From: Jonathan Davis (jonathan.davis@lineone.net)
Date: Fri May 07 2004 - 12:00:19 MDT
Hi Rhino,
I am very well acquainted with Slaughterhouse 5 and the story of Dresden.
That and the brutal treatment that was meted out to German civilians at the
end of the war has been an occasional theme on my blog.
http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/archives/020794.html
http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/archives/018877.html
Whilst I think the firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden were mistakes - even
though recent research challenges the claim that they were innocent cities
and of no value militarily
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747570787/) - think it is
absurd to claim they damaged Europe economically in the long term. US trade,
rescue packages and aid dwarfed the damage wrought by bombers as did 50
years of expensive defence of the continent.
Europe owes a massive debt of gratitude to the US as well as thanks for the
prosperity and security brought to the place after the war and to this day.
I mean, how well did Finland & other countries fare in the Soviet bloc as
opposed to those in the US bloc even though they were untouched by Allied
area bombing (Poland/Yugoslavia/Hungary/Albania/Czechoslovakia)?
Jei's revisionism is bunk.
Kind regards
JD
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of
rhinoceros
Sent: 07 May 2004 17:24
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: virus: Re:Some of Juuko Isohaari's favorite writers and posts
[Jei]
"Maybe I think we would be better off if America hadn't bombed the shit out
of Germany and Europe? Certainly the economy would have been doing much
better, now that I think about it. Millions of people would still be alive
and we wouldn't have had to pay for all the shit Russians wanted. Yeah, WWII
was most likely a disfavor that America did to Europe, from my personal
economical point of view."
[Jonathan Davis]
Jake, Rhino - are you sure you want to keep accusing me of delusion?
[rhinoceros]
So far, I have neglected to do so in so many words Jonathan. Dunno about
Jake ;)
What Jei said was true, although I would not let the European leaders off
the hook so easily. The most striking example was the wanton massacre in the
German city of Dresden, just to pick one of the less controversial cases.
Have you read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five"?
The destruction of Dresden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
Dresden was widely considered a city of little war-related industrial or
strategic importance, though, after the fact, in his memoirs Winston
Churchill described it as a "centre of communications of Germany's Eastern
Front." Dresden itself was most noted as a cultural centre, with noted
architecture in the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House and its
historic cathedral (the Frauenkirche) and other churches. It was also called
"Elbflorenz", i.e. Florence of the Elbe, due to its stunning beauty.
<snip>
3,907 tons of bombs were dropped. Out of 28,410 houses in the inner city of
Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. An area of 15 square kilometers was totally
destroyed, among that: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches,
5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large
hotels, and 62 administration buildings.
<snip>
The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known.
Estimates vary from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead. Such estimates are
made very difficult by the fact that the city was crowded at that time by
many unregistered refugees and wounded soldiers. The foreign forced
labourers may represent a large number of dead, since they were usually
employed in the squads to fight fire storms. (In comparison, some 100,000
died in the bombing of Hiroshima, about 50,000 in the bombing of Nagasaki
and 100,000 in the bombing of Tokyo and 200,000 were killed in Warsaw during
the Warsaw uprising 1944.) <snip>
Or the more cynical British account:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/area_bombing_05.shtml
<snip>
This directive led to the raid on Dresden and marked the erosion of one last
moral restriction in the bombing war: the term 'evacuation from the east'
did not refer to retreating troops but to the civilian refugees fleeing from
the advancing Russians.
Although these refugees clearly did not contribute to the German war effort,
they were considered legitimate targets simply because the chaos caused by
attacks on them might obstruct German troop reinforcements to the Eastern
Front.
<snip>
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