Posted on 02/21/2007 8:59:05 PM PST by dervish
The French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen provoked outrage among British veterans yesterday when he compared the September 11 attacks on the United States to RAF-led bombing raids during the Second World War.
The National Front leader said both were "terrorist acts as they expressly targeted civilians to force military leaders to capitulate". Mr Le Pen, 79, also dismissed the al-Qa'eda atrocities in 2001 as a mere "incident".
He told the Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix: "Three thousand dead — that is how many die in Iraq in a month and it's far less than the deaths in the Marseille or Dresden bombings at the end of the Second World War."
Praising those Muslims who condemned the attacks on New York and Washington, Mr Le Pen said: "The September 11 event, or one could say incident, prompted a certain number of people to distance themselves [from Islamic extremism] to avoid falling under the barrage of accusations that was unleashed."
'snip'
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
II. ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target
5. At the outbreak of World War II, Dresden was the seventh largest city in Germany proper.2 With a population of 642,143 in 1939, Dresden was exceeded in size only by Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, and Essen, in that order.3 The serial bombardments sustained during World War II by the seven largest cities of Germany are shown in Chart A.
6. Situated 71 miles E.S.E. from Leipzig and 111 miles S. of Berlin, by rail, Dresden was one of the greatest commercial and transportation centers of Germany and the historic capital of the important and populous state of Saxony.4 It was, however, because of its geographical location and topography and as a primary communications center that Dresden assumed major significance as a military target in February 1945, as the Allied ground forces moved eastward and the Russian armies moved westward in the great combined operations designed to entrap and crush the Germans into final defeat.
7. Geographically and topographically, Dresden commanded two great and historic traffic routes of primary military significance: north-south between Germany and Czechoslovakia through the valley and gorge of the Elbe river, and east-west along the foot of the central European uplands.5 The geographical and topographical importance of Dresden as the lower bastion in the vast Allied-Russian war of movement against the Germans in the closing months of the war in Europe.
8. As a primary communications center, Dresden was the junction of three great trunk routes in the German railway system: (1) Berlin-Prague-Vienna, (2) Munich-Breslau, and (3) Hamburg-Leipzig. As a key center in the dense Berlin-Leipzig railway complex, Dresden was connected to both cities by two main lines.6 The density, volume, and importance of the Dresden-Saxony railway system within the German geography and e economy is seen in the facts that in 1939 Saxony was seventh in area among the major German states, ranked seventh in its railway mileage, but ranked third in the total tonnage carried by rail.7
9. In addition to its geographical position and topography and its primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany’s most important optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.), gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler).9
10. Specific military installations in Dresden in February 1945 included barracks and hutted camps and at least one munitions storage depot.10
11. Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden (Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration Commands.12
Strategic Objectives, of Mutual Importance to the Allies and the Russians:
12. As early as 1943, the Allies and Russians had begun high-level consultations for the conduct of the war against Germany; in essence, for combined operations designed to defeat Germany by Allied bombardment from the air, by Allied ground operations against Germany from the west, and by Russian operations against the Germans from the west, and by Russian operations against the Germans from the East. At the Tehran Conference (28 November-11 December 1943) between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, the grand strategy for these combined operations was outlined and agreed upon by the three powers.13 Details for executing the grand strategy were not considered at the conference, but were to be worked out by the individual forces in keeping with the fortunes and progress of the war.14
13. In the closing months of 1944, Allied land advances in the west and Russian advances from the east, coupled with the ever-growing devastation from aerial attacks by the Allied heavy bomber forces, made it apparent that early in 1945 Germany proper could be invaded from both fronts and that the Allied strategic air forces would be more and more called upon to give direct support to these vast land operations. In September and October 1944 the Allies and the Russians began the exchange of information on their specific plans for operations designed to bring the war to a close in 1945.15 Simultaneously, the Allies and the Russians laid the general groundwork for closer cooperation and assistance in their forthcoming operations.16
14. On 14 December 1944, the American Ambassador to Russia, Mr. Averill Harriman, personally stated to Marshal Stalin that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), “was very anxious to operate in concert with the Russians and to help the Russian armies whenever such support might be needed.”17 Ambassador Harriman specifically discussed with Stalin the use of Allied air forces in the Mediterranean in support of Russian land operations in the Balkans.18 While there was no direct mention, in the 14 December conversations between Stalin and Harriman, of the employment of the massive Allied strategic air forces operating from the west, it was to be assumed that these forces would be used to support Russians operations on the Eastern front.
15. On 23 December 1944, President Roosevelt informed Stalin that--given the Marshal’s permission General Eisenhower would be instructed to send a representative to Moscow to “discuss with you the situation in the west and its relation to the Russian front in order that information essential to our efforts may be available to all of us.”19 On 26 December Stalin stated his acceptance of President Roosevelt’s proposal.20 The officer designated to confer with Stalin was Marshal of the RAF, Sir Arthur Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander, SHAEF, and immediately responsible to the Supreme Commander for all Allied air operations. Among the topics discussed by Stalin and Tedder at their meeting on 15 January 1945 was the employment of the Allied strategic air forces in the forthcoming combined operations. Tedder outlined to Stalin the “application of the Allied air effort with particular reference to strategic bombing of communications as represented by oil targets, railroads and waterways.”21 There was also specific discussion of the problem that would face the Russians if the Germans attempted to shift forces from the west to the east and of the necessity of preventing this possibility.22
16. Therefore, on 25 January 1945, the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee of the British War Cabinet, which was responsible for preparing such analyses for the Allied air forces, presented to Marshal Tedder, through appropriate channels, a working paper entitled “Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive.23 The findings of this authoritative body were as follows:
The degree of success achieved by the present Russian offensive is likely to have a decisive effect on the length of the war. We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end.24
It is probable that the Germans will be compelled to withdraw forces, particularly panzer divisions, from the Western Front to reinforce the East . . . . To what extent air bombardment can delay the move eastwards of these or other divisions destined for the Eastern Front is . . . an operational matter. It is understood that far-reaching results have already been achieved in the West by disruptive effect of Allied air attacks on marshalling yards and communications generally. These have hitherto been aimed at assistance to the Western Front and should now be considered in relation to delaying the transfer of forces eastwards.25
For the next several days these recommendations were carefully studied and evaluated by the appropriate authorities in the Supreme Commander’s staff, particularly among those immediately responsible to him for planning and authorizing air operations. On 31 January, the decision was made by the Deputy Supreme Commander Tedder and his air staff that the second priority for the Allied strategic air forces should be the “attack of BERLIN, LEIPZIG, DRESDEN and associated cities where heavy attack will . . . hamper movement of reinforcements from other fronts.”26 As of 31 January 1945, the Allied decision to establish Dresden as a second priority target, because it was a primary communications center and in support of the Russian armies, was by no means unilateral. The decision was founded on basic and explicit exchanges of information between the Allies and Russia and was clearly a strategic decision of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians.27
The Russian Request for Allied Bombing of Communications in the Dresden Area:
17. The Allied-Russian interchanges that had begun in the closing months of 1944 and had become, with the passing of time, more frequent and more specific, culminated in the ARGONAUT Conferences of January-February 1945. On 4 February, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Marshal Stalin, together with their foreign secretaries and military advisors, assembled at Yalta to present definitive and specific plans, and requests, for bringing the war against Germany to a victorious conclusion, by the summer of 1945, if possible (Other considerations involved in the ARGONAUT deliberations are not pertinent or relevant here). At this meeting, Marshal Stalin asked Army General Antonov, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, to outline to the Conference the situation existing on the Eastern Front and to describe Russia’s plans for subsequent operations. At the conclusion of his extended presentation, General Antonov made three specific requests for Allied assistance to the Russians: 27
Our wishes are:
a. To speed up the advance of the Allied troops on the Western Front, for which the present situation is very favorable: (1) To defeat the Germans on the Eastern Front. (2) To defeat the German groupings which have advanced into the Ardennes. (3) The weakening of the German forces in the West in connection with the shifting of their reserves to the East (It is desirable to begin the advance during the first half of February).
b. By air action on communications hinder the enemy from carrying out the shifting of his troops to the East from the Western Front, from Norway, and from Italy (In particular, to paralyze the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig).
c. Not permit the enemy to remove his forces from Italy.
18. It was the specific Russian request for bombing communications, coupled with the emphasis on forcing troops to shift from west to east through communications centers, that led to the Allied bombings of Dresden. The structure of the Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex, as outlined in paragraph 8 above, required that Dresden, as well as Berlin and Leipzig, be bombed. Therefore Allied air authorities concluded that the bombing of Dresden would have to be undertaken (1) in order to implement strategic objectives, of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians, and now agreed upon at the highest levels of governmental authority, and (2) to respond to the specific Russian request presented to the Allies by General Antonov to “paralyze the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig.”
The Recommendation and Authority for the Allied Air Forces’ Bombing of Dresden:
19. On 8 February 1945 SHAEF (Air) informed the RAF Bomber Command and the United States Strategic Air Forces that Dresden was among a number of targets that had been selected for bombing because of their importance in relation to the movements of military forces to the Eastern Front.28 This action, based upon the authoritative recommendation of the Combined Strategic Targets Committee, SHAEF (Air), and in turn based upon the recommendations of the Joint Intelligence Committee (see paragraph 16 above), was in keeping with the procedural structure and authority set up in SHAEF for the conduct of aerial operations by Allied forces.29
20. Allied aerial operations were ultimately the responsibility of the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, though normally he delegated the immediate authority for employment of Allied air forces to his Deputy Supreme Commander, Marshal Tedder. The latter, in turn, relied upon the commanders of the RAF Bomber Command and the United States Strategic Air Forces (General Carl Spaatz, Commanding) for the actual conduct of specific strategic aerial operations. The top commanders of the Allied strategic bomber forces were required to conduct all of their operations within the framework of bombing directives laid down to them by the Combined Chiefs of Staff (the British Chiefs of Staff and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff). In February 1945, when SHAEF (Air) directed the bombing of Dresden in immediate support of the Russians and in keeping with strategic objectives of mutual interest to the Allies and the Russians, the strategic objectives of mutual interest o the Allies and the Russians, the strategic bomber forces were operating under the authority of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) “Directive No. 3 for the Strategic Air Forces in Europe,” dated 12 January 1945.30 The second priority, after bombing of the German petroleum industry for the Allied strategic air forces was, in that directive, listed as the bombing of “German lines of communications.”31 The authority for and the ordering of the bombing of Dresden by Allied strategic air forces and the steps taken to carry out these orders were therefore within the framework of the existing basic CCS Directive No. 3 governing the operations of the Allied strategic air forces in Europe.
Information Officially Given to the Russians by the Allies Concerning the Intended Date of and the Forces to be Committed to the Bombing of Dresden:
21. Although the exact procedures for maintaining day to day liaison between the Russians and the Allies on Allied bombing operations was for a long time the subject of negotiation between the Allies and the Russians, certain procedures for such liaison were nevertheless in effect prior to the Allied bombings of Dresden.32 Therefore, the following actions were taken by Allied authorities to notify the Russians that in accordance with their expressed wishes as to actions and timing, stated at the ARGONAUT Conference on 4 February 1945, Allied strategic air forces would bomb Dresden during the first half of February.33
22. On 7 February 1945, General Spaatz, Commanding General, United States Strategic Air Forces, informed Major General J. R. Deane, Chief of the United States Military Mission, Moscow, that the communications targets for strategic bombing by the Eighth Air Force were, in the order of their priority, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Cheanitz (and others of lesser importance).34 On the same date, General Spaatz also notified General Deane that a 24-hour advance notice of the intention to conduct actual bombing operations against Dresden (and the other targets of mutual concern to the Russians and the Allies) would be forwarded in order that General Deane might so notify the Russians.35 Moscow notified the proper Russian authority that Dresden was among the targets selected for strategic bombing by the American Eighth Air Force.36 On February, General Spaatz informed the United States Military Mission that, weather permitting, the Eighth Air Force intended to attack the Dresden Marshalling Yards with a force of 1200 to 1400 bomber planes on 13 February.37 On 12 February, therefore, the Russians were informed of the Americans’ intention to bomb Dresden.38 Weather conditions did not permit the Eighth Air Force to carry out its attack against Dresden on 13 February.39 Accordingly, on 13 February by similar procedures the Americans informed the Russians, that the Eighth Air Force would attack the Dresden Marshalling Yards on the 14th.40 Subsequently, the Russians were informed by the Americans that Dresden, together with the other high priority communications centers targets, would be subject to attack whenever weather conditions permitted.41
The Forces and Means Employed by the Allies in the Bombing of Dresden:
23. In the Dresden bombing attacks of 14-15 February 1945 the American Eighth Air Force and the RAF Bomber Command together employed a total of 1299 bomber aircraft (527 from the Eighth Air Force, 722 from the RAF Bomber Command) for a total weight, on targets, of 3906.9 tons. Of this tonnage, 1247.6 tons were expanded by the Eighth Air Force, 2659.3 tons by the RAF Bomber Command. The Americans employed 953.3 tons of high explosive bombs and 294.3 tons of incendiary bombs--all aimed at the Dresden Marshalling Yards. The British employed 1477.7 tons of high explosive bombs and 1181.6 tons of incendiary bombs--all aimed against the Dresden city area.42 The American aircraft used H2X (radar) bombing method, with visual assists, and the British used the marker and visual method.43
Specific Target Objectives in the Dresden Area:
24. As related in paragraphs 5-11 above, Dresden became a military target as (1), and of overriding importance, a primary communications center in the Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex; (2) as an important industrial and manufacturing center directly associated with the production of aircraft components and other military items, including poison gas, anti-aircraft and field guns, and small guns; and (3) as an area containing specific military installations. The night raid by the RAF Bomber Command was intended to devastate the city area itself and thereby choke communications within the city and disrupt the normal civilian life upon which the larger communications activities and the manufacturing enterprises of the city depended. Further, the widespread area raid conducted by the British entailed bombing strikes against the many industrial plants throughout the city which were thus to be construed as specific targets within the larger pattern of the area raid.44 The Eighth Air Force raids, which were by daylight and followed, on the 14th and 15th February, the night raid of the British (13/14 February), were directed against rail activities in the city.45
No need for me to quote any propaganda - I've quoted Winston Churchill himself for the proposition that Dresden was a "mere act(s) of terror and wanton destruction." Further, I do not apologize for any terrorist attack - I condemn terrorist attacks made on civilians by anyone.
You "Britain was attacked and already well into a war with Germany. Where is the equivalent situation for Al Quada to attack us on 9/11 as you claim?"
Response - Britain was not attacked - Poland was attacked by Germany and the Soviet Union. Britain declared war on Germany then Germany declared war on Britain.
"Again, your Spaight quotes are quite selective. JM Spaight's Bombing Vindicated:
'Today we can hold our heads high. Could we have done so if we had continued the policy which we adopted in September, 1939, and maintained until May, 1940? It was a selfish policy after all, an ungenerous one, an unworthy one. We were prepared to see our weaker neighbours' cities devastated by air attack—OF THE TACTICAL ORDER—to bear their misfortunes with equanimity, to do nothing to help them in the only way in which we could help at all. (We had no great army then to oppose to the German hosts, and the mills of sea power grind very slowly.) We were prepared, in fact, to leave them to their fate provided we could save our own skin. Our Great Decision As it was, we chose the better, because the harder, way. We refused to purchase immunity—immunity for a time at least—for our cities while those of our friends went up in flames. We offered London as a sacrifice in the cause of freedom and civilisation."
Britain began bombing Germany only after Germany had bombed Poland, and Norway, and Belgium, France and Holland. Even then Britain tried to bomb only precise military targets with small numbers of aircraft.
Spaight isn't saying what you want him to at all."
Actually, Spaight admits in the above quote that the Germans were using tactical bombing "OF THE TACTICAL ORDER" when they took cities in support of their army. The British did not use tactical bombing as the Germans did - as Veale discusses in his book. Dresden was not a tactical bombing in support of a siege or of armaments factories in a city - it was a targeted terror bombing of civilians - as Churchill admitted.
Germany did not attack Britain and did not start the terror bombing of civilians (per Veale's book and your quote) and to my knowledge the U.S. did not attack Al Queda or Arabs and did not do anything that justified the WTC attacks on civilians by Al Quada - nonetheless, absurd atrocities were committed at Dresden and the WTC.
ummmm - no. It was terror.
By that time your dollar has broken down and you cannot afford to pay the maintencance of nuclear facilities anymore.
In other words; America deserved it. Al Quada was just paying us back for all the Nazi-like atrocities we have committed on them.
Howard Jarvis Admirer: Al Quada copied British and U.S. tactics from WWII with the twist of using the plane as the bomb. ..., but clearly the Allies destroyed Dresden as a terror attack, just as Al Quada destroyed the WTC as a terror attack.
The fact that it is not at all clear that the Allies destroyed Dresden as a terror attack is beside the point that HJA is clearly justifying Al Quada's attacks on the U.S.
It doesn't matter what Churchill said. In post #40 I thoroughly proved that Hitler/Germany deliberately targeted civilians on a massive scale. The only thing you have been correct about is that Germany did not attack Britain first. An irrelevant fact since Britain had a treaty with Poland to defend it and Germany massively attacked Poland including bombardment of civilians.
Keep on with your neo-Nazi garbage it's instructive.
If you believe Winston Churchill, it is very clear that Dresden was a "mere act(s) of terror and wanton destruction". I have said that the WTC attack was a mere act of terror and wanton destruction - with which I am sure TigersEye will agree.
I do not believe civilian terror attacks are justified - whether they were on Dresden or the WTC. But someone opened Pandora's Box and started targeting civilians for terror attacks with bombs - which Al Queda then copied. If you believe the quote TigersEye gave, Spaight admitted the Germans were doing tactical attacks - which complied with the laws of war. IMO the British attacks did not, since they deliberately targeted civilians.
And I stated that I know of no rational reason for Al Queda to attack the U.S. - therefore we did not deserve the WTC attacks.
I'll try to find my "Advance to Barbarism" book by Veale tomorrow since Tigerseye is doing his homework and making good arguments on this post. I'll have to do more homework on this topic to keep up with him.
No?
I didn't think so.
Who started the war?
Not Britain.
Germany was the aggressor; hence, nations it attacked do not have a moral obligation to respond in a restrained way. If they wanted to put every German that wasn't stuck in a concentration camp to the sword they had the moral authority to do so because the Germans started the war.... but only until the Germans surrendered. Such an action becomes an outrage if it is done AFTER a surrender, not before, or if it is done by the aggressor, not the one who was initially attacked. Dresden took place before the surrender.
If Germany knew to expect a massive, determined resonse it wouldn't have pulled the trigger in the first place. But Germany expected a soft response and so, they were tempted to pull the trigger.
Ugly as it is, that is war. For one side, war is a desperate fight for survival and no chances can be taken on leaving your attacker with the will or means to fight again any time soon. That's why in the Gulf War it was so important to go after the Republican Guard and obliterate it. We were slammed by countless outraged useless ninnies over that because it was ugly, and earned an ugly name: The Highway of Death. But we let the screaming ninnies have the last say and we stopped too soon.
As a result the regime was able to continue its war on its own people, and the regime itself lasted another decade. A whole lot more Iraqis ended up in mass graves or in Hussein's son's little torture chambers, and Iraq funneled cash into every marxist and islamic terror group it could in its lust for revenge, and Iraq bought the UN and apparently a fair number of our politicians.
Saddam won't get to see his victory, but his Syrian counterparts might if the screaming surrender ninnies this time around have their way.
Ironic how decades after WW2 the very people we're fighting are ideological descendents of the Nazi party, blended with some communism and of course Pan Arabism. WW2 Ended in the Pacific theater where we used the atomic bomb but didn't end in the Middle East.
A defender wins war however he can so he can live in peace and the only way to be sure you've done it is to get the aggressor to surrender unconditionally, to completely roll over emotionally as well as in capability. If they're led by a nutcase you're going to have to scare them more than he does to force a surrender. If you don't get them to roll completely you're going to have to fight them again some day when they rearm. And thye most certainly will rearm.
Once you've forced a surrender and have utterly knocked the fight out of them until they accept the fact that they are at your mercy, then it is time to be generous and gracious. Be gracious and you won't have to fight them again. Be vengeful and you're probably going to have to put up with a nest full of vipers in the future.
There was no set timetable for the end of WW2; reasonable people might have guessed it would and a month later, but unreasonable people could make it go on. Things that seem so sure can change unpredictably, one ill-fated decision, one unseen natural or human made disaster, a cut supply line, the sudden death of a critical individual in the 'cast of characters,' a turn of weather, even unexplained miracles can turn a winner into a loser, or make a crushed man a victor. A brilliant mind can devise solutions to escape a trap. A civilian population can pull its support out from under even the most victorious of armies and engineer political defeat- we're seeing people try to do that to us now, and we've seen that before. A population can rally. You always have to assume the unexpected, for no one knows what the next hour may bring.
If the Allies had fought a PC war the ashes in Europe would have been piled a good deal higher and the war would have gone on much longer; we did not have the time or luxury to be PC. Every day the war went on more people were selected for extermination and sent to their deaths. Any hesitation on our part had consequences even with Germans falling apart, hundreds of thousands of human beings would, and did, end up under Soviet boots with nothing but misery and fear in their future.
And for those morons who try to compare Dresden with Al Qaeda's activities... Al Qaeda was not and never has been a government - much less a representative one; its leaders are not accountable to their followers; its fighters are not subject to regulation or enforcement; its organization is without a recognizable & responsible chain of command. It has no authority to wage war on behalf of anyone.
It doesn't matter a hill of beans that the people who died in the WTC or on the airliners were civilians... even had the targets all been military ones and only American military personnel killed, al Qaeda still had no authority to wage war. If 9/11 had been an act of war by Iraq it would be slightly more comparable, though of little difference as Iraq was a dictatorship, not a representative government and so, had little authority to wage war on us and technically none at all since it signed a cease fire. Unlike the Allies in WW2, Iraq was not the victim of attack but was the initiator of aggression in the Gulf War... in short, Kuwait had the moral authority to wage war on Iraq and enlist allies in its defense to defeat Iraq, even to go to Baghdad itself and topple Hussein if it could, while Iraq did not have such rights since it was the aggressor. But for its invasion and pillaging of Kuwait there would have been no war at all. So even if 9/11 was recognized as the act of a stae like Iraq, it still doesn't compare in any way to Dresden.
What a load; it's not just about Guernica or Dresden.
The Nazi party very roots began in the targeting of civilians... even its own country's civilians. German built concentration camps and ovens were full of civilians from all parts of Europe who ended up there because their fellow civilians didn't lift a finger to stop it and even pushed for it by joining the party and propelling their artistic ex-corporal to power.
The victims of the camps weren't victims because the German army wanted them there. They were there because the German people aka *civilians*, and the collaborators in other nations who culled their own civilian populations for victims sent theirs too, and the media of the time were all complicit in sending them there.
Civilians looked the other way when Hitler's minions before the war started slaughtering the retarded and the crippled first. They just kept showing up to those rallies for years , even once some realized they were afraid not to. So long as they thought they could survive under Hitler or some other Nazi they would continue to do so.
There's nothing sacred about being a civilian. Hitler depended on masses of civilians to get into power.
If someone has shot the SOB before he made it there would be an outcry about assassinating a civilian. He was a star at the time, even here in the US he had a following of the biggest loser "civilians" you could ask for.
Sure, it would have been just peachy if Dresden hadn't been toasted. But it was brought to ruin and yet in the sum of all things the war ended with a better outcome than if Hitler had been given free reign, and I have to wonder what purpose there is to trying to extract endless "admissions of guilt" from the people who - thankfully - won the war?
The purpose seems only to try to establish some sort of twisted moral equivalence between Britain and Nazi Germany, and even between nations and anarchic entities and terrorist groups. No good can come of that.
9. In addition to its geographical position and topography and its primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany’s most important optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.), gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler).9
10. Specific military installations in Dresden in February 1945 included barracks and hutted camps and at least one munitions storage depot.10
11. Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden (Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration Commands.12
[ . . . ]
24. As related in paragraphs 5-11 above, Dresden became a military target as (1), and of overriding importance, a primary communications center in the Berlin-Leipzig-Dresden railway complex; (2) as an important industrial and manufacturing center directly associated with the production of aircraft components and other military items, including poison gas, anti-aircraft and field guns, and small guns; and (3) as an area containing specific military installations.
Churchill isn't a god; he is as we all are - imperfect. You can selectively quote from him all you want but it won't justify 9/11 or the Nazi initiation of WW2.
"The bombing in Dresden was for the purpose of destroying quite a few military production and transportation facilities."
The people of Dresden supported the German war effort which, among other things, involved the Germans killing as many American boys as they could. They supported this effort with their gold, their prayers and their legacy to the future.
If their weren't one military facility in the place it would still have been a legitimate target. The words "you are with us or against us" used to mean something.
In #26 you say "Even Churchill came to the realization that the RAF had committed an atrocity at Dresden."
Yet the PM Churchill quote here says nothing of the kind and is quite tepid criticism of the Dresden bombing in the name of preserving the land after the war.
I don't know who the authors you quote are, and frankly I don't care. Whether they are Ward Churchill type leftist idiots, Counterpunch types, or just plain 'axe to grind here.' One can always find criticism of Western behavior via moral equivalents that don't even begin to fly.
I suppose you find the persecution of the military in Iraq and the current Gulag comments correct too.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Thanks. Ironic, LePen, who has had lots of supporters here in the past, returns to the issue that began David Irving's career.
"Why is he still alive? Surely there is one Jew with a 9mm over there."
I will attempt to answer your question: Many of the Jews of France have become quite assimilated. In other words, they have become, well, French.
There, I hope that clears things up.
I would think the Jews have bigger...errr...demographics to worry about than a relatively small (albeit quickly growing) minority of European cryptofascists.
In other news, I would recommend Jews leaving Europe ASAP.
bump
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