Max Muir

>"You guys burnt the place down,
>turned it into a single column of
>flame. More people died there in the
>firestorm, in that one big flame,
>than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
> combined." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

"neo-Nazi groups promote the legend of Dresden via
Internet postings in order to show that non-Jewish
Germans suffered in the war."

The Dresden Legend by Rebecca Grant

>On the evening of February 13, 1945,
>an orgy of genocide and barbarism
>began against a defenseless German city,

DEFENCELESS DRESDEN

Eyewitness quote:
"In the distance an air-raid siren was wailing. Somebody muttered
`Chemnitz' nobody took any notice. But soon, sirens were sounding
loudly all around us. The local anti-aircraft batteries started
firing, joining in a chorus of crashing and banging to the rising
drone of heavy aircraft engines."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
"Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns
and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the
city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden
(Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration
Commands."

>one of the greatest cultural
>centers of northern Europe.

THE FLORENCE OF THE ELBE

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

Excerpt from "The Dresden Legend"
By Rebecca Grant

Goebbels Strikes

The second source was Nazi Germany's propaganda chief, Joseph
Goebbels. The foreign news service and the state-run Das Reich
newspaper started bumping casualty estimates from around 25,000 to
around 200,000 and emphasizing Dresden as a lost cultural treasure. "A
city skyline of perfected harmony has been wiped from the European
heavens," Das Reich said in early March 1945.

=
The Independent

'Even before the war was over, a legend grew up around the bombing of
Dresden - largely thanks to Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Nazi
propaganda described Dresden as a city of no military value, crammed
with refugees from the East. The "Florence on the Elbe" was allegedly
obliterated in a senseless act of barbarism.


> Within
>less than 14 hours not only was it
>reduced to flaming ruins, but an
>estimated one-third of its
>inhabitants, possibly as many as a half
>a million, had perished in what
>was the worst single event massacre
>of all time.


http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013


>Toward the end of World War II, as Allied
>planes rained death and destruction over Germany,
>the old Saxon city of Dresden lay like an
>island of tranquillity amid desolation.

PEACEFUL DRESDEN MAKING POURCELAIN
CHAMBER POTS

An official German 1942 guide described Dresden as
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>Famous as a cultural center and
>possessing no military value,

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

>Dresden
>had been spared the terror that
>descended from the skies over the rest of the country.

"Dresden was not a target of Allied air attack
until 1944. It was too far to the east. In the
early years of the war, RAF Bomber Command and
the US Army Air Forces had their hands full
attacking Nazi-held France, Holland, and western
Germany. Then came concentrated attacks on major
industrial targets and the all-important
preparations for the Normandy invasion."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND by Rebecca Grant

>In fact, little had been done to
>provide the ancient city of artists
>and craftsmen with anti-aircraft defenses.

DEFENCELESS DRESDEN

Eyewitness quote:

"In the distance an air-raid siren was wailing. Somebody muttered
`Chemnitz' nobody took any notice. But soon, sirens were sounding
loudly all around us. The local anti-aircraft batteries started
firing, joining in a chorus of crashing and banging to the rising
drone of heavy aircraft engines."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
"Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns
and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the
city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden
(Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration
Commands."

=
>One squadron of planes had
>been stationed in Dresden for awhile,
>but the Luftwaffe decided to move
>the aircraft to another area where
>they would be of use.

"a unit of ME-110 night fighters was based only five miles
away, the fuel shortage was now so acute that the pilots were forbidden
to
take
off without authorization from division headquarters. The
authorization
came
too late, and the pilots had to sit in their panes on the runway and
watch
Dresden burn."

--"The Air war in Europe" p. 190, Time Life Books


> A gentlemen's
>agreement seemed to prevail,

>designating Dresden an "open city."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

"Dresden was not a target of Allied air attack until 1944. It was too
far to the east"

>Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one
>military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city.

'Harris was unapologetic. Dresden, he said at
the time, "was a mass of munitions works, an
intact government center, and a key
transportation center." He added, "It is now
none of those things."

>Together with the 600.000 refugees from
> Breslau, Dresden was filled
>with nearly 1.2 million people.

Review of Fred Taylor's book exposing the Dresden myth.

'Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.'

> Churchill
>had asked for "suggestions
>how to blaze 600.000 refugees".

No, he had not. Churchill opposed bombing of Dresden.

> He wasn't interested how to target
>military installations 60 miles outside
>of Dresden.

The military installations were not being used to organise resistance
to
the Red Army.

DRESDEN: MILITARY TARGET

>From a letter to the Sunday Telegraph from Churchill's interpreter:

As a correspondent pointed out, Dresden was bombed because it was a
military target. (Letters Feb 20). The city's destiny was sealed at
the Yalta conference (on Feb 4 1945) and, as Winston Churchill's
interpreter, I heard and watched Stalin with his deputy Chief of
Staff, General Antonov, urgently ask us to bomb roads and railways to
stop
Hitler transferring divisions from the West. Antonov stressed the
importance of Dresden as a vital rail junction, saying there was a
"uzel-svyazi" - literally, "communications knot".


>More than 700.000
>phosphorus bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people.


Review of Fred Taylors book exposing the Dresden Hoaxacaust.

'Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.'

>More than 260.000 bodies and residues of bodies were
>counted.

No, they weren't.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

" the true number was probably closer to the 25,000 to 30,000, now
cited in official Air Force historical statistics. Taylor backed the
number, too. He cited records recovered from the Dresden archives in
1993, listing the number of people buried after the attack in municipal
cemeteries at 21,271."

>But those who perished in the centre of the city can't be
>traced.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?storyI0747


Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred."

>On Shrove Tuesday, February 13, 1945, a
>flood of refugees fleeing the
>Red Army 60 miles away had swollen
>the city's population to well over a
>million. Each new refugee brought
>fearful accounts of Soviet
>atrocities. Little did those refugees
> retreating from the Red terror
>imagine that they were about to die
> in a horror worse than anything
>Stalin could devise.

STALIN ASKED FOR DRESDEN TO BE BOMBED.

>From a letter to the Sunday Telegraph from Churchill's interpreter:

As a correspondent pointed out, Dresden was bombed because it was a
military target. (Letters Feb 20). The city's destiny was sealed at
the Yalta conference (on Feb 4 1945) and, as Winston Churchill's
interpreter, I heard and watched Stalin with his deputy Chief of
Staff, General Antonov, urgently ask us to bomb roads and railways to
stop
Hitler transferring divisions from the West. Antonov stressed the
importance of Dresden as a vital rail junction, saying there was a
"uzel-svyazi" - literally, "communications knot".

=
Soviet Jeopardy

"By Feb. 2, 1945, the Russians were near Frankfurt,
but Moscow's drive now formed a bulge 400 miles
long at its base with northern and southern flanks
over 100 miles deep. Even this juggernaut was
vulnerable to flank attacks from areas still held
by the German Army. Dresden was a major rail junction
controlling German movement on that front."

=
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid09
"At the Churchill conference in Alaska last year, Sir Martin Gilbert
presented a discussion on Dresden as part of the Bletchley decrypts.
It seems that Bletchley had picked up evidence that the Germans were
moving several armored divisions toward the Eastern Front and they
would be going through the Dresden rail junction. The Russians were
very insistent that Dresden be bombed?they had no aircraft of their
own that could do the job?and even moved the bomb line to the east
temporarily to allow the British to do the job (very unprecedented,
and very un-Russian)."

>" Winston
>Churchill--in collusion with that other
> "great democratic statesman,"
>Franklin Delano Roosevelt--had decided
> that the city of Dresden was to
>be obliterated by saturation bombing.

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

On the Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio, USA,
16 November), in a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's
famous book Slaughterhouse Five, it was stated for
what must be the thousandth time that Winston
Churchill ordered the wanton destruction of Dresden,
and many German lives, in the closing months of
World War II, for no good reason (or to get back
for Coventry). This is very far from the truth."

"The short answer is that the bombing of Dresden
was requested by the Soviets. It was far down on
a list of things they wanted done by the Allies in
order to ease their military situation."

"Churchill was not even in London to make the
decision. He and Air Marshal Portal were en route
to Yalta. The decision was made by deputy prime
minister Clement Attlee"

>What where Churchill's motives? They appear
>to have been political, rather than military.

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

Although Dresden was by then already in the Soviet bomb line--the area
assigned to Soviet military operations--General Antonov asked the
British and Americans to take over that area, and to try to interdict
as best as possible this massive movement of German divisions through
Dresden.

It is curious that when the request came to the Prime Minister and
British chiefs of staff, Churchill and the chief of the air staff, Air
Marshal Portal, were in flight on their way to the Yalta conference. So
the request was dealt with by Churchill's deputy Clement Atlee, later
the Labour Prime Minister, and by the deputy chiefs of staff. All
approved the Soviet request. It was the 16th or 17th item of the things
they approved that day.

When Churchill and Portal reached Yalta there was an incredible moment.
According to the original Yalta transcript, Stalin suddenly (almost
before he says "thank you for coming") berates Churchill and asks him,
"Why don't you want us to defeat the Germans? Why are you constantly
harming our efforts?"

Churchill replies, "What are you talking about?" Antonov explains:
"Well, we asked you to bomb Dresden and we've not had a reply."

=
THE LEFT TELL LIES

"In February 1985 Brezhnev made a major speech in which
he accused the British and Americans of a war crime: 'the
destruction of Dresden.' This was a central part of the
Soviet denunciation of our efforts in WWII--which, of
course, in their view, had been both pitiable and aimed
against them. Yet Dresden was a "war crime."

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

>Historians unanimously agree that Dresden had no
>military value.

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>What industry it did have produced only cigarettes and
>china.

'Harris was unapologetic. Dresden, he said at
the time, "was a mass of munitions works, an
intact government center, and a key
transportation center." He added, "It is now
none of those things."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

=
http://enjoyment.independent.c�o.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?s�toryI0747

A Review of Fred Taylor's book about Dresden...

Thousands of impressed foreign workers and slave labourers toiled in
the city's armaments industries. Dresden had not been turning out
harmless porcelain or consumer goods for years. More than 120
factories were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in
1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards.'

=
>But the Yalta Conference was coming up,
>in which the Soviets and their
>Western allies would sit down like
>ghouls to carve up the shattered
>corpse of Europe.

Not like the virtuous Nazis sitting down with
Stalin to carve up Eastern Europe was it?

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/addsepro.htm

> Churchill wanted a
>trump card--a devastating
>"thunderclap of Anglo-American
>annihilation"--with which to "impress"
>Stalin.

http://enjoyment.independent.c�o.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?s�toryI0747

A Review of Fred Taylor's book about the Dresden raid
"Later accretions to the
myth included the obscene suggestion that Dresden was targeted by the
Western Allies as an object lesson for the Russians. "


>Dresden's citizens barely had time to reach their shelters.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

"All sources agreed on one fact: A contributing factor in
the number of casualties was that Dresden lacked proper
air raid shelters for civilians"

Excerpt from "The Dresden Legend"
By Rebecca Grant

=
>However, what distinguished this raid
>was the cold-blooded ruthlessness
>with which it was carried out. U.S.
>Mustangs appeared low over the
>city, strafing anything that moved,
>including a column of rescue
>vehicles rushing to the city to
>evacuate survivors. One assault was
>aimed at the banks of the Elbe River,
>where refugees had huddled during
>the horrible night.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/719201.stm

"Civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing
Dresden in February 1945 were not strafed by
British and American aircraft, according to
new research by a German historian.
War expert Helmut Schnatz has thrown into
doubt one of the most bitterly contested
legends of the Second World War."
"He has received death threats as a result
of the controversy."

>In the last year of the war, Dresden had
>become a hospital town.

FESTUNG DRESDEN

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?storyI0747


'Even before the war was over, a legend grew up around the bombing of
Dresden - largely thanks to Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Nazi
propaganda described Dresden as a city of no military value, crammed
with refugees from the East. The "Florence on the Elbe" was allegedly
obliterated in a senseless act of barbarism. Later accretions to the
myth included the obscene suggestion that Dresden was targeted by the
Western Allies as an object lesson for the Russians.


Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.


Thousands of impressed foreign workers and slave labourers toiled in
the city's armaments industries. Dresden had not been turning out
harmless porcelain or consumer goods for years. More than 120
factories were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in
1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards.'

=
>During
>the previous night's massacre, heroic nurses had dragged thousands of
>crippled patients to the Elbe. The low-flying Mustangs machine-gunned
>those helpless patients, as well as thousands of old men, women and
>children who had escaped the city.

NEVER BELIEVE A NAZI

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/719201.stm

"Civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing
Dresden in February 1945 were not strafed by
British and American aircraft, according to
new research by a German historian.
War expert Helmut Schnatz has thrown into
doubt one of the most bitterly contested
legends of the Second World War."
"He has received death threats as a result
of the controversy."


*

The Independent, London, 20 December 2001, p. 19

***************

>The death toll was staggering.

It was lower than other German cities we bombed.

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013


>The full extent of the Dresden Holocaust
>can be more readily grasped if one considers that well over 250,000 --
>possibly as many as a half a million -- persons died within a 14-hour
>period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from
>90,000 to 140,000.*

Or a mere 25,000 Nazis in reality.

>Allied apologists for the massacre have often "twinned" Dresden with
>the English city of Coventry. But the 380 killed in Coventry during the
>entire war cannot begin to compare with over 1,000 times that number
>who were slaughtered in 14 hours at Dresden.

Right, because 380,000 is an imaginary number
from the fertile depths of your imagination.

=
(Letters Feb 20). As someone who's grandparents died from German
bombers, who's aunt had her house destroyed around her, who's mother
became seriously ill through the strain, and someone who spent his
young nights cowering in air-raid shelters, I later bombed Dresden with

no compunction whatsoever.
G. Abrahams
Birchington, Kent

=
>Moreover, Coventry was a
>munitions center, a legitimate military target.

Yes, it was.

> Dresden, on the other
>hand, produced only china--and cups and saucers can hardly be
>considered military hardware!

PEACEFUL DRESDEN MAKING PEACEFUL
POURCELAIN CHAMBER POTS FOR
REICHSMARSCHALL GOERING

An official German 1942 guide described Dresden as
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>It is interesting to further compare
> the respective damage to London
>and Dresden, especially when we recall
> all the Hollywood schmaltz about
>the "London blitz." In one night,
>1,600 acres of land were destroyed in
>the Dresden massacre. London escaped
>with damage to only 600 acres
>during the entire war.

Still, you managed to kill
66,000 Britons - many of them women and children - during the
Blkitz, a total much larger than the 25,000 Nazis
killed in Dresden.

>In one ironic note, Dresden's only
>conceivable military target -- its

Well, apart from the 110 war-related factories
going full belt...

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

>railroad yards -- was ignored by Allied bombers.

Here is contemporary document showing the
extent of the destruction. As you can see
the railway yards lie well within the zone
of total destruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageresden1945-3.jpg

>They were too busy
>concentrating on helpless old
>men, women and children.

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"26. The Eighth Air Force raids against the city's railway facilities
on 14 and 15 February resulted in severe and extensive damage that
entirely paralyzed communications. The city's passenger terminals and
major freight stations, warehouses, and storage sheds were, when not
totally destroyed, so severely damaged that they were unusable.
Roundhouses, railway repair and work shops, coal stations, and other
operating facilities, were destroyed, gutted, or severely damaged. The
railway bridges over the Elbe river--vital to incoming and outgoing
traffic--were rendered unusable and remained closed to traffic for many
weeks after the raids.51"

>Churchill, the monster who ordered
>the Dresden slaughter,

Churchill did not want to bomb Dresden.

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

The raid was made at the request of the
left winger Joseph Stalin and the order
to bomb signed by socialist Clement Attlee.

> was knighted,
>and the rest is history.

No, it isn't. It is socialist propaganda.

>The cold-blooded sadism of the massacre,
>however, is brushed aside by his biographers,
>who still cannot bring
>themselves to tell how the desire of one
>madman to "impress" another
>one let to the mass murder of


http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

On the Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio, USA,
16 November), in a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's
famous book Slaughterhouse Five, it was stated for
what must be the thousandth time that Winston
Churchill ordered the wanton destruction of Dresden,
and many German lives, in the closing months of
World War II, for no good reason (or to get back
for Coventry). This is very far from the truth."

"The short answer is that the bombing of Dresden
was requested by the Soviets. It was far down on
a list of things they wanted done by the Allies in
order to ease their military situation."

"Churchill was not even in London to make the
decision. He and Air Marshal Portal were en route
to Yalta. The decision was made by deputy prime
minister Clement Attlee"

>up to a half million men, women and
>children.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

the true number was probably closer to the 25,000 to 30,000, now cited
in official Air Force historical statistics. Taylor backed the number,
too. He cited records recovered from the Dresden archives in 1993,
listing the number of people buried after the attack in municipal
cemeteries at 21,271.


http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013

-paul Jones

"Max Muir" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] oups.com...


>"You guys burnt the place down,
>turned it into a single column of
>flame. More people died there in the
>firestorm, in that one big flame,
>than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
> combined." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

"neo-Nazi groups promote the legend of Dresden via
Internet postings in order to show that non-Jewish
Germans suffered in the war."

The Dresden Legend by Rebecca Grant

>On the evening of February 13, 1945,
>an orgy of genocide and barbarism
>began against a defenseless German city,

DEFENCELESS DRESDEN

Eyewitness quote:
"In the distance an air-raid siren was wailing. Somebody muttered
`Chemnitz' nobody took any notice. But soon, sirens were sounding
loudly all around us. The local anti-aircraft batteries started
firing, joining in a chorus of crashing and banging to the rising
drone of heavy aircraft engines."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
"Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns
and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the
city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden
(Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration
Commands."

>one of the greatest cultural
>centers of northern Europe.

THE FLORENCE OF THE ELBE

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

Excerpt from "The Dresden Legend"
By Rebecca Grant

Goebbels Strikes

The second source was Nazi Germany's propaganda chief, Joseph
Goebbels. The foreign news service and the state-run Das Reich
newspaper started bumping casualty estimates from around 25,000 to
around 200,000 and emphasizing Dresden as a lost cultural treasure. "A
city skyline of perfected harmony has been wiped from the European
heavens," Das Reich said in early March 1945.


Okay a[[arently we haver a history discussion so what the hell I'll put in
my 2 cents worth, I read aus politics and soc.culture.jewish to.

So straight from there all the wold war 2 stuff has apparently been
completely propagandised , by the jews who sold their own people out, by
Churchill who could have avoided bombing as Hitler wqs against bombing other
white saxon tpe people, however .




=
The Independent

'Even before the war was over, a legend grew up around the bombing of
Dresden - largely thanks to Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Nazi
propaganda described Dresden as a city of no military value, crammed
with refugees from the East. The "Florence on the Elbe" was allegedly
obliterated in a senseless act of barbarism.


The point is it was the most merciless bombing of the war, which might I
remind you gentlemen was 60 years ago now.
So why the hell are we still arguing about it.
I thought only the jews did that still to squeeze the last drop of
reparations out of the Germans.



> Within
>less than 14 hours not only was it
>reduced to flaming ruins, but an
>estimated one-third of its
>inhabitants, possibly as many as a half
>a million, had perished in what
>was the worst single event massacre
>of all time.


http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm


Although from what I've picked up lately from the poltical groups, it does
seem like the BS flowed thick and fast over worrld war 2 and for the life of
me I can see no reason why it all hasnt been straightened out by our so
called historians because if we are to believe the plitical channels the
truth is so far away from what we are being fed by one would assume is our
reliable historians, that it does appear that Irving and Co might have a
greater handle on the truth than your school historian.

To start of with - leaving the false 6 mill claim which I believe has been
decreased to about 1 mill to at least have some accuracy in the discussion.
More about that later.
Next it was not just a heartless attack on jews, though Hitler was as racist
as our pauline, but the jews played into his hands by declaring war on
Hitler. That was when jews who were in the same postion in Germany
apparently as they are today in our countries were weeded out.
And that change was brought about by the world jewish organization
declaring war on what on what can only be non jewish supporting germans as
jews were part of the government, administration and army.

Jews in German army
http://judaism.about.com/b/a/039042.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675641/posts
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/jewishnazi.html
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righitpix.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERmiltch.htm
http://www.jugendgeschichtswerkstatt.de/strassennamen/fliegerviertel/fliegerviertel.html

http://www.stormfront.org/whitehistory/gerjews.htm
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/03/NSJews.html
Here by a Munich-born historian saluting in moving detail a group of little
known
heroines - the women, nearly all of them German, who opposed Hitler both
before and, more dramatically, during the war.

http://www.new-books-in-german.com/aut2001/book05a.htm




City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013


>Toward the end of World War II, as Allied
>planes rained death and destruction over Germany,
>the old Saxon city of Dresden lay like an
>island of tranquillity amid desolation.

PEACEFUL DRESDEN MAKING POURCELAIN
CHAMBER POTS

An official German 1942 guide described Dresden as
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>Famous as a cultural center and
>possessing no military value,

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

Some more grist for the mill from our political groups.

TERROR BOMBING
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had given an assurance that:

'The British Government would never resort to the deliberate attack on women
and children and other civilians for the purpose of mere terrorism.'

However, his successor Winston Churchill appointed as his personal adviser
the Jew Professor Lindemann. Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, suggested the
bombing of German cities and that working class areas were legitimate
targets, and from then onwards the last vestiges of civilised decency in
warfare were abandoned. These bombings began on 10 August 1940 with the
bombing of the small open town of Freiburg on the Swiss frontier.
Fifty-three civilians were killed, including twenty children playing in the
park. It was reported by Mr. Taylor of the American Red Cross in the New
York Times of 3 May 1940. This was before the Germans began bombing British
cities. Mr. J. M. Speight, CBE, Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry,
wrote in his book The Splendid Decision:

'Adolf Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets
reluctantly after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets...
It gave Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield and Southampton the right to look
Kiev, Kharkov, Stalingrad and Sebastopol in the face. Our Soviet allies
would have been less critical of our inactivity if they had understood what
we had done... Hitler would have been willing at my time to stop the
slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement
confining the action of aircraft to battle zones.'

http://www.heretical.com/
And once the decision to include bombimg in the legal and appropiate weapons
of war we have the huge civilian losses .
Also gains a lot of credibility as being the main cause of the jewish , and
I might add at this time largely out numbered by non jewish prisoners,
anyway the reason for the deaths of the prisoners in concentration camps
wasm the intense bombing. Beside of course the diseases that flourished
under the unhygeinic conditions and the lack of food as the Germans were
starving as well. And if you dont believe that ask your grandad what it was
like in Britain under rationing. Where by the way the incidence of heart
attack decreased because of the diet forced on Britain in wartime.

I dont know why the western politicians as a whole seem so ready to
discount explanations that fit the independent and uninvolved red cross
records. They did have an office in Auswicht.



The truth is that somewhere between 700,000 and 1,500,000 people died in
German work camps in 1944 and 1945. Most of them were Jews. Many were not.
Most of them died in the last six months of the war from disease and hunger
caused by America's bombing of Germany and subsequent destruction of her
infrastructure. There were some atrocities but very few. Few people realize
that
the International Red Cross had a field office in Auschwiz from 1942 until
the end of the war.
That office never reported or recorded any atrocities (Several years ago
international Jewry forced the Red Cross to apologize to the Jews -
apologize for not seeing something that never happened.)

Clearly, the German authorities were at pains to relieve the dire situation
as far as they were able. The Red Cross are quite explicit in stating that
food supplies ceased at this time due to the Allied bombing of German
transportation, and in the interests of interned Jews they had protested on
March 15th, 1944 against "the barbarous aerial warfare of the Allies" (Inter
Arma Caritas, p. 78). By October 2nd, 1944, the ICRC warned the German
Foreign Office of the impending collapse of the German transportation
system, declaring that starvation conditions for people throughout Germany
were becoming inevitable.




So the only ethical problem we have is should bombing be resisted as
fiercely as possible.

And why is this being discussed here, does this fit the much vaunted charter
my friends have been accused of breaking.


"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

>Dresden
>had been spared the terror that
>descended from the skies over the rest of the country.

"Dresden was not a target of Allied air attack
until 1944. It was too far to the east. In the
early years of the war, RAF Bomber Command and
the US Army Air Forces had their hands full
attacking Nazi-held France, Holland, and western
Germany. Then came concentrated attacks on major
industrial targets and the all-important
preparations for the Normandy invasion."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND by Rebecca Grant

>In fact, little had been done to
>provide the ancient city of artists
>and craftsmen with anti-aircraft defenses.

DEFENCELESS DRESDEN

Eyewitness quote:

"In the distance an air-raid siren was wailing. Somebody muttered
`Chemnitz' nobody took any notice. But soon, sirens were sounding
loudly all around us. The local anti-aircraft batteries started
firing, joining in a chorus of crashing and banging to the rising
drone of heavy aircraft engines."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
"Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns
and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the
city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden
(Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration
Commands."

=
>One squadron of planes had
>been stationed in Dresden for awhile,
>but the Luftwaffe decided to move
>the aircraft to another area where
>they would be of use.

"a unit of ME-110 night fighters was based only five miles
away, the fuel shortage was now so acute that the pilots were forbidden
to
take
off without authorization from division headquarters. The
authorization
came
too late, and the pilots had to sit in their panes on the runway and
watch
Dresden burn."

--"The Air war in Europe" p. 190, Time Life Books


> A gentlemen's
>agreement seemed to prevail,

>designating Dresden an "open city."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

"Dresden was not a target of Allied air attack until 1944. It was too
far to the east"

>Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one
>military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city.

'Harris was unapologetic. Dresden, he said at
the time, "was a mass of munitions works, an
intact government center, and a key
transportation center." He added, "It is now
none of those things."

>Together with the 600.000 refugees from
> Breslau, Dresden was filled
>with nearly 1.2 million people.

Review of Fred Taylor's book exposing the Dresden myth.

'Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.'

> Churchill
>had asked for "suggestions
>how to blaze 600.000 refugees".

No, he had not. Churchill opposed bombing of Dresden.

The problem is is it really worth using bombing which only useful purpose
today is to allow warmongers amonst to propose war when it would be
unthinkable if bombing was outlawed.

TERROR BOMBING
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had given an assurance that:

'The British Government would never resort to the deliberate attack on women
and children and other civilians for the purpose of mere terrorism.'

However, his successor Winston Churchill appointed as his personal adviser
the Jew Professor Lindemann. Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, suggested the
bombing of German cities and that working class areas were legitimate
targets, and from then onwards the last vestiges of civilised decency in
warfare were abandoned. These bombings began on 10 August 1940 with the
bombing of the small open town of Freiburg on the Swiss frontier.
Fifty-three civilians were killed, including twenty children playing in the
park. It was reported by Mr. Taylor of the American Red Cross in the New
York Times of 3 May 1940. This was before the Germans began bombing British
cities. Mr. J. M. Speight, CBE, Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry,
wrote in his book The Splendid Decision:

'Adolf Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets
reluctantly after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets...
It gave Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield and Southampton the right to look
Kiev, Kharkov, Stalingrad and Sebastopol in the face. Our Soviet allies
would have been less critical of our inactivity if they had understood what
we had done... Hitler would have been willing at my time to stop the
slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement
confining the action of aircraft to battle zones.'

Which for two armed sides of perhaps equal production it sounds like a good
idea. Keeping the war away from civilians.
Because it does seem as barbaric as the ancient wasting of cities by our
barbaric ancestors rather than the marshall plan and introduction of
democracy.



http://www.heretical.com/
And once the decision to include bombimg in the legal and appropiate weapons
of war we have the huge civilian losses .

You can argue whatever you like but the warmongers still amongst us will
find it easier to convince people to start wars when under the explanation ,
as with Iraq, that bombs killing 90000 or so is necessary to bring democracy
to them.
And should cut down resistance. and our casualities.


> He wasn't interested how to target
>military installations 60 miles outside
>of Dresden.

The military installations were not being used to organise resistance
to
the Red Army.

DRESDEN: MILITARY TARGET

>From a letter to the Sunday Telegraph from Churchill's interpreter:

As a correspondent pointed out, Dresden was bombed because it was a
military target. (Letters Feb 20). The city's destiny was sealed at
the Yalta conference (on Feb 4 1945) and, as Winston Churchill's
interpreter, I heard and watched Stalin with his deputy Chief of
Staff, General Antonov, urgently ask us to bomb roads and railways to
stop
Hitler transferring divisions from the West. Antonov stressed the
importance of Dresden as a vital rail junction, saying there was a
"uzel-svyazi" - literally, "communications knot".


>More than 700.000
>phosphorus bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people.


Review of Fred Taylors book exposing the Dresden Hoaxacaust.

'Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.'

>More than 260.000 bodies and residues of bodies were
>counted.

No, they weren't.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

" the true number was probably closer to the 25,000 to 30,000, now
cited in official Air Force historical statistics. Taylor backed the
number, too. He cited records recovered from the Dresden archives in
1993, listing the number of people buried after the attack in municipal
cemeteries at 21,271."

Sounds like the same argument about the 6 million jews. I find the municipal
cemetries a little questionable as from what i read you had bodies were
fused together even in underground bunkers, and burial was more likely to be
mass graves rather than individual graves.


>But those who perished in the centre of the city can't be
>traced.

And no DNA in those days made ID difficul in those circumstances.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?storyI0747


Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred."

>On Shrove Tuesday, February 13, 1945, a
>flood of refugees fleeing the
>Red Army 60 miles away had swollen
>the city's population to well over a
>million. Each new refugee brought
>fearful accounts of Soviet
>atrocities. Little did those refugees
> retreating from the Red terror
>imagine that they were about to die
> in a horror worse than anything
>Stalin could devise.

STALIN ASKED FOR DRESDEN TO BE BOMBED.

>From a letter to the Sunday Telegraph from Churchill's interpreter:

As a correspondent pointed out, Dresden was bombed because it was a
military target. (Letters Feb 20). The city's destiny was sealed at
the Yalta conference (on Feb 4 1945) and, as Winston Churchill's
interpreter, I heard and watched Stalin with his deputy Chief of
Staff, General Antonov, urgently ask us to bomb roads and railways to
stop
Hitler transferring divisions from the West. Antonov stressed the
importance of Dresden as a vital rail junction, saying there was a
"uzel-svyazi" - literally, "communications knot".

=
Soviet Jeopardy

"By Feb. 2, 1945, the Russians were near Frankfurt,
but Moscow's drive now formed a bulge 400 miles
long at its base with northern and southern flanks
over 100 miles deep. Even this juggernaut was
vulnerable to flank attacks from areas still held
by the German Army. Dresden was a major rail junction
controlling German movement on that front."

=
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid09
"At the Churchill conference in Alaska last year, Sir Martin Gilbert
presented a discussion on Dresden as part of the Bletchley decrypts.
It seems that Bletchley had picked up evidence that the Germans were
moving several armored divisions toward the Eastern Front and they
would be going through the Dresden rail junction. The Russians were
very insistent that Dresden be bombed own that could do the job temporarily
to allow the British to do the job (very unprecedented,
and very un-Russian)."


TERROR BOMBING
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had given an assurance that:

'The British Government would never resort to the deliberate attack on women
and children and other civilians for the purpose of mere terrorism.'

However, his successor Winston Churchill appointed as his personal adviser
the Jew Professor Lindemann. Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, suggested the
bombing of German cities and that working class areas were legitimate
targets, and from then onwards the last vestiges of civilised decency in
warfare were abandoned. These bombings began on 10 August 1940 with the
bombing of the small open town of Freiburg on the Swiss frontier.
Fifty-three civilians were killed, including twenty children playing in the
park. It was reported by Mr. Taylor of the American Red Cross in the New
York Times of 3 May 1940. This was before the Germans began bombing British
cities. Mr. J. M. Speight, CBE, Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry,
wrote in his book The Splendid Decision:

'Adolf Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets
reluctantly after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets...
It gave Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield and Southampton the right to look
Kiev, Kharkov, Stalingrad and Sebastopol in the face. Our Soviet allies
would have been less critical of our inactivity if they had understood what
we had done... Hitler would have been willing at my time to stop the
slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement
confining the action of aircraft to battle zones.'

Which for two armed sides of perhaps equal production it sounds like a good
idea. Keeping the war away from civilians.
Because it does seem as barbaric as the ancient wasting of cities by our
barbaric ancestors rather than the marshall plan and introduction of
democracy.



http://www.heretical.com/
And once the decision to include bombimg in the legal and appropiate weapons
of war we have the huge civilian losses .

>" Winston
>Churchill--in collusion with that other
> "great democratic statesman,"
>Franklin Delano Roosevelt--had decided
> that the city of Dresden was to
>be obliterated by saturation bombing.

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

On the Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio, USA,
16 November), in a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's
famous book Slaughterhouse Five, it was stated for
what must be the thousandth time that Winston
Churchill ordered the wanton destruction of Dresden,
and many German lives, in the closing months of
World War II, for no good reason (or to get back
for Coventry). This is very far from the truth."

"The short answer is that the bombing of Dresden
was requested by the Soviets. It was far down on
a list of things they wanted done by the Allies in
order to ease their military situation."

"Churchill was not even in London to make the
decision. He and Air Marshal Portal were en route
to Yalta. The decision was made by deputy prime
minister Clement Attlee"

>What where Churchill's motives? They appear
>to have been political, rather than military.

The problem is not Churchill but the acceptance of bombing as a legitimate
tool of war.


TERROR BOMBING
Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement
confining the action of aircraft to battle zones.'
http://www.ety.com/HRP/rev/terrorbombing.htm
"The most uncivilized means of warfare that the world had known since the
Mongol invasions."
Doubtless, the same programme makers would be able to find similar
justification for the equally evil 'hidden holocaust'. This occurred when
Josef Stalin's British equipped Red Army in 1945 turned northern Germany
into a wasteland upon which was scattered the remains of four million
Germans, mostly women and children. Not even animals were spared.

The BBC's Night and Day programme will be a carefully edited 'account' of
RAF Bomber Command's air war against Germany; a glorification of what the
eminent British war historian Captain Sir. Basil Liddell Hart declared as
being "the most uncivilized means of warfare that the world had known since
the Mongol invasions." (1)

The volcanic flames ensuing were thrown five times the height of New York's
Empire State Building, with gases as high again caused meteorological
reaction as high as the stratosphere. Likewise Frankfurt and scores of other
cities like them. Middle Europe, the cradle of civilization, was incinerated
along with its inhabitants.

http://www.rense.com/general67/curch.htm
After touring the ruins, Winston Churchill remarked, "They cheered me as if
I'd given them victory, instead of getting their houses bombed to bits."
(416)

Churchill is telling the truth.

Unknown to Londoners, he had rejected Hitler's proposal to spare civilian
targets. Quite the opposite, he goaded Hitler into bombing London by hitting
Berlin and other civilian targets first.


http://www.heretical.com/miscellx/blitz.html
Between 1940 and 1945, sixty-one German cities with a total population of 25
millions were destroyed or devastated in a bombing campaign initiated by the
British government. Destruction on this scale had no other purpose than the
indiscriminate mass murder of as many German people as possible quite
regardless of their civilian status. It led to retaliatory bombing resulting
in 60,000 British dead and 86,000 injured.

Hidden from the public
'It is one of the greatest triumphs of modern emotional engineering that, in
spite of the plain facts of the case which could never be disguised or even
materially distorted, the British public, throughout the Blitz Period
(1940-1941), remained convinced that the entire responsibility for their
sufferings rested on the German leaders.' Advance to Barbarism, F.J.P.
Veale.





http://www.heretical.com/
And once the decision to include bombimg in the legal and appropiate weapons
of war we have the huge civilian losses .

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

Although Dresden was by then already in the Soviet bomb line--the area
assigned to Soviet military operations--General Antonov asked the
British and Americans to take over that area, and to try to interdict
as best as possible this massive movement of German divisions through
Dresden.

It is curious that when the request came to the Prime Minister and
British chiefs of staff, Churchill and the chief of the air staff, Air
Marshal Portal, were in flight on their way to the Yalta conference. So
the request was dealt with by Churchill's deputy Clement Atlee, later
the Labour Prime Minister, and by the deputy chiefs of staff. All
approved the Soviet request. It was the 16th or 17th item of the things
they approved that day.

When Churchill and Portal reached Yalta there was an incredible moment.
According to the original Yalta transcript, Stalin suddenly (almost
before he says "thank you for coming") berates Churchill and asks him,
"Why don't you want us to defeat the Germans? Why are you constantly
harming our efforts?"

Churchill replies, "What are you talking about?" Antonov explains:
"Well, we asked you to bomb Dresden and we've not had a reply."

=
THE LEFT TELL LIES

"In February 1985 Brezhnev made a major speech in which
he accused the British and Americans of a war crime: 'the
destruction of Dresden.' This was a central part of the
Soviet denunciation of our efforts in WWII--which, of
course, in their view, had been both pitiable and aimed
against them. Yet Dresden was a "war crime."

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

>Historians unanimously agree that Dresden had no
>military value.

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>What industry it did have produced only cigarettes and
>china.

'Harris was unapologetic. Dresden, he said at
the time, "was a mass of munitions works, an
intact government center, and a key
transportation center." He added, "It is now
none of those things."

=
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

=
http://enjoyment.independent.c­o.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?s­toryI0747

A Review of Fred Taylor's book about Dresden...

Thousands of impressed foreign workers and slave labourers toiled in
the city's armaments industries. Dresden had not been turning out
harmless porcelain or consumer goods for years. More than 120
factories were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in
1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards.'

=
>But the Yalta Conference was coming up,
>in which the Soviets and their
>Western allies would sit down like
>ghouls to carve up the shattered
>corpse of Europe.

Not like the virtuous Nazis sitting down with
Stalin to carve up Eastern Europe was it?

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/addsepro.htm

> Churchill wanted a
>trump card--a devastating
>"thunderclap of Anglo-American
>annihilation"--with which to "impress"
>Stalin.

http://enjoyment.independent.c­o.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?s­toryI0747

A Review of Fred Taylor's book about the Dresden raid
"Later accretions to the
myth included the obscene suggestion that Dresden was targeted by the
Western Allies as an object lesson for the Russians. "


>Dresden's citizens barely had time to reach their shelters.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

"All sources agreed on one fact: A contributing factor in
the number of casualties was that Dresden lacked proper
air raid shelters for civilians"

Excerpt from "The Dresden Legend"
By Rebecca Grant

=
>However, what distinguished this raid
>was the cold-blooded ruthlessness
>with which it was carried out. U.S.
>Mustangs appeared low over the
>city, strafing anything that moved,
>including a column of rescue
>vehicles rushing to the city to
>evacuate survivors. One assault was
>aimed at the banks of the Elbe River,
>where refugees had huddled during
>the horrible night.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/719201.stm

"Civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing
Dresden in February 1945 were not strafed by
British and American aircraft, according to
new research by a German historian.
War expert Helmut Schnatz has thrown into
doubt one of the most bitterly contested
legends of the Second World War."
"He has received death threats as a result
of the controversy."

>In the last year of the war, Dresden had
>become a hospital town.

FESTUNG DRESDEN

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?storyI0747


'Even before the war was over, a legend grew up around the bombing of
Dresden - largely thanks to Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Nazi
propaganda described Dresden as a city of no military value, crammed
with refugees from the East. The "Florence on the Elbe" was allegedly
obliterated in a senseless act of barbarism. Later accretions to the
myth included the obscene suggestion that Dresden was targeted by the
Western Allies as an object lesson for the Russians.


Taylor exposes each one of these legends. Dresden was hardly "an
innocent city". It was a Nazified city in which opponents of the
regime and Czech nationalists had been incarcerated and executed en
masse. The Jewish population, which included the remarkable diarist
Viktor Klemperer, had been reduced by deportations from 6,000 to a few
hundred.


Thousands of impressed foreign workers and slave labourers toiled in
the city's armaments industries. Dresden had not been turning out
harmless porcelain or consumer goods for years. More than 120
factories were devoted to the German war effort. On an average day in
1944, 28 military trains passed through its marshalling yards.'

=
>During
>the previous night's massacre, heroic nurses had dragged thousands of
>crippled patients to the Elbe. The low-flying Mustangs machine-gunned
>those helpless patients, as well as thousands of old men, women and
>children who had escaped the city.

NEVER BELIEVE A NAZI

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/719201.stm

"Civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing
Dresden in February 1945 were not strafed by
British and American aircraft, according to
new research by a German historian.
War expert Helmut Schnatz has thrown into
doubt one of the most bitterly contested
legends of the Second World War."
"He has received death threats as a result
of the controversy."


*

The Independent, London, 20 December 2001, p. 19

***************

>The death toll was staggering.

It was lower than other German cities we bombed.

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013


>The full extent of the Dresden Holocaust
>can be more readily grasped if one considers that well over 250,000 --
>possibly as many as a half a million -- persons died within a 14-hour
>period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from
>90,000 to 140,000.*

Or a mere 25,000 Nazis in reality.

>Allied apologists for the massacre have often "twinned" Dresden with
>the English city of Coventry. But the 380 killed in Coventry during the
>entire war cannot begin to compare with over 1,000 times that number
>who were slaughtered in 14 hours at Dresden.

Right, because 380,000 is an imaginary number
from the fertile depths of your imagination.

=
(Letters Feb 20). As someone who's grandparents died from German
bombers, who's aunt had her house destroyed around her, who's mother
became seriously ill through the strain, and someone who spent his
young nights cowering in air-raid shelters, I later bombed Dresden with

no compunction whatsoever.
G. Abrahams
Birchington, Kent

=
>Moreover, Coventry was a
>munitions center, a legitimate military target.

Yes, it was.

> Dresden, on the other
>hand, produced only china--and cups and saucers can hardly be
>considered military hardware!

PEACEFUL DRESDEN MAKING PEACEFUL
POURCELAIN CHAMBER POTS FOR
REICHSMARSCHALL GOERING

An official German 1942 guide described Dresden as
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich."

THE DRESDEN LEGEND BY REBECCA GRANT

"Dresden shifted to a wartime footing, with the
large Zeiss-Ikon camera factory converted to make
fuses and bombsight optics. The United States
Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110
factories and industries in Dresden. Some 50,000
people worked in munitions and armaments production."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

>It is interesting to further compare
> the respective damage to London
>and Dresden, especially when we recall
> all the Hollywood schmaltz about
>the "London blitz." In one night,
>1,600 acres of land were destroyed in
>the Dresden massacre. London escaped
>with damage to only 600 acres
>during the entire war.

Still, you managed to kill
66,000 Britons - many of them women and children - during the
Blkitz, a total much larger than the 25,000 Nazis
killed in Dresden.

>In one ironic note, Dresden's only
>conceivable military target -- its

Well, apart from the 110 war-related factories
going full belt...

http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"In addition to its geographical position and topography and its
primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in
February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial
enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported
to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these
were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory
(Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun
factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany's most important
optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the
production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.),
gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder
Bassler).9"

>railroad yards -- was ignored by Allied bombers.

Here is contemporary document showing the
extent of the destruction. As you can see
the railway yards lie well within the zone
of total destruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageresden1945-3.jpg

>They were too busy
>concentrating on helpless old
>men, women and children.

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"26. The Eighth Air Force raids against the city's railway facilities
on 14 and 15 February resulted in severe and extensive damage that
entirely paralyzed communications. The city's passenger terminals and
major freight stations, warehouses, and storage sheds were, when not
totally destroyed, so severely damaged that they were unusable.
Roundhouses, railway repair and work shops, coal stations, and other
operating facilities, were destroyed, gutted, or severely damaged. The
railway bridges over the Elbe river--vital to incoming and outgoing
traffic--were rendered unusable and remained closed to traffic for many
weeks after the raids.51"

>Churchill, the monster who ordered
>the Dresden slaughter,

Churchill did not want to bomb Dresden.

http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

The raid was made at the request of the
left winger Joseph Stalin and the order
to bomb signed by socialist Clement Attlee.

> was knighted,
>and the rest is history.

No, it isn't. It is socialist propaganda.

>The cold-blooded sadism of the massacre,
>however, is brushed aside by his biographers,
>who still cannot bring
>themselves to tell how the desire of one
>madman to "impress" another
>one let to the mass murder of


http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageidd9

"BOMBING DRESDEN: NOT CHURCHILL'S IDEA

On the Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio, USA,
16 November), in a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's
famous book Slaughterhouse Five, it was stated for
what must be the thousandth time that Winston
Churchill ordered the wanton destruction of Dresden,
and many German lives, in the closing months of
World War II, for no good reason (or to get back
for Coventry). This is very far from the truth."

"The short answer is that the bombing of Dresden
was requested by the Soviets. It was far down on
a list of things they wanted done by the Allies in
order to ease their military situation."

"Churchill was not even in London to make the
decision. He and Air Marshal Portal were en route
to Yalta. The decision was made by deputy prime
minister Clement Attlee"

>up to a half million men, women and
>children.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004dresden.asp

the true number was probably closer to the 25,000 to 30,000, now cited
in official Air Force historical statistics. Taylor backed the number,
too. He cited records recovered from the Dresden archives in 1993,
listing the number of people buried after the attack in municipal
cemeteries at 21,271.


http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

"Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion
and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden
as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American
propaganda."

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm

City ---- Population -- Killed -- %
Darmstadt -- 109,000 --- 8,100 -- 0.075
Kassel ----- 220,000 --- 8,659 -- 0.039
Dresden -- 1,000,000 -- 25,000 -- 0.025
Hamberg -- 1,738,000 -- 41,800 -- 0.024
Wuppertal -- 400,000 --- 5,219 -- 0.013