Germans demand apology for allied bombing raids

cheddar cheese · 10-31-2004, 11:23 AM

I thought it was more to do with the RAF

And if the Germans apologised of their own admission, why suddenly shift the blame?

the lancaster kicks ass · 10-31-2004, 12:20 PM

yes dresden was mainly us but the yanks were there to..............

HealzDevo · 11-01-2004, 02:02 AM

The fact remains that the Germans started that phase, because they were pounding enemy cities such as Paris and the cities of Warsaw and that to crush them quickly, long before the battle of Britain began. Their whole system of Blitzkrieg is based on the fact of Shock, Awe and massive might in the form of Stukas, Panzers, Bombers and troops all moving fast and acting as a unit to quickly overwhelm all obstacles in their past, including enemy cities. Blitzkrieg works by inflicting massive casualities and keeping the enemy guessing where and when the next strike will come and against what. Therefore, the war against London was something that the Germans had already done to many of the European countries. It seems however, that we are looking at some Germans that are looking at history through rose-coloured glasses (reference to Nazi flag colour intended) and seeing things as if they had done absolutely nothing to provoke Britain when they full well should know that the invasion of Poland was the final straw as far as Britain was concerned in dealing with a fiend with an insatiable lust for territory and power. Therefore, Germany really brought WW2 on herself, although the Allies do bare maybe a bit of responsibility for what happened, largely what happened was as a result of the actions of the Germans in attempting to destroy Britain and those that opposed them. Don't forget that Germany had military plans for Operation Sealion- The Invasion of the British Isles, which were only called off after it was found out that the RAF had absorbed remarkable damage and recovered to retake the skies over Britain.

HealzDevo · 11-01-2004, 02:07 AM

Because of the ability of the RAF to recover, only the first phase of Operation Sealion was ever carried out. Does anyone, really believe that the Germans would have acted in a very civilized manner once they got their boots on the ground? Not really, as there seems to be reports about German atrocities during the war. Also don't forget that in numerous countries that they invaded, they stirred up resistence moments that were reliant on Britain staying Free as a symbol of hope to them. If Britain had really fallen, it might have been the end for a lot of resistence movements as a Free Britain gave them something worth fighting for, and hope that someday the struggle would be vindicated and that they would be able to one day salute their countries flag in a country free from German control. France and a lot of these other places would probably be opposed to the British appoligizing to Germany for the bombings. This is my interpretations of those dark days of WW2 when it seemed that the whole of Europe might fall to the Germans.

HealzDevo · 11-01-2004, 02:55 AM

That's significant, we are talking about one of the only human regimes that only purely produced darkness, fear and mistrust. It was the French Revolution on a larger scale. If the bombings had not been done then it is possible that Germany could have located all its strategic military resources within cities until ready and then used these to blast Britain off the face of the earth. The reality is that the Germans were trying to blast Britain at the beginning. The Allies, managed to turn the tables and blast the Germans. The bombing of the cities may have been necessary, even though critics doubt this. Hitler was using propaganda on his people, the only way to get through to the German people the reality of what was going on at that time was to bomb Dresden and other German cities. If this hadn't been done the results could have been disastrous. As it is there was a large potential for WW2 to go wrong for the Allies. The last thing they needed was a massively re-equiped German Armed Forces to overrun Britain. The bombing of those cities distracted Hitler from this and made sure that production was channelled into producing Fighters and Flak guns to shoot down the number of Allied bombers crossing the channel, or coming from other bases. The resistance movements were acting as spotters for the Allied Bomber Force. They told of the German City targets that were worth striking and the amount of damage that was done. Whatever damage was done by the Allies in Dresden they had already had that damage meated out to them by the Germans. Therefore, the bombing of cities like Dresden may have stopped an Iraq Gulf War with primative weapons where the rules of engagement may have favoured Hitler.

cheddar cheese · 11-01-2004, 11:20 AM

Could you have not put all that into one post?

HealzDevo · 11-02-2004, 11:36 PM

I just preferred to do it that way as I was thinking in between times, + Broadband in Australia is a tad slow sometimes as it would take a day and a bit to download 700mb. Anyway, in summary a Free Britain was important and therefore the Germans were moving to attempt to crush the light of Britain. It is probably safe as I said to assume that Free Britain was a source of inspiration to the Resistence groups in occupied countries during those long hard years. The Germans would have engaged in wholesale slaughter and mayhem. No bombing campaign on the cities may have left Hitler to rebuild his armies and come back a thousand times as strong as he was. The potential was there as plans, equipment and men were already being drawn up against Britain just before the attack on the Russians. Britain had to make sure that Germany didn't have the resources to continue to fight an equal battle, and one of these things was cracking the moral of the German people. By late 1944 early 1945 because of the attacks on German by the Allied Bombers the Germans could see that they had no real chance of winning. The German people wanted to try to hold out to surrender to either the Americans or the British, although finally Russian troops entered the city and acted just as viciously as some of the German Forces had during the war. There is only one real thing that the Americans and the British should really apologize for, and that is leaving Berlin to be taken by the Soviets instead of taking it themselves.

MichaelHenley · 11-03-2004, 05:13 PM

So... In a nutshell, are you for or against the queen apologising? (So much text and so many posts attracts a bit of attention in my computer Studies class, thats all.)