A Real Holocaust: Dresden -- 13 February 1945

http://globalfire.tv/nj/08en/history/dresden.htm

How approximately 500,000 Germans were exterminated in one night

Very very sad....

I AM JUST SO SICK OF ALL THIS EVIL AND THE HUMAN ANIMAL RACE IN GENERAL..... NO OTHER LIFEFORM DOES THIS AND ITS JUST SICK..

 

Dude animals fight and kill each other all the damn time. The difference is humans actually find horror in it and set rules and limits to even warfare, which is supposed to be the ultimate human tragedy..........and it happened 75 years ago. And I don't know where you get 500,000 from, I mean that's not the first time I've seen that number, but most indepdent reports have given anywhere from 15,000-40,000 deaths at the time, heck the Nazi press at the time gave 200,000 as the death toll in Dresden.

 

yes that was a crime. They should have bombed bridges, train stations, ammunition factories and the german military, the war would have been over very quickly but that wasnt the goal.

 

They did bomb all those things, Germany's infrastructure was near non existent by 1945, bombers in WW2 didn't have GPS precision, you either had to carpet bomb by night as the RAF did, or go for more precise daylight bombing like the USAAF, which carries the risk of much higher casualty rates.

 

Precise daylight bombings. Pfff. The success rate of bombing runs was near zilch and the Americans weren't allowed to bomb at night because they couldn't navigate.
The people of Germany aren't upset with being bombed they're upset of how they were bombed with fire. Dresden is still carpeted in burned out buildings. They weren't "bombed" they were scorched. The people were scorched. Dresden had no strategic importance in the war other than cigarette manufacturing.
Just like the Japanese cities, bombed for no reason. No real military strategic sites were nuked, just the civilians. The pilots of these aircraft were fully aware they were murdering millions but "following orders" is a viable excuse to the victors.

 

you chose a truly stupid thread title..so stupid that any valid point you can possibly make is gone..are you saying there wasnt an 'actual holocaust'..or are you just misusing the word...or are you just not educated well?

 

Yeah, this thread seems like bait.

 

:willy_nilly: Not even sure how to respond. I love the part about no provocation, didnt they like invade France along with the rest of mainland Europe?

 

Also the Blitz which the British were still pretty pissed about, which were just reangered by the V-1 then V-2 bombings. Don't begin a total war if you're not prepared for the consequences.

 

Exactly what about coventry which was totally destroyed with a 1000 dead


Hotwater

 

I find the title insulting, as if what the Germans did WAS NOT a holocaust.

Seems extremely biased, fanatical even. I'll believe wikipedia before I believe that blatantly biased piece of Nazi propaganda bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Like if someone killed half my family and then half his family was killed in a raid to stop his madness... I'm supposed to feel sorry for him? Fuck that! Eye for an eye is my kind of justice, even if it was true, which it is not. Dresden was not a holocaust, it didn't kill 50K people let alone 500K, let alone 6-9 MILLION! It was not a deliberately evil genocide on a race of people like the REAL holocaust.

 

Maybe not, but still a horrible act. Completely unnecessary at the least.

As for the numbers killed,

http://open.salon.com/blog/procopiu...g_dresden_on_the_anniversary_or_the_firestorm

ZW

 

Define completely unnecessary. If this was 1945 I'm pretty sure at that point with victory certain yet the Germans still fighting tooth and nail, especially against the Russians, the allies both military and civilian would think anything that inched the war closer to an end was a necessary thing.

Also question, why do people obsesses over Dresden. Dresden is just a fraction of the number of German civilians who died in air raids which is estimated anywhere between 400-800,000. The firebombing of Hamburg in 1943 killed almost as many people and proportionally as amount of the city's population, other cities lost more, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Pforzheim_in_World_War_II

 

OK Maybe not completely unnecessary...depending on your viewpoint. :juggle:

We bombed Dresden with not only the intention of demoralizing the German people with our awesome firepower, but mainly to send a message to Russia that US and British forces were some vicious fucks, not to be messed with. Unfortunately they turned it on us later using the incident as a propaganda tool to discredit Western claims of moral superiority during the cold war.

ZW

 

I really don't think we bombed Dresden to send a message to the Russians. Germany, as well as parts of Japan at the time, was already in ruins, ruining one more city wouldn't add or subtract from our perceived ability to strategically bomb the crap of out somewhere. People really did think mass bombing though was a good way to lower morale at that point in the war, despite the fact 5 years earlier when all seemed lost for Britain and the Blitz was going on it didn't work then either.

Also something strange of note, German production of just about everything from tanks and planes to U-boats actually rose in 1943 and 1944 despite mass bombings. Germany originally didn't have its full economy on a war setting since Hitler feared rations would demoralize the population. That changed with the appointment of Albert Speer as armaments minister. Germany did in fact never run out of planes and tanks, what it did run out of was fuel and experienced pilots/gunners. So yeah basically the bombing of most places in Germany was the epitome of useless.(Something we didn't learn again from the Blitz, at first Germany was attacking airfields, plane factories and other logistics related to the RAF. Then a few stray bombers changed the course of history, Germany never had a chance once they switched to strategic bombing, especially since they lacked a good heavy bomber)

 

The commanders at the time thought it was necessary, otherwise they would not have been prepared to expose their aircrew to the risks inherent in carrying out the raid.

In just the same way that the commanders at the time thought it was necessary to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein deploying his weapons of mass destruction, which they believed to exist.

Leaders have to take decisions. They take them on the basis of the intelligence available to them at the time. Sometimes that intelligence is right, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the decisions are a good response to that intellilgence, sometimes they aren't.

But I really don't think it is a sensible historical exercise to look back, with the benefit of 20 : 20 hindsight, and to seek to analyse out whether this action or that action was really necessary. I'm sure that we can find many actions which, with the benefit of hindsight, do not appear to have been necessary. But what do we gain by identifying them as such? Nothing of any value, so far as I can see ...

 

I believe the value of historical hindsight and analysis is that it can help to ferret out the reasons for flawed analysis and poor foresight.

ZW

 

I couldn't agree more.

But the question Was it necessary? has no place in such an analysis.

 

In a moral analysis, it does.

WW2 is upheld as the moral war...regardless, I think we can agree, there was a lot more to it than stopping Hitler from eradicating the Jews.

As much as I believe war is and should be unnecessary in this modern world, (it's not going to happen anytime soon) occasionally I like to amuse myself and try to pretend as if what one learns about history is even worthy of analysis, considering most of it is written by the 'winners'...If you know what I mean.

ZW