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Dresden - Time for UK/US to Issue Regrets?
GreatGodPan
Posts: 53,186 Forum Member
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a speech in Dresden today, said the events of those nights when the city was fire bombed and 25,000 died as having "diminished all our humanity".
I believe this was a disproportionate action and a stain on the UK/US fight against Fascism in the war.
Maybe it is time for the governments of the UK and US to issue regrets for the actions of those nights?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31452693
I believe this was a disproportionate action and a stain on the UK/US fight against Fascism in the war.
Maybe it is time for the governments of the UK and US to issue regrets for the actions of those nights?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31452693
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I wonder if you would be saying this in 1940 when your kids were blown up along with your house as you were listening to the wireless in a nice suburb of east London.
This addresses the question - how exactly?
You think the shades of the British dead children would want to see thousands of German children die too?
Would we still have to apologise if Hitler won?
When the Nazis obliterated Coventry as an exercise in total destruction I am sure most would not want to kill women and children but the reality is if you did not do something equally horrific then it would continue on with each new generation. You seem to applaud killing Fascists but hate killing children many of whom were armed with grenade launchers to repel the invaders and keep Fascism alive. It is a conundrum but we should not apologise as I have a relative whose mother was machine gunned by a German fighter as she hung her washing out.
I'm sorry? I don't "applaud" the mass killing of any nation's civilian population.
Your last sentence is rather irrelevant - and a little odd.
You think a national standpoint on the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be coloured by the fact an uncle of mine was killed fighting the Japanese in Burma?
Did the bombing save any allied lives?
The war was nearly over and no military gain was had from this action, so why did they do it
Revenge for London and Coventry?
While it might be regrettable that Dresden was bombed so close to the end of a war that was essentially won by that time, it is also regrettable that the Nazis didn't surrender when the writing was on the wall.
I don't believe that it was any more disproportionate than any bombing campaign by any of the belligerents in WW2.
Certainly not any more disproportionate than the deliberate planned murder of millions of Europeans just for being different.
That is just the usual 100% pure neo-Nazi revisionist line and I have zero time for such misplaced views!
Dresden usually crops up this time of year and it's time for an injection of hard facts. Dresden was up to its neck in terms of Third Reich military involvement in WWII. For example, there were many military targets including wartime industrial plants, communications infrastructure, military installations and railway marshalling yards (used to transport military materiel).
There were also valid concerns that Dresden would be used as a staging post to reinforce German positions in the eastern province of Silesia and thus delay the end of the war even further (with even more fatalities). Therefore, on military and strategic grounds, the bombing of Dresden was fully justified.
The blame for the bombing of Dresden must ultimately reside with the Nazis and German armed forces because their fanaticism and refusal to surrender (despite their ongoing defeats) meant that the war went on until the bitter end. It was clear from mid-1943 onwards that the Nazis would lose and any sane regime would have ended it there and that would have saved millions of lives.
After WWII, the United States Air Force Historical Division conducted a thorough review into the bombing of Dresden which detailed the military importance of Dresden. That original report can be read in full right here: http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110208-030.pdf
In addition, the total death toll at Dresden was about 25,000 and put into the wider context, that was about the same as a week's exterminations at a single Nazi death camp.
OP, you really have plumbed the depths of political depravity with this thread.
No she was hanging out her washing in her home in Portsmouth, it was a terror attack, designed to frighten and terrorise the civilian population, all part of that war.
You do seem to support the fight against Fascism and in a fight the very nature of it means that a greater or lesser number of people get killed. How else do you fight the good fight other than by killing people?
London and Coventry were very fresh in people's minds, the newsreels of the time were dealing with what happened at the time and there were many women and children in British cities blown to bits that British people had to deal with and, literally, pick up the pieces.
We fought the Germans, not fascism.
There were no civilians during the war as everybody helped in the war effort, including women and children.
We were at war and it was a war we had to win.
I do not rejoice in the deaths of anyone.
Herman Goering introduced a new word into the English Language "coventrate", "To devastate by heavy bombing" after the Germans fire bombing attack in 1940
Perhaps Frau Merkal can go and apologise to the people of Coventry next time she comes over to visit her Northern Provinces
Exactly. Some people have conveniently forgotten about the Blitz.
The Germans started the war and bombed the UK indiscriminately.
We retaliated.
It was only the intervention of a couple of Wehrmacht soldiers that saved his life.
There was not any strategic sense in bombing Dresden as no specific factories vital to the German war effort were earmarked in this raid.
It was simply a terror raid that served no purpose other than to terrorise the population.
Over 600,000 German civilians died in Allied bombing raids including 76,000 children compared to 43,000 British civilian casualties.
Yes the Germans started it, but by 1945 the German civilian population had a beating 10 times worse in revenge and Dresden was simply the equivalent of putting the boot in on someone out on the floor.
Those who sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
That is the usual, distorted and inaccurate revisionist fiction. In contrast, this is actual fact: http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110208-030.pdf
Well let's hope somebody isn't out on the floor cold when you come out the pub looking for revenge
Neathandral comes to mind when I read some comments on these boards by certain posters....
No..............
Your 'link' is a report prepared by the USAF to justify itself.
Its rather like a panel of football hooligans being asked to prepare a report on football hooliganism...