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Putin criticizes Allies for Dresden bombing
MSNBC ^ | May 5, 2005

Posted on 05/05/2005 8:19:32 PM PDT by TFine80

BERLIN - Russian President Vladimir Putin told a German newspaper that Allied forces can’t be absolved of blame for horrors during World War II, and he noted in particular the massive bombing of Dresden in the final months.

Ahead of this weekend’s 60-year commemoration of Victory in Europe Day, Putin, in a joint interview with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told Bild that the Western forces deserved to be criticized for attacking civilians.

“The Western allies didn’t abound with any special humanity,” the Russian leader said. “It’s incomprehensible to me to this day why Dresden was destroyed. There was no military reason for it.”

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dresden; putin; weasels; wwii; yourekiddingme; yourewelcome
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To: wk4bush2004
The bombing was done mainly by the Brits as payback for the London bombing.


41 posted on 05/05/2005 11:03:17 PM PDT by John Lenin (Does God scare you ?)
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To: asgromo

Welcome to Freerepublic.


42 posted on 05/05/2005 11:07:44 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (.:: "Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything." ::.)
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To: WOSG

Or the SIXTY MILLION Stalin killed alltogether over his reign.


43 posted on 05/05/2005 11:08:28 PM PDT by Paul_Denton (Get the UN out of the US and US out of the UN!)
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To: TFine80; Lukasz; lizol; Grzegorz 246; gatorbait; PhilDragoo; potlatch; struwwelpeter; blackie; ...

My husband do write now thank you

"Either Putin is using Viagra, or he has some serious amnesia problem, with all do respect, Putin is loosing his mind. As far as Dresden goes, this is walk in a park comparing to what happened to Warsaw, maybe he would like to put some cents to it, or rather somebody is going to call me racist and antiracial etc... For surely I am not. However this guy is really having brain drama attack, for crying at aloud, what is wrong with these guys in Moscow, do they loose sense of history. Historic facts are as they Putin deal with it."
Thank you


44 posted on 05/05/2005 11:16:32 PM PDT by anonymoussierra (Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori -O sancta simplicitas!)
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To: asgromo

You guys ned to read more history.

Dresden was bombed because Stalin demanded it to be bombed.

Troops were being shipped thru Dresden to the eastern front. Stalin's request was approved before it ever came to the attention of Churchhill or FDR.


45 posted on 05/05/2005 11:18:19 PM PDT by BillSharp
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To: asgromo
Except when he praises the man and laments the change in said system. Oh and incidentally, the Russians requested the bombing of Dresden. The specific request was for the western allies to "By air action on communications hinder the enemy from carrying out the shifting of his troops to the East from the Western Front". That is the request that put the city on the target list, as a rail center.
46 posted on 05/05/2005 11:21:06 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: TFine80
Putin criticizes Allies for Dresden bombing

In January 1945 the British air ministry drew up a plan THUNDERCLAP for attacks on Berlin and population centres in eastern Germany. This was to take advantage of the recently launched Soviet offensive westwards from the Vistula and add to the growing chaos in Germany by disrupting the flow of refugees fleeing in the face of the Soviet attack. At the same time, the western Allies wished to demonstrate to the Soviets at the forthcoming Yalta conference that they were giving them the support of their heavy bombers, and, indeed, at Yalta the Soviets specifically requested help in this form.

From: The Oxford Companion to World War II via www.valourandhorror.com

On the other hand, a recent article from Germany claims that the various late WWII fire bombings in both eastern Germany and Japan were done for geopolitical rather than military purposes.
47 posted on 05/05/2005 11:24:21 PM PDT by caveat emptor
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To: NEBUCHADNEZZAR1961

I think it was the pot who called the kettle black.

;o)


48 posted on 05/05/2005 11:26:11 PM PDT by It's me
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To: MHT
He is just sucking up to German public opinion, which is currently on a "Germans were victims too" kick. It is the anniversary of the end of the war. He could celebrate beating the Germans in a crowing nationalist fashion, but while that might play in Moscow it would fall a bit flat in Berlin.
49 posted on 05/05/2005 11:26:13 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: caveat emptor
And is revisionist nonsense, of course. We have all the staff consulations over it. Russians and allies were in full agreement on the subject, nobody was sending any messages to anybody but the Germans. The message to the Germans was die already, or give the freak up.
50 posted on 05/05/2005 11:27:57 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: caveat emptor

Jörg Friedrich is the guy whose book Der Brand set off this whole recent German victimology craze.


51 posted on 05/05/2005 11:30:47 PM PDT by TFine80
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To: asgromo
I mostly like Putin's quote "The Western allies didn’t abound with any special humanity, it’s incomprehensible to me to this day why Dresden was destroyed. There was no military reason for it."

Ahhh, yes...those mean old "Western allies" who did nothing more than liberate half the world from the Nazis & Japanese Imperialism: not much "special humanity" in doing that, I guess. And Putin's Russia, which started the war as Hitler's ally, was such a shining exemplar of "special humanity" from 1917 to 1989...

Get real.

24,866/28,410 houses in the inner city of Dresden destroyed. An area completely destroyed: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings. 222,000 apartments in the city- 75,000 of them totally destroyed, 11,000 severely damaged, 7,000 damaged, 81,000 slightly damaged

It's called waging TOTAL WAR, aka, "fighting to win." It was completely justifiable within any context of World War II one might wish to examine. Period.

52 posted on 05/05/2005 11:31:05 PM PDT by A Jovial Cad ("A man's character is his fate." - Heraclitus)
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To: familyop
Well said, and exactly right.

Thanks for the *ping, BTW.

53 posted on 05/05/2005 11:35:26 PM PDT by A Jovial Cad ("A man's character is his fate." - Heraclitus)
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To: TFine80

keep in mind, Putin has been getting all his news all these years from CBS (Fake but Accurate)


54 posted on 05/05/2005 11:36:13 PM PDT by isom35
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To: TFine80

Dresden was flattened because our Soviet buddies claimed they needed it done. Pooty -poot is getting on the World's nerves ,I think

And the idea he is ignoring what happened to Warsaw, and the Red Army had the time and the Combat power to stop it, but, refused to do so. Hmmmm Pot.Kettle.Purple


55 posted on 05/05/2005 11:42:06 PM PDT by gatorbait
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To: TFine80
the Russian leader said. “It’s incomprehensible to me to this day why Dresden was destroyed. There was no military reason for it.”

I thought it was partly a response to Coventry.

56 posted on 05/06/2005 3:05:55 AM PDT by Schnucki
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To: familyop
>At airforcehistory.hq.af.mil you'll find that Dresden >contained well over 100 significant military targets. >Civilian losses were mostly due to the fires that spread, >and we did not have "smart bombs" in those days.
>

This is garbage. Criminality depends upon intention, not on action. Dresden was a war crime because civilians were targeted via the Allied fire-storm policy. This is documented. Aiming at industrial targets or transportation hubs is intention to destroy industrial targets or transportations hubs. Not a war crime. Aiming at civilians is. The warload carried by the bombers bears this out. No-one aimed at the military targets in Dresden.

By your reasoning Ward-Churchill is correct. There -were- military assets, people in uniform, etc, in the WTC and therefore it was a military target and therefore all the civilians who died were merely collateral damage. And that's because of a two-men-and-dog CIA office and a couple of uniforms.

In fact, regardless of any evidense of stated intent found in paperwork, anyone crashing fully fueled airliners into the WTC knows what will happen as a result of their actions and therefore their intent is evident. Thus their criminality is established. It is the same for Bomber Harris and his supporters.

AQ will not be able to rely on a defense that their documentation stated their intent to destroy a military target within the WTC, within the USA, with which they were at declared (holy) war.

Ward-Churchill's further assertion, that they were "all little Eichmanns beavering away" and therefore targets, is just plain Marxist "the enemy of the proletariat must receive social-justice" and therefore we must kill Czarist-reactionarys and counter-revolutionary Imperialist sympathizers. Anyone involved in capitalism is therefore a lawful target ie he wants "Spanish Civil War Rules". I hope he gets what he wishes for.

If you are right, so is Ward-Churchill. If Ward-Churchill is wrong so are you.

>The propaganda about Dresden being an intentional civilian >target was disseminated from neo-Nazi sites about a decade >ago, and that propaganda effort continues.
>

More garbage. Many people pointed out that Dresden was a war-crime the day after it was bombed. Including Winston Churchill in his famous memo. The arguments raged and raged and both Harris and Bomber Command were ignored when it came to handing out honors. Just because you only heard about ten years ago does not mean it started ten years ago.
57 posted on 05/06/2005 6:04:02 AM PDT by PzGr43
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To: anonymoussierra
>at aloud, what is wrong with these guys in Moscow, do they >loose sense of history. Historic facts are as they Putin >deal with it."
>Thank you

Putin did not say "There were no other war crimes except Dresden". He just pointed out Dresden was a war crime. That's a statement of fact. He is entitled to make that observation.

Even Dresden is not the worst Allied war crime: The worst and most hypocritical is their gunpoint round-up of Don Cossacks and Volga-Germans and their hand-over to certain death in Soviet captivity. But of course we all know you have to be German to be guilty of ignoring or aiding in holocaust round-ups.
58 posted on 05/06/2005 6:08:23 AM PDT by PzGr43
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To: PzGr43; anonymoussierra
"The worst and most hypocritical is their gunpoint round-up of Don Cossacks and Volga-Germans and their hand-over to certain death in Soviet captivity."

So in other words, the allies were responsible for atrocities committed by the Soviets? Against people who were indigenous to the Soviet Union and were returned there?

59 posted on 05/06/2005 6:34:12 AM PDT by OKSooner
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To: PzGr43; anonymoussierra

Thank you for making our point.


60 posted on 05/06/2005 6:35:03 AM PDT by OKSooner
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