Posted on 10/29/2004 7:16:19 AM PDT by Pikamax
Germany asks will Queen say sorry? Fri 29 October, 2004 05:44
By Alexandra Hudson
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans are waiting to see how the Queen refers to Britain's 1945 bombing of Dresden when she visits next week, now that they are speaking more of their own war-time suffering and breaking a long-standing taboo.
Just days ahead of the Queen's first visit since 2000, a row has erupted in the British and German press over whether the air raids were justified and whether the monarch should apologise.
Dresden was devastated in a firestorm which killed some 35,000 people just three months before the war's end. The fate of the eastern city has come to epitomise civilian suffering.
"Will the queen say sorry?" asked the country's largest selling newspaper Bild on Thursday.
The queen will host a concert in Berlin to raise money for Dresden's cathedral which lay in rubble for 50 years and is now a focus of German and British reconciliation.
"Such delicate gestures of reconciliation are probably too complicated for newspapers like Daily Mail and Daily Express to understand," wrote the Berliner Zeitung daily.
ANGER IN BRITISH PRESS
Talk of an apology has angered populist newspapers.
"Krautrage" said a headline in the Daily Star tabloid.
"Sorry, the Germans must never be allowed to forget their evil past," wrote columnist Simon Heffer in the Daily Mail.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman was quoted in Germany's Der Spiegel newsmagazine saying the Queen had not been asked for an apology. But she added: "The Queen is very conscious of the suffering of all people during the war."
The queen's three-day visit aims to focus on the future relationship of Britain and Germany.
On a visit to Britain two weeks ago German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he was amazed at the lingering portrayal of Germany in the British media as a nation of Nazis.
It was long considered unwise and even dangerously nationalistic for Germans to question whether Allied bombings were necessary or legitimate but German historian Joerg Friedrich did just that in 2003 in a best-selling book.
Shall we not reply, "What about your German fire-bombing of Rotterdam?"
After the war, the German state should have been divided into tiny bits and each part forced to learn and function in a different language, with German banned, as punishment after the war. And when I mean a different language, I mean the area around Stuttgart would have had to learn to function in Quechua. And around Berlin they would have had to learn and function in Tagalog. And their language and culture should have been erased as payment for what they did to the Gypsies, the Jews, the Poles, to the British, the Czechs, and the list goes on.
But my views are very moderate on this subject...
Well, the Krauts are sorry they didn't finish off all Jews...
Then they would have this lovely Pali state with arafart as its head (gag!)
One thing I learned a long time ago is to never second guess decisions that were made a lifetime ago.
At the time, the military commanders had information we don't have today and it was their call.
I'll BUMP that.
With all due respect to those who have already given so much, we sure used to get a lot more mileage out of those three little letters.
I will probably win NEGATIVE sympathy points for saying this, but here goes:
Germany, given what YOU did in World War II - consider yourselves fortunate we ONLY firebombed Dresden.
Queen to Prince Philip, "You know I mentioned the war but think I got away with it."
I'm half English and won't bore you with how many relatives i lost during the war.
It just shows you the the level of unbelievable role reversal they have assumed. Typical socialist victim brainwashing.
Sorry for WHAT? Sorry you picked HITLER to lead you down the road of ruin. Sorry you gassed 6 million jews.
Give it a freaking break!
Seriously, this reminds me of the MAD magazine parody of WWII movies 'then' and 'now' in the '60s where the 'now' version of a film on Pearl Harbor showed President Roosevelt apologizing to Emperor Hirohito because exploding US warships gave Japanese attack pilots headaches and earaches.
It is the natural human tendancy for humans to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.
Old Nazis are just old socialists.
My thoughts exactly.
Well, then you're more English than Lizzie Windsor (actually Battenberg --"Mountbatten" as anglicized --is her married name, nee von Saxe-Coeburg-Gotha -- Windsor as anglicized). I don't think there's much 'English' in any of the Windsors except for the Spencer blood Diana brought in to the young princes.
Here's the time line.
From September 1944 to April 1945 the Nazis launched thousands of V@ rockets specifically to target civilians in the UK.
From December 1944 to January 1945 the Nazis fought the last great offensive of the war, the Ardennes Offensive which we call the Battle of the Bulge.
Dresden was bombed in February 1945.
From the Allied point of view, Nazi Germany was a weakened but not yet defanged beast. The Battle of the Bulge ended just a week or two before the firebombing of Dresden and the Allied command was not about to let up on the Nazis after they had almost been successful in retaking territory from the Allies. Especially since during that offensive the Nazis had just killed US and UK POWs wholesale, executions-style.
Additionally, dozens of German rockets were landing in the UK every day in February 1945.
Suffice it to say that in February 1945, with rocket bombs falling daily in London, US troops finding the slaughtered bodies of POWs and more and more reports of genocide from the East, the Allies were not too concerned about overdoing it when they bombed Dresden.
Nor should they have been.
This is a sickening, shamefull request. SHAME on the Germans who think this is right.
The Queen Mother was English, I believe, certainly moreso than anyone in the family she married into. Prince Philip may be half-Greek by ancestry and not just by family residence. The family is a mishmosh, but they are mostly German with English contributions by the Queen Mother and Princess Diana.
Consider the Marshall Plan our apology.
To my knowledge, unlike Hiroshima or Nagasaki, Dresden was not of military significance. Berlin was, and I certainly don't dispute the necessity of bombing there (and Berlin was devastated -- I lived there for a year in the '70s, and even then, 30 years after the end of the war, the destruction was incredible).
One last thing: I'd just like to point out that the same German newspaper quoted in this article, Bild, has endorsed President Bush:
"Bush has learned the lessons of history. Good words do not help against violent fanatics, only military strength. With him, as opposed to Kerry, there is no waffling," it said."With Bush, we know what to expect. No one knows what John Kerry stands for and where he wants to lead America -- and the world."
Noting widespread opposition to Bush in Europe, Bild said that history had proved another conservative Republican US president, Ronald Reagan, to have been on the right side of history.
"We thank him for the end of the Cold War and reunification. It is very possible, that we will also be thankful to George W. Bush one day," it said.
EUROPE'S BIGGEST NEWSPAPER ENDORSES BUSH (GERMAN TABLOID PAPER CALLED BILD)
Yes, Germany has apologized for all that mentioned.
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