Memorial.

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The answer lies in a single word – Dresden. The air strikes from February 13, 1945 lie on the conscience of the English. By February 1945 this fight against civilians began to have the taste of a war crime.

and a single word response to that shiite - Coventry (14th November 1940)
 
i don,t agree with the memorial and i,m quite versed is ww2 as a subject.
i stand bias from all sides in this war or any war.
while many died on both sides every one had there fair share of heroes and villains in the war.
when the germans executed 40 soldiers on the crossroads we deliberately executed 40 germans in retaliation.
and there are many incidents like this from all sides some small some major.
but we always hear about what the germans did never what we did as british,we seem to put ourselfs on a pedestal blameless of all actions.
the bombings of dresden killed 25000 woman and kids the industrial or military targets on the outskirts of dresden were untouched even after 7 bombing raids.

During the final months of World War II, Dresden became a safe haven to some 600,000 refugees, including women, children, and wounded soldiers, with a total population of 1.2 million. Dresden was attacked seven times between 1944 and 1945, and was completely occupied by the Red Army after German capitulation.

The bombing of Dresden by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force between 13 February and 15 February 1945 remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of the Western European theatre of war. The inner city of Dresden was largely destroyed by 800 RAF and USAAF bombers that dropped 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) bombs in three waves of attacks. Early reports estimated 150,000 to 250,000 deaths, but the German Dresden Historians' Commission, in an official 2010 report published after five years of research, concluded there were up to 25,000 civilian casualties.
 
Forgive me if I find it difficult to take the word of someone with the user name storm trooperSS on this subject :roll:

yes what happened to dresden was bad, but no worse than what the germans did to coventry (first i might add)

"The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, knocking out the utilities (the water supply, electricity network and gas mains) and cratering the roads, making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the follow-up waves of bombers. The follow-up waves dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of incendiary bomb: those made of magnesium and those made of petroleum. The high explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to damage roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them.


Coventry Cathedral (dedicated to Saint Michael), was set on fire for the first time. The volunteer fire-fighters managed to put out the first fire but other direct hits followed and soon new fires in the cathedral, accelerated by firestorm, were out of control. During the same period, fires were started in nearly every street in the city centre. A direct hit on the fire brigade headquarters disrupted the fire service's command and control, making it difficult to send fire fighters to the most dangerous blazes first. As the Germans had intended, the water mains were damaged by high explosives; there was not enough water available to tackle many of the fires. The raid reached its climax around midnight with the final all clear sounding at 06:15 on the morning of 15 November.

In one night, more than 4,000 homes in Coventry were destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city's factories. There was barely an undamaged building left in the city centre. Two hospitals, two churches and a police station were also among the damaged buildings.
. "

A nation that did that is not well placed to accuse us of war cimes for doing the same thing 3 years later - especially as we did not prosecute the german airmen who flew the coventry raids.

The bottom line is that war is horrible and civilian casualties are both tragic and unavoidable, but that does not take away from the valor of the young men who fought and in many cases died for their country and to protect your and my future - for example had they not you would not now have the freedom to criticise the governments plans in public.
 
u forgot the e after ss which is sse stands for super soldiers elite which is my squad name i,m a gamer.
you say about coventry 500 people being killed most was building damage
lives are more important than buildings we can rebuild.
but what about .
bombing of Hamburg in 1943 50,000 civilians died.
bombing of Pforzheim in 1945 killing roughly 18,000 civilians
the list goes on.
oh and i,m british as well i just live life with a open mind and choose not to walk around blinded by what really happened.
 
stormtroopersse":3ixmvn1i said:
u forgot the e after ss which is sse stands for super soldiers elite which is my squad name i,m a gamer.
you say about coventry 500 people being killed most was building damage
lives are more important than buildings we can rebuild.
but what about .
bombing of Hamburg in 1943 50,000 civilians died.
bombing of Pforzheim in 1945 killing roughly 18,000 civilians
the list goes on.
oh and i,m british as well i just live life with a open mind and choose not to walk around blinded by what really happened.

or the london Blitz 20,000 civilian casualties

the bombing of portsmouth , plymouth, bristol, swindon, crewe, manchester, liverpool, tyneside... (over 60,000 british civilians killed in total)

as you say the list goes on and on

It is undeniably true that the RAF killed a lot of german civilians, but it is equally true that the luffwaffe killed a lot of british civies (and french, belgian, greek, russian, poles, slav etc), Care to guess what the civillian death toll was at stalingrad ?(over 40,000 civilian deaths from luffwaffe bombing in one week before land forces reached the city) , or at guernica ? (1,654 ), or warsaw ? (no figures available but 84% of the city was destroyed), or Wieluń (1300 civilian deaths, 90% of the town centre destroyed), There are loasds of other examples so the germans are far from blameless and thus not in a good position to point fingers at us over the dresden raid.

and also lets not forget that the germans started the war, and the RAF would not have been in the german skies had we and our allies not been atacked first.

I'm not blind to what really happened either, but nor am I blind to what would had happened had the young men who fought and died on the allied side not done so, if the Nazi's at won the war we would not be having this discussion and you would be in severe danger of being politically detained for daring to disagree with a government decision in public
 
Most of the comments above seem to reflect that very sensible old maxim that two wrongs make a right. :roll:
 
Jake":1jwh8tsq said:
Most of the comments above seem to reflect that very sensible old maxim that two wrongs make a right. :roll:

Give it another twenty years and people will forget.

The dead of the Crimean and Zulu wars have already slipped from popular memory, and reside in history now. I see no reason to believe that the dead of WW1 or WWII will ultimately be any different.

BugBear
 
bugbear":34ynkcqq said:
The dead of the Crimean and Zulu wars have already slipped from popular memory, and reside in history now. I see no reason to believe that the dead of WW1 or WWII will ultimately be any different.

Except the Crimean and Zulu wars weren't on film and they didn't effect nearly as many people. So I dunno whether I can see that happening.

As to the memorial, the rights and wrongs of certain raids are academic to me - it was war and everyone did terrible things. Dropping one bomb on any human being is a horrific thing, for heaven's sakes. But the young men who flew in Bomber Command were doing their duty for their King and Country just as much as the flash lot in the fighter squadrons, or the poor sprouts in the Merchant Navy. They've all been remembered in some way, and yet time and again the bomber crews have been shunned. Is it fair to overlook their bravery just because we can't come to terms with feeling guilty about what they were asked to do? Personally I think not.
 
devon your are a complete moron just because i stand back and view it from both sides makes me a troll lol. Can we have less of the personal abuse FROM ANYONE ,MOD it would make me a troll if i did,nt take in consideration of all sides.

when you compare figures.

Strategic bombing survey the number of killed by Allied bombing in Germany have been estimated at between 400,000 and 600,000.In the UK 60,595 British were killed by German bombing and in France 67,078 French were killed by US-UK bombing.
Roughly 7,500,000 German civilians were also rendered homeless.

so rather than build a £3.5million memorial to remember our airman lets get the germans to give us £3.5million and build a even better memorial for all airman on both sides that will solve the problems.
 
Alf":kafdpld6 said:
Except the Crimean and Zulu wars weren't on film...

The Zulu war WAS on film. I distinctly remember Michael Caine.

On a more serious note... I don't know a great deal about what actually happened at the time, regardless of how history has been written on the web or in books, but it's a simple fact that hero status is a significant factor in recruiting military personnel to fight today's battles. (Especially these days where the status of "enemy" is less black and white and therefore involvement etc is far more debatable (thus detracting from the "hero" status)). It seems necessary to roll out a memorial or other tribute every once in a while, some of which foster heated debate.
 
Alf, as someone who lost family members in that conflict and was himself hurt by bomb blast there is not one word you have said that I could argue with. Thank you.

Roy.
 
I note that you ignored my comments about Rotterdam etc, but perhaps you would care to give us the view from the other side on the German memorials.

Belsen,
Dachau,
Treblinka,
Auschwitz,
Buchenwald,
Sachsenhausen,

The list goes on, and I remember every stinking rotten one of them!

Roy.
 
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