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On 13.07.2012 02:42, Kenneth Morgan wrote:
The British maintained an effective blockade against Germany during World
War I that resulted in a shortage of food and other basic supplies to the
German civilian population. After the Armistice of November 1918, the
blockade was NOT dismantled. It continued in place until the end of the
Versailles Conference, June 1919. Several historians have suggested this
resulted in tens of thousands of deaths after the last shot was fired. The
continuation of this blockade after the Armistice, directed toward non
combatants, was not only a criminal act, but also one of cowardice.
It was also, of course, designed to stifle the German Revolution - we
shouldn't forget that at this time the Allies were also blockading
revolutionary Russia.
Coming back to the debate about the terror bombing of Dresden and other
German cities. I think that as Marxists that this bombing campaign was a
war crime and a crime against humanity - in particular against the
working class. The areas bombed weren't necessarily the industrial parts
of the cities but the city centres, which were full of refugees in the
latter part of the war and the residential areas.
I live in Chemnitz, one of the cities flattened shortly after Dresden.
You can still recognise the traces of the bombing simply by looking at
the architecture of the city. Many of main industrial areas of the city
were west of the river but the bombing was concentrated east of the
river where the city centre and the main working class residential areas
were and still are. Even in the case of those factories east of the
river most of them survived with relatively minor damage even when they
were relatively close to the city centre and most of the factories in
the city were still in use down to the beginning of the 1990s. This
isn't to deny that some factories were damaged and a few were even
destroyed, I'm simply pointing out that the main destruction wasn't in
the areas where most of teh industry was situated. The bourgeois and
petty bourgeois residential areas west of the river also suffered
relatively minor damage - most of the housing there survived relatively
unscathed and is still occupied today.
However, I think it's a serious error to describe this terror bombing as
a holocaust or genocide - these are the terms used by the Nazis who
attempt to use this Allied terrorism to rehabilitate Nazi Germany. There
was no plan or attempt to exterminate all Germans the way the Nazis
attempted to exterminate all Jews and Romanies or even to enslave them
as the Nazis planned to do with many of the Slav peoples.
From the experience of the Blitz it was clear that terror bombing
wouldn't lead to insurrectionary movements such as those that ended the
First World War. Insurrectionary movements were the last thing that the
Allied High Command wanted - as can be seen by their attitude to the
Resistance in France and Italy. I believe that the bombing was also
intended as a warning to the Russians not to advance beyond the Elbe,
just as the A-bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a warning not to
advance too far in Eastern Asia. Indeed when the capitulation occurred
the Americans occupied the western outskirts of Chemnitz - the stopped
at the autobahn while the Red Army occupied the rest of the city
(incidentally Chemnitz is west of the Elbe). Later under the terms of
the Potsdam Agreement the Americans withdrew from Saxony and Thuringia.
Einde O'Callaghan
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