Dresden deserves to be remembered

UK Telegraph ^ | 02/13/2013 | Tom Chivers

[Kid Shelleen]

It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.

[cripplecreek]

Of course, your sense of basic decency may differ from mine.

Fortunately it does.

Now if only someone here was man enough to explain why we haven't won a war since or how your little argument is any different from that of Hanoi Jane.

[US Navy Vet]

“General Patton was right that we should have crossed the Rhine and kept going on to Moscow and put an end to the scourge of Communism once and for all.” Patton was a GREAT General HOWEVER if he would have “invaded” the Soviet Union(Russia) he would have suffered the SAME fate as Hitler, and Nepolean(sp?) did. Russia like their Skythian(sp?) ancester will and always have used “Defense in Depth” Russia is 11 time zones wide and invading it will ALWAYS over stretch you supply Lines and LOCs. And General “Winter” will ALWAYS get you. Sherman Tanks, M-1 Garands and US Soldiers dow just a poorly in -50 Deg F Winter Weather as Tiger Tanks, Gewher 98 and Weirhaht(SP?) Soldiers did.

[hotsteppa]

Dorner was an Obama supporter if you forgot.

[Sherman Logan]

If the far leftwing Progressive movement had not made an attempt to hijack American democracy, Wilson would never have been President.

Well, no. Wilson became President because the GOP split, with the (as Progressive as Wilson) Roosevelt bolting and forming the Progressive (!) Party and the conservatives staying with Taft.

Had the GOP united behind either of them, they would have won easily. Wilson got 42% of the popular vote, while Taft and Teddy between them pulled a little over 50%. More than 6% went to a Socialist Party candidate.

[trailboss800]

Exactly, start a world war, murder 15 million innocent people, steal everything that is not nailed down and people get upset at you and drop bombs on you. Suck it up Germans.

[Sherman Logan]

You’re right, it was war. So I assume you would have considered similar attacks on Des Moines or Chicago to have been equally justified. After all, war is war.

Moral judgments must be based on the intrinsic morality of specific actions, not on the identity of the perps or victims.

[MeganC]

It would have been worth it to at least kick the Soviets back to their own borders.

[dfwgator]

The Germans did just fine.....they got the Marshall Plan after the war....what did their first victim, Poland, get? They got the Marshall Stalin Plan for 40+ years.

[allmendream]

Not just terror, but removing the ability of the enemy to make war, demonstrating their inability to protect their population, and making clear that the war is lost and they will bear a terrible cost for continuing it.

And yes, terror works SOMETIMES. Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize. Osama Bin Lauden thought that the USA was too involved in the affairs of the Middle East - he thought a devastating terror attack against the USA would make us learn the error of our ways. But he guaranteed that the USA would be WAY involved in the Middle East for DECADES. Exactly counter to his war aims.

[mass55th]

Don’t you love it when journalists who weren’t even alive during the war decide to offer their stupid opinions? I doubt the Germans have lost any sleep over the thousands of British men, women and children killed during the blitz. Germany bombed London from zeppelins in WWI as well. I just finished reading a book titled “Soldaten.” It’s about the secret U.S. and British recordings of German & Italian POW’s. Germany got what they had coming to them. They started the war, and we finished it. They’ll get no sympathy from me.

[jim999]

It is only by the Grace of God, that Patton et al were able to prosecute the war quickly enough that the Germans capitulated before the A-Bomb was completed.
Maybe it would have been better.
We would have saved a lot of money maybe, certainly a lot of Allied lives. The Russians may have pulled in their horns and left Eastern Europe alone. Maybe.
All of you leftard history revisionists can kiss my ass.
More damage has been done in the cause of misplaced compassion than all of the imperialist wars combined.

[US Navy Vet]

Not Des Moines, but Chicago...can I get back to you on that one?

[null and void]

Real war is about annihilation of the other sides ability to make war.

Close.

Real war is about annihilation of the other side's will to make war.

Without the will the USofA could have 30,000 nuclear warheads and still lose to a bunch of rag heads with a few AK-47s and the occasional car bomb or subway full of chlorine.

[Houghton M.]

An argument from the pit of hell.

[cripplecreek]

Well the part where the Allies WON the War and the Axis powers LOST the War.

LOL Not only did we win, we created two very war averse nations in the process.

Of all the wars we've lost since, Vietnam seems to be the only one that hasn't been an endless thorn in our side and we carpet bombed them.

[truth_seeker]

“The senseless murder of the Jews was an act that was so shrouded in secrecy that the populace had no idea what was going on.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Holocaust

“Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted but they did not know about the Final Solution and the specifics of the death camps. Robert Gellately, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was “substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans” in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.[8] The German scholar, Peter Longerich, in a study looking at what Germans knew about the mass murders concluded that: “General information concerning the mass murder of Jews was widespread in the German population.”[9]”

[VeniVidiVici]

How many wars has Germany started since?

Exactly. The total devastation certainly contributed to the long peace after the war.

[Flintlock]

Chillig, schmilling.

Dresden was the chief rail junction for the Eastern front.
Both Air Forces were fast running out of targets....and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the Russkies asked us to.

[dfwgator]

Since Germany was spared pretty much any damage in their homeland during the First World War, it provided fertile environment for the “stabbed in the back” conspiracy theories, which directly led to Hitler’s rise to power.

The Allies weren’t going to make that same mistake again, and made sure the Germans felt pain this time.

[US Navy Vet]

“Moral judgments must be based on the intrinsic morality of specific actions, not on the identity of the perps or victims.” you can sit here in 2013 and spout this Liberal ClapTrap because of the FREEDOM THOSE MEN GAVE YOU!