Posted on 11/18/2002 5:07:02 PM PST by MadIvan
was effectively a war criminal who sanctioned the extermination of Germany's civilian population through indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities, an article in the country's biggest-circulation newspaper claimed yesterday.
You have some bloody nerve, Fritz. Perhaps we should ask the Jews what they think of you getting all huffy like this? - Ivan
In an unprecedented attack on Allied conduct during the Second World War, the tabloid Bild has called for recognition to be given to the suffering inflicted on the German population during the strategic air campaign of 1940-45.
The suffering of the population in London is far more relevant. After all, the citizens of London didn't vote in Hitler. Same goes for Jewish civilians in the occupied countries the Germans brutally slaughtered - Ivan
The newspaper's campaign, provoked by a new German history of the bomber offensive, breaks six decades of virtual silence on the subject, and is being seen as the latest manifestation of a belief among Germans that they too were victims of the war - albeit a war started by their country.
The newspaper is serialising Der Brand (The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment 1940-45) by the historian Jorg Friedrich, which claims to be the most authoritative account of the bombing campaign so far.
Mr Friedrich claims the British government set out at the start of the Second World War to destroy as many German cities and kill as many of their inhabitants as possible. Civilian deaths were not collateral damage, he says, but rather the object of the exercise. He argues that Churchill had favoured a strategy of attacking the civilian population centres from the air some 20 years before Hitler ordered such raids.
Britain's war leader is quoted during the First World War as saying: "Perhaps the next time round the way to do it will be to kill women, children and the civilian population."
Friedrich goes on to quote Churchill defending the morality of bombing: "Now everyone's at it. It's simply a question of fashion - similar to that of whether short or long dresses are in."
Der Brand is far removed from the dry style of most German histories, and is filled with emotive accounts of the horrors of bombing, but carries few references to the man who brought retribution on Germany, Adolf Hitler.
Friedrich argues that the Allied policy of seeking to break German morale through bombing proved mistaken, the attacks merely serving to weld together the German population.
The debate is certain to anger those in Britain who see the strategic air campaign as a necessary evil.
The British, led by Sir Arthur Harris, C-in-C Bomber Command, were the leading proponents of "night area bombing", involving the systematic destruction of German industrial capacity and housing. The policy resulted in the laying to waste of city after city, including Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden, and the deaths of some 635,000 Germans.
The policy was to some extent forced on the RAF by the failure of daylight operations against pinpoint targets early in the war. It also reflected the fact that, for much of the conflict, bombing was the only method by which Britain could attack Germany.
German raids on Britain in the Blitz of 1940-41 were seen to have freed the British from the obligation not to attack civilian centres.
The serialisation of the book will furnish the far-Right in Germany with arguments to back its revisionist claims. It is also likely to overshadow recent reconciliation attempts between Britain and Germany over the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which tens of thousands died.
In a symbolic sign of friendship, British businesses have paid into a fund to reconstruct the Frauenkirche or Church of Our Lady which was destroyed in the raid and is set to be reopened in 2006.
Yesterday Antony Beevor, the British historian and author of the bestselling Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, criticised the German claim that Britain's war of attrition was unnecessarily brutal. "The trouble is this argument is removed from the context that they were the ones who invented terror bombing," he said, referring to German attacks on Coventry, Rotterdam and Warsaw.
"They literally obliterated whole cities and that certainly preceded what the British did," he said. "What we did was more terrifying and appalling, but it was a natural progression in this war.
"One can certainly debate the whole morality of bombing, but for Germans to say Churchill was a war criminal is pushing it a bit," he said.
Friedrich, 58, said his two years of research prompted him to change his views radically on the Allied bombing.
"Previously it appeared to me to be a just answer to the crimes of the Third Reich, but I've since changed my mind," he said. "Until the Second World War there was a common consensus that the massacre of civilian populations was illegal."
For the past year Germans on both the Left and Right have been locked in a new and intense debate about the war and their role as its victims as well as perpetrators. The debate was sparked by Gunther Grass, the Nobel prize winner, in a novel fictionalising the wartime account of a passenger ship torpedoed by the Soviet navy killing thousands of Germans on board.
Good point. But not all of the anti-Franco forces were Loyalists/Communists, or were supported by the USSR. Remember the POUM which George Orwell fought alongside? They were anti-Soviet and anti-Franco, since they were anarchists. Anarchism would have been preferable to fascism or Soviet Socialism IMO, since its a more puritanical form of libertarianism. But of course the POUM were slaughtered by Franco and the NKVD, along with Spain's chances for democracy and freedom before Franco's death in '75.
You had the choice between the lesser of two evils in that war. Had I been Spanish, my preference would have been to leave. As an Englishman, my preference would be not to fight in that war at all.
Regards, Ivan
The Germans should've never targeted London; it was a foolish change in tactics (though fortunate for the R.A.F.). Beyond that, the retaliation was severe and entirely appropriate.
I'm pleased that Tony Blair presented President Bush with a bust of Churchill. I believe it is an inspiration there in the Oval Office during these trying times.
Kinda hard to be a ruler of the EU when you've got the Americans occupying your nation backed up with several hundred nuclear weapons.
Alright, they didn't believe in capitalism, but they didn't believe in statism or totalitarianism either. They were really libertarian socialists. But they were still better than the NAZI backed fascists or the USSR backed loyalists, since they were democratic. But you're right, for most moderate/conservative Spanish people leaving would have been the best choice. The problem was the Spanish Civil war was just a proxy conflict between NAZI Germany and the USSR, and so no home-grown movement could have made a difference. That's why Orwell went there, to defend democracy in a country where un-democratic foreign powers were backing their political allies in order to turn Spain into their puppet.
Thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading the thread.
There is plenty of room for criticism of the conduct of nations in that period, and in the time leading up to it.Japanese wholesale attrocities in ChinaChurchill comes out far better than the rest, but it does have to be said that Harris is a blot on his record as well. At least Churchill was trying to prevent the Cold War; FDR got really gung ho about fighting only when Hitler invaded the USSR. And intended to confer with Stalin without Churchill! Which would have brought down the Churchill government, I make no doubt.
Nazi bombing and murder camps
Soviet gulags and show trials
FDR conning America into fighting for Stalin.
Yes, and Bomber Harris, too.The really bad decision was the FDR "unconditional surrender" policy, which lashed all Germany to the mast of Naziism. How much worse could restoring the status-quo-ante of the WWI Armistace have been than the bipolar Cold War? And how many lives would have been saved by a treaty restoring that status??
The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was a maritime disaster of the first water, but there was nothing either illegal or particularly surprising about it. It was not a hospital ship ... it was not a protected neutral. It was a ship under the control of the German military and a legitimate target. The Germans are just lucky that they surrendered before the A-bomb became an operational option for the Allies.
Churchill had just delivered his speech containing the quip “some chicken, some neck” to the Canadian Parliament on December 30 1941. He was walking into the Speaker’s Chamber, arm in arm with the Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, when the photographer flicked on his lights. “Two minutes for one shot, and I mean two minutes for one shot,” growled the great man as he lit a cigar.Karsh, however, did not want to photograph the Prime Minister with this already familiar prop. He held out an an ashtray, but Churchill continued to smoke. Undeterred, the photographer, muttering “forgive me, sir”, swiftly stepped forward and removed the cigar from the prime ministerial lips
“By the time I got back to my camera,” he later recalled, “he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me.” In an instant, Karsh had captured Churchill’s furious expression on film.
-- Yousuf Karsh obituary, The Telegraph.
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