The Lidice Memorial.
Posted on 02/14/2015 1:43:44 PM PST by Kid Shelleen
An estimated 25,000 people died in the British and American attack, which created a firestorm that left 33 sq km (12 sq miles) of the city in ruins.
Speaking at the city's Church of Our Lady, German President Joachim Gauck said the attack had "burned itself into the memory" of survivors.
The city was believed by Allied forces to be a vital Nazi command centre.
It was used by German forces to defend the country against Soviet forces approaching from the east.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
What are you talking about?
The so-called "right to choose."
Total war.
I knew what you meant as soon as I read it.
The heat over Tokyo was so intense it lifted a screen door up 20,000 feet and this was reported during mission debriefing. The turbulence caused by the heat was the worse thing many crew had ever expedienced, including air combat.
Screw the Germans. It was they who elevated Hitler, and they got what goes with that.
Thanks for your humorous post.
It was.
Dresden was the last remaining intact major transport hub in Germany at the time it was attacked. Frederick Taylor's excellent 2005 book on this subject details war production and communications work which was going on that made much of the city in fact a military target.
A lot of the controversy after the war was actually stirred up by the Soviets and East Germans to discredit the West during the Cold War, including a dramatic inflation of the death toll. While horrible, it was nowhere near what the Soviets claimed after the war.
Christopher was a leftist and "devout" atheist, but amongst us real conservatives he was something of a "most favored enemy," since he understood the threat that Islam posed to the West. Brother Peter is a total pacifist, who blames the decline of Britain, not on socialism, but on the world wars, the second of which he believes Britain should not have entered, since, in his opinion, Hitler had no designs on her.
I’m connected to P. Hitchens on facebook. Some of his opinions I agree with, some I don’t. I didn’t know his weird take on Hitler. I do believe Britain suffered mightily in the two world wars from which it has had trouble getting over. I was a fan of Christopher Hitchens although I have problems with his opinions, too. Both had trouble with their poor, hard-working patriotic father.
At the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the day the soldiers came, they killed more than six hundred men, women . . . and children.
...
Most of those who died were disabled by gun fire and burned alive or locked in the church and burned alive.
No rules in war...
The only reason Japan surrendered was because Hirohito managed to go on the radio, before Tojo and his pals offed him.
When Hitler took power, he envisaged a possibility of Britain and Germany being Allies, if Britain allowed Germany her colonies in the East, then Germany would have made no claims on any British colonies.
Some in Britain, I’m sure would have loved to make that deal, and they were the ones who hated Churchill for dare pointing out that Hitler was a bad man.
The Lidice Memorial.
I guess it’s OK to remember it. But I won’t feel bad about it.
We are going to have these “memorials” through August. The firebombing in Japan started in March of ‘45. So get your hankies out.
War sucks.
People like bandleader, PAR35, and Romulus need to get over themselves.
All praise to Colonel_Flagg for reminding the forum about Frederick Taylor’s book. But 30 seconds with a map ought to make it obvious that Dresden was a transport nexus; at the time it was hit, VE Day was still months away and the Allies were concerned that the Wehrmacht might retreat into the mountainous regions of southern Germany and western Austria, from whence they might wage irregular war for an indefinite period.
Critics of the Allied air offensives pride themselves on superior morality. They might recall that it’s easy to play the self-appointed moral arbiter from a point in time three generations later, easy to second-guess the decisions of leaders and actions of combatants in WWII. Decisions, and actions, it must be pointed out, that played no small part in making their comfort and leisure possible.
Complaining about moral deficiencies in this or that portion of the Allied war effort misses the point. The point can be framed as this question:
Should be choose to be moral, or effective?
If we do not choose the latter, we may not be around long enough to become the former.
One of the history shows I watch has a perfect comment from a British WWII vet. He says “We were good men who committed acts of unspeakable brutality because the nazis would accept nothing less”.
To be honest as a person who speaks a little German, and even dated a half German girl years ago, though the bombing was a tragedy and the loss of life tragic, the German people who lived back then have Hitler to blame and themselves for they could have rose up against him during that time, and I have to wonder if the people would not have sided with a socialistic, fascist, racialist man like Hitler, maybe they would still be alive, and the only Germans I really feel sorry for to be honest is people like COL Staffenberg, that man was hero.
You might try studying a little history. Then you might be able to tell the difference between targeted bombing of strategic and tactical targets, which the Americans did at great risk and cost, and terror bombing, which the British used against the civilian population.
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