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 ...
“the Japanese entry into that war.”
Dumbest statement ever about WWII. The Japs invaded all of the Pacific nations including China and none of that was related in any way to Germany an WWI.
As a child I used to listen to my parents and other relatives talk about the War. Not much more to that particular story, they were pulled onto a side track and could see and hear Dresden being bombed. They did describe the glow from the fire storm in the sky. After their train was rerouted around the city so they never went through it. Fortunately for them ( and me!) they ended up just inside the US zone of occupation at wars end, near Salzburg Austria liberated by Patton and 3 rd Army.
The funniest part was after being bombed countless times during the war by the USAAF stories I heard many times, I ended up a USAF officer, which my dad was extremely proud of.
“War is about armies fighting armies ~ or it’s supposed to be.”
No such thing. Never was. You as a nation don’t get to hide behind your army and claim innocence. Armies are of a nation and a nation is her people. Again, if you don’t like war don’t get all cocky and think your army will win and it will be the only thing attacked and suffer. After your army was defeated your men were killed, your women raped and your children enslaved, your land taken and your villages burned to the ground. That was war. It reminds you not to be so stupid as to wage war.
I don’t get why you believe aggressors should be given a pass and shown kindness upon defeat only for them to return again years later. Germany should have been disbanded after WWI such that WWII could not have happened, yet, we showed them mercy and let their little nation remain.
“An argument from the pit of hell.”
War is Hell. Hmmm...seems we’ve heard that one before.
“Congratulations ! You just justified the nuking of an American city.”
That was an idiotic statement.
To further your comments: That is why keeping muslims from getting nukes is extremely important.
The Allies had to trade independence for a number of Eastern European states (based on plebiscites and religious and linguistic differences) in exchange for the US bothering to hold a draft to send Americans of Austro-Hungarian descent to fight Germans.
The German idea that they could depend on a fifth column of Germans in the US was, of course, total BS ~ most of those Germans were here simply because Germany provided them with nothing, and, to top it of, our earliest German immigrants ~ starting in the late 1600s, had come here as penniless refugees courtesy of the King of England ~ who, of course, was German himself.
Sorry, the citizenry here just never listen much to the leadership elites of Europe ~ never have ~ but they don't care to kill their cousins either. The threat wasn't that the US would turn on the Brits, but that we wouldn't stay neutral ~ none of which would have made any difference when the Spanish flu hit the battlefield. That war disappeared in days.
But, let me put it to you this way ~ nations don't have friends, they only have interests. it was not in the American interest to participate in WWI ~ no one there was a threat to us.
“the Ottoman Empire was an old American ally since the Revolution.”
Really, because your ignorance of history is showing again.
While there were Germans in America as colonists, the British enlisted the the Germans as mercenaries and were an item in the Declaration of Independence: “He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.”
Sorry but Germany wasn’t a friend during that time and they even refused to acknowledge America as a nation until 1783 when we signed the Treaty of Paris.
I didn’t know your reflection could show in my mirror. You seem to think war is about police and courts and judges, that it is about playing nice and being harmless. Because of your liberal type we lose wars as you complain about the violence. Pussy.
Bingo.
You are correct CodeToad. We lost our way the moment we began trying to separate populations from their governments. People are responsible for who governs them. Period. Even in totalitarian states, people are collectively responsible for that government. It isn’t fair, but it is reality. It is terribly sad that so many civilians died in Dresden, but the fault lies squarely on Nazi Germany.
Civilian populations are fair game in war. That does not mean they should always be targeted, but it means they can be. Killing friendly or supportive populations would generally be counterproductive and bad strategy, killing hostile or indifferent populations is sometimes necessary. Further, putting our own forces at grave risk to protect enemy civilian populations is a recipe to lose battles and ultimately wars. We simply can not waste endless time and resources worrying about every civilian. And lastly, enemy populations that harbor insurgents, terrorists, etc, should be targeted for collective destruction. The Germans and Japanese knew after WW2 not to even think about an insurgency. They knew we’d take out entire cities till there was nothing left, and that stopped any “insurgency” in its tracks.
We fought WW2 with tactics that killed significant numbers of civilians. We won. The enemies surrendered and knew not to keep fighting. We were good and humane victors. The people in those countries almost immediately allied themselves with us and those relationships are strong even today. That’s how wars are supposed to be fought and concluded. We wouldn’t have had the problems we did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, if we’d stuck to the a war fighting philosophy that worked just fine.
50% of all British war resources went to Bomber Command and the RAF. With the world’s biggest navy and the empire-wide army having to divi up the rest. My ‘objections’ to Bomber Command would be logistical and tactical ones, not the tiresome argument over Dresden.
Dresden was a requested raid, the British had no interest in it until asked. It wasnt on our strategic field of operations.
I'm glad I asked - great story - beautiful ending. I don't know your Dad but I already like him... Thanks for sharing.
67,000 British civilians died in WW2. With another 90000 injured and at least 1.5m made homeless.
The raid was a rush job, a request by the Soviets to an RAF who had no strategic interest in the city. If the RAF ‘spared’ the factories, then it wasnt deliberate. Just sheer luck.
Dresden was an important military hub. Thats why it was bombed, to help the Soviets.
Fing moron. Even Bomber Harris and Lemay would gag on your idiot statement. You’re advocating genocide not war. The point is to destroy the enemies forces and ability to fight, not slaughter it’s women and children.
25,000 is now the sensible historical estimate.
The huge figures which are now ‘fact’ date to the Nazis themselves, who quoted high figures.
Hitler and Germany wanted total war. They got it.
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