6 ms·

I wonder what Mr.Vonnegut would have to say about the historians that try to minimize the causalities that occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.

by soperj 7y ago

jandrese 7y ago
"You weren't there".
oh_sigh 7y ago
What historians try to do that? Are they respected in their field? And are you sure about their intentions? Are they trying to minimize casualties, or just trying to find an accurate number(which may be smaller than reported casualties).
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  >What historians try to do that? Most of them. >Are they respected in their field? Yes. >Are they trying to minimize casualties Yes. The reality is, people don't want nuance. They don't want grey. They don't want to feel the discomfort of realizing that the "good guys" were not so good, that they started deliberately burning tens of thousands of innocent women and children alive before a single bomb had been dropped on an allied city. People do not want to understand that WW2 was a war between bad guys and bad guys, not some noble heroic battle of good vs evil.
  - consumer451 7y ago
    Curtis Lemay, who was the man in charge of the firebombing of Japan had no questions in his mind on the morality of the operation. > Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. - On the morality of the firebombing campaign And also: > There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. [0] I would imagine that this is the same logic that modern terrorists(not only Islamic) use to justify their killing of civilians. Aka, collective responsibility.[1] [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      .. its also the mechanism by which it is acceptable to completely ignore the victims of America's illegal drone killings.
  - archgoon 7y ago
    Putting aside our disagreements on the moral equivalency of the Axis and the Allies; it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940.
    - walshemj 7y ago
      Quite and one of my grandfathers was a bus driver for the corporation and drove Red Cross workers to Coventry. My mother told me that he had told her you could see the city burning from 15 plus miles away.
    - ShlomoS 7y ago
      >it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940. I did not claim that. I stated the objective and indisputable fact that England began deliberately burning women and children alive before Germany started bombing British civilians. The British terror campaign against German civilians began on 11 May 1940. The first German retaliation in kind was 4 September 1940.
  - matthewowen 7y ago
    This is a bad comment on multiple levels. It's factually incorrect: a LOT of bombs were dropped on the UK, and knowing that seems like a pretty low bar to having any opinion on the topic. But beyond that, it's obviously ludicrous to reductively say "between bad guys and bad guys" and simultaneously complain that people don't want nuance.
    - ShlomoS 7y ago
      >It's factually incorrect: a LOT of bombs were dropped on the UK Yes. After we started firebombing German civilians. I didn't say Germany did not bomb civilians, I said England (the supposed "good guys") did it first.
      - matthewowen 7y ago
        Dresden was 44/45. The blitz was 1940. Please explain.
        ShlomoS 7y ago
        Explain what? Why do you think Dresden was the first time we bombed German civilians? The terror bombing against civilians began immediately after Churchill took power, in May of 1940: http://www.british-values.com/index-to-articles/bombing/vindication/how-it-began.html http://www.british-values.com/index-to-articles/bombing/vind... The blitz was in response to that campaign and began in September of 1940.
- Melchizedek 7y ago
  http://www.unz.com/article/how-many-germans-died-under-raf-bombs-at-dresden-in-1945/ http://www.unz.com/article/how-many-germans-died-under-raf-b...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alexandercrohde 7y ago
The very first time I read his book, over a decade ago, I really sympathized with his cries for Dresden. But it didn't last for me: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
tomohawk 7y ago
If the Nazis did not want to be bombed, they should not have picked a fight with the 2 superpowers (UK, US) who had heavy bombers when they had none. I know someone who survived Dresden, and what those people went through was terrible. However, it was an inevitable consequence of stopping an ideological movement that did not value humanity in the least. When you hear people touting their ideology and how they can't respect people's rights because they're trying to achieve a greater good - watch out.
- mcbuilder 7y ago
  I think it is generally agreed that the Dresden bombing had little strategic impact, so I would do a little more reading on the subject before you go claim that it was a necessity to stop the Nazis. Unless you think vindictively bombing a civilian population as revenge is justifiable.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was arguably an opportunity to test methods. And to create terror, of course. Maybe also payback for the Blitz.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I understand that it was always going to be immoral to fire bomb Dresden but the wind on that day whipped up the fires considerably and the extremity of the outcome was due to chance rather than vindictiveness. Of course I think if they’d have known the outcome of course they would have done it anyway.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Or maybe some of them considered the wind fortuitous. I wouldn't be surprised. But then, I'm not a huge fan of war. In fiction, sure. The bloodier, the better. But not in reality, where so many die to make points.
  - WiseWeasel 7y ago
Tsubasachan 7y ago
The consensus during and after WW2 was that the Germans deserved it. If you start a war expect to get burned. Sadly history tends to fade and now the Germans were just a tragically misunderstood people doing nothing wrong.
- chachachoney 7y ago
  How amazingly reductive. Citizens are not governments. I wonder how you'd feel if you or a family member endured a horrible death by firestorm due to the machinations of a government which happens to rule the nation in which you currently reside? On whose perfect soil do you presently live?
- deogeo 7y ago
  If only the writers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II shared your gift for stating things so concisely and unambiguously!
emmelaich 7y ago
What minimization? The recent (2010) study commissioned by the Dresden council came to the same ~25k that is the popular opinion. To be fair I could easily see it being much higher but that figure is the best we have.

I wonder what Mr.Vonnegut would have to say about the historians that try to minimize the causalities that occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.

by soperj 7y ago

I wonder what Mr.Vonnegut would have to say about the historians that try to minimize the causalities that occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.

jandrese 7y ago

"You weren't there".

oh_sigh 7y ago

What historians try to do that? Are they respected in their field? And are you sure about their intentions? Are they trying to minimize casualties, or just trying to find an accurate number(which may be smaller than reported casualties).

ShlomoS 7y ago
>What historians try to do that? Most of them. >Are they respected in their field? Yes. >Are they trying to minimize casualties Yes. The reality is, people don't want nuance. They don't want grey. They don't want to feel the discomfort of realizing that the "good guys" were not so good, that they started deliberately burning tens of thousands of innocent women and children alive before a single bomb had been dropped on an allied city. People do not want to understand that WW2 was a war between bad guys and bad guys, not some noble heroic battle of good vs evil.
- consumer451 7y ago
  Curtis Lemay, who was the man in charge of the firebombing of Japan had no questions in his mind on the morality of the operation. > Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. - On the morality of the firebombing campaign And also: > There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. [0] I would imagine that this is the same logic that modern terrorists(not only Islamic) use to justify their killing of civilians. Aka, collective responsibility.[1] [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    .. its also the mechanism by which it is acceptable to completely ignore the victims of America's illegal drone killings.
- archgoon 7y ago
  Putting aside our disagreements on the moral equivalency of the Axis and the Allies; it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    Quite and one of my grandfathers was a bus driver for the corporation and drove Red Cross workers to Coventry. My mother told me that he had told her you could see the city burning from 15 plus miles away.
  - ShlomoS 7y ago
    >it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940. I did not claim that. I stated the objective and indisputable fact that England began deliberately burning women and children alive before Germany started bombing British civilians. The British terror campaign against German civilians began on 11 May 1940. The first German retaliation in kind was 4 September 1940.
- matthewowen 7y ago
  This is a bad comment on multiple levels. It's factually incorrect: a LOT of bombs were dropped on the UK, and knowing that seems like a pretty low bar to having any opinion on the topic. But beyond that, it's obviously ludicrous to reductively say "between bad guys and bad guys" and simultaneously complain that people don't want nuance.
  - ShlomoS 7y ago
    >It's factually incorrect: a LOT of bombs were dropped on the UK Yes. After we started firebombing German civilians. I didn't say Germany did not bomb civilians, I said England (the supposed "good guys") did it first.
    - matthewowen 7y ago
      Dresden was 44/45. The blitz was 1940. Please explain.
      - ShlomoS 7y ago
        Explain what? Why do you think Dresden was the first time we bombed German civilians? The terror bombing against civilians began immediately after Churchill took power, in May of 1940: http://www.british-values.com/index-to-articles/bombing/vindication/how-it-began.html http://www.british-values.com/index-to-articles/bombing/vind... The blitz was in response to that campaign and began in September of 1940.
Melchizedek 7y ago
http://www.unz.com/article/how-many-germans-died-under-raf-bombs-at-dresden-in-1945/ http://www.unz.com/article/how-many-germans-died-under-raf-b...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

alexandercrohde 7y ago

The very first time I read his book, over a decade ago, I really sympathized with his cries for Dresden. But it didn't last for me: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

tomohawk 7y ago

If the Nazis did not want to be bombed, they should not have picked a fight with the 2 superpowers (UK, US) who had heavy bombers when they had none. I know someone who survived Dresden, and what those people went through was terrible. However, it was an inevitable consequence of stopping an ideological movement that did not value humanity in the least. When you hear people touting their ideology and how they can't respect people's rights because they're trying to achieve a greater good - watch out.

mcbuilder 7y ago
I think it is generally agreed that the Dresden bombing had little strategic impact, so I would do a little more reading on the subject before you go claim that it was a necessity to stop the Nazis. Unless you think vindictively bombing a civilian population as revenge is justifiable.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was arguably an opportunity to test methods. And to create terror, of course. Maybe also payback for the Blitz.
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    I understand that it was always going to be immoral to fire bomb Dresden but the wind on that day whipped up the fires considerably and the extremity of the outcome was due to chance rather than vindictiveness. Of course I think if they’d have known the outcome of course they would have done it anyway.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Or maybe some of them considered the wind fortuitous. I wouldn't be surprised. But then, I'm not a huge fan of war. In fiction, sure. The bloodier, the better. But not in reality, where so many die to make points.
- WiseWeasel 7y ago

Tsubasachan 7y ago

The consensus during and after WW2 was that the Germans deserved it. If you start a war expect to get burned. Sadly history tends to fade and now the Germans were just a tragically misunderstood people doing nothing wrong.

chachachoney 7y ago
How amazingly reductive. Citizens are not governments. I wonder how you'd feel if you or a family member endured a horrible death by firestorm due to the machinations of a government which happens to rule the nation in which you currently reside? On whose perfect soil do you presently live?
deogeo 7y ago
If only the writers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II shared your gift for stating things so concisely and unambiguously!

emmelaich 7y ago

What minimization? The recent (2010) study commissioned by the Dresden council came to the same ~25k that is the popular opinion. To be fair I could easily see it being much higher but that figure is the best we have.