Feb 13 1945 - the firebombing of Dresden and POW K Vonnegut [View All]

[bobbieinok]

59 years ago the allies bombed Dresden; the war was nearly over.


at http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm


The WWII Dresden Holocaust -
'A Single Column Of Flame'
2-6-2


"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

On the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Within less than 14 hours not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants, possibly as many as a half a million, had perished in what was the worst single event massacre of all time.

......

In December 1944, Vonnegut was captured by the German army and became a prisoner of war. In Slaughterhouse Five, he describes how he narrowly escaped death a few months later in the firebombing of Dresden. "Yes, by your people , may I say," he insists. "You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I'm fond of your people, on occasion, but I was just thinking about 'Bomber Harris, who believed in attacks on civilian populations to make them give up. A hell of a lot of Royal Air Force guys were ashamed of what Harris had made them do. And that's really sportsmanship and, of course, the Brits are famous for being good sports," he concedes.

...

I'm not supporting this site's view of the firebombing - just using it as a source of some info and the reminder that Vonnegut was there and wrote about it.

Although I definitely question the 'necessity' of the bombing, I still pretty much think 'If you don't want your cities bombed, you don't start wars.'

(BTW one of David Irving's early books was about the Dresden firebombing. Now a Hitler apologist and a Holocaust denier, Irving labels the Dresden firebombing a 'war crime.')