Dresden Redux

This is an interesting topic, however, because of the delicacy of the subject matter, I shall have to outline the basis of the discussion very carefully. So, please be patient.
It is important that all participants read the following article:
http://www.israelshamir.net/english/princecharming.htm
It was written 17 June 02 by Israel Shamir. Mr. Shamir is a brilliant, sharp-speaking Russian Jew. He is also a fierce anti-Zionist.
The article is based on talks given in Stanford University, California and American University, Cairo.
This topic is based on the Dresden thread, and is an attempt to
try and find an explanation for the brutalization of the German people (mainly civilians) at the end of the war.
It is a perspective of the war which is rarely examined, although, after reading Shamir's article, it will raise new questions for you.

This is not the ranting of white supremacists or anti-semites.
Israel Shamir is a Jew, and the author of the book he is reviewing is a Jew, Tom Segev.

An Israeli writer, Tom Segev wrote a best-selling book entitled, One Palestine, Complete. Last year, it was published in English and very well-received by America's Jewish community. Some revues were:
"thoroughly researched" (Jewish week)
"fascinating" (Hadassa Magazine)
"landmark of information" (Houston Jewish Herald)
The great admirer of Sharon, Ron Grossman of Chicago Tribune called it "brilliant. an utterly fascinating narrative of the period".

Segev begins his book by describing the historical events leading up to the formation of the State of Israel. This takes us back to the Balfour Declaration and the reasoning behind Britain's decision to basically give Palestine to the Jews. Current belief is that Britain wanted a loyal state which would guard their oil interests in the area.
To quote Israel Shamir:

The Prime Minister, Lloyd George "feared Jews", and in his memoirs he explained his momentous decision to support Zionists by urgent need to form an alliance, "a contract with Jewry", "a highly influential power whose goodwill was worth paying for", in order to win the war. "The Jews had every intention of determining the outcome of the WWI. They could influence the US to intensify their involvement in the war, and as the real movers behind the Russian revolution, they also controlled Russia's attitude towards Germany. The Jews offered themselves to the highest bidder, and unless Britain would
clinch the deal first, the Germans would have bought them". The astute Lloyd George based his opinion on the reports of British ambassadors, who were unequivocal. "The influence of the Jews is very great," noted his man in Washington. "They are well-organised and especially in press, in finance, and in politics their influence is considerable". The ambassador in Turkey reported that an international connection of Jews was the real power behind Ataturk's revolution. The Foreign Office undersecretary Lord Cecil summed it up, "I do not think it is easy to exaggerate the international power of the Jews". The Royal Institute of International Affairs asserted that "the sympathy of Jews was vital to winning the war".

Shamir believes that the Allies were all anticipating the establishment of a Jewish state, and that they were trying to curry favor with the world Jewish community. The butchering of German civilians helped serve this goal by showing Jews that America and Britain not only disliked Germans, but were willing to annihilate them in huge numbers.
We are not here to discuss how much power the international Jewish community may or may not have. As Shamir states, whether that power is perceived or actual is no matter. All that is important is if it was indeed believed by the leaders of the Allied countries to be so. And, if so, was it the motivation behind the Allied bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, etc. and the apparent attempt to exterminate sections of the German civilian population?
In other words: was there an Allied plan for German genocide?

 

Knight Templar

I have this book, it is frankly excellent. As a Brit I bought it because my grandfather was shot and wounded by the Irgun in '46 and the arabs stole his motorbike which got him 2 weeks in the glasshouse. So in those episodes I had the summary of British policy in Palestine. I think your chap Shamir is overplaying the "fear" side of things, there was also much influence exerted through friendship. Besides Segev also points out how fervently anti-Zionists like Shamir opposed the moves made in the 20's and 30's. Perhaps he is reading what he wants to read in this book and discarding the rest?

Jumbo

 

Dear Jumbo,
Thanks for the response. Your personal connection with events is very interesting!
So, then, you would say that Balfour and the British were trying to be "friendly" in 1917? That seems unlikely, considering many of these politicians were anti-Semites (let alone, pro-Zionist.)
Segev is correct (of course) in saying that <i>anti-Zionists like Shamir opposed the moves made in the 20's and 30's.</i> But that doesn't mean they were necessarily wrong about WW II.
I found Shamir's article very persuading: what did you think?
And, lastly: the theories explaining Dresden are all weak. Putting the event in a post-war context does make sense. In the same way, the dropping of the A-Bombs makes more sense examined in a post-war mindset, than as some sort of purely military operation (see my other thread "Nagasaki Day." I tried to make both threads somewhat related.)
KT

 

Knight Templar

The one thing you have to remember about almost every facet of British colonial policy anywhere is a lack of coherence. This was magnified in Palestine.

The Balfour declaration was an attempt to gain Zionist support in it's crudest possible sense. There seems to have been the classic wartime attitude of "we'll sort it out after the war" which was a running theme through several allied agreements.

Of course the allies needed money and support from a significant element of the global business and banking community. It is what happened in the 20's and 30's where things start to get interesting. British colonial success was predicated on changing as little as possible in the colony. In Palestine we were commited to changing the nature of the Mandated territory which ran counter to classical notions of Colonial Office policy. I do not think it was fear of Zionism which drove the Balfour declaration: creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine remained stated British policy throughout the inter-war period, mainly due to pro-zionist politicians and zionist tribunes in London. The Segev book is very good at highlighting the difficulties between this stated policy and the practical implementation on the ground.

Jumbo

 

The term "pro-Zionist politicians" is very much different than "pro-Balfour politicians;" and, I believe that the latter outnumbered the former by a large margin. Lloyd George and Churchill both supported Balfour, but were certainly not "pro-Zionists." It's pretty hard to over-estimate the amount of anti-Semitism in British politics at this time.
I'm not sure I agree with the theory that the Brits were just giving land away willy-nilly with an eye to sorting things out later. I believe they had things sorted out in the Middle East long before the war ended.
When Jewish settlers began shooting British soldiers in the 20's, THEN they probably realized they had made a mistake.

 

Knight Templar

The British were not giving land away willy nilly but they were not really able to create a coherent plan. The circumstances surrounding the Balfour offer in 1917 were very different from the circumstances of the post war settlements, what with Wilson's 14 points, the League and all the rest. Unforseen and unwelcome in Britain, they were realities which prevented the postwar sorting out that the British might have liked: a Mandate had to be treated differently to a Colony.

Anti-Semitism in British politics is hard to judge. Certainly I would say it was less than in Europe. We had already had one Jewish PM who had rescued the Conservative Party and been a mainspring of Empire: Disraeli. As Segev notes the wartime Postmaster-General was Jewish, as was Hore-Belisha an inter-war Home Secretary (who gave Britain the Belisha Beacon to go with our Zebra crossings!) and so getting to one of the higher offices of state was not unheard of. British political culture in the 20's and 30's was undergoing a sea-change which had started before WW1 as power moved from Lords to Commons and the Landed to the Capital-owners and businessmen.

In this context anglicized Jews could become very influential politically but this did not generate an anti-semitic backlash. Even Mosley refused to go all out for antisemitism, after all his mentor was Mussolini not Hitler.

There was always a suspicion of Jews, as there was on the US East Coast, and they would never get into the Gentlemen's clubs or would be able to become a full part of the establishment.

Segev makes clear the difficulties faced by successive Governors General in Palestine in the face of a woolly policy. Nobody had considered what would happen to the arabs, they were overlooked in London and lacked the persuasive political machinery that was the hallmark of the Zionist movement. On the ground the realities of the policy was one of confusion and helplessness in the face of doing what Whitehall wanted. No wonder Palestine was an unpopular posting for Governors!

Jumbo

 

I don't think that Hamburg can be considered an outright act of allied genocide towards the German population.

That was just a concerted effort by the allies to bomb the crap out of a German city that ended up with a terrible set of events, IE the weather conditions at the time, that led to the terrible slaughter of thousands of German civilians.

As for Dresden? I think that it was not warranted to bomb that city, but I don't think the allies were trying to win favour with the Jews. It was more a case of the victors being able to do what ever they wanted to the vanquished. It came at a time when the whole world and his dog wanted to get their two penneth from the Germans after years of the German war machine's blood letting.

Look at what the Russians did when they went into Berlin.

 

Jumbo:
I agree that the word "suspicious" is more precise than the stock "anti-Semitism."
Britain's intentions behind Balfour have to point to something more than a "wooly policy," however.
Why did they do it? I can't believe that the Zionist movement (if you could call it that,) was influential enough to get this accomplished on their own. And it's equally hard to believe that there was suddenly some spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for the Jews of the world, so Britain simply sliced off a chunk of their empire to give to them.
Shamir does make reference to some rather surprising quotes, and I'd like to know if you think this is all made up out of whole cloth, or did these British politicians actually say these things: that they believed in an international Jewish influence in banking and industry.
It's easier for me to see the British as trying to placate a power which could possibly turn against them (or, so they thought,) than some sense of altruism.

Gunner's Dream:
You're way, way ahead of us.
I believe that Allied strategic bombing was good for little more than killing civilians and generally terrorizing the German people.
Check the Allied Strategic Bombing Survey: our bombers didn't start making any kind of a dent in the German war machine until later in 1944, and by then, the war was obviously lost for Germany.

KT

 

Well, I will not talk much, because stupid Friedrich may hurt some sensibilities with his idiotic attitude...

However, I do think that American, Soviet and British jews in the military did want some kind of revenge against Germany. For the time of Dresden all had already been discovered in the East and the West. But I think that the "strategic" bombing of Dresden and other cities was more for military porpouses than for the revenge of a few men, who I suposse were not far estimated even in their own countries...

 

Knight Templar

I think that there were a couple of strands to British policy to Palestine. First of all I think that they say the Europeanized Zionists as a far more comfortable lobby to deal with than the Orthodox community or the Arabs. They were much more "like them" than any other British Imperial group which was not "Kith and Kin".

I think lots of politicians gave vent to some feeling of suspicion of the Jews, but this, in the context of the world at the time was not unusual. The British were equally suspicious of the French, Americans and Germans not to mention the Soviets. This does not mean that Britain was anti-American, anti-French or anti-German. I could dredge up quotes from Churchill lauding Mussolini, welcoming the Blackshirts and a lot of other things upon which he changed his mind.

Another strand is that a Jewish state sponsored by Britain could act as a client in the Middle East. Creating pro-British states was something we had done with former colonies before, and would try to do again in the 50's and 60's. In this sense there was a high degree of self-interest. Equally the Mandate specified that the job of the Mandated power was to prepare that Mandate for self-government. The jews provided a readily available solution to this task: well educated, European and viciferous with a wealthy series of backers. How, looking at it this way, could Britain lose? Occupation was expensive, so setting up some sort of self-sustaining State would mean that the Treasury could save money too.

Read Segev's book. It is great. As an author he is even-handed with absolutley everyone. I was expecting an anti-British diatribe, instead I got a good analysis of British policy.

Jumbo

 

I'm well aware of how little effect the allied bombing had on the German war machine. You only have to look at the survey the allies did after the war to see that.

I just can't see how people get this idea that we were bombing Dresden because we wanted to please the Jewish nation.

My own personal opinion on the bomber war was that at the very least we held back well over 50% of the German air force protecting its' own country.

I still think that Hamburg was tragic and not intended to be as destructive and Dresden was just a whim of Churchill, who ultimately sanctioned it.

 

.. a 'whim' under Soviet pressure at Yalta, as we've discussed at great length elsewhere on the forum.

 

Can't say I discussed that here on this forum being new. Churchill was very good at whims. He was also good at bad ideas, Gallipoli, Italy etc.

It just seems to me that this forum just loves the old conspiricy theory. It tends to forget the actual people who died for the want of discussing far fetched ideas of what might have happened.

It is all well and good sitting at a desk typing stuff like this at a computer, but I feel this just detracts sometimes from the reality of it all.

It is like the fact that I am just finishing my time in the RAF. I am actually in Macedonia at the moment. Over the past four days eight people have died here. You won't see stuff about it in the news because it is all low key. But, if we really want to dig we could say that NATO is conspiring with the Albanians to re-arm them and then re-take parts of Macedonia. It's all crap just like the idea that we conspired with the Jewish nation to bomb the crap out of Dresden.

Like I have said before, we were the victors, we could do what we wanted, we decided that Dresden should be levelled. But, not because the Jews demanded we did it, nor because we had to show them some sort of solidarity. If we were so hung up on that then why did we hold onto Palestine?

 

Sorry, gunners dream, didn't mean to be dismissive ! There's a thread somewhere on the forum titled 'Bombing of Dresden - And For What ?' where a lot of 'Dresden myths' were researched deeply and found to be just that - myths !

Personally I feel the 'appeasing the Israelis' theory to be highly unlikely but I have no concrete sources on this so haven't joined the discussion on this thread.

 

Jumbo-
But, Segev says that Balfour was (primarily) the result of Britain's fear of International Jewry. You're recommending his book, while at the same time saying he's wrong.
I would like to read his book, by the way.
Gunner: Martin is right. If you just want to re-hash the whole Dresden-thing, then go to the other thread (please.) We're trying to confine our discussion to this specific topic. It was my mistake to sound-off about strategic bombing. Please read Shamir's article if you would like to participate (link provided in my first post.)

 

Martin:
The water's warm--jump in.

 

I'm with gunner's dream and others on this. I can't believe where people get these ideas. Probably after a heavy dinner with too much wine.

What conspiracy theorists never understand is that there doesn't have to be a sensible reason for something. Think about what you do in a day, there are some things you would call "bad ideas" and some where for the life of you you can't really think why you did it.

 

I'm glad that people agree with me on this one. This type of thing worries me.

What we should all be doing is discussing the reality of the terrible events in WWII. Dresden is one and the Holocaust another.

To suggest that both these were connected is terrible. It takes away the terrible suffering that both these peoples had to go through in WWII.

In this day and age it does not help when people now stand and try and deny that the Holocaust ever happened. This only helps to fuel those people's ideas that the Jews were their own worse enemies etc.

I for one believe that their theories on the Holocaust being a myth is complete and utter twaddle. There is too much evidence to dictate it did not. Dresden also happened, but not because we wanted to do something for the Jews. I do not believe there is enough evidence to support this claim.

This type of thread just takes away the impact of both tragedies.

 

Gunner & Andreas:
Go to the link and read the article!!
The two of you are missing the point completely.
Aaarrrggghhh....
The discussion is over the question of whether the British in 1917 perceived--PERCEIVED--there to be a world-wide organization of Jews in Finance and Industry.
As I stated in my first post: this thread IS NOT about whether or not such an organization actually exists. This is NOT about conspiracy theories.

 

I have read the article and I still fail to see how we annilated the German populatiion willy nilly during WWII just because we had this inward fear or mis-trust of the Jewish movement in industry from 1917 onwards.

This is an ongoing thing now and I just feel that this just endangers what the Jewish community as a whole has achieved after WWII, even with their present way of treating the Palestinians in Palestine.

Anyway I will leave you to your argument.