10 days to go...
...until the election
Good morning,
Today is the 80th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden. It is interesting that, so long after the attack, it still seems somewhat subversive or inappropriate to describe the bombardment of the “Florence of the Elbe” as a war crime.
But that is plainly what it was. And it was just one of many carried out by Britain’s Royal Air Force, which intentionally created firestorms in German cities in order to drive the working population out of their homes and demoralise them. The same was true in Hamburg, Frankfurt and many other cities, most of which still bear the scars today.
Some 25,000 people are estimated to have died in the bombing of Dresden on February 13th and 15th, 1945. What I didn’t know is that the GDR took over the Nazi propaganda figure of a quarter of a million deaths and used it during annual memorials that depicted the destruction of the city as the result of “Anglo-American fascism.” That is somewhat ironic given that Dresden was on the eastern front and the bombing was meant to help the Red Army’s progress towards Berlin.
After the end of communism, neo-Nazis filled the void in remembrance, holding annual marches at which they held up signs saying “never forgive, never forget.” Some old archive video of AfD politician Björn Höcke among the crowd at one of those marches turned up a couple of years ago.
Again, it’s ironic that the likes of Höcke want Germany to “move on” from its shame over Nazi war crimes, but seem so reluctant to let go of the victims of the Dresden firebombing.