David Irving, http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History_07 ... 90707.html :
and:"The bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam were no precedents for the RAF's saturation bombing campaign; both cities were attacked for military tactical reasons, as is well established in the records. Winston Churchill in his six-volume history The Second World War subsequently claimed that "thirty thousand civilians" were killed in the Rotterdam raid on May 14, 1940. The city officials told me the actual figure was around 900, mostly from fires caused by the blazing margarine factory."
and:Hannover wrote:See this recent thread:
new book: 'Britain 1st to bomb civilians indiscriminately '
and excerpted from another thread:Hannover wrote:More on the British initiation of terror bombings of civilians here:
Hannover @ banning political parties / more attacks on German democracy
With a list of German towns, cities where the civilian population was illegally terror bombed long before German retaliation.
- Hannover
excerpts:Hannover wrote:http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/Churchill/ ... plies.html
..........the British, by their own admission, initiated unrestricted bombing of civilian areas ought to merit for them membership in the select society of "war criminals." The unbelieving reader need only consult the testimony of the British officials J. M. Spaight and Sir Arthur Harris, for incontrovertible proof of this charge.99 A decision of the British Air Ministry made on May 11, 1940, to attack targets in Western Germany instituted the practice of bombing purely civilian objectives. This "epoch-making event," as F. J. P. Veale correctly describes it, marked an ominous departure from the rule that hostilities are to be limited to operations against enemy military forces alone.100 Spaight, former Principal Secretary of the Air Ministry, makes the following amazing comment on the decision of May 11, 1940:
Because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic bombing offensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May 11, 1940, the publicity it deserves. That surely was a mistake. It was a splendid decision.101
But the "great decision," the "splendid decision" of May 11, 1940, which was ultimately to cost the lives of millions, including thousands of Mr. Spaight's own countrymen, was to have an even more grisly sequel, for, according to Sir Charles Snow who had charge of selecting scientific personnel for war research in Great Britain in World War II, F. A. Lindemann, a Cabinet member and confidant of Churchill, produced in early 1942 a remarkable Cabinet paper on the subject of the strategic bombing of Germany:
It described, in quantitative terms, the effect on Germany of a British bombing offensive in the next eighteen months (approximately March 1942-September 1943). The paper laid down a strategic policy. The bombing must be directed essentially against German working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space round them, and so are bound to waste bombs ...102
One wonders if it was the cultivated humanitarianism inherent in this decision to assure the death of more working class Germans per bomb which entitled the Allies, and in particular the British, to sit in moral judgment on German leaders at Nuremberg in 1946!
99. J. M. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated (London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1944) and Sir Arthur Harris, bomber Offensive (London: Collins, 1947).
100. F. J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Apppleton: C. C. Nelson Publishing Company, 1953), p. 122.
101. Spaight, op. cit., p. 7.
102. C. P. Snow, Science and Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 48.Letter to PBS on fraudulent 'documentary' about the 'Blitz'
Dr. A.R. WESSERLE
16 March 1981
PBS Television "The Blitz"
Sirs:
Rarely have I come across a television broadcast more vicious in intent and more warped in execution than your recent "Blitz on Britain." As a survivor of the mass air raid executed against my native city of Prague, Bohemia, on the Christian Holy Day of Palm Sunday, 1945, by the Anglo-American strategic bomber force - a raid that maimed or murdered thousands a few seconds before the conclusion of the Second World War - I say this:
1. There can be no comparison between the brutality of the Anglo-American bomber offensive, on one hand, and the minimality of the German-Italian efforts, on the other. As the commander of the British strategic air offensive, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris shows in his Bomber Offensive (Macmillan, New York, 1947) 23 German cities had more than 60 percent of their built-up area destroyed; 46 had half of it destroyed. 31 communities had more than 500 acres obliterated: Berlin, 6427 acres: Hamburg, 6200 acres; Duesseldorf, 2003; Cologne (through air attack), 1994. By contrast, the three favorite targets of the Luftwaffe: London, Plymouth and Coventry, had 600 acres, 400, and just over 100 acres destroyed.
2. Anglo-American strategic bombers, according to official sources of the West German government in 1962, dropped 2,690,000 metric tons of bombs on Continental Europe; 1,350,000 tons were dropped on Germany within its 1937 boundaries; 180,000 tons on Austria and the Balkans; 590,000 tons on France; 370,000 tons on Italy; and 200,000 tons on miscellaneous targets such as Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland. By contrast, Germany dropped a total of 74,172 tons of bombs as well as V-1 and V-2 rockets and "buzz bombs" on Britain - five percent of what the Anglo-Saxons rained down on Germany. The Federal German Government has established the minimum count - not an estimate - of 635,000 German civilians were killed in France, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Czecheslovakia, and elsewhere.
3. Both Germany and Britain initiated air raids on naval and military targets as of 3 September 1939. However, when the British attacks on port installations in Northern Germany ended in disaster, with a devastating majority of bombers downed - the Battle of the German Bight - Britain switched over to less costly night air raids on civilian targets such as Berlin and the Ruhr industrial region. By contrast, Germany replied in kind only in the winter months of 1940/41, a year later. Observers indubitably British, such as the late Labour Minister Crossman, the scientist and writer C.P. Snow, and the Earl of Birkenhead, have demonstrated that it was not Germany but Britain that, after May, 1940, unleashed an official policy of unrestricted and unlimited raids on civilian populations under its new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and his science advisor, Dr. Lindemann. Professor Lindemann, the later Viscount Cherwell, coolly calculated that, by using a force of 10,000 heavy bombers to attack and destroy the 58 largest German cities, one-third of the population of Germany would be "de-housed." The assumption, of course, also was that out of those 25-27 million homeless at least ten percent - 2.5 to 3 million people - would be killed. On this score alone, Winston Churchill and his advisors deserve to rank among the maddest mass murderers in history. In fact, as West German records show, 131 German towns were hit by heavy strategic raids. Only the courage of the Luftwaffe pilots, the effectiveness of the air defense network and the strength of the fire fighting organization worked together to prevent a bloodbath to the extent envisioned by the Prime Minister.
4. Blood baths did occur when conditions were right. When the Anglo-American bombing policy reached its first grand climax in a raid on Hamburg that stretched over several days and nights in July, 1943, a minimum of 40,000 to 50,000 civilians burned to death. With the defensive power of the Reich worn down in the second half of 1944 and in 1945, the Anglo-Saxons indulged in ever more massive extermination raids against Europe. Communities of little or no military value, even if attacked previously, were now pulverized, preferably under conditions of the utmost horror. Christian holy days, and dates and sites of famous art festivals were select occasions for raids. Many of the most beautiful cities of Europe and the world were systematically pounded into nothingness, often during the last weeks of the war, among them: Wuerzburg, Hildesheim, Darmstadt, Kassel, Nürnberg, Braunschweig. Little Pforzheim in south-west Germany had 17,000 people killed. Dresden, one of the great art centers and in 1945 a refuge for perhaps a million civilians, was decimated with the loss of at least 100,000 souls. Europe from Monte Cassino to Luebeck and Rostock on the Baltic, from Caen and Lisieux in France to Pilsen, Prague, Bruenn, Budapest and Bucharest reeled under the barbaric blows of the bombers.
5. Nor did the extermination raids stop with Europe. Cigar-chomping General Curtis LeMay demonstrated in. the Far East that record kills could be achieved without resort to atomic weapons. By applying the lessons learned in Europe to the wooden architecture of the Asian mainland and Japan he raised "fire storms" which surpassed even those of Hamburg, n Japanese civilians were killed through bombing. Millions of others fell victim to it, from Mukden, Manchuria, to Rangoon, Burma. It goes without saying that LeMay and his colleagues could not have carried out their campaigns of mass annihilation without the backing of the highest political leaders in the land. In fact, the United States Government had placed orders for the immediate development of four-engined, superheavy, very-long-range bombers (the XB 15, the B-17, the XB 19, the B-24 and the B-29) starting in 1934. Thus, the Roosevelt Administration had begun to lay plans for offensive, strategic, global war back in 1933, the year of its inception. With the later exception of Britain, none of the other "large" powers followed suit: neither France, Italy and Germany, nor Soviet Russia and Japan the latter with extensive holdings in the Pacific. These are sobering facts. PBS, with its record of fine programming, has much to lose if it insists on presenting biassed reports such as "Blitz on Britain" or "UXB." If you care to tap the unplumbed depths of sentimentality, envy and hatred, start a comic strip. In the meantime, we'll change channels.
Give poor Alistair Cooke, who has been mightily discomfited of late, a much-needed respite.
Sincerely, Dr. A.R. Wesserle
Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 381-384.
In addition:“As early as 1953 H.M. Stationary Office published the first volume of a work ‘The Royal Air Force’, 1939-1945 entitled ‘The Fight at Odds’, a book described as “officially commissioned and based throughout on official documents which had been read and approved by the Air Ministry Historical Branch.” The author , Mr. Dennis Richards, states plainly the destruction of oil plants and factories was only a secondary purpose of the British air attacks on Germany which began in May 1940. The primary purpose of these raids was to goad the Germans into undertaking reprisal raids of a similar character on Britain. Such raids would arouse intense indignation in Britain against Germany and so create a war psychosis without which it is impossible to carry on a modern war. Mr Dennis Richards writes: “If the Royal Air Force raided the Ruhr, destroying oil plants with it’s most accurately placed bombs and urban property with those that went astray, the outcry for retalliation against Britain might prove too strong for the German generals to resist. The attack on the Ruhr, in other words, was an informal invitation to the Luftwaffe to bomb London “. p. 122
This passage merely confirmed what Mr. Spaight had so incautiously disclosed in 1944 in his by then forgotten book ‘Bombing Vindicated’. The popular belief that Hitler started unrestricted bombing still persisted and is, in fact, widely held at present day.
The third and last phase of the British air offensive against Germany began in March 1942 with the adoption of the Lindemann Plan by the British War Cabinet, and continued until the end of the war in May, 1945. The bombing during this period was not, as the Germans complained, indiscriminate. On the contrary, it was concentrated on working-class houses because, as professor Lindemann maintained, a higher percentage of bloodshed per ton of explosives dropped could be expected from bombing houses built close together, rather than by bombing higher class houses surrounded by gardens.”
source: ‘Advance to Barbarism - the Development of Total Warfare’, by F.J.P. Veale, p.184-185
A big reason why the 'Allies' need the 'holocaust' storyline
and:
- HannoverHannover wrote:Wielun and the numbers alleged in the Wiki are pure propaganda.Complete nonsense.It killed an estimated 1,300 civilians, injured hundreds more and destroyed 90 percent of the town centre. There were no military targets of any importance in the area.[1]
Look at the picture they provide, the actual damage was fairly minimal. Wielun was a military target and there was some minimal collateral damage, but clearly not an intentional civilian target.Just another fabrication that is easily debunked.Polish historian Jerzy B. Cynk, author of The Polish Air Force at War. The official history 1939-1943, wrote about the events: "Numerous direct support missions were also flown, with the heaviest attacks directed against the Polish cavalry and troop concentrations at Wielun."[9]
At 13:00 a German dive bomber wing, I./StG 2 led by Major Oskar Dinort via Nieder-Ellguth, were directed against this unit, followed a few hours later by Schwarzkopff with sixty Ju 87 Stukas of I./Sturzkampfgeschwader 77[8] Weather conditions were unfavourable during the day, with a visibility of only one kilometre and a practically closed layer of fog at 50 metres altitude.[10] Fog, mist and poor visibility thwarted many of the Luftwaffe's sorties planned for the morning of the first day of the invasion.[10] The dive bombers, facing intense anti aircraft fire, inflicted heavy losses on the Polish cavalry, and the advance was turned into a rout by 90 Stukas.[8] On their return home, four of the German Junkers Ju 87 bombers were shot down by the Polish 36 Academic Legion Infantry Regiment stationed nearby.[8] Three waves of attacks were carried out during the day.[8] The town was captured by the German Army on the first day of the invasion.[8]
- Hannover
