Sixty-five years ago this week 1,300 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force dropped more that 3,900 tons of heavy explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden, , the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 sq mi of the city centre and killed between 50,000 and 150,00 civilians. 
Bombing cities was popular in WWII. The Germans did it, the Japanese did it, the Allies did it...... nominally it was all to destroy 'military targets'..... like old men, women and children. Some of the cities destroyed or partially destroyed during the war are well known, like Coventry, London, Hamburg, Tokyo and Dresden. There were others.Aomori · Augsburg · Baedeker Raids · Bahrain · Barrow-in-Furness · Belfast · Belgrade · Berlin · Birmingham · Braunschweig · Bremen · Breslau · Brighton · Bristol · Bucharest · Budapest · Caen · Calcutta · Cardiff · Chemnitz · Chişinău · Chongqing · Clydebank · Cologne · Coventry · Danzig · Darmstadt · Darwin · Dresden · Dublin · Duisburg · Düsseldorf · Essen · Frampol · Frankfurt · Frascati · Fukui · Fukuoka · Fukuyama · Gelsenkirchen · Gibraltar · Gifu · Greenock · Guangzhou · Haifa · Hamamatsu · Hamburg · Hamm · Hanau · Heilbronn · Helsinki · Hildesheim · Hiratsuka · Hiroshima · Hull · Innsbruck · Kaiserslautern · Kassel · Kobe · Königsberg · Kure · Liverpool · London · Lübeck · Mainz · Malta · Manchester · Manila · Mannheim · Minsk · Mito · Munich · Nagaoka · Nagasaki · Nagoya · Naha · Nanjing · Naples · Narva · Nottingham · Numazu · Nuremberg · Omuta · Osaka · Pforzheim · Ploiesti · Plymouth · Podgorica · Prague · Rabaul · Remscheid · Rome · Rothenburg ob der Tauber · Rotterdam · Saarbrücken · Salzburg · Schaffhausen · Schwäbisch Hall · Schweinfurt · Sendai · Shanghai · Sheffield · Shizuoka · Sofia · Southampton · Stalingrad · Stettin · Stuttgart · Swansea · Taipei · Tallinn · Tel Aviv · Thessaloníki · Tokyo · Toyama · Treviso · Tsu · Ujiyamada · Ulm · Vienna · Warsaw · Wesel · Wieluń · Wuppertal · Würzburg · Yokohama · Zadar · Zagreb
Which just goes to show that blowing things up is a very popular thing. Lately, or not so lately if you are a purist, America blew up stuff in Iraq.
Now I am sure that the only things bombed were military targets.... Military old men, military women and no doubt some military children.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
I mentioned the civilian casualties to a guy in the car pool the other day... how deplorable it was. His reply was
"if they were that stupid as to live next to a military target...it's their own fault"
"You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one – I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show."
–"The Glenn Beck Program"
I am kinda worried about the tea-baggers.
An acquaintence of mine was very dismissive of them; that they were merely scared, confused, and upset people and the whole movement should dissolve in the near future.
"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them." Rush Limbaugh
5 comments:
But if none of those bombings had happened, then you would have had to fill this post with pictures of other things, like naked ladies, and who wants that? Won't someone think of the children?
So far as I know at this point the US is the only country continuing to bomb other countries. I think we're worrisomely ignorant as a nation. I think the Chinese guy has a point about economic warfare being the way of the future (and the present).
I didn't want to read this post because I know it's true. We, as a nation, are guilty of war crimes. Just because we won doesn't make us right.
Very moving and chilling post.
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