Dresden…. according to the BBC the rise of Pegida can be attributed to the raid on Dresden. The German fear of foreigners stems from this raid and its consequences.
But apparently bombing Dresden is acceptable for this German feminist anti-Pegida campaigner if it means clearing the city of Pegida…
I imagine many at the BBC would agree…ironic, as they now declare bombing Dresden to rid germany of the Nazis was a war crime.
“There is very little talk of Dresden as an integral part of the Nazis’ war machine, a railway hub to the Eastern front.” Sebastian Borger
The white middle class lefties that roam the corridors of the BBC have a double burden to carry around with them being tinged by Marxist and Trotskyite tendencies and horribly scarred with the stigmata of being ‘white’. They scour the world for worthy causes for which they can blame the West and masochistically then grovel and abase themselves as they proffer up earnest apologies for the sins of their forebears who knew not what they did.
The Second World War is a sore trial for them as it was a war against their mortal enemies, the evils of Fascism and the Far Right, a war in which confusingly their beloved Soviet Union was in partnership with their other enemy of conscience, the Capitalist West.
How can they apologise for ridding the world of the evil of the Nazi regime, done in conjunction with their ideological Motherland, the Soviet Union, and still attack the equally evil Capitalist West for having done so?
They had to find away to apologise for the wickedness of the West without also condemning the Heros of the Revolution.
Dresden. Dresden was their solution.
Dresden the ‘war crime’, an action worse than anything the Nazis carried out according to the BBC.
Seems others had the same idea…
The civilian deaths at Dresden would be used by two political machines as propaganda. First, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry would attempt to use this to stir public resentment against the Allied invaders. Then during the Cold War, Soviet propaganda would describe this bombing as western cruelty, alienating the East Germans with the British and Americans.
The BBC carrying on the good work of the Nazi and Communist propagandists then.
Ironically the bombing of Dresden, as well as an attempt to crush German morale and end the war early, was also part of a plan to help the Heros of the Revolution advance ….as the BBC in 1945 tells us....
British and US bombers have dropped hundreds of thousands of explosives on the German city of Dresden.
The city is reported to be a vital command centre for the German defence against Soviet forces approaching from the east.
Dresden is regarded by the Allies as the centre of its rail network linking eastern and southern Germany with Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
Last night, the RAF also hit oil plants at Nuremberg, Bonn and Dortmund.
Fighter Command Spitfires also pinpointed V weapons sites in the Netherlands that have launched hundreds of flying bombs against England in the last year.
It should be remembered that Dresden was not the only targeted city….many others had similar attacks upon them but resulted in far fewer caualties. Dresden had so many casualties because…
Although Dresden did not see particularly more attacks when compared to other German cities, the ideal weather conditions and the common usage of wooden structure made the destruction more widespread. The lack of anti-aircraft fire also contributed to the higher level of destruction, as Germany did not defend her with anti-aircraft guns as Dresden was far from Allied bomber bases, at least earlier in the war.
Here is the effect that the raid on Hamburg had on the Germans in 1943…
Such raids had a massive effect on morale and on the German war production capacity….they suggest that six more such raids could have ended Germany’s armaments production.
It is all very well sitting in your TV studio looking back on history and selectively choosing the narrative you want to portray now in order to suit your own agenda…in the middle of a protracted and enormously violent war things are more black and white and decisions have to be made on the basis that not to make them might mean you are literally wiped out.
It wasn’t a case of clever rhetoric, philosophical intellectualising or moral relativism, they were fighting for their survival….the survival of a whole culture, a society, a political and social construct that had been nurtured over centuries and much blood spent defending it.
Once again that is under threat as we see Islamic terrorism and the Islamist ideology stalking Europe…and once again the apologists are out in force.
As with Dresden and the men who flew the raids into Germany, it is those who would defend Europe’s heritage, and future as a secular, democratic, free society, that are in the ‘liberal’s’ sights rather than the terrorists and their ideology that would destroy it.
“Don’t forget that Auschwitz was liberated just about two weeks before the bombing of Dresden, And the pictures that emerged from Auschwitz were far more shocking than those of a destroyed Dresden.”
Anmd once again Jews are being hounded and killed across Europe.
Another irony is this ‘BBC’ report by a German journalist, ….
In fact, a lot of British efforts devoted to the post-War reconciliation were focused on Dresden.
By singling out the undoubtedly very beautiful Eastern city as a symbol for many, often more damaged, places in Germany, they unwittingly followed in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels.
In the last months of the war, Hitler’s propaganda minister talked up the “Allied war crime” to inspire an even more dogged defence of the Fatherland against the invading troops, particularly from Soviet Russia.
“Nazi propaganda celebrated its last success,” says the military historian Rolf-Dieter Muller – not least with an unscrupulous manipulation of casualty figures.
While police experts in Dresden concluded the most likely number of deaths to be 25,000, Goebbels increased that horrendous figure tenfold.
The Communist rulers of East Germany perpetuated the myth, as did well-meaning British observers who chose Dresden as the symbol of the horrors of aerial war and a centre for post-War reconciliation.
Thus the already well-established exceptionalism of Dresdeners was reinforced by outsiders.
The War casualties, macabre though it may seem, have become a totemic figure, and no expert opinion will sway the hardcore from the perceived special place of their town.
There is very little talk of Dresden as an integral part of the Nazis’ war machine, a railway hub to the Eastern front.
Bomber Command lost over 44% of its aircrew:
“When one [a shell] hit close the shards of shrapnel banged through the aircraft and pinged off more solid members. With a direct hit from an 88 mm or larger shell the aircraft would stagger, sometimes stall, fill with smoke and screaming wounded airmen. Sometimes a wing would fold up and the bomber would go straight down in flames. Other times the entire aircraft would simply vanish in a dirty ball of fire, smoke and bits of plane and man. Many other times the aircraft and men would fly on, riddled with holes but still fighting. Only to have to try to land somewhere without lights, damaged undercarriages, missing engines and wounded or dead crew. Often they bombed their targets only to die in a crash landing. “
I wonder how many of them would have loved to be keyboard warriors?
Indeed, Max Hastings book Bomber Command is essential reading. I applied for aircrew in 1979, passed the rigourous written and practical tests over the three days, was offered a commission as a Navigator provided the medical was satisfactory….which i failed, to my chagrin. The point is, only about 35% of my intake passed….they get the cream of British manhood, intelligent, superbly fit. It was the same during the war…..boy, did this country miss the 55,000 men killed, plus the wounded and maimed. Go and read, gasp, at the long, too long lists of names in each historic universities rolls of honour….the WW1 lists are unbearably long….and now look at this country, thousands of muslims, who despise us, thousands of free-loading strays from everywhere, we are lost now.
Every member of Bomber Command was a volunteer. There were no pressed men. I bet you wouldn’t see many of today’s BBC reporters volunteering to be embedded with a Lancaster squadron back then. And before any Beeboid loving smartarse makes a drive-by, piss-taking comment about time travel being impossible – I’m speaking hypothetically!
But Hamas hurtling thousands of missiles and rockets at a civilian population is a good thing. A righteous and noble act in the pursuit of freedom to which any defence put up against it is an act of terrorism, a war crime and a breach of human rights.
I must declare a personal interest in this example of the BBC continuing to undermine our country , history and culture. Dresden was my father’s 44th Op with Bomber Command. He was in a Pathfinder crew who marked the target.
I know that all the leftist revisionists draw a distinction between the bravery of the aircrew involved in the Bomber Offensive and those who devised and ordered the strategic bombing of Germany. But the fact that they , ably assisted by the BBC, have spent at least the last 40 years doing their best to convince the young people of this country that the Strategic Air Offensive was a war crime ,ineffective and a waste of resources, has done much to contribute to the now widely held view that Britain’s history is one that we should be ashamed of. I will not go through the facts to the contrary but basically the Offensive was the only way our democracy could fight back against a monstrous tyranny and it did much to weaken Nazi Germany.
Of course we are now faced with another tyranny that wishes to impose its primitive ,violent and evil will on large portions of the world, but our leaders just appease it and allow our democracy and precious values, to be undermined at every turn. We will get what our weakness deserves.
The BBC is virulently anti British and pro pretty much anyone else who is anti British. Why successive Tory governments have allowed them to continue their anti British crusade is beyond me. The number of reasons why I think that the BBC should be shut down asap grows almost weekly.
I recall the experiences of an older workmate who told me his story. As a POW in Germany towards the end of WW2, he experienced a one thousand bomber raid from just outside the targeted city. I cannot recall which city was involved. He had no qualms over this allied attack – even though it resulted in massive casualties. Perhaps he was affected by the fact that his young wife was, at the time, one of the millions in Southern England that were suffering daily raids of hundreds of flying bombs. To say nothing of the V2s targeting London.
Re-posted from Guido’s site… (your mate could well have been on the same forced march)
The bombing of Dresden achieved this if nothing else:
My late father in law was a PoW and held at Lamsdorf. They were forced marched from there westwards on one of the Death Marches in the face of the advancing Russians. On the evening of 13 Feb 45 they arrived at the outskirts of Dresden on the edge of a forest and witnessed the attack; seeing the large red glow in the sky, many remarked words to the effect ‘Bl**dy good – that’ll learn ‘em’. The next morning they witnessed hundreds of survivors de-camping to the relatively safety of the forest for refuge. They wore the ‘thousand mile stare’ of the exhausted and defeated; they spoke to the PoW’s guards of the terror and destructive power of the Allied Air Forces and of what had befallen the city that night. As a direct result most of the guards threw down their weapons, took off their helmets and joined
the refugees. My father in law seized the opportunity and escaped from the Death March and made his own way back
through enemy lines to the Western allies and repatriation. Don’t tell me (or him) that the bombing of Dresden was unwarranted or uncalled for; it shattered the morale of the civilian population and their military.
On 13 Feb 45 NO ONE knew that that war would be over on 8 May 45.
Oh – and the BBC can go fuck themselves.
Little Slimebag Goebels asked the German people if they wanted total war, they said that they did. They got it.
“It was evil” – Victor Gregg first hand account of the Dresden Bombing.
The 95 year old told us how he survived the raids while he was a prisoner of war
This is the heading for the video clip on the BBC1 Breakfast Show
It runs for over 7 minutes and besides this Dresden survivor telling of his harrowing experience as a result of the bombing, it is further compounded by the questions asked of him by the 2 presenters to ensure his vilification of the British for the bombing is heard by one and all.
No doubt it was an extremely traumatic experience for him, as it would be for anybody, however, nowhere in this clip are we told that Gregg had been sentenced to death by the Nazis, along with hundreds of other prisoners there, and but for the bombing he would not have survived and reached the ripe old age of 95.
Does this say something about the mental state of this man in dealing with this experience? Should we be told of this element within this narrative, perhaps to get an insight into the Stockholm syndrome, or similar mental process?
Apparently not when it doesn’t fit the desired BBC agenda.
“Dresden the ‘war crime’, an action worse than anything the Nazis carried out according to the BBC.”
Nice elision there, Alan. An interviewee saying it on the BBC is not the same as the BBC saying it. If it were, then the BBC would also believe that:
“The NHS should be run by business men” – Nigel Farage on the Sunday Politics, (5:20) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29597027
“Global warming is a scam” – Melanie Phillips on Question Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaLRQG6tnV4
Or indeed, from your own link: “It is just an example of warfare and of course it makes sense … Dresden was part of the enemy and you have to hit the enemy to end the Second World War.”
I enjoyed reading that the BBC’s “ideological motherland” is the Soviet Union. This is the same BBC that makes two very high-profile programmes called Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice, neither of which is any way communist, instead celebrating the “evil, Capitalist West” they apparently think it is.
“An interviewee saying it on the BBC is not the same as the BBC saying it.”
Interesting precedent, given generic conflations often spun here with your analysis notable by its absence.
Of course, there is an interesting trend in who the BBC invites on, and then is not responsible for what views that are their own get miraculously uttered. BBC Complaints has two divisions to create convenient black holes between who books guests and what they then say. Neither can comment on the other. Conveniently, as the result is no one, and certainly not the bbc, can be held to account.
To then cite Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice as anything other than ratings trash in guise of encouraging capitalism is quite special. The former bears no relation to sensible VC practice (one high profile ‘success’ turned out to have ignored IP realities throughout) and if anyone seriously thinks Suralan’s producer-puppet schtick encourages sensible entrepreneurship, I have Prince Albert factory in Gaza to sell you.
You mean like preferring to interview this man:
“It was evil” – Victor Gregg first hand account of the Dresden Bombing. The 95 year old told us how he survived the raids while he was a prisoner of war
Instead of this man?
Dresden: “We Gave Three Hearty Cheers At The Time” One Veteran PoW Tells Breitbart London
Presumably the BBC didn’t know what he was going to say in advance 🙄
That’ll be £900M Labour peer Lord Sugar playing the part of the ‘evil capitalist’ in The Apprentice then?
Dresden was Goebbels most successful and longest lasting propaganda success. It was Goebbels who made the unsubstantiated claims that there were over 200,000 people killed in the raids and that figure was readily leapt on after the war ended by the anti-British, anti-Western, pro-Soviet propagandists.
After WW2 ended and the Cold War came into being Dresden was in East Germany and firmly behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain and remained so until the fall of the Berlin Wall. That resulted in the Soviets continuing the massively inflated death toll only this time for their own propaganda purposes whilst their sympathisers here encouraged us to beat ourselves up over the issue.
Now the raid on Dresden has been able to be properly looked at by historians, and German historians at that and without any political propaganda input, the more accurate figure for the death toll has been put at between 22,000 and 25,000, bad though that is. The war time Nazi propaganda machine simply added a zero to the real death toll mainly with the intention to terrify the German people into continuing to fight on to the very bitter end.
Remember, Hitler and the Nazi fanatics were still deluding themselves that there would be some miracle which would allow the to become victorious and were willing to go to any lengths to force the German people to fight to the last person.
As for Dresden being of no military importance, the Nazis themselves had claimed earlier in the war that Dresden made a massive contribution to the war effort. In addition to that it was also a staging post for German troops and a major rail junction which was used in the transport those troops to the Eastern Front. But don’t let those details spoil the continuance of a good piece of politically motivated misinformation.
Well Al Beeb, how about London, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Birmingham, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester, and in Wales, Swansea?
If our parents and grandparents were alive now to witness these treacherous apologists, there would be no Al Beeb now, it would cease to exist.
Clearly at this time of year, the 70th anniversary of the bombing, it is the Dresden raid which is going to be talked about. At the appropriate time of year the BBC features the German raids on our cities, such as when, throughout 2010, the 70th anniversary, BBC Coventry and Warwickshire collected memories from 14 November 1940
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/coventry/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9162000/9162430.stm
Plus there were other features on it, such as this one
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11741315
The BBC website features these pages on the Blitz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/the_blitz
And here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/categories/c1161/index.shtml
So the idea that the BBC ignores or downplays the British experience of being bombed is untrue.
Dear ChrisL, I sincerely thank God that our forefathers won the War, so that you and I can freely speak and write as we do.
As do I.
I am in awe of all those who fought and laid down their lives to defeat the evil of the Nazis.
Purely in a genuine spirit of enquiry. You seem to be in some way connected to the BBC.Please tell all of us why the MARCH last Sunday was completely ignored by the BBC. A large march in Whitehall.. Not exactly in support of Charlie Hebdo and we get zilch from the greatest news agency in the universe.
Until we get some sense over this from the BBC I cannnot take it seriously.
I do not wish to use the word-lugenpresse- but it is looking as if it fits.
No connection whatsoever to the BBC, dave.
I agree that the BBC should have reported the march.
Chris, I don’t think anyone here would claim that the BBC are not subtle. They are; that is why their propaganda is so powerful. Stories are run with, ‘On the one hand…; on the other hand….’ to establish seeming balance, but the viewer hangs on to the beeboids summing-up and that is where they generally deliver the hit.
On the Dresden story this week, Fergal Keane used a construction like ‘Of course, Dresden is not morally comparable to the death-camps, but…’
A child taking it at face value would have thought Keane meant they weren’t comparable, but by drawing parallels, Keane ensured that the viewer was left wondering. If he really thought they weren’t comparable, he shouldn’t have mentioned the death camps.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/15/dresden-we-gave-three-hearty-cheers-at-the-time-one-veteran-pow-tells-breitbart-london/
My father too served in Bomber Command, and flew against Dresden as a Flight Sergeant air gunner. At no time during his life did he either condemn or support the RAFs strategic bombing campaign. He merely said ” It was what we had to do at the time “.
What did upset him was the aftermath of the bombing campaign in which politicians back peddled and distanced themselves from the bombing policy post 1945 and which which saw all those who both flew and died as part of the Command refused the recognition of a campaign medal.
Those who know won’t forget……
i have to admit,the bombing of dresden to me was wrong,just wrong. that is why we have free speech in this blog and can disagree unlike other blogs you might visit,but for the bbc and the left to make a politacal point of out this to attack bomber harris and winston churchill is just as obscene,take this for example.at 10 pm friday just gone they had a phone in on the stephen nolans show about this topic,who did they invite on to smear churchill and harris as war criminals.yes a certain man called john tipple who goes under the banner of being a member of the stop the war coalition, but in fact if you check him out on you tube he is a fully paid up ranting member of that far left extremist group called the socalist workers party,according to this arrogant ignorant moron churchill and harris were no better than hitler himself,the mindest of these extreme leftists is sick inducing to say the least,not once did nolan intervene to shup up this moron called tipple with his talking over everybody and his hate filled rants against he west,it was sickening listening and this guy upset quiet alot of people on friday night,why nolan invited this guy tipple on to this debate about dresden is beyond me,but if you want to listen to what he said it was 10pm,friday just gone on the nolan show on radio 5 live.
As views on Dresden appear largely to centre on civilian casualties the BBC report summary that Alan included above states this:
‘British and US bombers have dropped hundreds of thousands of explosives on the German city of Dresden.
The city is reported to be a vital command centre for the German defence against Soviet forces approaching from the east.
Dresden is regarded by the Allies as the centre of its rail network linking eastern and southern Germany with Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
Last night, the RAF also hit oil plants at Nuremberg, Bonn and Dortmund.
Fighter Command Spitfires also pinpointed V weapons sites in the Netherlands that have launched hundreds of flying bombs against England in the last year.’
Note that last item. Remind me, what sort of attack is carried out by single engine Spitfires (possibly carrying a single bomb & otherwise unarmed), it wouldn’t be a precision bombing raid, would it? Would you look on fighter pilots in the same way as, perhaps, you do bomber crews?
And against whom were these V-weapons – that they sought to destroy in that particular raid – targeted by the Germans? Was it military bases & depots? Armament factories? Airfields? Transport links? No. They were imprecise weapons of fear that were used against the British mainland, civilians included.
Perhaps Alan would be so kind as to confirm whether that BBC report was from just the night (two days) of the Dresden raid. If it was, then the BBC’s attention in 2015 on just Dresden does appear a little skewed at best.
I heard a couple of the days of this on R4 and it left me wondering how quickly the BBC had so quickly forgotten the excellent 3 or 4 part radio drama that they produced about Bomber Command, probably in 2010 or perhaps later; maybe the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters Raid.
I recently read Richard Morris’ biography of Leonard Cheshire, VC, OM. It is lengthy, has some curious gaps and finishes slightly strangely but on the flying that Cheshire did in Bomber Command it is, to my mind, very well done. I recommend it here for the insights it will provide.
So, the revision of history by the left regards WW2 continues. Here are a few snippets from history happening around the same time as Dresden these do-gooders don’t mention in their relentless reshaping of history in which to fit their idealogical bent.
In Dec 1944 Hitler launched the battle of the bulge where 200,000 troops, 400 tanks and over 2400 aircraft tried to knock the the US and UK out of mainland Europe. Yes Hitler failed, but over 100,000 men were killed and it ensured that the Allies didn’t take Nazis Germany as beaten this battle finished 3 weeks before Dresden.
At the same time Hitler was launching V2 against the allies, Antwerp saw more than any other city with over 1600 launched against it. (From Oct 44 to March 45) that doesn’t include the 550 V1 bombs which hit the city.
Northern (Occupied) Holland was under the grip of mass starvation which saw 4.5 million people affected, around 22,000 people starved to death
The battle of Antwerp saw 6000 Canadians troops killed.
London was under V2 attack, the last being on the 27 March 1945 killing 141 people.
We all knew Hitler was losing the war, but he was going down fighting, we didn’t have the knowledge of today, neither could we launch pinpoint attacks, it was a full scale war and people died.
So, when you hear people trying to paint the West as evil for hitting Dresden, remind them of the battle of the bulge, the starvation of Northern Holland and the battle of Antwerp. Those people didn’t ask for war, but the Germans gave it to them, maybe that is why the Dutch to this day hate the Germans and love the RAF
The bBC, the traitors within our midst
When I was with BAOR throughout the 1970s I was nonplussed to see young Germans celebrating their own military defeat at various anniversaries and commemorations of WWII !!
the left show themselves up to be as nasty as ever. But with the left the ends justify the means which is why 100s millions have been killed by socialism
Maybe the BBC would like to consider commemorating similar losses of life via strategic bombing during WW2.
Here’s some of National Socialism’s contributions to the bombing of civilians:
Warsaw September 1939: 25,800 civilians killed
Rotterdam 14 May 1940: 1,000 killed
The Blitz Sept 1940-May 1941: over 40,000 killed
Belgrade 6 April 1941: 17,000 killed
Leningrad 19 September 1941: 1,000 killed
Stalingrad August 1942: ~43,000 killed
V1 and V2 offensive 1944-45: ~8,700 killed