ASsman
10-31-2004, 02:14 PM
( A little something to take the stress of the Election or stealing of said Election)
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The Queen cannot apologise for acts of war Britain was forced to use against Nazism
Tony Rennell
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer
How Josef Goebbels, the original spin doctor, must be chuckling in whichever inner circle of Hell he has been consigned to for the past 60 years. His clever manipulation of the truth about the Allied bombing of the city of Dresden still has life in it. The Nazi master of the big lie is still winning the propaganda game.
Last week German newspapers once again took up the cry that the raid on the capital city of Saxony in mid-February 1945 was a war crime. In the week ahead, the Queen, on a visit there, will apparently come under pressure not just to mourn the dead but to say sorry on behalf of the British people.
Such historical apologising is fatuous at the best of times but in this case there is absolutely no justification for it. Dresden was a legitimate strategic target in a total war that had to be brought to an end as quickly as possible.
Its factories were turning out armaments, not china dolls; it was a transport crossroads for German reinforcements on the Russian front, and Hitler himself had declared it a fortress city to be held at all cost against the advancing Soviet Red Army.
An Allied PoW on a train shunted into a siding on the night before the bombers came saw with his own eyes that it was 'an armed camp with thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars transporting supplies towards the East to meet the Russians'.
Yet all this was concealed by Goebbels once the bombers had gone. He presented Dresden as an oasis of culture, a refuge, an innocent, open city that the British (and the Americans - their planes went in the next day) wiped out in a mad act of vengeance and vandalism.
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Certainly the attack was savage, the firestorms appalling and the death toll high. This was total war. But in Goebbels's hands, the number of dead was inflated from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and the mass of refugees in the city was exaggerated by a factor of five to a million. A tragic consequence of war was turned into a vile crusade to discredit the Allies and undermine the moral superiority of their cause.
Not even he could have guessed that the discrediting would outlive him and survive into the 21st century.
Goebbels fed the press in neutral countries with horror stories in which the death toll soared to at least 200,000 and the motive was the very destruction of German kultur. Then, in the years after the war, his version - the city's 'innocence', the death toll, the brutal intent - took on the characteristics of an urban myth. Dresden became a special case which Germans could use to deflect their guilt for the bestialities of Nazism and British moralists to beat their breasts over.
But the fact is that Dresden was not a special case. It was just another target like any of the others in Germany the RAF had been bombarding for years.
If we apologise for Dresden and declare the attack on it a crime, then we will have to apologise for the entire bombing campaign, and that would be preposterous.
For years the bombers were the only way a Britain facing defeat could take the war to Germany and defy the dictator. Then they became a vital means for securing victory. That civilians were killed and in large numbers was one of the dreadful yet inescapable realities.
The crime was Hitler's, not ours. He had launched and mercilessly pursued an all-out war, and the harsh truth that had to be faced in the spring of 1945 was that a Germany ruled by him was going to fight to the bitterest of ends. The Third Reich had to be militarily defeated and its people conquered, and time was of the essence.
A pilot who flew on the Dresden operation said, in explanation not excuse: 'What I did was help shorten the war. I saw my role as saving lives rather than taking them.'
Miles Tripp agonised for years over the slaughter. The bomb aimer in a Lancaster in the second wave of the attack, he was shocked by the terrible sight below. 'The streets of the city were a fantastic latticework of fire. It was as though one was looking down at the fiery outlines of a crossword puzzle; blazing streets stretched from east to west, from north to south, in a gigantic saturation of flame.' He could see no point in adding to the conflagration. He directed his pilot away and they dropped their bombs in what he hoped was open country.
But his part in bombing Germany preyed on his mind for years. He felt brutalised, robbed of all decent human feelings. Eventually he got the matter in perspective and his words are telling.
'I am sorry that my bombs killed many and made many homeless,' he concluded, 'but I am not ashamed. If a malignant growth must be cut out, without benefit of anaesthetic, then surrounding tissues are bound to be hurt. Had Nazi Germany won the war, the world would now be in an even worse mess. If the only merit was that the gas chambers were abolished, it is sufficient.'
And that is why we most definitely do not need to apologise for Dresden. Not unless we want Goebbels to have the last laugh.
· Tony Rennell is the co-author with John Nichol of Tail-End Charlies - The Last Battles of the Bomber War, to be published next Thursday.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1340160,00.html
-----------------
The Queen cannot apologise for acts of war Britain was forced to use against Nazism
Tony Rennell
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer
How Josef Goebbels, the original spin doctor, must be chuckling in whichever inner circle of Hell he has been consigned to for the past 60 years. His clever manipulation of the truth about the Allied bombing of the city of Dresden still has life in it. The Nazi master of the big lie is still winning the propaganda game.
Last week German newspapers once again took up the cry that the raid on the capital city of Saxony in mid-February 1945 was a war crime. In the week ahead, the Queen, on a visit there, will apparently come under pressure not just to mourn the dead but to say sorry on behalf of the British people.
Such historical apologising is fatuous at the best of times but in this case there is absolutely no justification for it. Dresden was a legitimate strategic target in a total war that had to be brought to an end as quickly as possible.
Its factories were turning out armaments, not china dolls; it was a transport crossroads for German reinforcements on the Russian front, and Hitler himself had declared it a fortress city to be held at all cost against the advancing Soviet Red Army.
An Allied PoW on a train shunted into a siding on the night before the bombers came saw with his own eyes that it was 'an armed camp with thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars transporting supplies towards the East to meet the Russians'.
Yet all this was concealed by Goebbels once the bombers had gone. He presented Dresden as an oasis of culture, a refuge, an innocent, open city that the British (and the Americans - their planes went in the next day) wiped out in a mad act of vengeance and vandalism.
Advertiser links
Progressive Insurance - Official Site
Save hundreds on car insurance - compare rates online at...
progressive.com
Compare Multiple Auto Insurance Quotes
NetQuote's fast free online rates. Comparison shop...
netquote.com
Save Now - 21st Century Insurance
Save $300 on auto insurance and get more coverage and more...
21st.com
Certainly the attack was savage, the firestorms appalling and the death toll high. This was total war. But in Goebbels's hands, the number of dead was inflated from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and the mass of refugees in the city was exaggerated by a factor of five to a million. A tragic consequence of war was turned into a vile crusade to discredit the Allies and undermine the moral superiority of their cause.
Not even he could have guessed that the discrediting would outlive him and survive into the 21st century.
Goebbels fed the press in neutral countries with horror stories in which the death toll soared to at least 200,000 and the motive was the very destruction of German kultur. Then, in the years after the war, his version - the city's 'innocence', the death toll, the brutal intent - took on the characteristics of an urban myth. Dresden became a special case which Germans could use to deflect their guilt for the bestialities of Nazism and British moralists to beat their breasts over.
But the fact is that Dresden was not a special case. It was just another target like any of the others in Germany the RAF had been bombarding for years.
If we apologise for Dresden and declare the attack on it a crime, then we will have to apologise for the entire bombing campaign, and that would be preposterous.
For years the bombers were the only way a Britain facing defeat could take the war to Germany and defy the dictator. Then they became a vital means for securing victory. That civilians were killed and in large numbers was one of the dreadful yet inescapable realities.
The crime was Hitler's, not ours. He had launched and mercilessly pursued an all-out war, and the harsh truth that had to be faced in the spring of 1945 was that a Germany ruled by him was going to fight to the bitterest of ends. The Third Reich had to be militarily defeated and its people conquered, and time was of the essence.
A pilot who flew on the Dresden operation said, in explanation not excuse: 'What I did was help shorten the war. I saw my role as saving lives rather than taking them.'
Miles Tripp agonised for years over the slaughter. The bomb aimer in a Lancaster in the second wave of the attack, he was shocked by the terrible sight below. 'The streets of the city were a fantastic latticework of fire. It was as though one was looking down at the fiery outlines of a crossword puzzle; blazing streets stretched from east to west, from north to south, in a gigantic saturation of flame.' He could see no point in adding to the conflagration. He directed his pilot away and they dropped their bombs in what he hoped was open country.
But his part in bombing Germany preyed on his mind for years. He felt brutalised, robbed of all decent human feelings. Eventually he got the matter in perspective and his words are telling.
'I am sorry that my bombs killed many and made many homeless,' he concluded, 'but I am not ashamed. If a malignant growth must be cut out, without benefit of anaesthetic, then surrounding tissues are bound to be hurt. Had Nazi Germany won the war, the world would now be in an even worse mess. If the only merit was that the gas chambers were abolished, it is sufficient.'
And that is why we most definitely do not need to apologise for Dresden. Not unless we want Goebbels to have the last laugh.
· Tony Rennell is the co-author with John Nichol of Tail-End Charlies - The Last Battles of the Bomber War, to be published next Thursday.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1340160,00.html