Steve :

It still comes down to the question of why ? !

Dresden as you can till imbitters me deeply especially with US fighter pilots that flew on this day and admitted to me what there mission was. The historical anaylsis may not even mention this as it only reveals only so much. But of course this is always the case with all documents. Why we must cross reference and of course ask many questions. A visit to the national archivs in the Staes or Freiburg BA/MA are excellent sources for starts......

discuss we must !

E

Steve:

The Air Force Research Institute?
I'm expecting a little impartial, accurate historical research, and you're giving me the Air Force Research Institute?
You're insistant on boiling everything down to military categories.
The Dresden bombing was political. The decision was made by the politicians, Churchill, specifically. The "military" excuse, given by the Prime Minister was to cause civilian panic , flood the streets with refugees, and block the German retreat. It had nothing to do with industrial production or railway lines. But, this was just the excuse. The military was against it: especially Eisenhower.
Churchill and others wanted to make a demonstration of strength to the Russians (and leave them with a destroyed city to occupy after the war remember that Dresden occured right after Yalta: that's what it was all about.
The Russians (who took Dresden,) did not want our bomber support. Churchill wanted to blow some more things up before the war ended.
Do you think that the Air Force Research Institute is going to tell you that? (Who are they, anyway?)
The Germans stopped counting their dead after 35,000, but the actual total was over 135,000.
Here's an accurate, concise description, from

"Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence
Its original Advisory Council included General George J. Keegan, General Daniel O. Graham, Ambassador Charles Lichenstein (of the Heritage Foundation), Professor Eugene V. Rostow, Professor Charles MacDonald and Dr. Max Singer (all from USA), Admiral Rene M. Bloch (France) and Dr. Uzi Landau, Ambassador Meir Rosenne, Prof. Yuval Ne'eman, General Joshua Sagui and General Rechav'am Ze'evi (all from Israel)."
--I found this after a 3-minute web search, and it describes the situation better than I can. Written in 1963:

http://www.westerndefense.org/bulletins/July-01.htm

per your other comments:
"As far as the Strategic Bombing being ineffective, I suggest you talk to Allied ground troops that will tell you otherwise."
--That's tactical bombing, not strategic bombing. That part of the air war was very successful.
"Also if you think a US invasion of Japan would have been better than the A-bombs you had better consider this, Allied estimates are over one million dead and wounded"
--Allied POLITICIANS estimated One mil dead. the military knew in July that the Japanese were trying to surrender, that this was inevitable. The decision to drop the bomb was NOT made by the military, in fact, I challenge you to find ONE American military leader of that time who supported dropping the atom bombs.
the real history of warfare--especially modern warfare-- involves politicians, industrialists, bankers, as well as the military. By 1945, we were much more concerned with the Soviet Union than we were with the remnants of the Wehrmacht.

Despite 'not wanting Bomber support', it is documented that General Antonov, with the personal backing of Stalin, insisted, at Yalta, that Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden were bombed as soon as possible...

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

martin:
this author says differently.
I'll have to ask for your sources

No problem, Knight.
For the whole scenario of Churchill, Yalta, Harris, Portal, Anonov and the question of Dresden see : -

Denis Richards 'The Hardest Victory' London 1994 pp270-271 citing Webster & Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany Vol III HMSO 1961.

Henry Probert 'Bomber Harris' London 2001 pp 317-321 citing Martin Gilbert 'Churchill', Richards 'Portal of Hungerford' and interview with Captain Hugh Lunghi, interpreter to British Chiefs of Staff at Yalta.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

You might also like to update yourself with the most recent discussion of the Dresden death toll in 'Telling Lies About Hitler'( London, 2002 ) by Richard Evans, expert witness at the Irving trial. See the whole of Chapter 5, 'The Bombing of Dresden'.

As mentioned before, history has accepted Irving's theorizing of '135,000' dead based on a single document which has conclusively been proved to be a fake. This was the TB47 form giving a figure of 68,650 cremated in the Dresden Altmarkt. In fact, it was 6,865 - the '0' was added later. Irving accepted this as proven in 1966 but failed to cite in later editions of 'The Destruction of Dresden', a significant factor in his loss of lawsuit against Lipstadt/Penguin Books in the High Court.

See also Gotz Bergander, 'Dresden im Luftkrieg ; Vorgeschichte - Zerstorung - Folgen ( Koln 1977, revised 1985 ).

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Martin,
Thanks for the biblio: some interesting texts there.

Steve,
The irony of these things is that soldiers tend to support their wartime politicians right-or-wrong; whereas the politicians will hang the military guys out to dry on a moment's notice if it serves their political purposes.

Like I said, Knight, no problem.
The fact is, the 'Dresden' controversy has become a political 'hot potato' in this country and there has been a lot of very ill-informed comment, particularly in the 'popular press'.
This has caused much anger and upset among surviving bomber crewmen.

As an Associate Member of the Bomber Command Association, I have tried to read everything I can find about Dresden. The Irving Trial produced some very interesting, and I would think definitive, analysis of the whole question.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

[ 30. October 2003, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Hi Knight and Friedrich: Knight, I back your last post 100%. The soldier gets the job done and then takes the fall for doing so. Hallo Friedrich my friend, Knight stated earlier in one of his posts that by that stage of the war Dresden was beyond bombing and personally I would agree but as I stated earlier, by that stage in the war, bombing had taken on a whole new look. Any town that was still producing war materials was being subject to increased bombing in order to destroy production totally even at the risk of larger civilian casualties. I wont argue whether it was political or not since I wasnt there and there are enough people who will do that for me.

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The soldier above all others prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. General Douglas Macarthur

Steve:
It's ALL political.
The military history is just an extension of the larger political story. These debates require some precision; when you say "America wanted to bomb such-and-such," do you mean the American government? the American people? Supreme military commanders? the Bomber Command? The soldiers?
If you want to find a military force which dominated the political, financial, as well as religious realms, you have to go back to
.
the Knights Templars

[ 30. October 2003, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

__________________
"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

You may well complain, but that does not make the two comparable.

Quote:

Steve, with all due respect (you know I consider you a friend) 60.000 people were killed in Dresden, burnt alive. How would you compare a binoculars factory to aeroplanes an tanks factories as there were in Cologne? Dresden was a medieval, historical city made of wood which had any important industry. Beside it was full with ten million refugees!!! It is idiotic to bomb a target like that!!!

10 million refugees is a gross overexaggeration. Even David Irving, a historian whose views on Dresden have been utterly discredited gave an (unsubstantiated and disproved) estimate of 'One or two million refugees'. Dresden was not as crammed with refugees as you claim.

Everyone complains about auschwits, last time I checked, but nazis.

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Living History at http://oldreliable9_47.tripod.com

Auschwitz and other camps: hmmm 6 million jewish and minority refugees as well as german civilians gassed in a killing machine...property taken and certain parts like gold teeth, hair, and skin used for products.

Dresden: 35,000-65,000 dead = tragic and pointless but not comparable in the slightest to the holocaust.

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Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. -- Sir Winston Churchill

Or the SS.

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„Solange man nicht mit dem Kopf unterm Arm rumläuft geht es doch noch!" Erwin Rommel

Wouldn't the Taliban qualify here as well?

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Seriously, all today is missing is free cotton candy and the annual Bay State Hooker Parade to make it any better.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

"Dresden's fate had been sealed at the February 4-11, l945 FDR-Churchill-Stalin conference at Yalta. Reports about the Dresden decision center on Stalin's desire to see it savaged as a means of enhancing the Red Army's offensive by jamming up German troop movements."

"Roosevelt and Churchill were of course well aware of Dresden's particulars, including the fact that it was a hospital, prisoner of war and, now, refugee center."

"Dresden had once been a pivotal communications and rail center important to the Wehrmacht. But as Irving notes, by the time it received its fatal blow, "The city's strategic significance was scarcely marginal . . . " it was home to 630,000 permanent residents, its numbers swelled by German and Allied wounded, Allied POWs(Stalag IVb at Mülhberg ) and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing areas in the path of the Red Army's advance. The city's authorities were convinced that a non strategic city with a large number of military hospitals, POW compounds, etc., would not receive anything approaching the annihilative smashing so many other cities and towns had undergone. Therefore most of the air defense and flak batteries that would otherwise be in Dresden were transferred to areas where it was assumed they'd be needed."

"Dresden was virtually undefended. Luftwaffe fighters stationed in the general vicinity were grounded for lack of fuel. With the exception of a few light guns, the anti-aircraft batteries had been dismantled for employment elsewhere. McKee quotes one British participant in the raid, who reported that "our biggest problem, quite truly, was with the chance of being hit by bombs from other Lancasters flying above us."

"Dresden was merely a staging center for a half million refugees from Silesia. The (rail) yards were not even attacked. There were no ammunition workshops and factories, only a small works making optical lenses for gun sights."

"13 February brought 796 Lancaster bombers and 9 Mosquitoes from the Royal Air Force (RAF). In 3 hours, they dropped 1,478 tons of explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiaries (incendiary bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium, phosphorus or petroleum jelly (napalm), in clusters over a specific target. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire).American Flying Fortresses and Liberators dropped 1,800 explosive bombs and 136,800 fire sticks.American planes completed the raid when they returned and unleashed 3,700 more explosive bombs on Dresden .
Incendiaries caused the temperature to climb to degrees previously unheard of in Germany or Europe, 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (Black). The fires depleted oxygen and suffocated those who made it to bomb shelters."

"The task of the first wave was to create the fire storm. Three hours later, a second and much heavier night force of British bombers was timed to arrive when the German fighter and flak defenses would be off guard, and the rescue squads on their way. Its task was to spread the fire storm. Finally, the next morning, a daylight attack by the Eighth Air Force was to concentrate on the outlying areas, the new city"

"The cultural center of the city was totally destroyed. Meanwhile, the only possible military or economic targets--the barracks in the city's north and the train station where trains carrying reserves for the Eastern Front might depart--were left untouched."

"even the German authorities -- usually so pedantic in their estimates -- gave up trying to work out the precise total after some 35,000 bodies had been recognized, labeled and buried. We do know, however, that the 1,250,000 people in the city on the night of the raid had been reduced to 368,619 by the time it was over ."

"A look at aerial maps of the city before and after the terror attacks clearly shows the large white oil tanks owned by British-controlled Shell Oil. These tanks remained entirely untouched by the bombardment."

"Targets of genuine military significance were not hit, and had not even been included on the official list of targets. Among the neglected military targets was the railway bridge spanning the Elbe River, the destruction of which could have halted rail traffic for months. The railway marshalling yards in Dresden were also outside the RAF target area. The important autobahn bridge to the west of the city was not attacked. Rubble from damaged buildings did interrupt the flow of traffic within the city, "but in terms of the Eastern Front communications network, road transport was virtually unimpaired."

"In the course of the USAF daylight raids, American fighter- bombers strafed civilians: "Amongst these people who had lost everything in a single night, panic broke out. Women and children were massacred with cannon and bombs. It was mass murder." American aircraft even attacked animals in the Dresden Zoo. The USAF was still at it in late April, with Mustangs strafing Allied POWs they discovered working in fields."

"Those few who managed to escape the air attack were hounded later from the air by diving planes to kill off any fleeing survivors."

"This inferno was described in one account of the bombing aftermath as:
". . . scores of Mustang fighters diving low over the bodies, huddled on the banks of the Elbe, as well as on the larger lawns of the Grosse Garden, in order to shoot them up."

"British prisoners who had been released from their burning camps were among those to suffer the discomfort of machine gun attacks . . . Wherever columns of tramping people were marching in or out of the city they were pounced on by the fighters, and machine-gunned or raked with cannon fire."

"Precise casualty figures will never be known. The German authorities stopped counting when the known dead reached 25,000 and 35,000."

"few weeks before the end of World War II, Churchill drafted a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff:

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."

NOTE:
Once Dresden came under Soviet control as part of East Germany, as Davidson mentions, the Soviets used the attack as evidence that democratic countries, especially the United States, were vicious war criminals (119). American visitors were welcomed with comments that Dresden was their work that had become Russia’s “job to clean …up

http://www.westerndefense.org/bulletins/July-01.htm

http://www.meredith.edu/stones/newpage2.htm

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p247_Lutton.html

http://www.fpp.co.uk/reviews/Dresden/Esquire1163.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWfirestorm.htm

PS.

Sir,

Michael Shrimpton writes (Aug. 14) that Dresden was an important centre of communication and lay across the Red Army's line of advance: "It was a probable routing for some trains to the Auschwitz concentration camp." Not very probable: Auschwitz had been evacuated a month earlier; as for Dresden, the RAF target map for the raid, which is in my possession, shows that not one Elbe bridge, railway line or station was in the fan-shaped sector of the city marked out for saturation bombing. We now know that the twelve US air force bomb groups which attacked twelve hours later had these orders: "Primary target - visual - center of built up area Dresden. Secondary target - visual - M/Y [marshalling yards] Chemnitz. H2X [radar blind bombing] center of Dresden."

Yours faithfully,

David Irving

http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/ReadersLet...mes140801.html

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Friedrich, no flame intended, but just 2 questions:

1.) Would you rather consider yourself being more a neo-nazi or an ultra-nationalist or something else?

2.) Who is "we"?

I'm interested to know more about that "we" you feel to mention that often, because that implies that you might talk for all GERMANS out there.

So, you basically say that "we" should have better had done this or that to win the war for the nazis or "we" think that german war crminals shouldn't been tried or "we" equal Dresden with Auschwitz.

Well, I'm German, I'm adult, I'm a democrat, I have my values who are based on freedom, peace and individuality, and I think that I'm a "modern german" - and at least patriotic enough to say that I'm not part of your outdated, revanchist, pro-nazi "we".

nuff' said.

Cheers,

[ 23 October 2002, 06:36 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

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