Historians allege Dresden deathtoll "exaggerated"

[Blood Trinity]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7066263.ece

Crypto-Zionist hypocrites take a stab at German suffering with re-evaluation of the deathtoll of the Dresden bombings, alleging that the Nazis exaggerated the figures for political ends.

Wait - Does this sound familiar at all?

Ladies and gentleman, expect revisionism to appear in the news once again down the road.

[Blood Trinity]

The timing of this earth-shattering historical revelation really is impeccable with Ernst Zündel's very recent release from prison. For those of you living on the moon for the last 30 or so years, he's that guy that has been battling both Canada and Germany's legal system for years and was finally thrown in jail for questioning whether the deathtoll at Auschwitz and elsewhere was exaggerated for political ends.

Somehow, I doubt the revisionism of this already-downplayed massacre will end up in court. The degree of "chutzpah" on display is simply amazing.

[Lulletje Rozewater]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7066263.ece

Crypto-Zionist hypocrites take a stab at German suffering with re-evaluation of the deathtoll of the Dresden bombings, alleging that the Nazis exaggerated the figures for political ends.

Wait - Does this sound familiar at all?

Ladies and gentleman, expect revisionism to appear in the news once again down the road.

That is hogwash.
The estimate of 200.000 plus is quite right.
There may have been 25.000 Dresden citizens killed,but the massive influx of people from the East fleeing to Dresden were large,most of them were not accounted for.
Besides, Dresden had no real "war" factories.
This bombing was an outright crime,willfully perpetrated,-----by savages.
While I do not dispute the German bombings on Allied cities(Rotterdam,Stalingrad),they certainly did not bomb Paris or Lion for that matter,the way the Allies did Dresden.

[Lulletje Rozewater]

Dresden song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYYgTNXxwUA

[Lenny]

The number of registered missing persons, i.e. dead, was over 100,000. (http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Dresden/deathroll/index.html) Since the city was packed with refugees from the east, a lot of the dead probably went unreported...

(Let it be noted that private families of Dresden had no reason to fake a missing-person's report, then or now, because it's not like Dresden [or Hamburg, etc] victims got any kind of cash payments or glory, as a certain other group's real and supposed victims have...).

Something like two-thirds of all the buildings in the city were flattened or gutted in the firestorm. The city was too crowded and only minimal air-raid precautions were in place, since no one dreamed anyone would bomb this nonmilitary city. (Possibly excluding the railyard, which was curiously untouched in the Feb.13th holocaust!). How anything less than the 135,000 dead that the Dresden officials concluded in March 1945 could have died is a mystery to me.

[Cato]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

10 March 1945: 334 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy ~267,000 buildings; ~25% of city[1] (Operation Meetinghouse) killing some 100,000

Two unsung and horrible stories of WW2, yet the Magical Six Million get all the airtime.

[Wulfhere]

That is hogwash.
The estimate of 200.000 plus is quite right.
There may have been 25.000 Dresden citizens killed,but the massive influx of people from the East fleeing to Dresden were large,most of them were not accounted for.
Besides, Dresden had no real "war" factories.
This bombing was an outright crime,willfully perpetrated,-----by savages.
While I do not dispute the German bombings on Allied cities(Rotterdam,Stalingrad),they certainly did not bomb Paris or Lion for that matter,the way the Allies did Dresden.

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

[Falkata]

I´m not an historian and i didn´t do a research about the Dresden bombing, so i can´t discredit their theories... I just would like to know why this kind of revisionism is fine and not ther other one? :rolleyes:
This double standard is shameful

[Lulletje Rozewater]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

So what are 10 mercians killed in the scheme of stupidity

[Cato]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

http://smartmortgageadvice.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/footinmouth.jpg

[Wulfhere]

So what are 10 mercians killed in the scheme of stupidity

I don't know what you mean, but I do know that 10 Mercians are worth more than 80 million Germans.

[poiuytrewq0987]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a133/LordPsycho/tactical_facepalm.jpg

[Lulletje Rozewater]

I don't know what you mean, but I do know that 10 Mercians are worth more than 80 million Germans.

That is uderstandable:D:D
The following extract is taken from John Brannigan’s highly interesting study of Literature in England, 1945 – Orwell to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan 2003) from a chapter entitled “English Journeys”, in which the author considers Geoffrey Hill’s poem Mercian Hymns :

“In recent years, this scarcely understood Mercian king has become central to an ongoing debate about the nature of Englishness, as a number of Islamic commentators have argued that Offa converted to Islam during his reign over England. The evidence for this conversation comes from the Islamic inscriptions on Offa’s coins, whch have been interpreted as quotations from the Qur’an….I’m ill-equipped to to make any contribution as to the veracity of these claims and their refutations, but amidst contemporary Powellite debates about the degree to which the Islamic faith is congruent with Englishness, the possibility that Offa might prove to be the ancestor of a diversely orientated, multi-cultural, multi-faith England is a salutary reminder of the polymorphous legacies of history.”


What is your muslim name.:eek::eek:

[Svanhild]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

Is there an ignore list function? I want to add that imbecile member.

[Arrow Cross]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.
http://gadgetsteria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/implied-facepalm.jpg


Is there an ignore list function? I want to add that imbecile member.
He's a clinical case, truly. Every forum needs one for the entertainment, but this one isn't even funny anymore.

You can find your Ignore List under the "Settings & Options" menu in your User CP.

[Al Croise]

First of all Dresden was military target.
There were plenty of military targets like:
roads
bridges
food factories
electricity works
railway station
etc.

If the Germans wanted to demilitarize Dresden and avoid bombing they could have done following actions:
block the roads for Wehrmacht, SS and military supplies
blow up bridges
blow up food factories
blow up electricity works
blow up railway station
blow up etc.

They failed to blow up military targets themselves and demilitarize Dresden, so they were punished by allies.

Second of all.
The dead of Dresden are not victims.
Germans started the war, so they were perpetrators. German killed is not a victim.
German killed is a guilty perpetrator killed.

Analogy:
Pedophile raped and killed blond 7 year old girl.
He was caught and executed (Texas), sentenced for 18 months in jail (Dresden, Germany :wink ).
Is he a victim, because he was executed (in Texas) or sentenced for 18 months in jail (Dresden, Germany :wink )?
Or is he a guilty perpetrator?

That is the reason the World does not buy German victimhood.

[Pallantides]

First of all Dresden was military target.
There were plenty of military targets like:
roads
bridges
food factories
electricity works
railway station
etc.

If the Germans wanted to demilitarize Dresden and avoid bombing they could have done following actions:
block the roads for Wehrmacht, SS and military supplies
blow up bridges
blow up food factories
blow up electricity works
blow up railway station
blow up etc.

They failed to blow up military targets themselves and demilitarize Dresden, so they were punished by allies.

Second of all.
The dead of Dresden are not victims.
Germans started the war, so they were perpetrators. German killed is not a victim.
German killed is a guilty perpetrator killed.

Analogy:
Pedophile raped and killed blond 7 year old girl.
He was caught and executed (Texas), sentenced for 18 months in jail (Dresden, Germany :wink ).
Is he a victim, because he was executed (in Texas) or sentenced for 18 months in jail (Dresden, Germany :wink )?
Or is he a guilty perpetrator?

That is the reason the World does not buy German victimhood.


http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a133/LordPsycho/tactical_facepalm.jpg

http://gadgetsteria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/implied-facepalm.jpg

[Smaland]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

According to the Wikipedia article on the Blitz, 60,447 British were killed during the War by conventional bombing and V-weapon attacks (51,509 by bombing and another 8,938 by V-weapons). The enormity of their suffering needs no further comment from me.

But this does not justify the execution of a single German civilian. They were all completely innocent of this particular set of acts. They owned no bombers, they possessed no V-weapons, and they didn't even know how to fly. They were ordinary people who were simply trying to make it through each day. The people of Dresden should not have been burned at the stake simply for being German.

[Jarl]

So what are the numbers officially? The discrepancy between 25,000 and 250,000 is quite striking...



In the first few decades after the war, some death toll estimates were as high as 250,000. However, figures in the hundreds of thousands are now considered unreasonable.[6] Today's historians estimate a death toll between 24,000 and 40,000,[7] and an independent investigation commissioned by the city council in 2006 determined a minimum of 18,000 victims with a maximum total number of fatalities of around 25,000.[8][9][10]



So oficially it is 18 000 to 25 000... which of course, does not make it less of a crime. Bombing and murdering civilians should be always condemned.


For comparison, London bombings during the Blitz took 43,000 lives.

[Svanhild]

So oficially it is 18 000 to 25 000... which of course, does not make it less of a crime.
The official numbers are sugar-coated and estimated by scientists of the system, in other words leftist-liberal and in case of doubt against German interests. My trust is on authentic and politically neutral scientists, former numbers and eyewitnesses. The real number of victims is somewhere between 75.000 and 150.000. To suggest that only 18.000 people were killed is sheer cynicism and sires of an anti German basic attitude.

[Cato]

The official numbers are sugar-coated and estimated by scientists of the system, in other words leftist-liberal and in case of doubt against German interests. My trust is on authentic and politically neutral scientists, former numbers and eyewitnesses. The real number of victims is somewhere between 75.000 and 150.000. To suggest that only 18.000 people were killed is sheer cynicism and sires of an anti German basic attitude.

At least 100,000 from what I've been able to tell, making Dresden a a very huge calamity, right behind two cities named Hiroshima and Nagasakhi. :eek:

[Fortis in Arduis]

The timing of this earth-shattering historical revelation really is impeccable with Ernst Zündel's very recent release from prison. For those of you living on the moon for the last 30 or so years, he's that guy that has been battling both Canada and Germany's legal system for years and was finally thrown in jail for questioning whether the deathtoll at Auschwitz and elsewhere was exaggerated for political ends.

Somehow, I doubt the revisionism of this already-downplayed massacre will end up in court. The degree of "chutzpah" on display is simply amazing.

I do not identify a Zionist agenda here.

You might find a crypto-this or that, because that is what most zealots want to find, but the enemy is international capitalism and socialism, not Zionism, which is simply a broad-spectrum political and also religious movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in biblical Israel.

Chutzpah is not the sole preserve of the Jewish people.

Britain and Britons have enough chutzpah for everyone to share. ;)


They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

So, you are an apologist for capitalist war-crimes and ethnocides.

:coffee:

The diminutive figures for British and Commonweath civilian casualties were dwarfed by those of ethnic Germans, not to mention the number of German-Jews and Poles who were abandoned by, or dismissed as unimportant by the capitalist stooges of American finance.

I think that we have to take a long look at ourselves before pointing the finger.

[Jarl]

To suggest that only 18.000 people were killed is sheer cynicism and sires of an anti German basic attitude.

But if this is truth:

Today's historians estimate a death toll between 24,000 and 40,000,[7] and an independent investigation commissioned by the city council in 2006 determined a minimum of 18,000 victims with a maximum total number of fatalities of around 25,000.[8][9][10]

Then who's claiming the toll was higher than 40,000? I mean... on what ground you assert that these numbers are "sheer cynism"? If you think that the German authorities themselves (city council) are inadequate to conduct a credible research, then there is pretty much noone you consider reliable. We might as well put the figure up to 40 mln.

Here, some internet amateurs claim it was an unbelievable 600, 000 ppl!


http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?277131-65-years-ago-The-WWII-Dresden-Holocaust-A-Single-Column-Of-Flame


At least 100,000 from what I've been able to tell, making Dresden a a very huge calamity, right behind two cities named Hiroshima and Nagasakhi. :eek:

Is this based on some factual data?


Dresden has a population of 650 000 in 1933. Then it decreased to 450 000 by 1946. However, most people got displaced since they lost their homes. Rotterdam Blitz officially took 1000 lives, but displaced or left homeless about 70 000 to 80 000 people. Thus, we got a net difference of 200, 000 citizens. Majority of which were most likely displaced.


I mean. German Blitz that lasted about a year took 40, 000 lives in London... So I would be careful when looking at the figures. Does anyone question the credibility of this:

e bombing of Dresden by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force between 13 February and 15 February 1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of the Western European theatre of war. The inner city of Dresden was largely destroyed by 800 RAF and USAAF bombers that dropped 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) bombs[13] in three waves of attacks. Early reports estimated 150,000 to 250,000 deaths but the German Dresden Historians' Commission in an official 2010 report published after five years of research concluded that there were up to 25,000 civilian casualties.[14]

...???

[Svanhild]

But if this is truth:

Today's historians estimate a death toll between 24,000 and 40,000,[7] and an independent investigation commissioned by the city council in 2006 determined a minimum of 18,000 victims with a maximum total number of fatalities of around 25,000.[8][9][10]

Then who's claiming the toll was higher than 40,000?
It's not the truth, it's a politically intended result. German rightwing activists often use Dresden as the master example of German bloodletting in WW2 hence the political mainstream has an interest to tone down the numbers of victims.

on what ground you assert that these numbers are "sheer cynism"?
On the ground of common sense. Gesunder Menschenverstand.

If you think that the German authorities themselves (city council) are inadequate to conduct a credible research, then there is pretty much noone you consider reliable.
Current German authorities are rotten and often act fully against the will of the people by purpose.

We might as well put the figure up to 40 mln.
Why do you want to turn every German issue into ridicule? You wouldn't do that if the topic was on Polish victim numbers. Can't you behave at least one single time?


Dresden has a population of 650 000 in 1933. Then it decreased to 450 000 by 1946. However, most people got displaced since they lost their homes.
By the time of the bombing raids Dresden was full of refugees of the eastern territories. A lot of them were unregistered and any halfway sane mind should come to the conclusion that it is impossible to come to a clear number of victims und such circumstances. Unregistered victims have no name and are often counted as missed and not as dead.

Eyewitnesses, natives to Dresden and former objective researchers, uninfluenced by political interests, confirmed that the bombings killed at least 75.000 to 150.000 people. Pardon my french, but I trust these people more than modern scientists who have a political agenda and weren't even alive when the bombings took place.

[antonio]

I suppose Germany has laws to jail all that minimize, justify or deny Dresde rutless bombing. :grumpy:

[Jarl]

Why do you want to turn every German issue into ridicule? You wouldn't do that if the topic was on Polish victim numbers. Can't you behave at least one single time?

Why do you always have to smell a rat in everything I say? I only wanted to ask about sources. To me "common sense" is not enough as it's by definition some personal subjective feeling based on our POV. It is therefore flawed by our emotions. Since this is an important subject I only wanted to see who comes up with figures higher than 18 000, or 40 000 and on what grounds - since the estimates always have to be based on some, even partial, evidence.


Eyewitnesses, natives to Dresden and former objective researchers, uninfluenced by political interests, confirmed that the bombings killed at least 75.000 to 150.000 people. Pardon my french, but I trust these people more than modern scientists who have a political agenda and weren't even alive when the bombings took place.

OK. Now you say "former objective researchers, uninfluenced by political interests"... I understand that since you are a German nationalist/patriot, and you despise the crimes conducted on Germans, you take the more preferable option and opt for higher numbers. This crime will remain a crime anyway. However, has it never crossed your mind that the former researches could have been less objective? Or politically biased? There is certainly a concrete technical reason why the Dresden historical comission came up with 18, 000, instead of 150 000. Do you know what that technical detail influencing the estimates is?




"

[Lulletje Rozewater]

Kurt Vonnegut was in Dresden when it was bombed in 1945, and wrote a famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, in 1969. http://www.rense.com/1.imagesC/vonnegut.jpgIn February 1945, Vonnegut was witness to another pretty good imitation of Mt Vesuvius; the firebombing by Allied forces of Dresden, the town in eastern Germany, during the last months of the Second World War. More than 600,000 incen-diary bombs later, the city looked more like the surface of the moon. Returning home to India-napolis after the war, Vonnegut began writing short stories for magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post, and, seven years later, published his first novel, Player Piano. ...
http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm

[Lulletje Rozewater]

I suppose Germany has laws to jail all that minimize, justify or deny Dresde rutless bombing. :grumpy:

Wish you were there.

[anonymaus]

Referring to the Bombing of Dresden as a war crime is already de rigeur among serious and educated people. The number won't change that.

[JMarcial]

Why when Jews rise the toll of the murdered in the KZs by the Germans it is a "jewish lie" but when the Germans rise the toll of the murdered in Dresden by the British it is not a "german lie"?

They aren't much different from each other starting at both claiming to be a chosen/superior people.

[Lenny]

I trust these people [mortuary clerks of Dresden in 1945, counting the bodies] more than modern "scientists" who have a political agenda and weren't even alive when the bombings took place.

That's for sure. I don't understand people who believe Dresden-denial. It's so nakedly political...


Dresden is very much unlike the tales from Auschwitz -- the tales of millions of Jews disappearing without a trace -- because there were actual bodies to be counted at Dresden. There were detailed population counts of German residents of Dresden. Morticians and various clerks kept tabulations on this while sorting out the bodies and dealing with missing-persons reports. (Actually they did do likewise at Auschwitz when inmates died, which is how we know up to 50,000 prisoners died there of all causes in the 4 years of the camp... Yet, a certain number of conspiracy-theorists still hold onto the absurd claim that "millions" were "gassed" with no credible evidence at all, and a good deal of evidence against).

The official count for Dresden is 135,000 confirmed dead. This is from the then-director of the Dead Person's Section of Dresden's Missing Persons Bureau. Some nationalist activists have insisted the real figure must be higher, because some of the most-recent refugees would have not been counted. If they were vaporized, there was no body to count. If they were newly-arrived, no one would have known them so as to report them missing yet. As we know, in Feb. 1945, refugees from the East outnumbered native Dresdeners in the city. Most refugees were registered, though.

Still, it's a valid point. One way or another, the number of people who died that night might creep closer to 150,000 or maybe even above (refugees would have had less access to bomb-shelters)... Needless to say, this is higher than the sum total of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Something approaching 750,000 German civilians died from Allied bombs in the war. Millions more died in other ways, both before and after the war. All tolled, well over 10% of Germans died in the period 1939-1949.

[Lenny]

The origins of the 35,000 Figure

Sir: AS someone deeply involved in Coventry's civic and cathedral twinning and reconciliation links with Dresden during the 1960s, I deplore current attempts to downplay the mass slaughter wreaked upon that city by the Allied airforces' deliberately created inferno (Robert Hanks, 16 April; letters, 17, 20 April). The Nazis, doubtless for propaganda, put the number of dead at 250,000, but David Irving's research set the total at 135,000, a figure derived from Hanns Voigt, superintendent of the Dresden Lost Persons Centre in 1945.

Curiously, it was the post-1945 Communist mayor of Dresden, Walter Weidauer, who first advanced the much reduced figure of 35,000 -- for political reasons. He attacked Irving for helping "[Western] Imperialists' spread the notion that atomic bombing was no worse than a major conventional air-raid" (Walter Weidauer, Inferno Dresden, 1966). Since this down-playing of the casualty figures resulted from the (very understandable) wish to highlight the distinctive horrors of atomic bombing, GDR official documents on this subject must surely remain suspect.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Dresden/Indep_ltr_250407.html




figure derived from Hanns Voigt, superintendent of the Dresden Lost Persons Centre in 1945.Professor Richard "Skunky" Evans, another historian who lives by the smear, ignorantly dismissed Voigt in his High Court evidence (on oath) as being a "virulent fascist". What else could he say? In fact we now know that Voigt was a trusted, highly esteemed, and much decorated, member of East German society in the 1950s and was allowed by the Communist regime to emigrate without difficulty upon his retirement to West Germany.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Dresden/Indep_ltr_250407.html

[Lulletje Rozewater]

Why when Jews rise the toll of the murdered in the KZs by the Germans it is a "jewish lie" but when the Germans rise the toll of the murdered in Dresden by the British it is not a "german lie"?

They aren't much different from each other starting at both claiming to be a chosen/superior people.

Classic/.

The Germans are superior business people and the jews superior street-vendors .:thumb001:

[Debaser11]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

I'm sorry that my first post on this wonderful forum has to be this nasty, but you need to learn some history before you make such ridiculous comments. You sound like an ignorant fool. The Germans tolerated nasty RAF night bombings on their civilian populations for nearly four months before understandably retaliating on Britain's civilian population. Even the German rocket (V-2) stood for "vegenence" as in "payback for what you've done to us." Churchill wanted war. Not Hitler. Roosevelt wanted war. Not Hitler. Read primary sources.

Bombing civilians is not justified. But you have no understanding of history and cannot even begin to put the Nazis' crimes into proper perspective. As far as you not giving a damn about German sensibilities, I wouldn't expect an ignoramus like yourself to care about the sensibilities of a people that spawned great minds like Kant, Hegel, Von Braun, Beethoven, Schweitzer and Gutenberg. Why even come on this forum if you "don't give a shit" about a good chunk of continental Europe's sensibilities?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmyn2bQx_qI&feature=related

[Furlan]

They did bomb British cities though - London, Birmingham, Coventry and all the others - which you failed to mention. Every British city bears the scars, even today. The destruction of Dresden was perfectly justified, because it was the Germans themselves who were savages, and needed to be utterly destroyed in order to be defeated (since they hadn't accepted defeat in 1918). I don't give a shit about German sensibilities. In 1945 it would have been perfectly justifiable for the allies to throw every stinking German into the gas ovens they had made for the Jews. But we were too nice for that.

Sadly they bombed nice places instead of flattering Mercia :D

[Furlan]

The timing of this earth-shattering historical revelation really is impeccable with Ernst Zündel's very recent release from prison. For those of you living on the moon for the last 30 or so years, he's that guy that has been battling both Canada and Germany's legal system for years and was finally thrown in jail for questioning whether the deathtoll at Auschwitz and elsewhere was exaggerated for political ends.

Somehow, I doubt the revisionism of this already-downplayed massacre will end up in court. The degree of "chutzpah" on display is simply amazing.

I am still waiting 'Historians allege Holocaust deathtoll "exaggerated"' :D

[Odin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV2JRZuDoB0

[sean]

Dresden seems to be one of those historical myths that keeps getting kicked around. For whatever reason, people always have this hugely exaggerated notion of the death toll, to make the Allies seem as evil as possible.

https://i.imgur.com/8GDMQmT.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/a3CDaRT.jpg

Every modern historian I'm aware of agrees with the number that the municipal government of the city itself came up with post-bombing, (http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommission_Dresden1945_Abschlussbericht_ V1_14a.pdf) around 25,000 dead. The death toll was only about 25,000, and other cities got hit way, way harder, like Hamburg, Mainz, and Bochum. Nobody ever remembers those.

Dresden was a legitimate military target. Dresden had multiple major railroads, a harbour for freight traffic on the river Elbe, freight yards to serve as storage, ship building yards, munition storages, multiple electric motor manufactures, iron foundry, 2 aircraft repair factories, and engine/armament factories.

Operation Gomorrah had a higher death toll. Comparing it to the bombing of Hamburg, Dresden was hit with fewer bombs, over a shorter period of time, in wetter weather, and had a lower population so therefore fewer targets.

I think Dresden only stands out because some try to make it a martyr of their cause and apply falsehoods about the reality of the situation. Trying to say the city was a cultural center and had cathedrals (as if that matters), wildly inflating the death toll (claiming up to 300,000 died), saying the city had no defences (what city in WW2 didn't have flak and AA guns in/around it? Not a single one.), or that the city was entirely civilian and refugees (let's just ignore that big rail hub that was a staging group for parts of Army Group Center/Heeresgruppe Mitte as they tried to reinforce the Eastern Front).

The whole bombing was presented as a demonstration of support for the Soviets who were closing in from the East, but you could also read it as a warning to Stalin as by that time the wartime alliance was beginning to fray.