Historian acknowledges Britain fire-bombed German cities in WWII for purpose of mass civilian deaths and terror, killing at least 600,000

The fire-bombing of German cities, such as Hamburg and Dresden, was not designed to "destroy military targets", but rather designed to kill civilians en mass, as a psychological weapon (as done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Still, the concensus among kosher "historians" and tv talking heads is that this "wasn't as evil as the (mythical) Nazi gas chambers."

Aftermath: Death and devastation in Dresden after the allied bombing in February 1945

Did Lancaster bombers that killed 600,000 in German cities deliberately target civilians? A new book says YES...

By Leo Mckinstry
Last updated at 9:13 AM on 29th September 2009
Daily Mail

To the RAF aircrews, the sight of the eastern German city ablaze looked like a terrifying vision of hell. As the vast stream of 796 four-engined Lancaster heavy bombers swept over Dresden on that night of February 14, 1945, almost 2,000 tons of explosives and incendiaries were dropped onto the inferno.

One Lancaster pilot recorded in his diary: 'The glow could be seen 50 miles away. The target area was almost like day. Down below, the town was a mass of flames, a pool of fire. It was awe-inspiring.'

The scenes in Dresden were Biblical in the scale of devastation. The merging of the fires sucked oxygen from the air and created a ferocious, howling tornado. Trees were pulled from their roots, buildings destroyed and people flung through the air like ragdolls.

Soaring temperatures turned the asphalt streets into a deadly, molten quagmire. Thousands suffocated or burned to death in the cellars of their homes. As the blaze intensified, huge crowds made for the city's reservoir and dived into the water.

But the sheer numbers, combined with the roaring heat and the lack of oxygen, made the place unbearable. People desperately tried to clamber out, yet the smooth cement edges made it impossible. Far from being a refuge, the reservoir turned into a sweltering graveyard.

The raid on Dresden is one of the most notorious episodes of Britain's war effort, a symbol of the ruthlessness of the RAF's strategic bombing offensive.

It has been estimated that around 25,000 people were killed that night - compare that to the 568 deaths in the assault on Coventry by the Luftwaffe in November 1940, by far the worst individual raid that any British city endured during the Blitz.

Yet, for all its infamy, the attack on Dresden was by no means the most savage of the RAF's bombing campaign. In July 1943, a series of raids on Hamburg killed at least 45,000 people in a gigantic firestorm.

Little more than a week after Dresden, 362 Lancasters dropped 1,551 tons of bombs on the small town of Pforzheim in 22 minutes. The central area became a blazing crematorium, with the death toll reaching 17,600, a quarter of the population.

In total, at least 600,000 civilians are thought to have lost their lives in the RAF's remorseless pounding of German cities. Because of the epic slaughter, the campaign has always provoked controversy.

During the war, the urban bombing had its detractors, not just from pacifists but even from figures within the Government itself, such as Tory Minister Lord Salisbury, who warned in 1943 that 'we are losing some of our moral superiority to the Germans'.

In the decades since 1945, the debate has continued to rage. Some have accused the British Government of war crimes. Others have drawn an emotionally charged parallel between the urban firestorms and the horrors of the Nazi gas chambers.

Defenders of the bombing offensive have long argued that such criticism is a gross injustice. The aim of the RAF, they maintain, was to destroy German industry and the military infrastructure. Civilian deaths were a regrettable consequence of this strategy, not its central goal.

'We have always adhered firmly to the principle that we attack none but military objectives,' declared Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Air Secretary, in the Commons in October 1943.

In one post-war lecture, Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff throughout the campaign, said it was 'a fallacy that our bombing of the German cities was intended to kill Germans, and that we camouflaged this intention by the pretence that we would destroy industry. The loss of life was purely incidental'.

The truth is that such claims were dishonest. Unpublished papers I have unearthed for my new book on the Lancaster bomber reveal that the mass, indiscriminate killing of Germany's urban population was indeed the key goal of the RAF's campaign.

During my research on the Lancaster - the heavyweight plane that enabled the RAF to mount the bomber offensive - I uncovered a wealth of archival material which exposes the truth about the Government's policy.

Typical was one paper from the Air Ministry, written in August 1941, which urged that the focus of attacks must be 'the people in their homes and factories'.

Warming to this theme, the Directorate found inspiration in the Luftwaffe's bombing of Coventry, 'one of the most successful raids carried out by the German Air Force on this country', with a ton of incendiaries for every 800 citizens.

'If Bomber Command could carry out a raid on the Coventry scale every month, the result would be a complete state of panic in the industrialised west of Germany', and 'considerable loss of life'.

Another 1941 Ministry report called for 'saturation by incendiaries' to break 'the morale of the population' and leave the German people 'conscious of constant physical danger'.

At the same time, the RAF's chief Sir Charles Portal privately promised Winston Churchill that a significant expansion in the heavy bomber force would ultimately bring about 'the destruction of six million homes' and 'civilian casualties estimated at 900,000'.

Indeed, senior RAF planners did not hesitate to use the term 'terror-bombing' to describe some of their raids.

Fearsome: A Lancaster bomber in action during the Second World War

The most passionate enthusiast of the strategic offensive was, of course, Sir Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command from 1942. 'What we want to do is to bring masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill the Boche and to terrify the Boche,' he said.

So relentless was his determination to hit the German cities that he regarded any other operations as a distraction. He even regarded the famous Dambusters Raid of May 1943 as a waste of time, privately claiming that it 'achieved nothing'.

The son of a civil engineer based in imperial India, Harris had developed his spirit of aggressive independence while at English boarding schools.

A grizzled veteran of World War I, he had risen through the ranks of the RAF through his dynamism and natural authority. Churchill regarded him as a philistine, but he was not without humour and could poke fun at his own image as a bloodthirsty autocrat.

Once, driving fast in his Bentley towards Whitehall, he was stopped by a police officer. 'You should be more careful. You could kill someone,' said the constable. 'Young man, I kill thousands of people every night,' he replied.

Harris's complaint against the RAF top brass, highlighted in archive papers which have never been published before, was that the Government should be far more candid about its policy of deliberately targeting Germany's civilians.

He never had any time for Portal's and Sinclair's denials, as he explained in a letter to them in October 1943: 'The aim of Bomber Command should be . . . publicly stated: the destruction of German cities and the killing of German workers.'

In another memo, two months later, he stated that the 'working populations are literally the heart of Germany's war potential. That is why they are being deliberately attacked'. But neither Portal nor Sinclair abandoned their rhetorical deceit as the campaign continued.

It was a campaign that would never have been possible without either the brilliance of the Avro Lancaster or the heroism of the aircrews.

Created by the visionary Avro designer Roy Chadwick and first entering RAF service in December 1941, the Lancaster transformed the performance of Bomber Command.

Its huge bomb bay, stretching twothirds of the fuselage, allied to the strength of its ultra-reliable Merlin engines, meant it could carry far greater loads than any other bomber in the European theatre. Its average load was 12,000lb, but towards the end of the war it was lifting the Grand Slam bomb weighing over 22,000lb, or ten tons.

Thanks to this capacity, the Lancasters dropped 51 million incendiaries and 607,000 tons of high explosives during the war. For all its weight, the Lancaster was also a highly manoeuvrable aircraft, capable of reaching more than 300mph in a shallow dive. It was also resilient, capable of absorbing large amounts of punishment and even of returning to England on just two engines.

But none of these virtues would have mattered without the bravery and selfsacrifice of the heavy bomber crews. No other part of the armed forces had consistently to endure such mortal dangers.

Of the 125,000 men who served in the Command, 55,700 - or 44 per cent - were killed in action, 8,400 seriously wounded and 9,800 taken prisoner.

'All war is brutal,' Harris-once warned. 'If there are any weaker brethren who cannot stomach it, the sooner we dispose of them, the better.'

Remarkably few airmen flinched in battle, despite the risks of flying through the German flak and fighters.

A rare few gloried in the slaughter, seeing it as revenge for the Blitz. 'The filthy Hun. Let the bastards die like the rats they are,' wrote Lancaster wireless operator John Byrne in late 1944.

Others had qualms about pounding residential areas. Bill Utting, an Australian who took part in the Dresden raid, said he 'felt disgust when I learnt of the numbers that had been killed. I was very, very sorry, but it was too late then'.

But the overwhelming attitude of the airmen was that they were helping to destroy the Nazi war machine.

They were right to feel that way. I would argue that, for all the ethical condemnation it has attracted, the bombing offensive was essential in defeating Germany.

The greatest moral crime of all would have been to abandon the campaign to hit back at the Reich, for that would have prolonged the war, and consequently the Nazis' genocidal oppression.

The strategic air offensive brought the war to German homeland, weakening its ability to carry on the fight. Thanks to the RAF's heavy bombers, the Reich was forced to divert colossal resources into air defences. By 1944, two million Germans were engaged in anti-aircraft duties, while a third of all artillery production was devoted to antiaircraft guns, when such weaponry was in desperately short supply.

A fifth of the non-agricultural German workforce was required to deal with consequences of bombing, such as clearing rubble, laying railway tracks or repairing damaged structures. One Nazi study in January 1945 revealed that, due to the bombing, the German economy had produced 25 per cent fewer tanks than planned, 31 per cent fewer aircraft and 42 per cent fewer lorries.

The air campaign also meant deepening misery for Germany's population.

'The people are beginning to suffer what is called bunker fever and inability to work,' revealed a report by the intelligence branch of the SS in January 1945.

As the attacks persisted, support for the Nazi regime crumbled. Interrogated by the Allies after the Nazis' surrender, Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, admitted that the attack on Dresden was the most demoralising raid of the war.

Alternatively, the bombing by Lancasters brought hope to the victims of German tyranny. 'The fires in the sky, a huge red glow - it was like heaven for us. We knew the end of the war must be near,' recalled Ben Halfgott, a Jew imprisoned in a concentration camp near Dresden.

The RAF's Lancasters gouged out the industrial heart of Germany. The campaign spelt ruin for the Reich's war economy and military capability. And in the end, despite the civilian death toll, that was the greatest moral triumph of all.

Lancaster: The Second World War's Greatest Bomber by Leo McKinstry (£20, John Murray). To order at £18 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216788/Did-Lancaster-bombers-killed-600-000-German-cities-deliberately-target-civilians-A-new-book-says-YES-.html


1943 - The Bombing of Hamburg - Uncensored German Film

Dresden - A True Holocaust And Act Of Heinous Terrorism

Eisenhower's Death Camps - Hundreds of Thousands of German POWs & Civilians Killed in Open Fields Without Access to Shelter, Food, & Water

The Dresden Bombing: An eyewitness account

source

The Dresden Bombing: An eyewitness accountBy Edda West.My grandmother would always begin the story of Dresden by describing the clusters of red candle flares dropped by the first bombers, which like hundreds of Christmas trees, lit up the night sky - a sure sign it would be a big air raid. Then came the first wave of hundreds of British bombers that hit a little after 10 p.m. the night of February 13-14, 1945, followed by two more intense bombing raids by the British and Americans over the next 14 hours. History records it as the deadliest air attack of all time, delivering a death toll that exceeded the atomic blasts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.In 20 minutes of intense bombing, the city became an inferno. The second bombing raid came three hours after the first and was “intended to catch rescue workers, firefighters and fleeing inhabitants at their fullest exposure.” Altogether, the British dropped nearly 3,000 tons of explosives that shattered roofs, walls, windows, whole buildings, and included hundreds of thousands of phosphorous incendiaries, which were small firebombs that sprinkled unquenchable fire into every crevasse they rolled into, igniting the inferno that turned Dresden into a “hurricane of flames.”By the time the Americans flew in for the third and last air raid, smoke from the burning city nearly obliterated visibility. One American pilot recollects, “We bombed from 26,000 feet and could barely see the ground because of clouds and long columns of black smoke. Not a single enemy gun was fired at either the American or British bombers.”The Americans dropped 800 tons of explosives and fire bombs in 11 minutes. Then, according to British historian David Irving in his book, The Destruction of Dresden, American P-51 fighter escorts dived to treetop level and strafed the city's fleeing refugees.My grandmother described the horrific firestorm that raged like a hurricane and consumed the city. It seemed as if the very air was on fire. Thousands were killed by bomb blasts, but enormous, untold numbers were incinerated by the firestorm, an artificial tornado with winds of more than 100 miles an hour that “sucked up its victims and debris into its vortex and consumed oxygen with temperatures of 1,000 degrees centigrade.”Many days later, after the fires had died down, my grandmother walked through the city. What she saw was indescribable in any human language. But the suffering etched on her face and the depths of anguish reflecting in her eyes as she told the story bore witness to the ultimate horror of man's inhumanity to man and the stark obscenity of war.Dresden, the capital of Saxony, a centre of art, theatre, music, museums and university life, resplendent with graceful architecture -- a place of beauty with lakes and gardens -- was now completely destroyed. The city burned for seven days and smoldered for weeks.My grandmother saw the remains of masses of people who had desperately tried to escape the incinerating firestorm by jumping head first into the lakes and ponds. The parts of their bodies that were submerged in the water were still intact, while the parts that protruded above water were charred beyond human recognition. What she witnessed was a hell beyond human imagination; a holocaust of destruction that defies description.It took more than three months just to bury the dead, with scores of thousands buried in mass graves. Irving wrote, “an air raid had wrecked a target so disastrously that there were not enough able-bodied survivors left to bury the dead.”Confusion and disorientation were so great from the mass deaths and the terror, that it was months before the real degree of devastation was understood and authorities, fearful of a typhus epidemic, cremated thousands of bodies in hastily erected pyres fueled by straw and wood.German estimates of the dead ranged up to 220,000, but the completion of identification of the dead was halted by the Russian occupation of Dresden in May. Elisabeth, who was a young woman of around 20 at the time of the Dresden bombing, has written memoirs for her children in which she describes what happened to her in Dresden. Seeking shelter in the basement of the house she lived in she writes, “Then the detonation of bombs started rocking the earth and in a great panic, everybody came rushing down. The attack lasted about half an hour. Our building and the immediate surrounding area had not been hit. Almost everybody went upstairs, thinking it was over but it was not. The worst was yet to come and when it did, it was pure hell. During the brief reprieve, the basement had filled with people seeking shelter, some of whom were wounded from bomb shrapnel.“One soldier had a leg torn off. He was accompanied by a medic, who attended to him but he was screaming in pain and there was a lot of blood. There also was a wounded woman, her arm severed just below her shoulder and hanging by a piece of skin. A military medic was looking after her, but the bleeding was severe and the screams very frightening.“Then the bombing began again. This time there was no pause between detonations and the rocking was so severe, we lost our balance, and were tossed around in the basement like a bunch of ragdolls. At times the basement walls were separated and lifted up. We could see the flashes of the fiery explosions outside. There were a lot of fire bombs and canisters of phosphorous being dumped everywhere. The phosphorus was a thick liquid that burned upon exposure to air and as it penetrated cracks in buildings, it burned wherever it leaked through. The fumes from it were poisonous. When it came leaking down the basement steps somebody yelled to grab a beer (there was some stored where we were), soak a cloth, a piece of your clothing, and press it over your mouth and nose. The panic was horrible. Everybody pushed, shoved and clawed to get a bottle.“I had pulled off my underwear and soaked the cloth with the beer and pressed it over my nose and mouth. The heat in that basement was so severe it only took a few minutes to make that cloth bone dry. I was like a wild animal, protecting my supply of wetness. I don't like to remember that.“The bombing continued. I tried bracing myself against a wall. That took the skin off my hands -- the wall was so hot. The last I remember of that night is losing my balance, holding onto somebody but falling and taking them too, with them falling on top of me. I felt something crack inside. While I lay there I had only one thought -- to keep thinking. As long as I know I'm thinking, I am alive, but at some point I lost consciousness.“The next thing I remember is feeling terribly cold. I then realized I was lying on the ground, looking into the burning trees. It was daylight. There were animals screeching in some of them. Monkeys from the burning zoo. I started moving my legs and arms. It hurt a lot but I could move them. Feeling the pain told me that I was alive. I guess my movements were noticed by a soldier from the rescue and medical corps.“The corps had been put into action all over the city and it was they who had opened the basement door from the outside. Taking all the bodies out of the burning building. Now they were looking for signs of life from any of us. I learned later that there had been over a hundred and seventy bodies taken out of that basement and twenty seven came back to life. I was one of them -- miraculously!“They then attempted to take us out of the burning city to a hospital. The attempt was a gruesome experience. Not only were the buildings and the trees burning but so was the asphalt on the streets. For hours, the truck had to make a number of detours before getting beyond the chaos. But before the rescue vehicles could get the wounded to the hospitals, enemy planes bore down on us once more. We were hurriedly pulled off the trucks and placed under them. The planes dived at us with machine guns firing and dropped more fire bombs. “The memory that has remained so vividly in my mind was seeing and hearing humans trapped, standing in the molten, burning asphalt like living torches, screaming for help which was impossible to give. At the time I was too numb to fully realize the atrocity of this scene but after I was 'safe' in the hospital, the impact of this and everything else threw me into a complete nervous breakdown. I had to be tied to my bed to prevent me from severely hurting myself physically. There I screamed for hours and hours behind a closed door while a nurse stayed at my bedside.“I am amazed at how vivid all of this remains in my memory. (Elizabeth is in her late 70s at the time of this writing). It is like opening a floodgate. This horror stayed with me in my dreams for many years. I am grateful that I no longer have a feeling of fury and rage about any of these experiences any more -- just great compassion for everybody's pain, including my own.“The Dresden experience has stayed with me very vividly through my entire life. The media later released that the number of people who died during the bombing was estimated in excess of two hundred and fifty thousand -- over a quarter of a million people. This was due to all the refugees who came fleeing from the Russians, and Dresden's reputation as a safe city. There were no air raid shelters there because of the Red Cross agreement.“What happened with all the dead bodies? Most were left buried in the rubble. I think Dresden became one mass grave. It was not possible for the majority of these bodies to be identified. And therefore next of kin were never notified. Countless families were left with mothers, fathers, wives, children and siblings unaccounted for to this day.” [end quote]According to some historians, the question of who ordered the attack and why, has never been answered. To this day, no one has shed light on these two critical questions. Some think the answers may lie in unpublished papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and perhaps others. History reports that the British and American attack on Dresden left more than 2-1/2 times as many civilians dead as Britain suffered in all of World War II, and that one in every 5 Germans killed in the war died in the Dresden holocaust.Some say the motive was to deliver the final blow to the German spirit -- that the psychological impact of the utter destruction of the heart centre of German history and culture would bring Germany to its knees once and for all.Some say it was to test new weapons of mass destruction, the phosphorous incendiary bomb technology. Undoubtedly the need for control and power was at the root. The insatiable need of the dominators to exert control and power over a captive and fearful humanity is what drives acts of mass murder like the Dresden firebombing and Hiroshima.I think there was also an additional hidden and cynical motive which may be why full disclosure of the Dresden bombing has been suppressed. The Allies knew full well that hundreds of thousands of refugees had migrated to Dresden in the belief that this was a safe destination and the Red Cross had been assured Dresden was not a target. The end of the war was clearly in sight at that point in time and an enormous mass of displaced humanity would have to be dealt with. What to do with all these people once the war ended? What better solution than the final solution? Why not kill three birds with one stone? By incinerating the city, along with a large percentage of its residents and refugees, the effectiveness of their new firebombs was successfully demonstrated. Awe and terror was struck in the German people, thereby accelerating the end of the war. And finally, the Dresden firebombing ensured the substantial reduction of a massive sea of unwanted humanity, thereby greatly lessening the looming burden and problem of postwar resettlement and restructuring.We may never know what was in the psyche of those in power or all the motives that unleashed such horrific destruction of civilian life - the mass murder of a defenseless humanity who constituted no military threat whatsoever and whose only crime was to try to find relief and shelter from the ravages of war. Without the existence of any military justification for such an onslaught on helpless people, the Dresden firebombing can only be viewed as a hideous crime against humanity, waiting silently and invisibly for justice, for resolution and for healing in the collective psyches of the victims and the perpetrators.

Related Articles:- Dresden - A True Holocaust And Act Of Heinous Terrorism- The REAL "holocaust" of WWII - the post-war genocide of at least three million Germans- "Crimes and Mercies" by James Bacque: the genocide of 9 to 14 million ethnic Germans under Allied occupation from 1944-1950- Hidden History: The Starvation of Around One Million Germans by Allied Naval Blockade Following WWI - Bolshevik Revolutions In Germany circa 1919- The Jewish Desire to Exterminate Non-Jews- Revisionism "kosher" for REAL "holocaust" at Dresden; Commission says only "25,000" died

Dresden - A True Holocaust And Act Of Heinous Terrorism

Following the recent "kosher" white-washing of the history of the bombing of Dresden, let us learn and reflect on the truth about this dark chapter of history:source: http://www.israelect.com/reference/WillieMartin/Dresden.htm

Dresden - A True Holocaust And Act Of Heinous TerrorismFifty-eight years ago, on the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. 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 half a million--had perished in what was the worst massacre of all time.[...]The following account, taken from the Feb. 1985 issue of the NS Bulletin, tells us what a REAL holocaust is like.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 tranquility amid desolation. Famous as a cultural center and possessing no military value, Dresden had been spared the terror that descended from the skies over the rest of the country.[...]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.[...]The first bomb fell at 10:09 p.m. The attack lasted 24 minutes, leaving the inner city a raging sea of fire. "Precision saturation bombing" had created the desired firestorm.A firestorm is caused when hundreds of smaller fires join in one vast conflagration. Huge masses of air are sucked in to feed the inferno, causing an artificial tornado. Those persons unlucky enough to be caught in the rush of wind are hurled down entire streets into the flames. Those who seek refuge underground often suffocate as oxygen is pulled from the air to feed the blaze, or they perish in a blast of white heat--heat intense enough to melt human flesh.[...]A Swiss citizen described his visit to Dresden two weeks after the raid: "I could see torn-off arms and legs, mutilated torsos and heads which had been wrenched from their bodies and rolled away. In places the corpses were still lying so densely that I had to clear a path through them in order not to tread on arms and legs."The death toll was staggering. 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.[...]In one ironic note, Dresden's only conceivable military target-- its railroad yards--was ignored by Allied bombers. They were too busy concentrating on helpless old men, women and children.If ever there was a war crime, then certainly the Dresden Holocaust ranks as the most sordid one of all time. Yet there are no movies made today condemning this fiendish slaugher; nor did any Allied airman--or Sir Winston--sit in the dock at Nuremberg. In fact, the Dresden airmen were actually awarded medals for their role in this mass murder. But, of course, they could not have been tried, because there were "only following orders."This is not to say that the mountains of corpses left in Dresden were ignored by the Nuremberg Tribunal. In one final irony, the prosecution presented photographs of the Dresden dead as "evidence" of alleged National Socialist atrocities against Jewish concentration-camp inmates! Churchill, the monster who ordered the Dresden slaugher, was knighted, and the rest is history. 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 up to a half million men, women and children.NEVER SHALL WE FORGET THE VICTIMS OF THIS UNSPEAKABLE CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.

Related Articles:- The Dresden Bombing: An eyewitness account- The REAL "holocaust" of WWII - the post-war genocide of at least three million Germans- "Crimes and Mercies" by James Bacque: the genocide of 9 to 14 million ethnic Germans under Allied occupation from 1944-1950- Hidden History: The Starvation of Around One Million Germans by Allied Naval Blockade Following WWI - Bolshevik Revolutions In Germany circa 1919- The Jewish Desire to Exterminate Non-Jews- Revisionism "kosher" for REAL "holocaust" at Dresden; Commission says only "25,000" died

Revisionism "kosher" for REAL "holocaust" at Dresden; Commission says only 25,000 died

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Dresden-victims-39farfewer-than-believed39.4549585.jp

Dresden victims 'farfewer than believed'02 October 2008 By BRIAN FERGUSON A NEW study claims no more than 25,000 people were killed in the massive Allied bombing of Dresden in the Second World War – far fewer than many scholars have believed.

http://cofcc.org/?p=2797

German government denies the holocaustCofCC.org News TeamOctober 3, 2008In Germany there is a law that says you can’t “defame the dead” by downplaying war atrocities or publish information about the numbers of fatalities in an atrocity that is lower than previously agreed upon figures. Normally people charged with violating this law are declared “holocaust deniers.”This however is thrown out the window when it comes to the Government and the victims of the atrocity are ethnic Germans.[...]Firebombing of Dresden…The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, 12 weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying 13 square miles (34 km2) of the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city center.Dresden was a cultural landmark of little or no military significance, a “Florence on the Elbe,” as it was known, and the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and not proportional for the commensurate military gains.Winston Churchill had promised to spare Dresden as a safe-haven for German refugees. The city of 650,000 million had swelled to an estimated two million prior to the bombing. The attack was largely hidden from the American population for two and a half decades. It wasn’t until the 1969 movie “Slaughterhouse Five” about US POWs in Dresden shocked American audiences, who had never heard of the bombing before. The movie was based on a book by Kurt Vonnegut and cited the death toll at 135,000. Kurt Vonnegut was not only a famous novelist, but was an American POW that witnessed the bombing firsthand. Tens of thousands of American, British, and Canadian POWs were being held in Dresden. As many as 4,000 died in the bombing.A little known investigation by the US government declared that 50,000 had perished. However, a large list of major historians have consistently put the death toll at well over 100,000. Some German historians claim a quarter of a million killed. Most of the victims were homeless refugees fleeing from the Soviet Army.After the bombing, Winston Churchill appeared ashamed of it and repeatedly tried to distance himself from the attack. An American investigation into why Dresden was bombed blamed the attack on the Soviet Union. Stating that the US was obligated to bomb Dresden at the request of the Soviets due to a pre-existing agreement.[...]The report is transparently disingenuous and a hypocritical double standard when it comes to the application of German law protecting the memory of those who died in atrocities.

Tears for Dresden

http://www.louisbeam.com/dresden.htmI Cried Tears For DresdenFebruary 13, 1997Essay By Louis Beam

Though I never knew them, though they died months before I was born, I can not help but to still feel the pain of those innocent people of Dresden who suffered so unjustly, unfairly, and totally without fault February 13, 1945. They make me think of abused children suffering for something that they do not understand. Abused children in a small way share with those now departed souls of Dresden the total unjustness of this world. Innocent people would not in a fair world, a decent world, be made to suffer.They died this night. So many of them. Bombs raining down upon their heads like manna from hell -the heads of defenseless women and children for the most part. Babies in their cribs. Sobbing children in their mothers arms. Little girls without blemish, little boys full of anticipation at the excitement life promised them. The girls became blemished heaps of burnt flesh. The promise was broken by life to the boys. There would be no future for them.Even now, across time, distance, culture, language, and ocean, I hear their cries. Ten thousand per second raising their helpless, tortured voices for mercy. No mercy. No relief. Only painful death from planes with United States written on them. Why did my father’s generation do this? How could they kill all these people - then not know about it? My father a decorated, battle field commissioned, combat hardened infantry veteran of Roosevelt’s army, told me as I lay at his feet as a small child listening that "Hitler was bad but the German people were good." The Germans were "very smart" they just had a bad leader he said. He was proud of his role as a soldier in defeating Germany. And if soldiers are without responsibilities for their role in history then he had more right then many to be proud of his many decorations. Then in 1984 after discovering the horrible truth about Dresden I spoke to my father about it. I told him more people were killed there in a single night of fire and bombing then in England during the entire war. He said "that is a lie." He refused to believe me. I stressed to him that they were innocent people. He became angry with me. I asked him why they were killed. His anger boiled over and he said I was believing Nazi propaganda. I said to him "there are no Nazi’s daddy you killed them all, there are only people who study history" while pulling an Encyclopedia Americana from the shelf. The encyclopedia while only admitting to a numerical fraction of the dead at Dresden was yet sufficient to exceed England’s total bombing dead."These were refugees fleeing the communists" I said, becoming angry myself. "Why did Roosevelt order it done?" I demanded of him.He read it and became silent. He read it again while running his fingers along the words carefully touching the numbers as if to make sure they were there and real. It then dawned on me. He did not know! He had lived through this time and because of a constant flood of propaganda from America’s news media this horrible war crime and others like it had been kept from him.I could see this troubled him, for it was from him that I acquired the proclivity of taking up the fight for the down trodden, those abused unfairly. He was a kind man and would have never knowingly participated in such cruelty. I left for home then feeling sorry for Dad. I left him to think in peace. My anger at his being a part of those who did this horrible thing abated.I swear I will not forget the crime against innocent people at Dresden. I will not forget who is responsible. I will not forget! I am but one small life. One dim light in a world covered with the darkness of cruel machinations by evil men. But this little light of mine, I will let it shine! For only by doing so do I serve my reason for existence, for life, for eternity. I read as a young person that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Those words became a part of my soul, my life. Love is put to the test when one takes on the suffering of others - when one becomes a voice against evil for those who have none, a target of abuse for doing nothing but standing for justice. There is no reward save knowing you have done that which is right. And there is hope. Hope that others will make the light that truth is a part of their life, their existence, so that together we become a bright ray for the future. A light unto the feet of all our fellow men who stumble.In distant Dresden park they lie in their graves now. Rest my unknown friends, you downtrodden and despised of this world. Though we could not speak the same language if we stood before each other, though I never knew your names, and while your faces I can only imagine, you are my departed loved ones. My heart beats for yours. My mind remembers for yours. My tears for yours...

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