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The perpetrators are the
same ...
but the scale of allied war crimes
against Germany remains unparalled
| Baghdad 2003 | Dresden 1945 |
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Los Angeles Times - October 29, 2001, p. F6 |
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Hollywood ... don't tell the full story of how we won the war in Europe. U.S. and British aerial bombing. This aspect of the war is rarely dramatized. ... In our bombing of Germany, heavily populated civilian districts were intentionally targeted. The idea was that by targeting the civilian population, we would disrupt Germany's economy, destroy the morale of its citizens and create chaos by rendering millions of people homeless. Low-income areas were especially targeted for destruction because the population was denser and the buildings closer together. In February 1942, Allied bombers were specifically instructed to concentrate on built-up residential areas instead of targets such as dockyards and factories. It was a brutal way to win a war - and it worked like a charm. By the war's end, more than 2.3 million German civilians were dead, about one-third of them killed in air raids (60,000 of these air raid victims were not even Germans; they were foreign laborers, including Jews). The death toll from both atomic bombs does not equal the death toll from the fire and phosphorous bombs used against Germany. (These bombs created a firestorm that was so intense, German civilians were baked alive in their basement bomb shelters.) ... "How can we kill innocent civilians? Why, we're as bad as the terrorists!" ... If millions of civilian deaths were necessary to bring down Nazi Germany (a country that never attacked the United States), are not some civilian deaths to be expected? .. The German civilians who were burned alive in our bombing raids were no more likely to be Nazis than the Afghani civilians who've been hit by U.S. missiles are likely to be Taliban sympathizers. ... No war in U.S. history claimed more civilian lives than our war against Germany. The public should know the full story of how the "greatest generation" won the war. ... The reality of our victory in World War II isn't pretty, but that doesn't mean we should avert our eyes - especially not right now. |
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"Bush is
waging terrorism" |
