Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---------------------------------------------
Mass Murder: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Urban Bombing
Bob Petrovich
War is hell and Hitler started it. He persuaded his followers that their
"moral superiority"
excuse them from being human and having mercy towards their victims.
Almost 60 years later, we struggle to answer the question: was it the
universal crime or
it is crime only because Hitler lost the war?
SCHRECKLICHKEIT - Nazi way
Schrecklichkeit (frightfulness) - an instrument of the German invasion
of
Belgium and France,
intended to disarm or destroy any civilian resistance.
"Since speed was of the essence,
no civilian harassment or irregular warfare
would be tolerated by the Germans.
They used heavy artillery,
including the siege gun 'Big Bertha'
. . . on the town centre of the city of Louvain;
they shot hostages; burnt villages,
and when women were raped by German soldiers,
their commanders did little about it"
Winter and Baggett's The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century ,
p. 67
SCHRECKLICHKEIT , "we'll meet again" way
"We'll meet again,
Don't know where,
Don't know when,
But I know
We'll meet again
Some sunny day."
-Vera Lynn, singer, 1942
When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister May 10 1940, he appointed
Frederick Alexander Lindemann as his adviser. Soon Lindemann air
doctrine
followed, an adaptation of ideas of Italian fascist general Giulio
Douhet.
The crown jewel of Lindemann doctrine is fan-patterned firebombing of
Dresden. (Firebombing is newspeak for achieving effects of atomic bomb
by
conventional explosives.) Dresden had no industry. It was cultural
center
protected by treaty between Germans and Britons.
Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris summed it up:
"Whenever the fact that our aircraft OCCASIONALLY (emphasis BP)
killed women and children is cast in my teeth I always produce this
example of the blockade, although there are endless others
to be got from the wars of the past. "
Up to 2 million German civilians were killed "occasionally" in British
area
bombing and American "precision bombing" of German cities.
"They reaped what they sow" one may rightfully say. But what about
others?
Civilians in occupied Europe were also "occasionally" targeted,
especially
on Christian religious holidays.
They were bombed, although they did not follow Hitler's murderous path,
even when fought against Hitler and were recognized as allies.
During only one such air raid, USAAF air raid on Belgrade, (Orthodox
Easter
Sunday, April 16 1944)
more than 2000 Serbian civilians were killed. Two times more than
Luftwaffe killed in Rotterdam,
4 times more than Luftwaffe killed in Coventry. Damage to German
occupying
forces was insignificant.
USAF boasted that U.S. bombers equipped with the "top secret" Norden
bomb
sight
could drop a bomb "into a pickle barrel."
What happened? Official USAAF history explains that Belgrade residential
quarters were bombed
by navigational error. But it does not explain why more than 6000 Serbs
were killed in Nish and Pirot,
some 200 miles away. Nor it explains why, if the target was indeed
Romania,
"Happy Easter" greetings
found on unexploded ordnance were written in Serbian.
Gratitude for saving 500 American Airmen behind enemy lines, perhaps.
By comparison, the railroads leading to death camps - Dachau, Auschwitz,
Belsen, Jasenovac and many
others were not destroyed. Death factories worked full time. Protection
of
ENIGMA secret.
Nazi production for military was unharmed also.
Hiroshima could be understood as an effort to shorten the war,
regardless
of historical evidence stating otherwise.
But how to understand Nagasaki August 9 1945 11:02 A.M.?
And how to approve it?
Lindemann doctrine continued to live after WWII. Rolling thunder over
Viet
Nam, secret bombing of Cambodia
1970, precision bombing of shelters in Iraq 1991.
SCHRECKLICHKEIT, humanitarian way
"I think no power to your refrigerator, no
gas to your stove, you can't get to work
because the bridge is down - the bridge on
which you held your rock concerts -- and
you all stood with targets on your heads.
That needs to disappear at 3 o'clock in the
morning."
-- Lt. Gen. Michael Short, US Air Force Commander, May 12 1999
Demonization and dehumanization of victims is part of Schrecklichkeit,
Nazi
way, "we meet again" way or humanitarian
way.
Perceived moral superiority over victims also.
Napalms did not incinerate Vietnamese, only "gooks", "Charlies" and "me
love good".
Cluster bombs were not murdering children and old people on marketplaces
in
Serbia, it was humanitarian intervention.
"Do you still wanna be a Serb" read inscription on unexploded
ordnance.The
same question could be sent back.
My family had been bombed by LUFTWAFFE in 1941, by USAAF and RAF in 1944
and by
USAF, RAF and LUFTWAFFE in 1999.
The difference?
Hitler's Luftwaffe did not use plutonium laced depleted uranium
ammunition.
Nazis were not humanitarians
There was no CNN in Hitler's time.
Nowadays, wars are fought from 15,000 ft against the enemy population
(real
war)
and from all media towards own population. (virtual war)
Supporting it is just another way to pull the cluster bomb release
trigger.
We may comprehend Hiroshima, but how to comprehend Nagasaki?
Please think about it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
------------
BACKGROUNDER
[1] the "primary object" of the bombing "should now be focused on the
morale
of the enemy civil population and in particular, of the industrial
workers"
Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic, Air Offensive
Against
Germany: 1939-1945
[2] Bomber Offensive, Air Marshall Harris.
Greenhill Press; ISBN: 1853673145
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853673145/qid=996644244/sr=1-1/ref=sc_b_\
1/104-7599668-2197567
[3] "in air operations against production the weight of attack will
inevitably
fall upon a vitally important, and not by nature very amenable, section
of
the community-the industrial workers, whose morale and sticking power
cannot be expected to equal that of the disciplined soldier."
- John Slessor quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command (1979)
[4] ." In reality, an estimated one-half of U.S. bombs were
dropped through cloud cover or at night where the average bombing error
was
about three miles off target. And of those bombs dropped in daylight
under
clear conditions, at most half fell within one quarter mile of the
target
point (John Ellis, Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the
Second
World War [1990].
[5] "High-ranking officers sent official messages to one another which
caused
the record to suggest that AAF [Army Air Forces] practice fitted with
the
official policy. Yet these officers knew this was not the case.... [U.S.
deputy air commander] Anderson and his colleagues were protecting the
image
of the AAF from historians and other investigators." -"American Military
Ethics in World War II, The Bombing of German Civilians," Journal of
American History, September 1980
[6]"Once in England the censors held up my report that the Eighth Air
Force
had bombed Germany through a solid cloud cover. This was politically
sensitive;
our air staff maintained that we were practicing only precision bombing
on
military targets. But the censors released my story when I pointed out
the obvious--Germans on the ground and the Luftwaffe attacking bombers
knew the clouds were there.
The truth was not being withheld from Germans but Americans."
Walter Cronkite, Newsweek, February 25, 1991
[7] The effect of firebombing:
"People died within seconds of being subjected to the unimaginable heat,
dying from oxygenlack, carbon monoxide poisoning, even incandescence"
(Chaz
Bowyer, Air War Over Europe [1981]..
Dresden Death toll:
The Americans and British have tried to reduce the figure to 60,000,
which is
absurdly low, while "the German Federal Bureau of Statistics in
Wiesbaden
claims that it was 600,000" (Janusz Piekalkiewicz, The Air War:
1939-1945
[1985]).
The reason for bombing Dresden
"I feel that our air forces are the blue chips with which we will
approach
the post-war treaty table, and that this operation will add immeasurably
to
their strength, or rather to the Russian knowledge of their strength."
General David Schlatter, Eisenhower's deputy chief of air staff
[8] The effects of humanitarian bombing of Serbia
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/EUR700182000
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/
UNEP http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf/missions/photos.html
-------------------------------------------------
This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been
shut down
==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA
Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This email was sent to: archive@jab.org
T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================
