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.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Hitler and Germany wanted total war. They got it.

Agree. Seventy plus years ago, Nazi Germany embarked on a mission to subjugate the world, using the most ruthless and barbaric methods seen in modern times. Murder, terrorism, slavery, genocide, and off-the-charts cruelty were their calling cards, and they got exactly what they deserved, even arguably not enough.

As a moral argument that only works when you assign absolute moral responsibility to every citizen for everything a politician does, openly or covertly. I think a little humility is in order when judging the members of the Hitler Youth. The Nazis invested in making membership “cool” - and they put serious pressure on anyone who thought to keep their boys out of it.

With all due respect, it is hypocritical to judge people in that situation if you haven’t resisted similar temptations. Hitler didn’t stand up and say, “Vote for me, I’ll make sure you torture and murder unarmed Jews.” In fact the Nazis made documented efforts to conceal the reality of their program from the public, in and out of Germany. And if you were in Germany, and had voted for Hitler, you would not want to know that you had elected a demonic figure. Any more than our “low information” voters here think they did anything wrong or dangerous. They will be in denial for a long or even indefinite time over it.

[muawiyah]

until recently ~ like today for example ~ both major parties had a variety of coalition partners. The policy goals of each coalition member are always at variance with the interests of the others in some way.

For the first time in about 1.5 centuries the top end pro-US Bank crowd are over in the Democrat party ~ I can hear Jackson rolling over in his grave.

TR's progressives gravitated early into the Democrat shell corporation ~ the business crash in the immediate post WWI period lost them the popular vote though ~ so you end up with a short string of Republican Presidents, another downturn, then 16 long years of leftist tyranny led by the same old progressives who'd blown it under Wilson.

[muawiyah]

That's a little broad doncha' think. Germany, for the most part had lost by the time somebody thought to bomb Dresden ~ and with the Red Army pausing from the Vistula–Oder Offensive for necessary reinforcement and resupply ~ whatever military utility Dresden had had was of little note except or one thing ~ the possibility that German military units might flee through there to the West to surrender to American or British forces.

This particular bombing begins to look much more like the opening shot in the Cold War, at least in Joe Stalin's playbook.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Nobody is agreeing with Hanoi Jane -- the truth is, the attack on Dresden was brutal and many innocent civilians died horrible deaths as a result. Possibly, even probably, it was unavoidable and necessary. But that doesn't change the fact that it was a tragic and grave event.

I find disturbing the number of FReepers casually tossing out statements like 'they had it coming, all of them,' 'it was okay because they probably would have done the same to us,' 'war is war, kill them all.'

Aren't they tough.

[cripplecreek]

And I still don’t care how tightly knotted your little panties are.

You pathetic pieces of garbage want to call my grandfather a war criminal, go right on ahead but don’t expect me to be cowed by your pseudo intellectual emotionalism. Its not going to happen.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Read it bit more carefully -- I never said anything about war criminals. My great-uncle won a bronze star at Remagen, another great uncle could never speak about what he saw on Iwo Jima, a great uncle of an in-law never came back from Iwo Jima.

I said that the bombing of Dresden was a horrifying event, a grave event, and must be remembered for that. Along with many, many other events of that war, even if justified it is still a tragic monument to what can and sometimes must happen.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

And also that I find it disturbing how many keyboard commandos (who may or may not have ever actually been exposed to a war worse than “call of duty”) are casually triumphant and proud about the deaths of civilians, old men and women, babies and children.

[cripplecreek]

If its that big of a problem you could always ask to have us removed.

Now go away. you’re wasting my time and yours.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Did you catch #346

[rollo tomasi]

With all due respect, it is hypocritical to judge people in that situation if you haven’t resisted similar temptations.

With all due respect, the hypocrisy will only come if the fellow you referred to falls for a cult of personality. Unless you can prove the poster has fallen for a ruse than your words are meaningless.

Hitler filled a spiritual void, those who were grafted into his dictatorship and failed to resit the madman's Nationalistic "spell" have themselves to blame. Do not trust mankind at all to solve your personnel/national ills, if you do than all the hell coming to you is well deserved.

[jmacusa]

Well first of all I didn't use the term carpet bombing but I understand your point . No single weapon, short of nukes,can end or win a war.However in the skies over Germany the massive fleets of B-17s and B-24s pounded virtually every big city and major town into dust and along with bombing factories, railways, bridges and centers of communication and logistics that in the final weeks of 1945 the 8th.Force(''The Mighty Eighth'') determined there were no more targets of any importance to bomb.Further more the relentless pounding, most all of which was done by the USAAF in daylight certainly aided the troops on the ground by so degrading the ability of the Germans to keep a center of gravity and logistics for defense let alone trying to attack. And it certainly took a lot of pressure off the Russkies who had no strategic bomber force. And as good as the Brits were in no way did they suffer the kind of loses the USAAF did. I had the honor years ago to meet a man who had been a captain in the Eighth. He flew a B-17 and he told me of what it was like to encounter the Me109s and the Fw 190s. He told me ''the minute we were over Germany them sons a bitches were all over us from start to finish and the flak was so thick you could walk on it’’. As to the Japaneses Le May found that precision bombing was all but useless and very taxing on the new B-29. At the high altitudes and the vexing air currents over Japan Le May decided to use incendiaries at lower altitudes and just burn them out. War is Hell. Japan reaped the wind it sowed. But yes, it took two nukes to persuade ''the sons of Heaven'' to give it up. Ah, but war, like hindsight, is 20/20.

[jmacusa]

It’s not true that Dresden was a city without military importance. It had industries on it’s out skirts and it was a major east/west railroad hub. People either don’t know or forget that in 1942 master propagandist Joseph Goebbels gave what has to be one of the greatest propaganda speeches of all times when he extorted thousands in a speech at Berlins Sportsplast when he roared to his audience “Do you want total war?’’ They answered in a resounding “Yes!””. They asked for it and they got it.

[jmacusa]

One word: Auschwitz.

[Sherman Logan]

until recently ~ like today for example ~ both major parties had a variety of coalition partners.

The same is true today, of course. Gays vs. environmentalists vs. feminists vs. blacks vs. hispanics vs. outright socialists in the Democratic Party. Social conservatives vs. fiscal conservatives vs. libertarians vs. neoconservatives vs. paleoconservatives in the GOP.

Many people of course belong to more than one of these groups. Like the socialist lesbian latina environmentalist.

In most of the world, with multi-party systems, the coalitions necessary to govern are assembled after elections by negotiations between parties. Here, the negotiations take place before elections within parties.

In both systems there is a pull into the coalition created by a desire for power and greater dislike of the other side, and a push out of the coalition created by discomfort with your coalition partners.

[IbJensen]

Dresden would never have happened had the ridiculous war we referred to as WWI had not occurred. The aftermath of that conflict is what led to Hitler’s rise to power in the impoverished Germany.

[muawiyah]

That's the story. The single member district (house, state, nation) serves to create the bimodal saddle ~ after all, the winning team will always win with 50% +1 vote. Things might not start out that way ~ e.g. the United States ~ but very quickly the smart guys figure it out and take over the elections ~ see Jefferson for that one. He tossed the Federalists aside like they'd never existed. They had more or less thought that elections would always consist of men of property and power selecting responsible public stewards. Little did they imagine somebody might think things ought to work differently!

People unwilling to work in a coalition before the elections are doomed to lose. With the GOP-e having managed to hijack the party machinery over the last 79 years it's no wonder that 11 of their Presidential candidates have been beaten like an old rug ~ they don't play coalition politics well and simply fail to get out the existing Republican voters.

There are several solutions to the dilemma. For example:

1. Detach the GOP-e from the Republican coalition,

2. Create a new centrum ~ a NEW REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE for the state parties to meet with and let the current RNC wander into the wilderness of small party dissolution with the GOP-e.

OR, 3. Try to create an entirely new party ~ in some manner more pure in purpose than the current coalition.

Of those 3 possibilities, I Prefer #2. It's consistent with the only other successful party break down and take over that ended up with a viable national party ~ that was when the Republican party was formed ~ mostly as a Committee devoted to the selection of a candidate to run for President in 1856. They linked up with still extant Whig party units (why you still find Whig monetarist theories current in Republican circles) and they linked up with Abolitionist units at the state and district level which had almost, but not quite, achieved status as independent political parties.

That's where Republican idealism continues to arrive ~ that's our Socon, Defensecon, etc. movements emanate.

What we need to do is quite simple ~ detach the political leaches. They have a home over in the Democrats if they want.

So, can we do it? Odds are if only a handful of lifelong Conservative Republicans get together behind the idea it can be done in weeks. All the other approaches will take years and we don't have years or this republic to futz around.

[muawiyah]

People forget that in the late Winter and early Spring of 1945 every city in Germany was no longer relevant. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had already decided on the Red Army assault on the Eastern States and Berlin. Munitions factories in Louisville and other Midwestern places had been working overtime for months to produce the artillery and rockets that would be used in the actual battles.

I've heard the money was pretty good, but there was nothing to spend it on ~ yet. Folks had hope. The Germans, in contrast, were already despondent.

Bombing Dresden may have been just a show of power or brutality ~ or done by the Western Allies to prohibit a sudden move to the West by the Red Army, or done by the traitors in the midst of the Western Allies to prohibit a sudden move to the East by Western Allied armies ~ so to speak, if Dresden had any residual military utility, it was as a rail connection for the Western Allies or the Russians ~ but the Germans were spent, and once the Red Army did in Berlin, they'd be totally prostrate.

[the scotsman]

If the Germans were ‘spent’:

why did the British and Canadians then take 6000 casualties a week in February 1945 to clear the Reichswald Forest, in some of the most vicious fighting of the war?.

why did the Germans two weeks after Dresden stop Bradley’s first attempt to cross the Rhine?.

why did the Germans stop Simpson’s 9th US army dead in its tracks?

why did the Germans flood the dams in the Hurtgen Forest, stopping the American advance through the forest stone dead?

why did the Germans punch a hole 70 miles deep in the Soviet lines at Lake Balaton in Hungary early Feb 45, using SS and SS panzer units and almost win the battle?.

why were the allies still being held fast in Italy?.

[the scotsman]

Well, the cuddly old Germans have to take much of the blame for that as well. Rampant militarisation by King Willy, the invasion of Belgium, war crimes against the French and Belgian people, even allied prisoners......

[the scotsman]

‘And as good as the Brits were in no way did they suffer the kind of loses the USAAF did’

Excuse me?.

RAF Bomber Command lost 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (thats a 44.4% death rate), with a further 8,403 wounded in action and 9,838 prisoners of war. Almost half dead. Incredible losses.

The USAAF in Europe and N Africa had 350,000 aircrew during the war and suffered 26,000 killed and 23,000 POWs. Thats a death rate of 13.46%. THREE AND A HALF TIMES LESS THAN RAF BOMBER COMMAND.

An RAF Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I!.

Your ignorance is frankly shocking.