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 ...
Tom Chivers should realize that Hitlers failed Von Rundstedt Offensive which was stopped in late January 1945, pissed off a lot of people. Hitler should of called it quits right there, unfortunately the Allies needed to teach Hitler’s Germany a lesson in humility so they began targeting city-area industries in mid-Feb.
I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant while I was in college. One of my patients was an English woman who had lived through the London bombings. This was in the early 1970s and she was still talking about it, in fact, she was still terrified. The night crew said she would weep all night. When I came in the morning she looked to be a total mess. I don’t know what happened to her after she left our floor, but I will never forget the look of terror in her face as she talked about the bombs hitting all around her.
It worked.
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If your understanding of “it worked” is that large numbers of innocent civilians were killed then it “worked” — in the same fashion that the 9/11 attack on the WTC worked. But, you know, that doesn’t make it the right or moral thing to do.
Of course, your sense of basic decency may differ from mine.
If you have any doubts about the ‘national types’ in Europe, look where the EU is going and where they are.
People who live in bamboo and rice paper houses shouldn’t throw firebombs!
http://www.militarymuseum.org/Hayfork.html
War is about armies fighting armies ~ or it’s supposed to be. Sometimes it slips into the murder of civilians. Then it’s just murder. 52 million Europeans were murdered in the last century by firearms ~ that’s not really a firearms issue but you should ask yourself two things ~ why do leftists still not count those 52 million people when comparing American and European rates of homicide, and secondly why don’t they remember that it took the combined occupation of most of Europe by the American armed forces and the Red Army to bring that bout of murder to an end.
“The British did not start the war.”
True. But they and their French allies were hypocrites in that they declared war on Germany due to their alliance with Poland while saying NOTHING about the Soviets who had simultaneously invaded Poland. Myself, I do not find the bombing of Dresden or any other city to be the most shameful episode of that war, no, what I find shameful is how the West allied themselves with the pigs and rapists from the Soviet Union so as to appease their own left wing populations.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3uFUxMwA1w
Billy Ayers understood that
City centers were the preferential targets for WWII bombers. Not just because bombing techniques were very hit-and-miss at the time.
Bombing city centers - where main rail junctions, telephone systems, city administration, and utilities were located - would result in the maximum amount of suppression of war activity.
The RAF learned this after the Coventry Blitz, when loss of crucial municipal infrastructure had a longer-lasting effect than the damage to factories.
Halving Dresden’s war-output for a few months with a single raid? That sounds like a good outcome - before it’s given the appropriate leftist spin by the History Channel.
Sorry, but that appears to be a strawman argument. Whether or not they were bombing the railheads to the camps is irrelevant to the fact that Dresden was still a legitimate target for both rail and industrial reasons. It would have been nice if they had been bombing the camp railheads, but then you would probably be whining about any German civilians who may have become casualties while living near those railroad lines and railheads.
Dresden was a valid target, pure and simple. The evidence is quite clear in that regard. Because we weren't bombing someplace else doesn't make it any less of a valid target. There is no quandry other than the false-front one that you are attempted to construct.
Interestingly, i was just in Dresden two weeks ago, on business. It was my first visit to the city.
Spent a full day wandering the city center, and a museum near our hotel, which had a Stalingrad exhibit.
Found a park nearby that had a statue erected to the Soviet red armies during the “great patriotic war”. I was a bit surprised that the statue was still there, 20+ years after the fall...
I still think the Soviet influence in the old East Germany is still quite strong. They dont have the infrastructure that exists in the “west”, etc. Interesting to note.
We started out fighting a “compassionate” war in 2001. How’s that worked out for us so far....?
I think the world would be better served commemorating Coventry rather than Dresden.
What part of ‘war’ don’t these people get.
Dresden was full of skilled labor that added to their war machine. The skilled labor were a strategic resource as well as the ball bearings, etc.
When China finally gets around to attacking us when Obama drops our defenses, do you think they’ll want to keep around that small group of Americans that actually know how to make something anymore?
It can be argued that area bombing was ineffective and expensive. It was employed because low-altitude bombers could only get through at night, when precision bombing was not possible. The most effective bombing campaign was the USAAF’s precision daylight attacks on Germany’s transportation and oil infrastructure.
The German's gave up less than three months later; the bombing worked to weaken their resolve to resist. War is hell; and the more hell the faster it ends.
THEY SURREDERED!!!!!!!!! and saved an estimated million casualites if we had to invade Japan. It is estimated that we would have lost 100,000 lives in an invasion. The Japaneses would have lost millions mostly to disease and starvation as we would have systematically removed their ability to feed and care for their people.
Terror works.
Back then wars were fought to defeat the enemy and gain victory.
WWII for the USA was fought and won in less than 4 years because the goal was to defeat the enemy - not to ask them why they didn’t like us.
Today our politicians have made war just another part of the FREE STUFF culture. They build our enemies dams, power plants, water treatment plants and supply them with the most up to date equipment. That is why “wars” today last 10 years an more. There are too many people making money off it and getting FREE STUFF.
Yet, the more of us they kill, the more we give them.
Then our government brings our enemies to the USA, puts them in the high government positions and in the military, and gives them better treatment than its own patriotic citizens.
When they kill us our government calls it “workplace violence” and protects them.
Dresden style carpet bombing was a better way to go.
If we had fought in Afghanistan the way we fought WWII we would have been out of there in 3 months and it would be a long time before anyone screwed with us again.
“Now, tell me what part worked”
Well the part where the Allies WON the War and the Axis powers LOST the War.
I think we have been recently invaded by a bunch of trolls. Same bleeding heart stuff with the Chris Dorner situation.
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