Dresden.

I’m not sure this is going anywhere, so have decided to close it. I’ll open it again if given just cause.

Bruce

What I notice here that most the posters of the more left/liberal/pc vein seem to be the ones most intolerant of views which disagree with their own. The reasonI posted this is that I have a German lady lives near me who was living on the outskirts of Dresden at the time. I had a chance to speak to her about this yesterday. She said she would quite happily open the memorial, as a child she “looked” Jewish, and that was enough that she could rarely leave the house without all sorts of grief from the locals.Those that say the majority of Germans didn’t support Hitler should read Victor Klemperers’ book and then keep quiet.
One of her brothers was in killed serving with the Luftwaffe,the other survived the Eastern Front and died last year. Post war she met and married a Japanese man, one of the nicest people I have ever met, who died 4 years ago. He served as a boy soldier in Manchuria, now you want to go on about Dresden…read what happened there and then say the atom bombs were wasted.

to be fair we as a country also gleefully supported the crusades

you cannot blame a race of people , but you can blame psychologicaly controling governments

wich odly enough is where this comes from

did you ever sit back and ignore newspapers and governments propaganda and actualy think your own thaughts

bad people will always be bad , however it takes religion,government or the press to make good people do bad things !!

I have read this entire thread from top to bottom and i can come to only one conclusion, that is… the news paper in question has written an article in such a way to generate heated, opinionated debate (squabling) by the ill informed majority…. it has set a trap into which we have all fallen….
We would all do much better (than spouting off here) if we wrote a considered and researched response to Boris or indeed our own local councillor…..
This thread should now be locked:mad:

What I notice here that most the posters of the more left/liberal/pc vein seem to be the ones most intolerant of views which disagree with their own. The reasonI posted this is that I have a German lady lives near me who was living on the outskirts of Dresden at the time. I had a chance to speak to her about this yesterday. She said she would quite happily open the memorial, as a child she “looked” Jewish, and that was enough that she could rarely leave the house without all sorts of grief from the locals.Those that say the majority of Germans didn’t support Hitler should read Victor Klemperers’ book and then keep quiet.
One of her brothers was in killed serving with the Luftwaffe,the other survived the Eastern Front and died last year. Post war she met and married a Japanese man, one of the nicest people I have ever met, who died 4 years ago. He served as a boy soldier in Manchuria, now you want to go on about Dresden…read what happened there and then say the atom bombs were wasted.

Hear, hear!

Let’s do our best in our little microcosmos of a vintage aircraft thread to perpetuate hatred and hostility. After all, WW2 ended only 65 years ago, so why bother with moving on? Let us all ensure that all of this is passed on to our children and grandchildren in a manner which ensures that everything remains as it once were… 65 years ago.

Oh, and how mildly entertaining that the threadstarter has a German Tiger tank as avatar, not to mention the various enthusiastic comments on German WW2 aircraft in other threads.

couldn’t agree more whilst it is wrong to forget all races and all causes of deaths in the war

to some extent we are also on the verge of glorifying it too much !!

perhaps a memmorial in the 50’s or 60’s would have been fitting we are now on the point where we have enough memmorials ( one huge flying one ) that speaks more than any hunk of concreete can

but it is now 2010 and time to move on from atrocities on both sides

and to teach the young to get along with other nationalitys !!

i’ll close with the words of johny johnson ( lancaster crew on the dambuster raids ) in a documentary on t.v . commenting on his aircrafts failed attempt on the second dam

” our bomb failed to blow the dam , in hindsight knowing the death and destruction the sucessfull one caused all i can say is thank god it failed !!”

I can’t speak for Kenneth, but I’ve had ’em and they stink, Graham. I’ve heard the most breathtaking xenophobic sh!t passed around covered by ‘oh, we were only joking’ or ‘I’m not racialist but…’. Sorry, using humour to cover nasty, small minded xenophobia is thankfully getting expensive.

I know ‘British’ humour very well, Graham, I don’t think that remark was either funny or excusable.

Particularly – as you’ve repeatedly failed to acknowledge, or I’ll assume, therefore grasp – that the Dresden Mayor is / was in the UK for reconciliation – to close the gap you and other here are trying to keep open.

You are entitled to your opinion I can respect that, I may disagree but I won’t sink to your level of name calling and cheap insults or make a judgement on your personal beliefs, from your posts.
You are indeed a remarkable person, you have never met me but you seem to be able to Judge me from a few lines on the forum which you have misinterpreted.
In fact I have friends from all over the world of many nationalities. I was trained by a German early in the summer to gain my diving certificate, we got on fine and have become firm friends.
Its people who try to stifle any discussion and round on anyone who has an alternative view by accusing them of racism who cause bad feelings, it’s a cheap trick, designed to shock and end opposion to any other view.
The issues in the world could be solved by frank discussion but many are scared to speak for fear of being accused of racism.
I admit I don’t generally have much respect for politicians of any nationality and this coloured my first post more than an issue of nationality.
Forums seem to suffer from a form of road rage when some behind their computer screens are amazingly eloquent how ever in the normal way of discussion face to face are remarkably guarded in expressing their opinions.
Reconciliation? You seem to struggle with this concept on this forum.
Incidentally it amazes me how some are allowed to make personal attacks with impunity and others are pulled up on the slightest remark?

Forum Code of Conduct (Updated 2010 Please Read!)

——————————————————————————–

5) Posts containing swearwords or insults whether aimed at individuals or aimed indiscriminately at nations, ethnic groups, gender, religions and/or cultures will be edited or deleted. Persistent or serious offenders will be banned.

Kev, I have no idea what you are trying to say, but for the record, as I’d like to count you a friend, thinking for oneself does not require any superiority or abasement. Most of us here are capable of avoiding the snares of organisations like the Mail. Choosing not to do so is, I submit again, sad.

Goodbye.

Again James I bow to your superior intellect.

Reconciliation, an interesting concept.

Regards,

kev35

You need some lessons in British humour maybe?

I can’t speak for Kenneth, but I’ve had ’em and they stink, Graham. I’ve heard the most breathtaking xenophobic sh!t passed around covered by ‘oh, we were only joking’ or ‘I’m not racialist but…’. Sorry, using humour to cover nasty, small minded xenophobia is thankfully getting expensive.

I know ‘British’ humour very well, Graham, I don’t think that remark was either funny or excusable.

Particularly – as you’ve repeatedly failed to acknowledge, or I’ll assume, therefore grasp – that the Dresden Mayor is / was in the UK for reconciliation – to close the gap you and other here are trying to keep open.

The thread has well and truly drifted so I will conclude by saying of a deep-down fear I have for the future of Europe. I believe the merging of many nationalities into one large state is fraught with danger. Despite (perhaps because of) the drift of populations from one country to another there will always be a core of people (in any country) who see themselves as ‘pure’, and are fiercly patriotic/nationalistic. It’s happened before and could happen again. I hope my fears are unfounded.

Thanks, RPS. Interesting point. It’s only something to be feared while people decide to attack, rather than reconcile. This is a perfect case study. My wife and I travelled through Europe a couple of years ago, including Italy, France, Germany, Denmark and the UK. I don’t have any fears for continental Europe’s future. The re-enaction of the blunderbuss and balloon episode by a German and a Frenchman on the airfield at La Ferte was side-splitting, and indicative of the need to work together in the future. The only problem is if a majority sign up to that minority xenophobic ‘purity’ deal. This thread shows clearly how easy it is to create argument where none exists; and overlay an attempt at reconciliation with hate and how many people couldn’t spot being led up the garden path. Maybe you should be worried.

However, we need to be reminded of the basics.

Thank you for your post.

Please point out where the members of this forum – rather than Daily Mail rest-a-quotes ‘need to be reminded’ of the details of the raid? Or the basics? There is no disputing the details or the role of Bomber Command here. I’m not aware of any actual dispute by respected or elected leaders in the UK.

Please quote where the Dresden Mayor ‘needing to be reminded’, or advocating the prevention of a memorial?

The issue is entirely down to the Daily Mail creating a controversy where there isn’t one. And a number of forum members subsequently following that agenda.

Frankly getting to engage with people who demand ‘free speech’ while failing to show any comprehension of the material – less than a page long – is pointless, and leaves a nasty taste.

There is no debate on the Dresden bombing itself here. It’s not argued.

There is clearly a complete inability to see a hook, like and sinker from a ‘little Britain’ rag by some.

That’s enough, I’m done.

thankyou tfctops, that’s kind of the point I was trying to make in my ham-fisted way earlier. This thread is, or should be, about acknowledging the Bomber Command guys who were lost doing their duty, not about being hijacked into yet another debate about the rights and wrongs of area bombing.

Glad someone can see the point don’t think area bombing worked myself but as Harris said it had never been tried.As to anti Germany feeling I think that has passed in most cases I worked with the Luftwaffe at TTTE Cottesmore and also at Leeming and we were all good friends isolated incidents will always happen.

Regards

Jon

Frederick Taylor’s book on the Dresden bombing is probably the best work, I understand, on the matter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview2

Should be essential reading for anyone who wishes to express an opinion on Dresden.

Been a while since I read it but a combination of factors such as weather, three trips in nights and one day and the PR of first Germany and then Russia have all combined to make Dresden stick out more than any of the other raids during the war

My concern is the perpetuation of the hatred of WW2 and passing this on to generations essentially completely unaffected by these events. Suggesting e.g. that a German mayoress should be dropped from the BBMF Lancaster , and drawing parallels to WW2 for latter-day situations and events very often does exactly this.

I don’t hate Germans simply trying to point out why they were bombed I have drawn no parallels with modern day Germany. The comment about the Lancaster was tongue in cheek, a sort of humour as I am sure many of the other posts were. You need some lessons in British humour maybe?
Attacks on the Germans you mention happen to all nationalities including British we could quote these incidents all day it doesn’t mean they are because of the war or because they are discussed here.
It seems you would end all discussion on what happened?

I didn’t get to 61 Sqdn in 5 Group until the end of February ’45 so I wasn’t involved in the raid on Dresden. However, we need to be reminded of the basics. We had been at war with Germany, for the second time, for over 5 years. The RAF was the fastest reacting military force and the people of the UK couldn’t wait for the war to end. In the morning papers would be censored reports about the progress of various units around the world. I was there, so I do know a little of what went on, and the satisfaction shown by the people about the activities of Bomber Command was quite obvious. The country’s leaders knew a lot about what was going on in the war but it is only with hindsight that anybody can say we shouldn’t have done this or that. The intention was to end the war as soon as possible by whatever means possible. It is all very well for some of the contributors to express their doubts or opposition to what went on but if we hadn’t done what we could they wouldn’t be able to express their views today. Sir Arthur Harris’s statue is a fitting tribute to a very determined and brave leader. The Bomber Command Memorial is a very belated tribute to some of my fellow aircrew and we, in this country should decide for ourselves what is remembered, celebrated or commemorated in our own land. I just hope we have strong minded politicians who will ignore suggestions from others.

Here here at last a comment from someone that was there you have my respect.

I had been holding my piece (or should that be peace?).

I appreciate Hugh Spencer’s post. I think too much of history is determined by hindsight and too little attention paid to first-hand accounts.

However it is VoyTech’s post that touches on my thoughts. Hatred/dislike of other nationalities (not just Germany) has always been there, it is part of nature, part of our instinct. The Frankie Goes To Hollywood song “Two Tribes Go To War” illustrates this (or, at least, the title does). Animals in the wild have and fight for their own territory we, as humans, jaw, jaw to avoid war, war (most of the time).

The bombing of Dresden was a product of our hatred of Germany and the Nazis at that time and at it’s worst (not that I disagree with what happened and I am an ‘admirer’ of Harris), the teenager’s threat were bad and the comments made on sunny beaches about towels and sunbeds are ‘hatred’ in it’s mildest form.

The thread has well and truly drifted so I will conclude by saying of a deep-down fear I have for the future of Europe. I believe the merging of many nationalities into one large state is fraught with danger. Despite (perhaps because of) the drift of populations from one country to another there will always be a core of people (in any country) who see themselves as ‘pure’, and are fiercly patriotic/nationalistic. It’s happened before and could happen again. I hope my fears are unfounded.

Roger Smith.

I guess it’s a bit of an exagerration to link any anti-German reaction with “perpetuation of the hatred of WW2”.

I wish it were, but it isn’t. Believe me. There are many other examples. Soccer may be an additional motivation, but the root cause is the one I mentioned above.

My concern is the perpetuation of the hatred of WW2 and passing this on to generations essentially completely unaffected by these events.

they were approached by a group teenagers asking them were they were from. Answering “Denmark”, they were told that they should consider themselves lucky, because if they had been German they “would have had the sh*t knocked out of them”.

I guess it’s a bit of an exagerration to link any anti-German reaction with “perpetuation of the hatred of WW2”. While in UK I have met very similarly negative attitude of local youngsters against the French (the last war between France and Britain was some 200 years ago) and the Poles (I cannot recall any war between Poland and Britain).
In the case you described I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole incident had more to do with a recent international football match than WW2.

…we, in this country should decide for ourselves what is remembered, celebrated or commemorated in our own land. I just hope we have strong minded politicians who will ignore suggestions from others.

Please (re-)read my two last posts.

Bomber Command Memorial

I didn’t get to 61 Sqdn in 5 Group until the end of February ’45 so I wasn’t involved in the raid on Dresden. However, we need to be reminded of the basics. We had been at war with Germany, for the second time, for over 5 years. The RAF was the fastest reacting military force and the people of the UK couldn’t wait for the war to end. In the morning papers would be censored reports about the progress of various units around the world. I was there, so I do know a little of what went on, and the satisfaction shown by the people about the activities of Bomber Command was quite obvious. The country’s leaders knew a lot about what was going on in the war but it is only with hindsight that anybody can say we shouldn’t have done this or that. The intention was to end the war as soon as possible by whatever means possible. It is all very well for some of the contributors to express their doubts or opposition to what went on but if we hadn’t done what we could they wouldn’t be able to express their views today. Sir Arthur Harris’s statue is a fitting tribute to a very determined and brave leader. The Bomber Command Memorial is a very belated tribute to some of my fellow aircrew and we, in this country should decide for ourselves what is remembered, celebrated or commemorated in our own land. I just hope we have strong minded politicians who will ignore suggestions from others.

While driving home from work yesterday, I listened to the news channel Bayern 5 Aktuell report of the visit of the Mayoress of Dresden to London on the occasion of a joint exhibition in the London Transport Museum, and in Coventry and Dresden about the horrors of WW2 bombing. She spoke about how deeply moved she was by the exhibition and the need for reconcillation.

Thank you Kenneth. The reason the Mayor is in the UK is reconciliation.

It is sad that so many here decided to follow the Mail‘s nasty little alternative line.

I’m afraid that I can also support Kenneth’s sad inditement of modern manufactured hatred of Germans, in my case in the UK. Both my wife and I have had close German contemporaries who have been insulted and abused – while we witnessed it – out of the blue on the basis of their nationality – over something that they have had nothing to do with, before they were born.

For those capable of reading and evaluating data beyond the length and bias of a nasty little hate-Mail, here’s some suggested reading.

I don’t offer these because I agree with the views presented, but because in each case I learned something from them – in most cases which challenged and often changed my assumptions. If you wish to prop up your existing assumptions, don’t read on.

History Today magazine recently published an article (available online) about what Berliners ‘knew’ of the Holocaust at the time. It serves as an excellent introduction to some of the realities of living in a dysfunctional state.

http://www.historytoday.com/roger-moorhouse/berliners-holocaust

Frederick Taylor’s book on the Dresden bombing is probably the best work, I understand, on the matter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview2

More controversial (that is, I don’t agree with his conclusions or methodology) is philosopher AC Grayling’s book – reviewed here: http://www.powells.com/review/2006_05_30.html

For those who are interested in the difference between real history and mythmaking, lies and fraud in this area, the published details of the David Irving trial are fascinating and enlightening reading. The section starting on 5.2 deals with unfrocked ‘historian’ Irving’s misuse and manipulation of evidence to peddle a nasty little agenda. It is a larger, legally contested and crushed, equivalent (I suggest) to the Mail’s twisting of data and actions wich started this thread.

http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans

The Wiki page is, as often the case, very good. For those allergic to Wiki, try the footnotes or quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Regards,

… would you mind pointing me in the direction of sources which accurately represent German public opinion on the activities of the RAF and USAAF during World War Two please?

I’m afraid I can’t off the top of my head. In any case, concerning the bombing as such, I’m sure that opinion would perhaps understandably be negative. Who likes having bombs dropped on their heads anyway.

However, this is not the issue at present and is not the reason why I posted in this thread in the first place.

The subject of this thread, as I understand it, is the alleged resistance of some people in Dresden towards the erection of a Bomber Command memorial in London, rather than the rights and wrongs of who bombed whom and when. The chances of contributors to this thread ascertaining undisputably something many professional historians have been disagreeing on for many years are slim, to say the least.

As regards the Dresden resistance, what you must understand is that there is a very wide-spread and common tendency in Germany for individuals and minorities to protest against anything on the alleged behalf of the immediate public, be that airfields, motorways, railway stations, Google Street View, etc. etc. Their messages are grasped by journalists hungry for a sensationalist story (which Bild always is) and presented as majority views, even though this is not necessarily the case. I strongly suspect that this is what happened here. I have no connection to Dresden whatsoever, but I’m quite sure that the majority of people there (by nature born mostly after WW2) have more pressing problems on their minds, such as unemployment rates and decay of the social system in general (health care, for example), and couldn’t care less about a proposed memorial somewhere completely different.

My concern is the perpetuation of the hatred of WW2 and passing this on to generations essentially completely unaffected by these events. Suggesting e.g. that a German mayoress should be dropped from the BBMF Lancaster , and drawing parallels to WW2 for latter-day situations and events very often does exactly this.

The following two examples illustrate that this perpetuation is alive and well:

Some years ago a young German school girl in an international school in the Netherlands was attacked by a group of Dutch boys and had a part of her finger cut off. The boys’ motivation was “that she was German”.

Some years ago, my brother (from Denmark) took his family to see where we had been on holiday as children with out grandmother in Gillingham (Kent). Speaking Danish among themselves, they were approached by a group teenagers asking them were they were from. Answering “Denmark”, they were told that they should consider themselves lucky, because if they had been German they “would have had the sh*t knocked out of them”.

Prejudice and aggression like this only happens because it is brought forward from one generation to the other and it has to be stopped, if we want to move forward from events happening more than 65 years, get on with life and avoid situations such as what happened in ex-Yugoslavia.

Many people could do a positive effort in this respect instead of painstakingly living in a past of which they were never directly part of anyway.