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1. 05:01 AM - (Jim Stone)
2. 11:14 PM - Re: Dresden (Speedy11@aol.com)
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Does anyone know the contact info for Full throttle concepts,inc? They sell the
silver bullet.
Thanks,
Jim Stone
Message 2
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Pat,
You were quite right to butt in. Your first hand experience adds insight.
It's terrible that we upset the "cultured people" all over Europe. Those
Europeans should have raises their concerns about "wartime culture" with
the Nazis.
I love Germany, but personally, I'm glad we have to option to speak, or not
speak, German.
We owe the allies who fought and won that war an enormous debt.
Stan Sutterfield
The destruction of the city provoked unease in intellectual circles in
Britain. According to Max Hastings (a renowned British historian), by
February 1945, attacks upon German cities had become largely irrelevant to
the outcome of the war and the name of Dresden possessed a resonance for
cultured people all over Europe ?" "the home of so much charm and beauty,
a
refuge for Trollope's heroines, a landmark of the Grand Tour." He argues
that the bombing of Dresden was the first time Allied populations
questioned
the military actions used to defeat the Nazis...
Hi,
as a lurker on the Rocket list ( just interest as I fly a microlight) I am
loth to post this but I just cannot let a discussion of Dresden pass by
without comment.
Being 81 I lived through the war ( and got bombed out) and perhaps have a
different viewpoint than those `second guessers` born later who have had
the
luxury of hindsight when evaluating what should and should not have been
done.
Max Hastings is of course right when he says that there was `unease` in
intellectual circles. There was unease after we bombed Hiroshima and
Nagasaki but this was a problem which had to be solved IMMEDIATELY. The
decision would not wait for the luxury of intellectual discussion. There
was
a war on, decisions had to be made NOW. The Germans and the Japs were
still
fighting, they were not giving up. We had them on the back foot certainly
but that is the time to attack, not ease off. There was no `unease` among
the men who had to go in and die on the ground in Germany or storming the
beaches of the Japanese homeland. They all said `Serve the bastards right,
they started it`
There seems to be the idea that Dresden was sitting there making Dresden
porcelain figures. Were they hell. Any more than Bath or Coventry
were.Bath
was stuffed to the gills with Admiralty Planning Departments and you
couldn`t throw a stone in Coventry without hitting an engineering works.
They were all `legitimate` targets.
Remember too that this was the end of the war and we had brought bombing
to
a pretty fine art. We had a lot of practice and lost a lot of Bomber
Command
and the American Airforce refining the problem. If Germany had been as
expert in bombing in the early part of the war as we were then do you
think
that she would have worried about Bath, Bristol, Coventry, Plymouth,
London
having `cultural resonance`. Of course not. They did their best to wipe
out
those cities, it is just that ,like us at that time, they were not very
good
at it.
Poor old `Bomber` Harris got a lot of stick just for carrying out his
orders. He was denied the rewards which were handed out to the commanders
of
every other arm of the Services. His men ,who died in their thousands,
were
denied a Campaign Medal even. Suddenly, when the need for them had passed
everyone became holier than thou` and began to voice doubts about the
bombing campaign, and decrying the efficacy of the results.
Sorry to but in
Pat
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