Germans call Churchill a war criminal (HOLD MEIN BIER...YET AGAIN)

The Daily Telegraph ^ | November 19, 2002 | Kate Connolly

[MadIvan]

was effectively a war criminal who sanctioned the extermination of Germany's civilian population through indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities, an article in the country's biggest-circulation newspaper claimed yesterday.

You have some bloody nerve, Fritz. Perhaps we should ask the Jews what they think of you getting all huffy like this? - Ivan

In an unprecedented attack on Allied conduct during the Second World War, the tabloid Bild has called for recognition to be given to the suffering inflicted on the German population during the strategic air campaign of 1940-45.

The suffering of the population in London is far more relevant. After all, the citizens of London didn't vote in Hitler. Same goes for Jewish civilians in the occupied countries the Germans brutally slaughtered - Ivan

The newspaper's campaign, provoked by a new German history of the bomber offensive, breaks six decades of virtual silence on the subject, and is being seen as the latest manifestation of a belief among Germans that they too were victims of the war - albeit a war started by their country.

The newspaper is serialising Der Brand (The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment 1940-45) by the historian Jorg Friedrich, which claims to be the most authoritative account of the bombing campaign so far.

Mr Friedrich claims the British government set out at the start of the Second World War to destroy as many German cities and kill as many of their inhabitants as possible. Civilian deaths were not collateral damage, he says, but rather the object of the exercise. He argues that Churchill had favoured a strategy of attacking the civilian population centres from the air some 20 years before Hitler ordered such raids.

Britain's war leader is quoted during the First World War as saying: "Perhaps the next time round the way to do it will be to kill women, children and the civilian population."

Friedrich goes on to quote Churchill defending the morality of bombing: "Now everyone's at it. It's simply a question of fashion - similar to that of whether short or long dresses are in."

Der Brand is far removed from the dry style of most German histories, and is filled with emotive accounts of the horrors of bombing, but carries few references to the man who brought retribution on Germany, Adolf Hitler.

Friedrich argues that the Allied policy of seeking to break German morale through bombing proved mistaken, the attacks merely serving to weld together the German population.

The debate is certain to anger those in Britain who see the strategic air campaign as a necessary evil.

The British, led by Sir Arthur Harris, C-in-C Bomber Command, were the leading proponents of "night area bombing", involving the systematic destruction of German industrial capacity and housing. The policy resulted in the laying to waste of city after city, including Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden, and the deaths of some 635,000 Germans.

The policy was to some extent forced on the RAF by the failure of daylight operations against pinpoint targets early in the war. It also reflected the fact that, for much of the conflict, bombing was the only method by which Britain could attack Germany.

German raids on Britain in the Blitz of 1940-41 were seen to have freed the British from the obligation not to attack civilian centres.

The serialisation of the book will furnish the far-Right in Germany with arguments to back its revisionist claims. It is also likely to overshadow recent reconciliation attempts between Britain and Germany over the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which tens of thousands died.

In a symbolic sign of friendship, British businesses have paid into a fund to reconstruct the Frauenkirche or Church of Our Lady which was destroyed in the raid and is set to be reopened in 2006.

Yesterday Antony Beevor, the British historian and author of the bestselling Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, criticised the German claim that Britain's war of attrition was unnecessarily brutal. "The trouble is this argument is removed from the context that they were the ones who invented terror bombing," he said, referring to German attacks on Coventry, Rotterdam and Warsaw.

"They literally obliterated whole cities and that certainly preceded what the British did," he said. "What we did was more terrifying and appalling, but it was a natural progression in this war.

"One can certainly debate the whole morality of bombing, but for Germans to say Churchill was a war criminal is pushing it a bit," he said.

Friedrich, 58, said his two years of research prompted him to change his views radically on the Allied bombing.

"Previously it appeared to me to be a just answer to the crimes of the Third Reich, but I've since changed my mind," he said. "Until the Second World War there was a common consensus that the massacre of civilian populations was illegal."

For the past year Germans on both the Left and Right have been locked in a new and intense debate about the war and their role as its victims as well as perpetrators. The debate was sparked by Gunther Grass, the Nobel prize winner, in a novel fictionalising the wartime account of a passenger ship torpedoed by the Soviet navy killing thousands of Germans on board.

[Guillermo]

Up is Down bump.

[xp38]

While I was a bit young to understand the impact of the assassination of JFK and only have the vaguest recollection of the funeral a few days later I do have vivid memories of reading a headline just a little over a year later in one of the local newpapers here in Toronto. The huge headline read Man of the Century Dies. True then and true today and always will be.

[another cricket]

The British, led by Sir Arthur Harris, C-in-C Bomber Command, were the leading proponents of "night area bombing", involving the systematic destruction of German industrial capacity and housing. The policy resulted in the laying to waste of city after city, including Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden, and the deaths of some 635,000 Germans.

Excuse my hard heartedness but so what? Should they have been left in peace to build even more German tanks and bombers and all the rest to kill those on our side? They started it. We just ended it. And while civilians in a dictatorship maybe given the benefit of the doubt as to which side they are on the citizens of a nominal democracy are given no such leeway.

Nor should they be. They chose this monster to be their leader. They followed him into battle. Choices have consequences. And I have never believed that they didn’t know what was going on in the camps.

>

a.cricket

[Congressman Billybob]

Some words from a Tom Lehrer song, "Dr. Werner von Braun," come to mind:

"Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But I think our attitude should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old Londontown.
Who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun...."

Congressman Billybob

Click for "Let's Hear It for Fraud -- And REAL Soon"

Click for "to Restore Trust in America"

[desertcry]

It looks like the old hitler propaganda machine is rising from it's ashes in the kraut land. Could this be the sign of the 2nd coming of the genocidal german chancellor? Something evil is awakening in germany, and I think W knows it, that's why he is avoiding der herr schroeder.

[LibKill]

This goes way past revisionist history. It is Nazi revivalism.

Either that or the author is in cloud-cuckoo-land, certifiably bonkers.

[6ppc]

Let 'em have it Ivan! That's about the most offensive thing I've ever seen. We're probably gonna have to slap them down again in a few decades.

[Gumlegs]

Is this the very definition of "cheek",

No, but it emanates from between a set of cheeks found at a midpoint between the head and the feet.

[MWS]

Bump for Churchill.

Would that we had more like him in our dark times today.

[ffrancone]

The socialist liberal media has made hitler a saint in the good old USA.

Can't say that I agree with this. I think the socialist liberal media keeps trying to make him into an honorary Republican :)

[uncbob]

Well like some general said
It's OK if we bomb them in their factories making munitions during the day what's wrong with doing it at night in their homes

The idea of INNOCENT CIVILIANS always seemed like a contradiction to me

I remember in WWII how everyone was getting behind the war effort and proudly claiming they were helping so I guess it was OK to shoot a soldier but not the guy building the guns

[uncbob]

When Japanese complain about our two atomic bombs and forget about their attrocities, my simple reply is "When I see and hear trash like you, it is too bad we didn't 50 or 100 atomic bombs to use.

Some Japanese admit the bombs were the best thing to happen to them at that time. It ended the war The fanatics would have had the Japanese fighting to the bitter end with a lot more casualties.
In addition Russia was about to come in and would have gotten the northern Japanese Islands as a reward

[Prodigal Son]

The nerve... What's got into ole Fritz lately? They are the loose cannon of Europe right now. They are pissing off everybody.

[uncbob]

Can't say that I agree with this. I think the socialist liberal media keeps trying to make him into an honorary Republican :)

Ain't it ironic how the libs like to paint GOP as Nazis when they are the ones espousing the Nazi philosophy

[ffrancone]

Anyone think that we ought to pull our military bases from Germany ought to think again.

I'm sorry for that terrible loss, which was repeated over and over and over. Noone who has not known up close the two surviving member of large extended families (70+), the rest of whom went into the ovens, can really get a grasp on the magnitude of the horror of what the Germans did.

My company hires programmers out of Germany. I was speaking with one of my programmers (29 years old, thereabouts) a couple of years ago. He told me quite proudly that Germany had changed. That Germany had not gone to war in 50 years and that war was impossible now. I took a deep breath and told him that Germany had been an occupied country for forty of those fifty years and still had powerful foreign troops on its soil. He swallowed, paled, and told me he had never considered that and that I was right.

I am starting to reassess my company's relationship with Germany. I deal with fine people, friends, there. But the atmosphere has changed a lot. The vicious anti-americanism is so thick you can cut it with a spoon. The business environment is getting more difficult as a result. With their economy tanking, the conditions could soon get ripe for some very disturbing political changes there.

Like you, I have never regarded the American troops there as a 'favor' we do Germany. It is a favor we do for the rest of the world.

[Havoc]

Well and truly beyond cheeky. Brazen liberal socialist absurdity is the phrase that leaps to mind. Kinda like when John Lovett(sp?) was asked if he felt he'd offended
the Germans after doing a parody of Hitler - he quipped
'oh, yeah, I may have lost some support among my Nazi followers.' out of sarcastic witt. But this bovine excriment is what is produced when people start handwringing and searching for a way not to look so bad
in "relative" terms. Relativism and reason are the tools
used amongst the inadequate to pretend they matter and aren't actually 'so bad' afterall. It's used by countless bad groups to construct a level of pretense in rewriting history to make themselves look less culpable for their own doing. Which is why it's oft not a good idea to let liberals write history books - else we should believe that free love and pot brought down the iron curtain. Then again there are pretentious types in our own midst who cling to a group that has spent the better part of it's modern days playing Conservatism and trying to convince people it isn't so bad either. The point being we have to be on watch against absurd brazen-ness wheresoever it rears it's head.

When such things happen by the hand or by verbalization such that offense is given to sense, one should remind
those perpetuating the nonsense to flatulate out of range
of the public nose or simply not eat the beens of bull to begin with. There is a lesson here. And it is that freedom of speach allows idiots to furnish their own rope.

[TiaS]

Regarding Kennedy; I've always wondered at the timing of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy's return to the United States and the departure of Neville Chamberlain, while on the English scene we see the rising star of Winston Churchill, son of Wall Street's Lady Randolph.

[Jonah Hex]

...the tabloid Bild has called for recognition to be given to the suffering inflicted on the German population during the strategic air campaign of 1940-45.

Sounds like the tabloid should be renamed Bilge, Ivan. In other words, what rubbish!

[Brian Allen]

<< Anyone think that we ought to pull our military bases from Germany ought to think again.

I'm sorry for that terrible loss, which was repeated over and over and over. Noone who has not known up close the two surviving member of large extended families (70+), the rest of whom went into the ovens, can really get a grasp on the magnitude of the horror of what the Germans did .....

..... Like you, I have never regarded the American troops there as a 'favor' we do Germany. It is a favor we do for the rest of the world. >>

For sure!