re: #14 HappyWarrior

Agh, you know what gets me is when Neo-Nazis start acting like Dresden was a war crime but never a word from them about German attrocities on London, Warsaw, and other cities. I believe the book that showed David Irving to be the scum be is was a book about Dresden.

The bombing of Dresden didn’t come out of nowhere. Germany had sown the wind, and they reaped the whirlwind. Nonetheless, the attack on Dresden was a moral error.

The war in Europe was as good as over by the time that attack was mounted. The Americans had got the best of the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, while on the Eastern Front, the Soviets were in full pursuit across Poland as the Wehrmacht fell back toward its last stand line on the Elbe before Berlin.

Killing some 25000 civilians, (a sober estimate of the result) in Dresden didn’t figure to shorten the war, or reduce our own casualties, or achieve much of anything beyond retribution, visited upon people who hadn’t had any central hand in Germany’s crimes. The same number of missions, devoted to bringing supplies up to the front, would have done more for the Allied war effort.

After that raid, the Allies abandoned their strategic attacks on Germany since there weren’t any suitable targets left. Dresden itself wasn’t a suitable target, given that German industry was already running on fumes.

If anybody deserved collective retribution, it was the Germans. But that’s a big if. War is cruel, but it has its logic. Drastic measures may be required—-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example.

But when the end finally comes into view and one’s own casualty list is not going to get much longer, nor can the enemy hold out much longer, it’s time to think to the shape of a future peace.