I got to wonder because I think it’s not a good one since it was a legetimate+strategic bombing was completly legal at that time. Dresden was used as a logisitical center and as a industrial center by the nazi during world war 2 and I dunno why but Wehraboo (or neo nazi I think,not even Weehraboo) say that bombing dresden was as bad as the holocaust and try to make it look like it’s on the same scale (yes, I readed those kind of people https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/search/?q=holocaust%20dresden&restrict_sr=1 and of course they will throw this false 600000 death toll to )
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Looking for logic in a neo-nazi’s brain is like going to the grocery store and asking them to sell you a TV. There are no TVs here!
But if you want an actual answer. Probably something about the beautiful architecture of Dresden that was lost. Though, if you ask these people to name one of the Dresden landmarks that was destroyed, you’d probably get the same response that Brexit supporters give when you ask them which EU law they don’t like.
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Not a bad question, although I just like to point out not every person who condemns the Dresden bombing is a neo-Nazi/Nazi apologist or has an agenda. Same goes how condemning the Holodomor doesn’t make you a right-wing nutjob.
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I think you meant left-wing nutjobs for Holodomor.
EDIT: Clarification in my following post.
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My mistake, corrected. (To clarify I initially said right-wing because there are left-wing circles that do condemn the Holodomor, myself included.)
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I was talking about people who deny it as being “left-wing nutjobs.” Condemning that atrocity is another story…
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It is certainly part of a question I’ve asked on this forum. Not “why do neo-nazis use it” but more, how to even go about examining the Dresden bombings. As you’ve stated, it is a charged political topic even more than a historical topic. That modern political lens makes a clear examination of the past a bit problematic ^^;
As for your original question “why” I’d guess because Dresden has a resonance that goes beyond historical circles and neo-nazis will use ANY topic to further their agenda.
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WW1: Bad guys vs Bad guys
WW2: Bad guys vs Evil guys
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no ,good guy vs evil guy,guessx who started the war when the ally wanted to prevent it to happen? Really this “muh both side” thing doesn’t apply to ww2 and war crime of the alli cannot be on the same scale than the nazi/axis one
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Not apologizing for the nazis, but… If they bombed it for being a logistics center, why wasnt the railway station or bridges even on the target map? Why werent the important bridges bombed? Why wasnt the industrial areas and military barracks just outside the city hit?
No. The reality is they didnt know much at all about what was going on in Dresden, but still chose to bomb it with incendiary bombs, to create a firestorm. Which is a big shit move against civilian population.
That the nazi leaders did stuff just as bad does not justify it. It just means the allied leaders had as little regard for civilians as the nazi leaders had.
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If you can’t see the the difference between between the bombingsWhich saved Victor Klemperer and the Nazis treatment of harmless civilians in Dachau and Auschwitz, not to mention institutional mass rape and murder?
Maybe you are making a false Shoah comparison. Why?
As for military value, Frederick Taylor used prime evidence to find out Dresden had targets enough of military value and the railway station was bombed.
The whole idea of bombing was shortening the war which would have saved lives had the Germans like the Japanese stopped (well there were some assassination attempts on Hitler),
So the way the Allies treated civilians (which had a democracy before) is very different and once the Germans surrendered they were treated well (see Marshall plan).
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Dont be silly. Im mentioning apples and you spit back oranges. The death camps has nothing to do with how WW2 leaders saw enemy civilians. Its an unrelated topic. The people in the kz camps were civilians and military, national and foreign. They were there because of various ideologies, not because they were civilian.
A railway station was hit, yes, but it was not on their target map. Do we justify fire bombing civilians because we were lucky and bagged a railway station at the same time?
and the military targets that were on the target list were nowhere near where they actually dropped the bombs.
Just read the false and IMO sickening equation (used by (Neo) Nazis)you made, and Jews were innocent civilians no matter how often the National Socialists portrayed it as a war against the Jews. The bombing killed civilians and saved others.
Which sources are you using on Dresden anyway?
By the way, the Marshalling yards (Indeed not just the station) were the target and hit like the 16th January (yes it was bombed before). On the question whether the train station was singled out:I know the Revisionist argument that it wasn’t just the station and use it as fake logic. Also as a result Klempener and Many other Jews missed the train. So these “apples and oranges” in your words are both fruit and directly related.
See the historic report.
The Jews were NOT random civilians. They were a specially targeted group. And have nothing to do with how military operations and planning treated or valued civilians. WHY do you keep dragging the holocaust into this debate? Are you one of those who insist that every singel action taken, and every word spoken, by any german person between 1936 and 1945 are by default wrong and unethical, because of the holocaust? And by extension that every single action taken, and every word spoken, against the german people in this period is by default ethical and justified, for the same reason?
The source I quote is the one you just attached. The 1953 USAF report (written by the victor), that of course said the action was justified. And in this report, as pointed out by Alexander McKee, the targets given were not the targets hit, and the legitimate targets that were actually hit did not feature on the target list.
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[quote=“kjveslum, post:15, topic:3145, full:true”]
"The Jews were NOT random civilians. They were a specially targeted group. And have nothing to do with how military operations and planning treated or valued civilians. "
Wrong, Hitler and the National Sociailsts continuously stated that the war was against the Jews and Bolsheviks. The military operations/einsatzgruppen went hand in hand with the mass murdering of Jews and other groups. This artificial difference is ridiculous. And yes Anne Frank who was murdered and Viktor Klemperer were civilians who deserved to be saved. Even if it doesn’t fit your earler “gleichschaltunglogik”.
“WHY do you keep dragging the holocaust into this debate?”
Every day the deathcamps weren’t working saved countless lives, so stopping the war early was vital. The question why are you condemning the one’s who fought against the holocaust yourself and not condemning. In 1918 Germany was smart enough to give up, the Allies had to stop the war as quickly as possible and spoiler alert the Germans went on keeping throwing Hitlerjugend lives into the Allied war machines untill the streets of Berlin:-(.
2 Simple questions:
Do you condemn the holocaust, was it perpetrated by Germany
Should Victor Klempener and the other Jews that were saved by the bombing have been murdered?
(I believe in freedom of speech so you are free to answer).
" Are you one of those who insist that every singel action taken, and every word spoken, by any german person between 1936 and 1945 are by default wrong and unethical, because of the holocaust? And by extension that every single action taken, and every word spoken, against the german people in this period is by default ethical and justified, for the same reason?"
Those people you mention here don’t exist. Yes bombings are terriful but I understand they were seen as a necessary evil. It is ethically justified to stop the holocaust. And many Germans actually agree to this. Viktor Klemperer was a German and not a National Socialist, don’t conflate the 2. Anti-Nazi does not equate anti-German.
“The source I quote is the one you just attached. The 1953 USAF report (written by the victor) that of course said the action was justified,”
Another Nazi trope, that it is written by the victor doesn’t make it untrue. Also that something is written by an inhabitant of a nation from the “defeated” doesn’t make it true!
" . And in this report, as pointed out by Alexander McKee, the targets given were not the targets hit, and the legitimate targets that were actually hit did not feature on the target list."
See the report, the Marshalling yards (trains/goods etc) were a legitmate target (and hit). Oh and had the bomb missed one can still see it as a legitimate target.
As for McKee, the Devils Tinderbox. A lot of his “research” has been debunked for example his “fake P-51 Machine gunning strafing attacks”. He went to East Germany and the Soviets definitely wanted the pain the Allies as evil as possible. Frederick Taylor Dresden 1945 and other also German writers corrected this. All the US mission reports “prime evidence” prove this untrue, also the fighters didn’t have enough fuel anyway (the even had to load the planes dangerously aft CG to load the fuel). Don’t believe everything he (or David Irving) writes. He after all unlike Frederick Taylor didn’t do his homework. McKee just called everyone a liar with different facts, that doesn’t cut it.
By the way, don’t believe me:
If you are willing to PM me I will glad by and send you a copy of Frederick Taylor so you can make up your own mind, ok?.
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This is starting to get unmanagably long, but in a few points:
- No, someone else doing something worse does not cut it as an excuse. Not in kindergarden and not in war.
- ofc i condemn the holocaust, im not a raging lunatic.
- is it ok to kill a thousand people to save a million? Well, thats a philosophical question, but in a way the Nuremburg trials themselves gave the answer as “no”, when judging against nazi scientists that experimented on people in the kz camps. Killing one innocent to save many others was judged clearly as not ethical. Why should these ethics not apply to the military?
- Sure, the Soviets wanted to paint the allies as evil post-ww2, but in the same way the allies wanted to paint themselves as pure goodness at the same time.
- To quote your Frederic Taylor. “I personally find the attack on Dresden horrific. It was overdone, it was excessive and is to be regretted enormously. (…) It’s comparable with other air attacks in the war such as the German attack on Belgrade or even Stalingrad before it was besieged and of course other British and American attacks as well including the big ones in Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)” https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel-interview-dresden-bombing-is-to-be-regretted-enormously-a-341239.html
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[quote=“kjveslum, post:17, topic:3145”]
This is starting to get unmanagably long, but in a few points:
- “No, someone else doing something worse does not cut it as an excuse. Not in kindergarden and not in war.”
The holocaust was caused by a people overthrowing its first chance at democracy followed by a senseless slaughter. The bombings were a strategy to stop the war early and as early as possible. They Allies hoped that Germany would surrender like they did in November 1918 when all was hopeless. Any sensible people should have done it. We are not in Kindergarten the bombings were there to stop a war if you have to falsify facts to defend your point?
As for specific cases, say Ed Shames 9now 97) killing the Nazi guards at Dachau after seeing the emanciated corpses and people or hearing the stories about the Germans who fought a mother to take her child and then kicked the child untill her intestants were coming out of her mouth. You can see this as Kindergarten behaviour, I see it as perfectly human to do. Feel free to be (fake or not) outraged and call him a war criminal.
To use a a Norwegian example, the mass murder in Utoya should not have been stop if it would involve any risk of shooting a child? Just standby and let him slaughter. Not saying the police did it there. Same with Germany, the holocaust needed to be stopped!
- ofc i condemn the holocaust, im not a raging lunatic.
Good we at least agree on this, thanks and nice that you read Taylor who is far more balanced and a true historian unlike Irving, Mckee, or ex-10th SS Gunther Walraff (the "conscience’ of Germany). Oh I too think the bombings were horrible, but it did shorten the war.
“* is it ok to kill a thousand people to save a million? Well, thats a philosophical question, but in a way the Nuremburg trials themselves gave the answer as “no”, when judging against nazi scientists that experimented on people in the kz camps. Killing one innocent to save many others was judged clearly as not ethical. Why should these ethics not apply to the military?”
You seem to be one of the very few people who believe that Dr. Mengele was interested in saving people. His expirements were pure vicious evil. A moral equation between Mengele and Air Force Servicemen and women goes way to far for me. By the way the Neurenberg trial never convicted Allied bomber pilots. So all these legal talk is hypothetical.
“Killing one innocent to save many others was judged clearly as not ethical. Why should these ethics not apply to the military?”"
In that case the bombardment of Omaha beach by the ships should not have happened either because civilians were killed this in your logic it morally equates the National Socialists.
A single civilian death (say in a bomb attempt on Hitler) to save the holocaust from happening, in your view that would be thus wrong’. This is maybe a philosophical question but indifference to the extreme under a very very thin moral veil. I am just glad that Ed Shames and the other veterans who risked their lives did than stay on the sidelines and “let it happen” while feeling fantastically moral. N
As for philosofical questons. Cool you condemned the holocaust (less cool you step the side question other Anne Frank/Victor Klemperer should have been murdered.).
" * Sure, the Soviets wanted to paint the allies as evil post-ww2, but in the same way the allies wanted to paint themselves as pure goodness at the same time."
Well that is propaganda, my grandfather was in the German Arbeitseinsatz and saw the most horrible things. The Germans became a lot less arrogant and less tedious in their praise for “the fantastic fuhrer” after the first bombings and the uniforms coming back from the front for washing (stiff with blood being prepared for re-use). When the 3rd Army captured him (they assumed he was German) he got eggs floating in fat the next day. After a few days he met an American who was born in Antwerp and spoke Dutch so he could go home. I know with the lapse of time these stories will disappear but there WAS a real difference between the Allies and the Germans.
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As for the moral difference, your quote of their spiegel was 2 unconnected parts. If you qoute you shouldn’t cut out the inconvenient art in the middle. Now Jews according to the Wiesenthal center have to be careful again when wearing skullcaps in Germany it is good to keep understanding moral differences and not equate everything.
Example: pragraph in full:
"“Taylor: The whole “Holocaust of bombs” thing has been around on far-right Web sites for years and is only now emerging into the NPD’s antics in the (Saxony state government). I frankly don’t understand what they’re saying. All sides bombed each other’s cities during the war. Half a million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That’s roughly equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied raids. But the Allied bombing campaign was attached to military operations and ceased as soon as military operations ceased. But the Holocaust and the murder of all those millions would not have ceased if the Germans had won the war. Bombing is ruthless war making, but to use the word Holocaust to describe ruthless war making is to confuse two entirely different things.”
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This seems like an inappropriate question for Out of the Trenches. It’s not really something that you need Indy and the team specifically to answer. Not to mention you seem to answer it yourself in your description below the question and then start linking to subreddits. Im not saying this isn’t an important topic, but what the hell are Indy and the team supposed to say? How would they know what those people think and how they justify their actions?
If you want to ask Indy and the team about the firebombing of Dresden itself and the rationale behind that event, then ask that. Have them explain the operation and clear away any myth or exaggeration.
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