Meh, other cities were hit harder in Germany. Why's everyone singling out Dresden like that?
Dresden was made iconic because of the lack of strategic importance to Dresden, and the press story that ran afterwards, "Now Terror, Truly," where an AP reporter basically got a military official to admit on the record that the RAF was deliberately performing genocidal bombing of civilians for the purposes of terrorism. (Later compounded by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V.) Other cities either weren't as culturally iconic or had some sort of strategic value to justify them, such as factories involved in war production.
Dresden, therefore, can be used as a political token of moral equivalence or "Victor's Justice"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor%27s_justice to say that the Allies were as guilty of war crimes as the Axis was, but that none of their soldiers were executed for "just following orders" solely because they won the war, not because of any difference in actual behavior. Some of those, particularly outright Holocaust Deniers and overt Nazis, themselves, vastly overstate the actual deaths in order to declare Dresden a "bombing Holocaust" that is exactly equal to (or somehow worse than) the actual Holocaust. Even outside those corners, it can be used as proof by anyone who distrusts militarism in general as a way of dispelling the myth sometimes built around World War 2 of being pure good versus pure evil and, by extension, attacking the notion that there are "good wars" with clear moral superiority on any side.
It's more used against Britain than the US, because "You dropped nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima" is an even more ready-made argument about indiscriminate killing of civilians than firebombings. (Even though, again, the firebombing of Tokyo actually killed FAR more people than either nuke.)
Furthermore, a lot more than that chocolate would be melting in a firestorm. They're called firestorms for a reason - they were purposefully designed to create low-pressure areas that swept the flames inward into a vortex (of fire) that pulls a deliberately-placed outer ring of flames ever-inward, offering no chance of escape outside of some form of fireproof (underground) facility.
On the other hand, it sure beats knowingly blowing up the universe "by accident" while trying out an experimental hyperdrive you knew in advance would fail...
Some of those, particularly outright Holocaust Deniers and overt Nazis, themselves, vastly overstate the actual deaths in order to declare Dresden a "bombing Holocaust" that is exactly equal to (or somehow worse than) the actual Holocaust.
To be fair, a burnt offering is a jewish religious ceremony so dresden makes perfect sense; in turn, I would expect the final solution to be called a more german name. I wonder if the Japanese atomic bombings have a japanese title?
<googling intensifies> oh my god, completely unrelated but there were people who fled the aftermath of hiroshima to nagasaki. I think i'm going to throw up
millenialkuraudo said: <googling intensifies> oh my god, completely unrelated but there were people who fled the aftermath of hiroshima to nagasaki. I think i'm going to throw up
Don't ever google the rape of Nanking/Nanjing, dude. You'll probably faint if your that squeamish.
Dresden was made iconic because of the lack of strategic importance to Dresden, and the press story that ran afterwards, "Now Terror, Truly," where an AP reporter basically got a military official to admit on the record that the RAF was deliberately performing genocidal bombing of civilians for the purposes of terrorism. (Later compounded by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V.) Other cities either weren't as culturally iconic or had some sort of strategic value to justify them, such as factories involved in war production.
Dresden, therefore, can be used as a political token of moral equivalence or "Victor's Justice"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor%27s_justice to say that the Allies were as guilty of war crimes as the Axis was, but that none of their soldiers were executed for "just following orders" solely because they won the war, not because of any difference in actual behavior. Some of those, particularly outright Holocaust Deniers and overt Nazis, themselves, vastly overstate the actual deaths in order to declare Dresden a "bombing Holocaust" that is exactly equal to (or somehow worse than) the actual Holocaust. Even outside those corners, it can be used as proof by anyone who distrusts militarism in general as a way of dispelling the myth sometimes built around World War 2 of being pure good versus pure evil and, by extension, attacking the notion that there are "good wars" with clear moral superiority on any side.
It's more used against Britain than the US, because "You dropped nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima" is an even more ready-made argument about indiscriminate killing of civilians than firebombings. (Even though, again, the firebombing of Tokyo actually killed FAR more people than either nuke.)
Furthermore, a lot more than that chocolate would be melting in a firestorm. They're called firestorms for a reason - they were purposefully designed to create low-pressure areas that swept the flames inward into a vortex (of fire) that pulls a deliberately-placed outer ring of flames ever-inward, offering no chance of escape outside of some form of fireproof (underground) facility.
On the other hand, it sure beats knowingly blowing up the universe "by accident" while trying out an experimental hyperdrive you knew in advance would fail...
So it's basically either Nazi propaganda or anti-Western revanchism/revisionism.
So it's basically either Nazi propaganda or anti-Western revanchism/revisionism.
More so the former than the latter. A lot of history books about the "German perspective" are straight up just Nazis writing about what they did and including obvious lies that they were told by the higher ups and continued to repeat until their deaths
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