Should we apologise for Dresden?
Discussion
British diplomats and church officials will attending a wreath-laying ceremony in Germany to mark the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden.
If there haven’t been already there is bound to be calls for an apology from the usual hand ringers.
My view is that Great Britain was at total war with Nazi Germany and therefore did what it had to do to bring the war to end.
>>> Edited by c c on Sunday 13th February 07:12
If there haven’t been already there is bound to be calls for an apology from the usual hand ringers.
My view is that Great Britain was at total war with Nazi Germany and therefore did what it had to do to bring the war to end.
>>> Edited by c c on Sunday 13th February 07:12
c c said:
British diplomats and church officials will attending a wreath-laying ceremony in Germany to mark the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden.
If there haven’t been already there is bound to be calls for an apology from the usual hand ringers.
My view is that Great Britain was at total war with Nazi Germany and therefore did what it had to do to bring the war to end.
>>> Edited by c c on Sunday 13th February 07:12
Why do I hear no clamour for an apology from the Germans for London, Coventry, Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bath, Exeter...
What about German apologies to the low countries? What about the villages in France that witnessed the total genocide of all their inhabitants?
This country stood alone against the Nazis in World War 2 and continues to pay the economic price, to this day. Germany, the antagonist, not only has experienced a lengthy period of economic boom (which it has now screwed up due wholly to its own political incompetence) but has an ever greater political stranglehold on the same continent it sought to seize by force just 60 years ago, through its domination of a corrupt EU.
With 20/20 hindsight, Dresden was a mistake. But it was not an act of barbaric wanton destruction in the same way that the blitz was.
Apologise? Apologise for what? Apologise for being the only country to take a stand against Nazism? Apologise for the millions of our men and women who lost their lives for the freedom of Europe? Apologise for the almost complete sacrifice of our economy as the price of freedom? Apologise because we are British and therefore responsible for every woe of the world? Earnest lefties, take your apologies and shove them up your arses.
IIRC Germany has apologised for decimating various parts of the UK. Many of it's inhabitants still feel like they need to apologise for the actions of their forbears.
Should we apologise? I'm not sure it would achieve anything as it would not be coming from anyone who was involved in making the decisions to bomb these places in the first place
Should we apologise? I'm not sure it would achieve anything as it would not be coming from anyone who was involved in making the decisions to bomb these places in the first place
Trooper2 said:
IMHO they who started the war should get no apologies. In other words if the war wasn't started by Germany then Dresden would never have happened.
wasn't it britain that declared war on germany?
(i know, i know, just playing devil's advocate)
arguably germany's policy of bombing civilian targets started after britain started the same thing
for every bomb that fell on britain, 5 fell on germany
dresden was a target of no military significance, coventry was a manufacturing centre
anyway, that said, I don't think an 'apology' is necessary, merely an acknowledgement that in war, wrong things like this, happen
los angeles said:
Yes, we should apologise. We wiped out a great city and thousands of innocent people in it to "teach Germany a lesson." It was our version of shock and awe. But we left the extermination camps alone. History teaches us that draconian measures rarely shorten a conflict. In war, all men do mad things.
You have 60 years hindsight to benefit from.
The bombing of Germany, if such a conflict was to arise again, would have be quite impossible. The first civilian who incurred a scratch (or suffered the indignity of being awoken by an air-raid siren) woudl complain to the EU Court of Human Rights and the war woudl be put on hold while millions in taxpayer's money was spent investigating the claim. After about 5 years of due process, the conflict could resume.
Churchill was pressured by Stalin to bomb Dresden. We did a lot of things to try to please Stalin; one wonders why. The raid was a demonstration of air power, for bombing was the only way we could take the war to Germany.
Anyway, to return to the theme. If you go back to the night before the raid and take a poll of Londoners and Liverpudlians 'Should we bomb Dresden with maximum effort?' the answer would be about 100% 'yes'.
WW2 was total war. In total war you do whatever you can to win, whether it's killing the enemy or destroying the workers and their homes so they can't make more tanks, aircraft, bullets and bombs to be used against you. When faced with an enemy like Nazi Germany, you don't pansy about being nice, because they bite back.
If you play half measures, the war lasts longer, the death camps keep working for longer and more of their victims killed. Oh, and more of your own side get killed too. In war, your people are more importnat than those of the enemy.
Luckily, we now live in a world where we do not experience such extremes. We do that because once, we were prepared to get on with the job. It irks me that people who've only known peace can think they know more or better than those who lived through such perilous times.
We should tell them to shut up whining about Dresden. We should only ever send Diplomats there called "Harris" just to rub it in. The Krauts are like sheep they follow 1 leader and they blew it when they followed Hitler. If our spineless bastards apologise we should never let them back in our country.
In fact we should tell them if they dont stop asking we will organise annual bombing raid celbrations with flights over Dresden just for fun.
In fact we should tell them if they dont stop asking we will organise annual bombing raid celbrations with flights over Dresden just for fun.
nonegreen said:
We should tell them to shut up whining about Dresden. We should only ever send Diplomats there called "Harris" just to rub it in. The Krauts are like sheep they follow 1 leader and they blew it when they followed Hitler. If our spineless bastards apologise we should never let them back in our country.
In fact we should tell them if they dont stop asking we will organise annual bombing raid celbrations with flights over Dresden just for fun.
Off to join the diplomatic corp then?
we were at war
we were in no danger of being invaded (realistically in 1945)
I'm not sure if even the nazis wanted to exterminate us all
were all germans 'unfeeling savages' or just the ones in dresden?
the common people in the street didn't start the war (and as i said, britain actually declared war on germany, not the other way round, to split hairs)
the common people in the street didn't bomb anyone, and british bombers were the first to attack civilian targets
BTW, yes they did apologise, and they still do
the nazis were wrong and evil, no one denies that
bombing dresden was wrong, and done for political reasons, rather than military ones
>> Edited by hugoagogo on Sunday 13th February 10:48
we were in no danger of being invaded (realistically in 1945)
I'm not sure if even the nazis wanted to exterminate us all
were all germans 'unfeeling savages' or just the ones in dresden?
the common people in the street didn't start the war (and as i said, britain actually declared war on germany, not the other way round, to split hairs)
the common people in the street didn't bomb anyone, and british bombers were the first to attack civilian targets
BTW, yes they did apologise, and they still do
the nazis were wrong and evil, no one denies that
bombing dresden was wrong, and done for political reasons, rather than military ones
>> Edited by hugoagogo on Sunday 13th February 10:48
nonegreen said:
We should tell them to shut up whining about Dresden. We should only ever send Diplomats there called "Harris" just to rub it in. The Krauts are like sheep they follow 1 leader and they blew it when they followed Hitler. If our spineless bastards apologise we should never let them back in our country.
In fact we should tell them if they dont stop asking we will organise annual bombing raid celbrations with flights over Dresden just for fun.
Exactly as John cleese would say "they started it they invaded poland", have they apologised to poland, no thought not, we have this bloody annoying habit of apologizing for our victorys when they should be celebrated. hugoagogo said:
we were at war
we were in no danger of being invaded (realistically in 1945)
I'm not sure if even the nazis wanted to exterminate us all
were all germans 'unfeeling savages' or just the ones in dresden?
the common people in the street didn't start the war (and as i said, britain actually declared war on germany, not the other way round, to split hairs)
the common people in the street didn't bomb anyone, and british bombers were the first to attack civilian targets
BTW, yes they did apologise, and they still do
the nazis were wrong and evil, no one denies that
bombing dresden was wrong, and done for political reasons, rather than military ones
>> Edited by hugoagogo on Sunday 13th February 10:48
Sorry but this is nonsense.
I've just dug out Arthur Harris' autobiography. Here is his own account of what led tot he bombing of Dresden:
"With the German army on the frontiers of Germany we quickly set up GH and Oboe ground stations close behind the front line and this ensured the success of attacks on many distant objectives when the weather would otherwise have prevented us from finding the target. At the same time the bombers could fly with comparative safety even to targets as distant as Dresden or Chemnitz, which I had not ventured to attack before, because the enemy had lost his early warning system and the whole fighter defence of Germany could therefore generally be out-manoeuvred.
In February of 1945, with the Russian army threatening the heart of Saxony, I was called upon to attack Dresden; this was considered a target of the first importance for the offensive on the Eastern front. Dresden had by this time become the main centre of communications for the defence of Germany on the southern half of the Eastern front and it was considered that a heavy air attack would disorganise these communications and also make Dresden useless as a controlling centre for the defence. It was also by far the largest city in Germany - the pre-war population was 630,000 - which had been left intact; it had never before been bombed. As a large centre of war industry it was also of the highest importance.
An attack on the night of February 13th-14th by just over 800 aircraft, bombing in two sections in order to get the night fighters dispersed and grounded before the second attack, was almost as overwhelming in its effect as the Battle of Hamburg, though the area of devastation -1600 acres - was considerably less; there was, it appears, a fire-typhoon, and the effect on German morale, not only in Dresden but in far distant parts of the country, was extremely serious. The Americans carried out two light attacks in daylight on the next two days.
I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself, and that if their judgment was right the same arguments must apply that I have set out in an earlier chapter in which I said what I think about the ethics of bombing as a whole."
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