#5

Post by Panzermahn » 04 Jan 2005, 07:25

So was Dresden. There were over 100 shops and factories making war materials for the Wehrmacht in Feb 45.

The number of refugees in Dresden is debatable, but it should also be noted that there were refugees in Stalingrad as well. The fact that much of Dresden's AA defenses had been relocated elsewhere is the fault of the German government, not the Allied bombers. The Luftwaffe lost only three planes in its initial attack on 23 August. The Soviet AA defenses were rather lacking there, also.

The German authorities were also negligent in the way they handled refugees in 1945. Does this mean that any attack on any location that contained refugees was a war crime?

The same can hardly be said of the Allied attack on Dresden.

Source please? Where are the lists of shops and factories? Who owned them? Krupps? Thyssen? IG Farben? Surely, you would not want me to name industrial factories in Stalingrad for you, right? I believe it is famously mentioned in Beevor's StalingradThe Russian civillian refugees in STalingrad are a result of the Soviet authorities failure to organised mass evacuations when Soviet Intelligence knew that the Germans were preparing an assault towards Stalingrad and also because of Dzugashvilli's mad order of Not One Step Back.....Soviet AA defences are lacking in Stalingrad? Source please?Dresden's AA defences were taken down because the urgency to used them at the Eastern Front to protect the German eastern territories from a Russian invasion...Your notion of the lack of AA defences in Dresden attributed to the fault of German government is simply illogical, and absurd..For example, let's say the Germans was preparing to invade England at te Dover beaches and Churchill decided to stripped of most of the AA defences in London and send them to the coast to thwart a German invasion. And when the Germans bombed London without much losses because the lack of AA defences in london, therefore it should be the fault of Churchill, not German bombers...Is this what you imply?It was not the fault of German authorities in the way of handling refugees in 1945. It is because III Reich was severely pressed fro all the sides in Europe, Eastern Front, Western Front, Italian Front and most of the resources were prioritized to the Wehrmacht first for defence. Furthermore, the Germans did not know (meaning no intelligence) that the Anglo-American air forces had the audacity to firebomb Dresden because Dresden, first and foremost was a cultural city which was even famous with British visitors (the Englischer Garten comes in mind) unlike in STalingrad, the Russian authorities knew (meaning they had intelligence information) the Germans were preparing an assault towards Stalingrads but yet they did not do much to organized the evacuation of civillians.THe Anglo-american top brasses knew it was a matter of time before 3rd Reich will be defeated (and its even obvious in 1945) so why purposely bombed a city which had no vital industrial targets and it is known that the bombing offensive in Dresden did not even delay the advance of Anglo-American forces in Western front. THe Anglo-American bombing of Dresden still remains, until today, an example of savage air-terrorism against the helpless German civillians and refugees which were majority women and children at Dresden (just like September 11 atrocities pepertrated by Islamic terrorists)