Since I’m of German descent it always dismays me when I see something about World War II that I know to be false!
This article will not be about who was at fault for the two World Wars, or what atrocities were done by whom, since there is more than enough blame to go around!
But I will freely admit that the Germans and the Japanese were the bad guys in World War II. (That doesn’t excuse the lies told by both sides on what really happened during that war.)
I would like to address just one of the many inconsistencies that are now portrayed as historical fact!
The Subject in question was the bombing of Dresden, Germany, in the middle of February, 1945.
First, the article I read today ………., which was the reason for this little rebuttal.
Dresden, Germany’s seventh biggest city at the time
of the Second World War, and an extremely important industrial centre,
experienced one of the most severe bombing campaigns seen anywhere up to
that point in time. During the most intense period, from 13 to 15
February 1945, 1,300 bombers from a combined RAF and USAAF force dropped
more than 3,900 tons of high explosives and firebombs upon the
beleaguered city. Fifteen square miles of the city center were utterly
destroyed by the devastating firestorm that swept through the streets –
the hot winds driving people back into the deathtraps that were their
houses. The death toll was publicized to be as high as 200,000 by the
Nazi-controlled German press in 1945, but subsequent estimates,
including one supported by the city authorities in 2010, put the figure
at 25,000.
First of all, the OFFICIAL death toll, was 50,000 people, not 25,000…………., but that’s minor compared to what comes next.
The second point is THIS statement: “Germany’s seventh biggest city at the time of the Second World War, and an extremely important industrial centre.”
Folks, Dresden did not have so much as ONE industry anywhere near it! It was a University town, and also A REFUGEE CAMP FOR ABOUT 500,000 POW’s and GERMANS FLEEING THE RUSSIANS!
(That’s half a million women and children trying to get away from the Russian hordes that were sweeping in from the east, plus all the POW’s from the Battle of the Bulge!)
This brings to the fore that old saying of mine about the “factor of ten!”
The victors ALWAYS exaggerate the sins of the losers by a factor of ten ……………….., and diminish their own crimes by a factor of ten!
Now, remember those half a million women and children that we just talked about?
They, as well as the entire city, were pretty well wiped out in a period of two or three days of incendiary bombing and fire storms.
All half a million of them!
And that’s were the “factor of ten” comes in folks, it wasn’t
50,000…………… it was 500,000!
If you don’t believe me read Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s book about the bombing, he was there as one of the POW’s! (“Slaughterhouse Five”)
Vonnegut was part of a group of American prisoners of
war who survived the bombing in an underground slaughterhouse meat
locker used as an ad hoc detention facility. The German guards called
the building Schlachthof Fünf (“Slaughterhouse Five”), and the POWs
adopted that name. Vonnegut said that the aftermath of the attack on the
defenseless city was “utter destruction” and “carnage unfathomable.”
The experience was the inspiration for his famous novel,
Slaughterhouse-Five, and is a central theme in at least six of his other
books. In Slaughterhouse-Five—which is nominally a fictional work—he
described the ruined city as resembling the surface of the moon and he
said the German guards put the surviving POWs to work, breaking into
basements and bomb shelters to gather bodies for mass burial, while
German civilians cursed and threw rocks at them. Vonnegut remarked,
“There were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Germans sent in
troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians’ remains were burned to
ashes.”
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