DBWI: 63rd Anniversary of the Berlin Bombings

Blackwood

Banned
Today marks the 63 years since the Allied powers dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Berlin, Germany. While thousands of civilians managed to evacuate the city beforehand, thousands more died in the blast and ensuing aftermath. Today Germany is a proud and prosperous nation, and Berlin has been rebuilt as one of the most populous and developed in the world today. Although many of the ruins are long gone, the battered frame and crumbling walls of the Old Reichstag still stand, surrounded by modern skyscrapers and roads, as a testament to the destruction that humanity can inflict, as well as to the commitment to rebuild.

What do you all have to say about it?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
By following the madman Hitler with such fervent loyalty, the German people brought the destruction upon themselves. And the number of people killed in the bombings is nothing compared to the number of people who died in the Nazi death camps.
 

boredatwork

Banned
The germans started the war. It is like anything else in life - if you start something, you better be ready for all the consequences, especially those that you didn't foresee.

Or, as my drill instructor used to say (well, shout really) "Mess with the best, die like the rest"

Certainly solved that little chip on the shoulder issue the Germans used to have, now didn't it?
 
It's a shame the Germans were so fanatical... but on the other hand, the bombing managed to stop the war on both fronts, or it's at least believed to be one of the major factors (along with the death tolls of the Battle of Kyushu) that caused Japan to finally give in... so I think it was worth it, really... (apologies to any Germans here who feel otherwise)
 

Markus

Banned

First of all you got the years wrong, Blackwood. Berlin was nuked in 1944, which makes it the 64th anniversary.


I´m surprised the previous posters have not commented on just how badly the Allies fucked it up. Just the bombing of
Berlin killed about 100,000 civilians, but shortened the war not by a single day as Adolf Hitler survived this attack.

The long term effects are even worse, the massive enmity caused by the repeated attacks guaranteed Germany was always a shaky NATO ally at best. Until the shit hit the fan in 79 when the SPD/FDP government succumbed to million strong demonstrations because they did not veto NATO´s "Double-Track" decision even though no Pershing II missiles were not to be stationed in Germany anyway. The swing to the left almost got Germany out of NATO and got the west on the brink of loosing the cold war. Speaking of loosing, Germany withdrawing from the NATO military command in 1992, the utter lack of German support for the 1st gulf war and pretty much any other kind of international operation with any level of American participation might be seen as ingratitude given the USA´s support for reunification, but realistically no government could survive anything that smells like military support for the USA anymore. Not after 79.

Roosevelt should have listened to his advisers warning him he has to get Hitler or he will get nothing. And even more to the much stronger warnings preceding the bombing of Dresden and the ones preceding the bombing of Munich.
 
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By following the madman Hitler with such fervent loyalty, the German people brought the destruction upon themselves. And the number of people killed in the bombings is nothing compared to the number of people who died in the Nazi death camps.
Seriously? I really doubt that killing 100,000 is somehow morally "better" than 7 million deaths. Sure, its smaller, but its innocent civilians who died in both cases. A few hundred Nazi officials don't compensate for the massacre that the allies caused.
 
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