Posted on 02/13/2020 7:17:08 AM PST by C19fan
WRONG. He did it immediately after the attack and demanded their bombing strategy be changed.
If they didn’t like war then they shouldn’t have started one. War isn’t a law enforcement operation. It is obliterating the enemy until they cease to exist. If we can’t trust you, we’ll destroy you.
But his example was wrong. In the bayonet situation it’s kill or be killed, you stick him or he sticks you. These women and children trying to keep their houses from burning down weren’t about to kill anybody. And ethics ALWAYS exist. That’s the point of ethics. And you ran right into the problem, there’s no evidence that it shortened the war, or more importantly that a less vicious civilian targeting version of the bombing would have prolonged it. There’s a reason Churchill changed their bombing tactics after Dresden. It was not a justifiable tactic, at least as he saw. I agree with him.
This was far more controversial.
It really did not shorten the war by much. The nukes saved millions of American and Japanese lives. It save an entire culture.
Dresden had been spared. But damn, it was quite the firestorm.
Cite which specific events you are speaking about. Perhaps Nanking? or Warsaw? or Stalingrad? or maybe Manila?
A fact lightly touched on in the story was that Stalin demanded Dresden be bombed because it was a transportation hub in the way of his advancing army.
Then how come we just didn’t go into German towns and machine gun everyone there? Because we’re not barbarians.
Before the huge air raid, it had not suffered a major Allied attack.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/atomic-bomb-on-germany.html
The article discusses the logistics of putting the b29’s in Europe. Remember there were 3 atomic bomb “kits” (kits were complete atomic bomb airbases) completed. One was assembled in the US for testing, one was assembled in the pacific, and one was held in reserve.
HEY! Why bring me into it?
“You think directly targeting and killing innocent people, with no military purpose, is OK?
You are no better than ISIS.” [2banana, post 16]
Only the factually ignorant can believe Dresden wasn’t a legitimate target.
Look at a map, then post.
Dresden was a transportation hub; the Allies feared the Wehrmacht would retreat through there, regroup, and hole up in Bavaria - a mountainous region very difficult to attack.
Dresden was also home to a number of industries as vital to the German war effort as armored vehicle assembly plants and aircraft factories: optics, gun sights, electronics, seals for hydraulics, various other precision small parts. Factories too small to be located and targeted individually.
Morally, it’s less than admirable for you to sit here in comfort, enjoying the fruits of peacetime 75 years after the fact, breezily striking a moralizing pose, denigrating the sacrifices of forbears that made your lotus-eating existence possible. It’s also a pretty cheeky display of arrogance, ingratitude, and bad taste.
I would hardly expect you to admit half your family was supporting the Nazi war effort in Germany during WW II.
But they were, like it or not. The real story is that your father, having immigrated to the US after WWII managed to raise such an ignorant, bitter, and ungrateful child.
Why did your family not move to East Germany after the war?
After all, if the Allies were so unfair, why live amongst them?
At that time the war was effectively over, the action was arguably worse than any bombing the Germans did in their bombings of London in it's scope and accuracy, the Luftwaffe was a bare skeleton. There can be no comparison to the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki as far as needing to pacify a citizenship willing to fight to the last man, woman and child. There was no such attitude among the German people as a whole who were tired of a war that had drug on under the leadership of a patently insane Hitler.
We stopped using WW2 rules of engagement after 1945. The US has not definitively won a war since then.
I've heard it said that a war often doesn't end until the enemy leadership has their wives and daughters crying to them, to please make it stop.
Thank you.
At that time the war was effectively over, the action was arguably worse than any bombing the Germans did in their bombings of London in it’s scope and accuracy,
You stand on the hill of HINDSIGHT - what if, maybe.
This sort of article by the Daily Mail is written in hopes of making the relativistic comparison between Allied actions by the western allies, Allied actions by the Soviets and Axis actions by the Nazi. All actions by those of the past are equally bad in this sort of analysis.
Thus all “religion” is myth and superstition when viewed from a modern relativistic view point.
In this period of the European Theater, Russia was promised action by the western allies in Eastern Germany to help the resurgence of Russia who had paid greatly to stop and then throw back the Nazi eastern campaign.
I agree with your assessment.
‘ve heard it said that a war often doesn’t end until the enemy leadership has their wives and daughters crying to them, to please make it stop.
From this lesson, WWII was unconditional surrender from the get go. The interim of peace is longer with unconditional surrender?
It was not just “about retaliation”.
If you do not understand logistics its not something that can be taught quickly.
But to see people like yourself spewing the talking points which were first being spewed by communist college professors during the sexual revolution is disgusting.
You do not have “a point”.
You have an untruth which you are trying to get military veterans who understand the second world war in all respects to swallow by repeating it over and over.
The transportation hubs in Dresden had a massive military significance and destroying them completely shortened the war.
You're right I was not there, but you know who was? My parents in Hungary and other relatives in Germany.......so no I don't stand on the hill of hindsight, I stand on the hill of knowledge.
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