2005, makes it quite clear that there were valid reasons for the bombing of Dresden, particularly the fact that it was a key rail intersection between the West and East Fronts, allowing rapid movement of troops and supplies to both fronts. Additionally, there was a still a fairly large industrial component present in the city that supported the war effort. The railroad component of the argument, by itself, in my mind, would be sufficient to warrant the city’s destruction.

[CodeToad]

“God wasn’t pleased with the firebombing of innocents!”

There were no innocents in the aggressor nation of Germany. Sorry, but they deserved the war in return that they started. If you don’t like war don’t start one.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Not as well as the raid on Tokyo which killed 100,000 people in one night. The incendiaries dropped on a city that was mostly wood destroyed over 90% of the place.

[discostu]

Not really. Yeah a lot of people got killed, but the level of destruction steeled the resolve of the Germans, and correctly appalled the allies, and the general that masterminded it was quietly pushed aside for being a little too bomb happy. Being the good guys comes at a certain price.

[Kozak]

My parents were on a train being evacuated from Oppeln to the West, trying to avoid being “liberated” by Stalin ( for a second time!). They were sidetracked just outside the city when the raid began. If that train had been a couple of hours earlier....

[treetopsandroofs]

WTH has happened to FR with all the bleeding hearts who believe the propaganda without even questioning it?

Let’s say it — the Hussein Head media wants us to say it was UNFAIR — that we bombed Dresden, won the war, put a man on the moon... We sure fixed NASA for that when we couldn’t come up with muslim “contributions” to the space program.

Hussein Heads and enabling “freepers” — I’m getting very disillusioned here.

Which way is Mecca?

I better get used to it — HEIL HUSSEIN!!!