Dresden: barbarism and vengeance

Discussion in 'General' started by T-34, May 9, 2006.

  1. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    Seeing as I saw it on the Goodies Reunion a couple od months ago, i couldn't possibly comment. BTW, i think we've just hijacked the Dresden thread. Gnomey might be handing out waggy fingers again! I want one!
     
  2. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    I thought his description of the bombing to be acurate, his opinions are not my own but I will certainly consider them in the grand sheme of things.
    "dishonest"?
    If it's your viewpoint then it is indeed honest.

    After reading Taylor's book, other books on WW2, and the Irving-Lipstadt trial transcripts and books and articles on him and them thereon, I wouldn't trust Irving's viewpoint on the weather.
     
  3. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    If, towards the end of the war, or indeed at any other time, the Germans and a bomber force compairable to the Allies, would they have done the same to London? Of course they would.
     
  4. redcoat

    redcoat Senior Member

    I I still think Irving's description of the bombing in great detail is worth the read, the actual bombing with the pathfinders and all that.
    No.
    Buy ,or borrow, Taylors book. Its far better.
     
  5. viper_1967

    viper_1967 Member

    If, towards the end of the war, or indeed at any other time, the Germans and a bomber force compairable to the Allies, would they have done the same to London? Of course they would.
    No XXXX sherlock!
     
  6. viper_1967

    viper_1967 Member

    After reading Taylor's book, other books on WW2, and the Irving-Lipstadt trial transcripts and books and articles on him and them thereon, I wouldn't trust Irving's viewpoint on the weather.


    I'm reading it now!
    Weather? I trust that to God.
     
  7. viper_1967

    viper_1967 Member

    No.
    Buy ,or borrow, Taylors book. Its far better.

    I think this merits another thread, I need a few days please...
     
  8. viper_1967

    viper_1967 Member

    Just finished Taylor's book, what a read!
    The detail is fantastic.
    So I guess the only point of contention that remains(after the Mustang straffings where the results of dogfighting) is was Dresden a military target?
    Well according to Heinz Guderian it was!
    They did not know that, on January 1, 1945, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, Chief of the Army General Staff, had designated Dresden a military strongpoint, a "defensive area" (Verteidigungbereich). Dresden was to be one of several strongpoints to be used in a last desperate effort to slow the relentless Russian advance into Germany.

    I have found several references to this.
    I still feel for the poor bastards.
     
  9. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Just finished Taylor's book, what a read!
    The detail is fantastic.
    So I guess the only point of contention that remains(after the Mustang straffings where the results of dogfighting) is was Dresden a military target?
    Well according to Heinz Guderian it was!
    They did not know that, on January 1, 1945, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, Chief of the Army General Staff, had designated Dresden a military strongpoint, a "defensive area" (Verteidigungbereich). Dresden was to be one of several strongpoints to be used in a last desperate effort to slow the relentless Russian advance into Germany.

    I have found several references to this.
    I still feel for the poor bastards.


    You're entitled to feel bad for the residents of Dresden. Citizens are flung into wars at the behest of their leaders, often willy-nilly. But they are more responsible for letting Hitler come to power and wreck Germany and Europe. The Dresdeners paid the harsh price for failing to stand up to Hitler when it counted.

    And maybe there won't be any more wars in Europe.
     
  10. T-34

    T-34 Discharged - Nazi

    You're entitled to feel bad for the residents of Dresden. Citizens are flung into wars at the behest of their leaders, often willy-nilly. But they are more responsible for letting Hitler come to power and wreck Germany and Europe. The Dresdeners paid the harsh price for failing to stand up to Hitler when it counted.
    oh, come on! what can people do against politics.
    its nowadays that people can be cheated into thinking they can influence politics, but that's only illusion.
     
  11. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    oh, come on! what can people do against politics.
    its nowadays that people can be cheated into thinking they can influence politics, but that's only illusion.

    Sadly T34 there are the Shepherds and the Sheep. When the sheep are in green pastures they are happy and content and follow the herd.

    When the ground becomes barren, the sheep have nowhere elso to go and become the prey of the land however the shepherds can move on.
     
  12. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    oh, come on! what can people do against politics.
    its nowadays that people can be cheated into thinking they can influence politics, but that's only illusion.

    I think there is a ring of truth here.

    The Hitler regime could not be toppled from within except by the will of the armed forces.However the Wehrmacht had been seduced by Hitler from his rise to power and the fires of Prussian militarism were again rekindled.

    When the Wehrmacht leadership awoke, finally to the horror and senseless path that Hitler was taking Germany,they were largely impotent and found that the SS were the real power.

    However,the newsreel scenes showing the victorious parade in Berlin after the defeat of the BEF and France showed to the rest of the world that Hitler was overwhelmingly supported by the German people.

    On the other hand,I had a friend who served in Germany for 3 years from the end of the war as an 18 year old who remarked,"funny there was nobody who
    own up and say they supported the former regime,they were all anti Nazis"
     
  13. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    I think there is a ring of truth here.

    However,the newsreel scenes showing the victorious parade in Berlin after the defeat of the BEF and France showed to the rest of the world that Hitler was overwhelmingly supported by the German people.

    On the other hand,I had a friend who served in Germany for 3 years from the end of the war as an 18 year old who remarked,"funny there was nobody who
    own up and say they supported the former regime,they were all anti Nazis"

    What was that saying: Before the cock crows three times!

    Having said that, I don't believe I would have been owning up either!
     
  14. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    This is such an emotive subject! The Nazis did, of course, proclaim total war, and it is also largely true they had little compunction about stategic bombing of foreign cities and the consequent civilian casualties while they were winning. However, to embrace the argument that as they sowed the wind, they should expect to reap the whirlwind, could lead one open to the accusation of being little better, morally, than those we sought to defeat. Also, it ignores the fact that not all Germans were Nazis - and certainly the babies and small children incinerated in the firestorms were not. They were innocents (as were their British counterparts in the Blitz. Don't they say innocence is always the first casualty of war?). Of course, I appreciate I, and all of us, have the luxury of being able to debate all of this in the comfort and safety of hindsight, commodities denied those involved. But at least such distance in time allows more objectivity, and we can see the barbarism, in its many forms, extant on all sides in war. There is no way to fight war without it: war, by definition, is bestial and barbaric.

    As to the bombing of Dresden, and the wider area bombing of Germany by night (and day), it was recognition - in part - of just how profligate in expenditure of human life on all sides this really was, that inspired the development of so called "smart weapons" to take out purely military targets. If we can claim any moral high ground, it can be only to say that we at least were abhorred at the destruction wrought to our enemies cities, whereas they, if the positions were reversed at war's end, wouldn't have cared less. But that is all. So maybe the question should be - honesty, decency, justice: do we fight with those things, or merely for them? And if we abandon those things in the fight, can we ever get them back?
     
  15. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    Wow. Adam, that is one hell of a statement. I feel the need to stare at the wall for 10 minutes while i think about it. Thank you.
     
  16. BulgarianSoldier

    BulgarianSoldier Senior Member

    Maybe you people end this topic ,but i want to say that this is the war.Killing and barbarisam.To kill some one is an act of barbarisam not only to destroy a whole city full with inosent people.War never chages.The whole war is act of barbarism.
     
  17. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    Wow. Adam, that is one hell of a statement. I feel the need to stare at the wall for 10 minutes while i think about it. Thank you.

    I detect more than a little sarcasm! Care to elaborate?
     
  18. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    I detect more than a little sarcasm! Care to elaborate?
    I wasn't being sarcastic and I am sorry if it came across like that. I meant what i said. Your statement was very calm and controlled and it's made me somewhat thoughtful in a 'sit and stare at the wall while i think about it' way. That's all. I just think it was one of the most thought provoking posts in the thread.
    Sorry if i came across as insulting. Didn't mean to.
    Kitty
     
  19. viper_1967

    viper_1967 Member

    This is such an emotive subject! The Nazis did, of course, proclaim total war, and it is also largely true they had little compunction about stategic bombing of foreign cities and the consequent civilian casualties while they were winning. However, to embrace the argument that as they sowed the wind, they should expect to reap the whirlwind, could lead one open to the accusation of being little better, morally, than those we sought to defeat. Also, it ignores the fact that not all Germans were Nazis - and certainly the babies and small chilren incinerated in the firestorms were not. They were innocents (as were their British counterparts in the Blitz. Don't they say innocence is always the first casualty of war?). Of course, I appreciate I, and all of us, have the luxury of being able to debate all of this in the comfort and safety of hindsight, commodities denied those involved. But at least such distance in time allows more objectivity, and we can see the barbarism, in its many forms, extant on all sides in war. There is no way to fight war without it: war, by definition, is bestial and barbaric.

    As to the bombing of Dresden, and the wider area bombing of Germany by night (and day), it was recognition - in part - of just how proligate in expenditure of human life on all sides this really was, that inspired the development of so called "smart weapons" to take out purely military targets. If we can claim any moral high ground, it can be only to say that we at least were abhorred at the destruction wrought to our enemies cities, whereas they, if the positions were reversed at war's end, wouldn't have cared less. But that is all. So maybe the question should be - honesty, decency, justice: do we fight with those things, or merely for them? And if we abandon those things in the fight, can we ever get them back?

    I could not have said it better.
     
  20. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    I wasn't being sarcastic and I am sorry if it came across like that. I meant what i said. Your statement was very calm and controlled and it's made me somewhat thoughtful in a 'sit and stare at the wall while i think about it' way. That's all. I just think it was one of the most thought provoking posts in the thread.
    Sorry if i came across as insulting. Didn't mean to.
    Kitty

    Thanks, Kitty. Sorry I took it the wrong way!

    If you haven't read it already, can I recommend Len Deighton's novel "Bomber" to you? It follows the progress of Lancaster "O" Orange and its crew on a bombing raid over Germany in June, 1943, and the lives of those German civilians on the ground whose lives were irrevocably altered by its bombs. The path of destruction wrought by each and every one of its of its incediaries and cookies is shown in detail. The course of night fighter bullets and their terryfying effect on the flesh of the aircrews is given similar treatment. But what makes the book stand out is that it has no bias, nor makes any judgements. It is simply the best anti war statement I have ever read.

    The BBC subsequently turned it into a 4 hour radio play starring Samuel West in the lead role as F/Sgt Sam Lambert, and the producers used Edward Elgar's Sospiri ("Sighs") as the musical score. It's a haunting piece which Elgar wrote on the eve of the Great War, and it unerringly captures something of the tradegy to come. This is why they chose it for their production of "Bomber".

    It is interesting how often classical music is used to evoke the horror of war. It was during the period in which "Bomber" is set that Bomber Command aircrews adopted Chopin's "So deep is the night" as more or less their unofficial hymn, and its melancholic, soulful quality reflected the fact that their losses were rising alarmingly and the night itself, once thought to provide so much protection against night fighters, now appeared but a tattered cloak...
     

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