I wonder why?
Posted on 02/13/2013 9:04:00 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
He wasn’t happy about them being shoved into gas chambers either. Tough sh!t for the Krauts. They started the damn war.
Where’s that little black kid when you need him?
That democracies willingingly engage in such periodic reassessment is not a weakness, but a moral strength. We should. Bad thing happened. The only question is: Was our hand FORCED? Were we compelled by circumstances and action of the enemy to do these things?
My opinion?
Collectively, Germany got what she deserved. Collectively, that nation had to be punished, AS A PEOPLE, and had to be made to suffer horribly. They would respond to nothing less.
Individually? I'm sorry any of them had to die, and no, I'm not proud that we had to slaughter them, and it's a pity THEY MADE US DO THAT TO THEM before they responded to reason.
Sauron
“War is Hell!”
William Tecumseh Sherman
Well, they may have rationalized it in that way (I have no doubt they did), but the fact is that the Russians negotiated the partition of Poland BEFORE the Germans had even attacked it.
The Russians were nobody's savior.
I believe Germany could have defeated Russia if only they had treated the Russians with just a smidgen of Humanity......Originally they were welcomed as liberators from those who were happy to be out from Stalin’s jackboot. Even had a high ranking Red Army general, Vlasov, offering his services to fight against the Bolsheviks.
I believe it would have been very easy for Hitler to overthrow the Bolshevik regime, I think Stalin was toast if the Nazis managed to take Moscow....of course, perhaps Hitler understand his replacement could have been even more formidable.
“Remember to keep believing public education and Big Media headlines!
This sickens me. I feel like I’ve visited DU and need a bath.”
Wow equating me with a visit to DU sounds like a personal attack. Exactly what about my comment other than the allies lied about why they attack, which is a valid opinion considering all the controversy over this raid, reeks of DU? Why don’t you go pound sand instead of reading posts since you’re so sensitive. I’ll restate my opinion again. The amount of ordinance dropped on Dresden was enough to damage both the City and the outlying suburbs, where most of the factories were located. The fact they keep dropping incendiary devices in the city was to create the firestorm that happened. You want to have a debate about an historical event or what? And what does 70% or 100% have to do with anything? My point to bring that up was to just to throw out there that the Germans were pretty damn good at getting producing munitions at the end of the war.
You mean to tell me that Hitler would go through all of the trouble of killing every Jew in Europe, without eventually turning on the one country that would have had the most Jews remaining? And once Russia and England would have been defeated, what would have stopped him?
Hindsight is 20/20...we have the luxury of looking back and determining that perhaps bombing Dresden wasn’t such a great idea....guess what, most decisions taken in war aren’t the right ones.....the best of battle plans don’t survive the first shot.
Other than the first run, ALL other bombing runs over Japan were prefaced with warning leaflets! How could we know that our bombs would be so devastating to their infrastructure? It wasn’t the bombing that did the most damage, it was the rice-paper/wood structures that continued to burn for THREE DAYS!
More importantly, we were at war with the WHOLE of Japan! They thought of Hirohito as a GOD who had to be followed and loved! So, unlike Germany where after electing their Dictator he went crazy (although he already was, just no one noticed), Japan was WILLINGLY fighting for Hirohito! As noted by the continous 90+% death rates as we did our island-hoping campaign all the way to mainland Japan.
Agree with you, but Muawyiah (sp) started with the “Failure of the United States...” In 1920’s - 1930’s, the US was not a world power and could not have stopped anything, militarily. Only became a world power after WWII.
True, they just traded one set of chains for another.
We're lucky that Tojo and Company didn't bump off Hirohito, before he went on the radio.
I wonder why?
History Channel = Third Way Channel.
History Channel = Third Way Channel.
Saturation bombing of cities worked to break the fighting spirit of the German (and Japanese) people so completely that once their nations had surrendered there was nary a peep of resistance or any kind of serious insurgency. The civilian population knew that the allies wouldn't bat an eye at taking out population centers to end any continued fighting. Unlike in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, there was no real effort to hide combatants or terrorists as the people knew the result would likely be collective destruction of any population responsible. When the war was over, they were done.
We fought WW2 properly and when we won it was over. Where we have gotten in trouble since then are these attempts at separating a population from their government. This is a fools errand. It is why we struggle to really bring our conflicts to any clear conclusion now. People are responsible for their leaders. Period. That doesn't mean kill civilians that would support or otherwise welcome us. Nor does it mean we should kill just for the sake of watching bodies drop. But it does mean we should sometimes rain death and destruction on enemy populations when it seems clear this will help us win a war where the goal is total defeat of the enemy - and with no painful, bloody insurgency after the surrender documents are signed.
Make no mistake, flattening German cities caused absolute chaos through Nazi Germany. The revisionist history in modern textbooks is bunk. Those saturation bombings caused mass transportation disruptions, wreaked havoc on German soldiers morale who had families in bombed out areas, forced Germany to stack valuable anti-aircraft equipment at population centers rather than the front, wasted endless manpower hours rebuilding routine yet still vital infrastructure, and just generally impressed it upon the Germans (and Japanese) that we were prepared to do whatever it takes to win.
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