Just thought I would create a thread about this, since the bombings started today back in 1945. Whether or not you agree with the reasons for the bombing, or in the manner it was carried out, it was a very devastating strike. Probably the most famous of WW2 next to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



Altstadt before:


Altstadt after:




during the strike

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

It's amazing the amount of death & destruction one lunatic jackass can cause.

One of Europe's oldest & most beautiful cities reduced to rubble.

Sickening.

Surely an act of terrorism

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An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

Seems like revenge for the Blitz.

And as such, completely unacceptable.

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"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."
Matthew 5:9

Dresden was bombed because the Soviets claimed that a huge force of German soldiers would be there, NAZIs retreating from the Soviets.

Fire Storms were not an unknown phenomena but the level of destruction was a bit of a suprise regardless.

Casualties, according to German Authorities, were a great deal less than most sources have claimed over the years.
Its possible their were many German soldiers there who were not counted among the casualties by Civilian authorities because they had no records of their temporary presence during a mass retreat.

I seriously doubt that the British would have committed a bomber force of that size specifically to bomb a target which they did not sincerely believe to have some military significance.

Neither the Germans nor the Japanese balked at destroying entire cities in order to terrorize the population of their opponents. What comes around goes around.

So they carpet bombed a city into a fiery mess to get some retreating soldiers?

The difference is the Nazi's were put on trial for their crimes.

Source? Who are these "authorities?"

You underestimate the British ability to commit heinous war crimes for the mere sake of being brutal.

The difference is the Nazi's were put on trial for their crimes; obviously what goes around does not come around as the British terrorists were not put on trial next to them?

Survival of the fittest gentlemen, survival of the fittest...

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"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." -John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)


"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist." -Archbishop Helder Camara

"Semantics is the essence of debate."
-Me

LOL

The Germans shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

That justifies firebombing a city?

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"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."
Matthew 5:9

I'd vote no, but then again, wars are not fought by committee, they are fought by a select few, with one constraint, can it be done. Whether it is justified matters little in the light of the fact that your opinion matters for almost nothing. Survival of the fittest...

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"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." -John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)


"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist." -Archbishop Helder Camara

"Semantics is the essence of debate."
-Me

Dresden was bombed as an experiment, it was chosen because there it was not of much military significance, so there wouldn't be very much AAA.
One of the major problems of running a strategic bombing force is coming up with targets. For the British, who were short on airplanes and couldn't afford heavy losses, that meant bombing at night, and you need a huge target like a city if you are bombing at night.

They developed a system, low flying pathfinder aircraft would locate the target and drop incendiary bombs to mark the target, then a mass of fire bombs would be dropped from high altitude, followed by deep penetrator bombs to rupture water mains, and then high explosives to collapse buildings and block the escape of the firemen after their hoses went dry.
In one raid in Hamburg, 80% of the fire department was killed.
Once the firemen were killed the city would burn out of control.

Even daylight "precision" bombing was a misnomer, only 50% of the bombs dropped in precision bombing raids landed within a mile of the target.

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“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

So is the "holocaust" justified because in 1933 world Jewry declared an economic war on Germany? Using your logic....

Second, to correct your revisionist history Britain declared war on Germany not the other way around...

More to prevent their re deployment along more defensible lines. Besides producing casualties among the retreating troops they hoped to destroy the rail lines and switching stations.
Destroying railroad yards prevented the Germans from returning recovered and repaired tanks to the front lines. Long after the war thousands of rebuilt and battle ready Panzers were discovered hidden on spur lines.
These were not found until experimental aerial and satelite surveys of Germany were done during the cold war.

The Japanese executed many allied airmen claiming that specific bombing missions contravened the Geneva Convention, though Japan was not a signatory and seldom if ever honored any such articles .
In at least one instance a captured P-51 pilot was executed after the Germans found evidence on his gun camera film that he'd fired on one of their pilots after the German had bailed out, the US pilot had seen the Germans do the same to his wingman not long before.


The German Government's official tally of casualties at Dresden. You can look it it up.
I've read up on the Dresden bombing several times over the years. Articles inflate the casualty figures more as time goes by, but the official figures remain the same.


Plenty of that going around.
I ran across German Propaganda photos claiming to show evidence of the British having tortured some german POWs, the photos actually showed bodies that had lain out in the sun several days and been partly devoured by small animals, injuries were consistent with an air crash, the Germans had suffered heavy losses of Glider borne paratroopers in that engagement.

Thats the difference between winners and losers.
Besides which, everytime the subject of supposed violations of the Geneva Convention comes up someone says that not abiding by the articles would result in POWs being mistreated. So if such retaliation is considered reasonable in one case why not in another?
By the end of WW2 there was little compassion left for the Enemy's population, and Germany had never show any.

And they did so by carpet firebombing an entire city

What does this load of crap have to do with the carpet firebombing of Dresden or allied murderers escaping trial?

In other words you have no source...

Sounds like the holocaust casualty rates; numbers are revised downward at Auschwitz by the millions yet the magical number of 6 million remains a constant.

Sorry for going off-topic...

Much like the allied propaganda photo's of "death camp" victims who largely died of Typhus? Oooops off-topic again...sorry.

It is called "Victors Justice."

if you are too lazy to do a quick search then you can remain ignorant.

Gee, never heard that losers were more likely to be morally superior.

Post the suspect photos and signed death certificates of the victims pictured. You don't expect me to believe you without positive proof now do you?
Never occurred to you that starvation increases the death rate from disease by weakening the immune system I suppose.

I might have figured you for a David Irving fan.

As for the Six Million Figure, I never heard it quoted as six million jews only. The figures I can remember quoted close to fifty years ago were aproximately six millions Jews, Gypsies, Intellectuals, homosexuals, etc. The NAZIS killed a lot of people for a wide variety of reasons.