It worked.
Not!
I remember it was a city that sat on the thumbs while its leader took its country to hell just like we are today.
It was total war. And effective. Any sympathy I have is always tempered by the box cars full of Jews bound for Osweicum(sp?). A lot of civilians knew what was going on but did nothing..
A war crime that should have been prosecuted and everyone involved executed by firing squad.
Killing civilians: the elderly, women and children was an act of evil. God wasn’t pleased with the firebombing of innocents!
Yes, I so well remember reading about how all those Luftwaffe bomber pilots had to expose themselves to additional risks in the sky above London in order to avoid hitting any civilian dwellings or bomb shelters back in 1940.
This is sarcasm most extreme.
Part of the reason for this whining over the last decade or so is that the writers have never been in a situation that could be considered “Total War”.
May God continue to protect us from Total War. Amen.
“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?
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.
But you couldn't say my pals weren't interested...
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?
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.
When Germany remembers this(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice), I MIGHT give a SHIT about “Dresden”.
Total war = no civilians.
Ask the Poles and Russians about what happened to their cities at the hands of the Germans.
Had the Germans been able to continue their attacks on London, it too would have been obliterated.
The fire bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo were awful, horrible attacks. That was the point.
The British did not start the war. Their losses were staggering and they had been fighting it for 2.5 years before we came in. Its wrong to judge people fighting for their lives, 70 years later.
**** The city’s anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley.****
Then the Germans should have declared it to be an “OPEN CITY”.
Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry deserve to be remembered.
Tom Chivers should realize that Hitlers failed Von Rundstedt Offensive which was stopped in late January 1945, pissed off a lot of people. Hitler should of called it quits right there, unfortunately the Allies needed to teach Hitler’s Germany a lesson in humility so they began targeting city-area industries in mid-Feb.
I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant while I was in college. One of my patients was an English woman who had lived through the London bombings. This was in the early 1970s and she was still talking about it, in fact, she was still terrified. The night crew said she would weep all night. When I came in the morning she looked to be a total mess. I don’t know what happened to her after she left our floor, but I will never forget the look of terror in her face as she talked about the bombs hitting all around her.