02-21-2003, 03:02 PM
Quote:Dresden was overflowing with war refugees. Grandfathers, mothers and children... none of whom had ever lifted a weapon or actively sought open conflict.
The very same grandfathers who elected NSDAP. The very same mothers who educated their children to become good Nazis. All those "innocent" German civilians that made WW2 and the Holocaust possible, motivated by their Nationalist Antisemitic ideology.
Quote:I sincerely hope you don't truly feel that way... for that is the same reasoning why the terrorists cells in this world seek to kill American citizens.
Today, America does not wage war upon a whole continent. America does not run elimination camps. Germany did, and most of the people who died in Dresden supported that. It were not only the people carrying a weapon who committed the Holocaust.
You are not per se responsible for the actions of the government you happen to be under. But if you support a regime as terrible as the NSDAP, you are fully responsible for the crimes it committs.
The bombing of Dresden was a direct result of the war Germany had started, in which it made little difference between civilian and military targets. Remember the attacks on English cities. Remember the murder units that followed the Wehrmacht on the eastern front.
The Germans must have known that their own brutal logic would turn against them should they lose the war.
Wether it was militarily necessary or more politically motivated - the Germans who died in the bombing of Dresden were not innocent victims.
Moldran