Bombing of Dresden - Should the Queen apologise?

The Daily Express is claiming that the German government is putting pressure on the Queen to apologise for the bombing of Dresden during world war 2.

Today's Bild Zeitung has a front-page article about it:
Bild Zeitung: Entschuldigt sich die Queen für Kriegs-Bomben auf Dresden?

And here it is in English at Deutsche Welle:
Deutsche Welle: Do Mention the War?


Dresden ruins

Liz Windsor (ie the British people) have already paid for the "cupola" thing (in gold) for the newly restored cathedral in Dresden which seems a symbol of re-concilliation enough.

The story is constantly being twisted by the right to make Germany per se to be a victm of WW2 whereas the tragedies that befell ordianary men and women in Germany would not have happened if the nazis hadn't started a genocidal war of agression.

The deliberate targetting of civilian populations in terror raids that weren't of particular strategic importance is however a VERY bad mark against Britain. Even the British ruling class know this: "Bomber" Harris who masterminded it was one of the few of his rank not to get an OBE.

i have an opinion here, and also a very great story, but i'm busy...

I think its wrong of the german government to ask the queen to apologize, and I cant understand why they would.

But since they have asked I guess in the interests of diplomacy it wouldnt hurt the queen to mutter out some token verbal gesture.

I totally agree with you @Kza... As mentioned earlier it probably plays well to the more right elements of the German political spectrum. However internationally I think it makes the German government look like Jackasses. If I were Germany I wouldn't be asking for any apologies relating to WWII (not that they may not be deserved some, but wouldn't *ask* for them).

Generally I'm a liberal, open minded, easy going type, but for whatever reason when it comes to what the Nazis (which were the German government mind you) did and mix that with some Germans attitudes today and I get a little wound up. I know I should "let it go".

Why should the Queen apologise? She wasn't at the controls of a Lancaster was she?

Has the German governemnt specifically apologised for Blitzing London? I know they apologised for the Holocaust but i don't seem to remember any specific apology to the families of London that went thru the same devastation. And to quote Basil Faulty: "You started it by invading Poland!"

Why the Queen? Why not Tony Blair?

Errmm... hang on a cocking damm picking minute, they started bombing a dozen or so countries, destroying valuable landmarks all over Europe, and they want the Queen to appologies. Hmm... god next we will be appologing to the countries for destroying their bombs as they landed on our houses.

Why Tony Blair?
He won't apologise for things he has done in the last couple of years, so why do you think he would apologise for something that happened before he was born?

Really? Not cotton...ok

The german government can fuck off ! They can fuck off doubly because they're the cun*s that started the fucking war (not strictly speaking but close enough). Wankers!

And certainly wasn't our Liz flying the Lancasters or making the strategic combat decisions.

They bombed our chippy.

And our chippy too! B*stards!

That would be like asking the German government to apologize for the holocaust.

Not anything like it. The Queen didn't slaughter 6 million jews and "undesirables".

I hope Prince Phillip joins her for her visit and really sticks his foot in it by saying something incredibly non-politically correct and insulting. Heehee.

WTF?!

The Daily Express has alleged the German government is pressuring England for this. Everyone else is repeating it. No one has a source.

It ain't so.

The bombing of Dresden, however, was indeed a travesty. This alone should have had Butcher Harris up on war crimes charges. As it was, he was the only commander at his level not to receive a knighthood and who was shunned by all his other fellow generals and marshalls after the war.

woof.

What do you mean 'if Prince Philip...' Of course he will. If only everything in life was as reliable as a Prince Philip.

Hee yeah.

He'll be pacing slowly behind her as Royal protocol dictates.
Squinting and grinning no doubt.

Check a few of these out: Prince Philip Gaffes

Yup... he's your very own George Bush (or I guess I should say GWB is our very own Prince Phil)

The bombing of Dresden, however, was indeed a travesty.

no it wasn't.

it was a result of many factors going the right way, and a belief that if the population wasn't seriously pounded on the head, they would still fight a partisan war on into the late 1940s. it's wrong just to look a dresden and go "war crime!", it should have been clear to germany after hamburg which way this was going to end. if you start an all out air war, dont fucking complain that the opposition developed an effective long distance four motor bombing. but there agian, if germany had even thought about the bomber as an effective toll in itself and not just as a way of supporting ground troops then we'd all have learnt german a little bit earlier in our lifes

I don´t think it is fair for us to judge about this. Germans did apologize for holocoust and they still do and it is a history that will never let them go. Germans are all over the world famous or infamous because of Hitler and they paid and still paying to jewish families (which I think is not fair - I think that it is time to stop this), but then again I don´t think that queen needs to apologize for anything and I think that Germans don´t need to apolgize for the massgenocide on jewish people. It was 60 years ago and non of the generations living now should think about stuff like this. It brings just more with it...

@natasa Too bloody right. It happened but it's over if not forgotten and no amount of hollow apologising is going to change anything. The present and future are more important.

I didn't want to get into another long war discussion, so I'll try to keep this short.

The US method was "strategic bombing", taking out industry. This required greater precision and flying during the day so that the men could see their targets.

The RAF under Arthur Harris decided to fly during the night to better protect the planes and men in them. Harris figured he'd crush the German spirit (or so he claimed) and by destroying their homes, make it harder for Germans to work on the war effort.

The logic fails completely. England didn't give up as London was pounded every single night and there was no reason to believe that Germany would do the same.

Humans can live anywhere; we're almost as adaptable as cockroaches. Industry needs factories, and we went after ball bearings, steelworks and oil (Ploesti). It worked, and after the war when Nazi generals were asked, they all said it was the targeted bombing that caused them problems.

Harris preferred to be called '"Bomber" Harris' but everyone called him "Butcher", at least behind his back. Slaughtering civilians through bombing and firestorms is why.

Did the Nazis start it? They sure as shit did. That doesn't excuse the action.

Do I think the UK should apologise? No. It was a war that took place 60 years ago. It's over. Almost everyone alive at the time isn't now.

Again, until I see otherwise, I believe the story is nothing more than a UK "news"paper trying to start a shitstorm in order to sell more copies.

woof.

If the story is true then its just going over old ground again & again.

If we get into this kind of discussion, both countries will be apologising to eachother for ever.
By the time we got into carpet bombing etc things were pretty desparate and we would do anything just to get it finished (just as the US did in Hiroshima / Nagasaki)

If the queen needs to aploogise for anyone, its her grandson...I'll get me coat too

Rather than apologize for the bombing, they should show measures of goodwill and both the British and Americans should remove all their military troops from germany. The cold war is over for more than a decade and there is no threat of any nation invading germany. So the US and UK should remove their invading armies and allow germans to take care of their own military affairs. That would be the greatest apology and solidarity act that these nations could show.

I would agree but I believe the community appreciates the money that the american military spends, and dont actually want the US Army to leave.

Wasn't the Queen to young to be flying airplanes then?

Deary me...another TT chat about the bombing of Germany. I don't claim to be an expert on the matter, but I will say this - it is widely believed that Dresden was attacked to demonstrate to the USSR just what area bombing could achieve. Dresden is deep inside Germany and had little or no industrial significance - it was bombed to scare the Russians. Most of the 30,000 or so people who died were civillians.
Should we have done it? I'm not sure.
And I doubt that Harris was called 'Butcher' Harris by many at the time - the RAF crews held him in some degree of adulation. Since the war his name has been muddied, as has that of the many men who flew in the air war against Germany.

There are approximately 15,000 British troops of the 1st Battalion Light Infantry stationed in Paderborn. One of the main reasons that they are still there is simply that the British government has nowhere to put them if they relocate back to the UK.

the sort of thing this refers to is "I put your nan in an oven in poland. you get no death certificate"

therefore her life insurance policy does not pay out. 60-odd years on many of these cases have not been resolved

fair? natasa, you wouldn't know fair if came and bit you in the nose

errr any munition falling within a coupple of miles of the target was considered accurate, the yanks got pasted all over europe and also killed hundreds of thousands of civillians so peerleease get of the moral high horse. there was no such thing as startigic bombing in the 1940s. the losses incurred by the brits flying in the day were too high (the german luftwaffe not yet having been forced into a support role on the eastern front) and would have so seriously reduced their fighting capabilities that bomber commeand would have ceased to be. dont forget the americans were too busy sucking up to hitlers arse before the japanese kindly deceided to bomb pearl harbour, and that left the critical years of 40 and 41 up to the aussies kiwis canadians south africans indians brits and a bunch of mad poles to save europe from a very dark future. (there again it would have saved me a fortune on german leasons...)

Kza, you are right in a way when you say that they 'dont want the military to leave', but this is a very small minority. Over the last 60 years small towns and communities have become dependant on the military. Services and shops have began to cater to them and so that is how they make their money. However, this section of the population is quite small. Take Würzburg or Baumholder for example. They are both smaller towns, and when the US military announced that it would be closing some bases, these towns complained. The population of these 2 towns is a few hundred thousand at most and they are the only ones who are complaining. Germany has a population of 82 Million, so to say that a few hundred thousand who are loud with their protests speak for the majority is wrong. You cant say that the germans dont want the foreign militaries to go because 100.000 out of 82 million complain! The government doesnt want them to go because they recieve money and support from the US and British military (tow the party line and we dont have any problems with the US or UK govt.). However, the normal people do want the militaries gone. Near Dortmund is a good example. It had a huge British military presence up until the mid 1990s. The people (a small minority) who made money off the military yelled and screamed and made it seem like the world was coming to an end when they heard of the removals. Once the military moved out, the area did not become a ghost town and the people did not become poor. They are in fact doing better now than they did when the military was there.

Here is a good way to look at it: there is a factory that produces horse drawn buggies. It is located in a town of 100.000 people and the entire town depends on this factory to make their living. Today no one needs buggies anymore because the car has come. The factory since it is no longer useful will be closed down. The people of the town complain and make protests and write to the government asking them to stop the factory from closing since they will be out of a job. No sane government or business man in the world would argue for the factory to stay open due to these 100.000 voices out of a population 82 million. It would be more economically feasible for them to close down the factory and build a new useful factory in the town.

It is the same situation with the military. It would be crazy to listen to a few hundred thousand voices and keep military bases in a time when they are outdated and unneeded.

The americans were also supplying britain with vital supplies (munitions, food, etc) across the atlantic for quite some time before Pearl Harbour caused them to officially declare war.

Would check the exact dates but can't be arsed to go googling.

Hurrah! Now it's going to be a 'who won the war' debate. I haven't the time for a long answer, so here's the short version: Russia won it, and could have done so alone.

yes and making a mint out of it too. They didn't do it just because they wanted to help Britain. They had Britain by the short and curlies and managed to flog off obsolete military equipment cos we were desperate for anything. And this agreement also involved us giving important military bases to the americans. so certainly no halos on their part

and turning away ships full of jewish refugees! i agree with jimbo the russians won. the americans fleeced britain, we only now have just paid off our war debt!

by the way, this agreement (also known as the Lend-Lease Agreement) was only drawn up in 1941. The last payment that Britain made to the US asa result of this agreement was made in 1972, nearly 30 years after the war ended.

The capitalists fleeced everyone in WWII and they weren't just Americans.

Adding America's weight to WWII is what won the war. Russian would have gone down in flames had the Nazis not needed to strengthen the western and southern fronts. Italy did such a piss poor job of holding back the Americans that the Nazis had to realign its defenses.
And without the Americans, the Brits would of indured the blitzkrieg until it surrendered as well.

Actually, there may not have been a WWII had a few early occupied countries resisted. That includes Great Britains weak kneed early approach to appeasing Hitler and hoping the whole thing would just go away.

returning to the topic of Dresden.

It was the Germans that invented the bombing of civilian targets in the First World War when Zeppelins and later Gothas dropped a few bombs on london. (The cricketer WG GRace died of a heart attack brought on by such a raid)

In the Spanish Civil War the used more modern machines to inflict greater devastation most notoriously Guernica, and then when they were winning so spectacularly in 1939-40 they bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam with devastating effects and tried to do the same to British cities.

The Allied bombing was the next step in the process and thanks to our greater resources we were able to use more and bigger bombers to do to the Germans on a bigger scale what they had done to others. The Germans wanted total war and they got it in spades.

German moaning about the bombing reminds me of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans complained long and loud about it, quite forgetting that after the Franco Prussian War of 1871 and after Russia left the war in 1917, they imposed treaties that were just as harsh if not worse. Indeed the treaty imposed on Russia created a German Empire in the Ukaine and White Russia long before Hitler and lebensraum was heard of.

I like Germans and love living in Germany but I really have no sympathy when they start insinuating a moral neutrality between our actions and theirs.

So while we're at it, lets demand an apology off the the Danes and French for invading in 1066, the Spanish for the emotional stress incurred by sending the Armarda, the French (again) for Napoleon, the Dutch for the loss of our ships in numerous battles and attacks in the 1600's (not known by many Brits but a celebrated part of Dutch history I believe).

Lets face the fact that people remember, so until everybody ho was alive at the time has died (and maybe a generation later as well), things like this will keep cropping up.

To people of our generation, born long after the events of 60 years ago, it is history. Not to be forgotten but certainly a grudge to keep going on about.
Most of us normal people tend to be positive and look forwards rather than moan about something long ago. It won't change the fact that things happened.

And dont forget the Roman's. What good did they ever do for us!!

There's the road ! oh and the ...

The problem is that 'history is written by the winner'. The US, Britain, France and every other country that has ever waged or gone to war has commited many atroticies. The fact is, how and if you hear of these atrocities is dependant on who wins. In the USSR for example, they would never talk about the war in an objective sense. So the Polish people were taught that the USSR was its saviour and that they were right (much as the germans are taught today that the US and Britian are their saviours). After the fall of the USSR, the people could see the truth, and look at the facts of the crimes the Russian troops commited.

I watch a TV programme everyday that tells of Nazi germany's atroticities and of the laws broken by the USSR. However, has anyone ever seen a programme talking about crimes commited by the other forces? I have only seen 2 in my life. One was here in Germany, which talked about how the US forces forced the german soldiers in a camp at the end of the war and forced them to sleep outside in the middle of winter without cover. It also talked about how US generals approved the bombing of civilian areas (Demutigung Bomben) in order to try to break the will of the german people.
The other documantary I saw was in Canada which talked about general crime by the US and British forces after the occupation of Germany (rape, theft, beatings, murder from the soldiers on the general population).

The fact is that most of the media (german at least) comes from the US or is owned by the US companies so you will never ever hear anything bad about the allied forces. They freed germany and they helped the german people is the line that they use. It is unthinkable to ever think that they would report about bombing civlilian targets or crimes commited by the soldiers. For this reason, things like the bombing of Dresden, murder of entire vilages in Vietnam, etc. etc. etc. are almost never reported.

You are only wrong when you lose...

..or systematically slaughter 6 million non-combatants, etc, etc.

Ah yes - because the Germans killed the Jews we were morally right in killing their civilian population through bombing.

Fact is, that killing people, whether unavoidable or not, is not a nice or justifiable thing.

Hear hear. Nobody won the war. Humanity lost. And continues to lose.

Agreed - but on the upside millions of Americans can claim that 'they won the war' as though they singlehandedly destroyed the Reich, so at least some good came of it.

Well according to Hollywood they did