Germans call Churchill a war criminal (HOLD MEIN BIER...YET AGAIN)

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.

I don´t know what to say after reading most of your posts.
First, I have to wonder about you.

You speak of "the Germans, Huns, Fritz, Krauts" as if we were ONE MAN (Hitler), as if all the women, elder people, children who died in the cities of Dresden, Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Köln were guilty of slaughtering jews and deserved the death penalty.

I afraid of your words of "reserving a nuke for Germany" and of your ideas to get rid of the German people. I hear that you think of us as a threat to the civilized world all the time... have you ever been to here??

I don´t know what to answer... except maybe, that it must be acceptable in a society where freedom of speach should be respected, to call Churchill (and "Bomber Harris") a war criminal. THAT DOESN´T MEAN THAT ANYBODY FORGETS THE CRIMES OF AUSCHWITZ OR BUCHENWALD.

Blaming the one sides crimes doesn´t mean to accept the others side.

You wonder why we punish those who say that Auschwitz never happened? The reason is, that we´ll never want to happen it again! That´s why we´ve to prevent any kinds of racist energy.

I considered America as a friend, an ally, a very good partner (let´s forget for a moment the relations with my government). But when I hear you, I get the impression that America has declared war on Germany.
The war is over and we´ve to talk not only about the crimes the Nazis (which is not equal to the German people) and the allied forces committed. Therefore I consider this book as a very good basic for discussions.

I`m disappointed (and I´m sure most of you don´t care about that). I´m sorry to say that most of you haven´t understood anything of the post-war Germany....

Even if you insulted me and my fellow-citizen:

my best wishes for you,

Michael

In the early 1880's, when my paternal grandfather was an infant, his family fled Germany from the Military Buildup and draft -- as early as 1882...

My Great Grandfather was sent over to the U.S. at age 16 to avoid the Franco-Prussian War. His family lived near the French border and spoke French as a second language. They wanted no part in German expansionism.

So is it early 1800's or as early as 1882? It can't be both.

On the one hand: to flee from German expansionism it must be 1870 (when the German-French war started).

On the other: speaking French as 2nd language was popular in the 18th century and the Franco-Prussian war against Napoleon was in 1806 - so it could be early 19th century.

Finally, if it was your Grand Grandfather, it must have been late 19th century... or you must be VERY old. :-)

On the other: speaking French as 2nd language was popular in the 18th century

In the case of my great grandfather's family, I don't think popularity had anything to do with it. The language of diplomacy and society meant little to them. What mattered was that the French lived in the next valley over, so speaking French was only natural.

Dear Gentlemen,

from the bottom of my heart I would like to thank you for your nuanced opinions and kind words in the debate on Jörg Friedrich’s controversial book “The blaze” on FR in 2002. This book was too polemical to be a useful piece of history, as I would say, but it really fits with its author.

J. F. is - like most of the accursed generation born between 1940 and 1950 - a terrible historian, a left-winger and a Germanophobe (theoretically the average Englishman ought to like him), but still I seriously considered leaving FR immediately after reading the comments beneath this article.

Luckily the vile creature which penned it (I am not dignifying that lifeform with the appellation of “human being”), Mad Ivan by screenname, has long left the forum (”mad”- how true), but his words and those of his fellow Britons in the debate have reminded me once again why I have avoided the English - and everything associated with them - for as long as I can remember :-)

May God bless you all, and your loved ones, too, especially in these trying times.

Yours faithfully,

Menes

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