← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Ragnar
Thread ID: 12316 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-02-14
2004-02-14 00:02 | User Profile
135,000 Germans at Dresden died this day in history. So far I've seen it mentioned in a half-dozen places -- but none more interesting than an otherwise fairly routine Larouchite article at Rense:
[url]http://www.rense.com/general15/tr.htm[/url]
Excerpt:
[QUOTE]...As commentators on the scene at "Ground Zero" of the World Trade Center (WTC) attack on Sept. 11 surveyed the devastation, they reached for metaphors to describe the incredible scene. "It looks like Dresden," said one, referring to the firebombing of that German city by the Allies in 1944.
Dresden had no military value as a target. For centuries, it had been a center of German cultural heritage--a heritage that had everything to do with positive developments in human civilization, and nothing to do with the Nazi disease that had been imposed on Germany by the Anglo-American financial elite. Dresden was chosen for destruction as an act of TERRORISM, directed, [B]not against the Nazis, per se, but the German people. [/B]
The firebombing of Dresden, creating a raging inferno of destruction that slaughtered more that 100,000 human beings, [B]was conceived and directed by a group of social psychiatrists at the Strategic Bombing Survey, affiliated with the Special Operations Command of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).[/B] This group was effectively overseen by the head of the British Psychological Warfare Directorate, Brig. Gen. John Rawlings Rees, the director the Tavistock Clinic in London, which, since the 1920s, had served as a center of psychological warfare operations of the British Empire.
[B]The team at the Strategic Bombing Survey, which included a host of U.S.-based Tavistock operatives, such as Kurt Lewin, Rensis Likert, and Margaret Mead, theorized that the terror inflicted on the German population through the "message of Dresden" would break their will to fight, leaving them fearful, frightened, and disorganized.[/B] They projected that it would have a lasting effect on Germany, removing that nation from among the great states of Europe, making it a permanently psychologically scarred entity. The German people, they argued, would be made to realize that "all that is German" could be wiped away, all of its culture and history, in an instant, as it were, by powers who would oppose an assertive future Germany.
In his 1941 book, "Time Perspective and Morale," Kurt Lewin described the psychology behind the use of this terror tactic for mass effect:
"One of the main techniques for breaking morale through a `strategy of terror' consists in exactly this tactic--keep the person hazy as to where he stands and what just he may expect. If, in addition, frequent vacillations between severe disciplinary measures and promises of good treatment, together with the spreading of contradictory news, make the cognitive structure of this situation utterly unclear, then the individual may cease to know when a particular plan would lead toward or away from his goal. Under these conditions, even those individuals who have definite goals and are ready to take risks will be paralyzed with severe inner conflicts in regard to what to do."
[B]As the pilots and their crews came to realize what they had done--the creation of a raging inferno, burning civilian targets and civilians--many returned to their bases horrified.[/B] At the instruction of the psyops warriors, the crews had not been fully briefed on the mission. Now, they were greeted by teams of psychologists and others, who would profile their responses to the terror they had unleashed; they were told, as the crews who later dropped, unnecessarily, atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, that it would "shorten the war."
As one former intelligence officer remarked decades later, [B]"we killed for pure terror, slaughtered people as A TERRORIST WOULD. And, it had no effect on shortening the war. In fact, it seemed to help rally the German people to the Hitler government. The fools who designed this mission probably extended the war"[/B][/QUOTE]
2004-02-14 02:00 | User Profile
The bombing of Dresden was a war crime of epic proportion. Somebody should have been held accountable for the incineration of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
But I guess that wouldn't be in the best interests of the Jews (which is the only thing that matters in this pathetic world we live in), so why bother?
Dan
2004-02-14 22:54 | User Profile
Here is another article worth taking a look at:
[url]http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm[/url]
Note this paragraph, second to last:
[QUOTE]This is not to say that the mountains of corpses left in Dresden were ignored by the Nuremberg Tribunal. In one final irony, the prosecution presented photographs of the Dresden dead as "evidence" of alleged National Socialist atrocities against Jewish concentration-camp inmates![/QUOTE]
Can this claim be verified by any other sources? (I'm not doubting it, I would however like to see another source, other then rense.com)
Dan
2004-02-15 01:12 | User Profile
Dan B.
I've heard this before and have no idea if it is true. You are right to double-check that sort of thing.
David Irving's book might mention it, the updated edition is available below. I have only read the first edition, published around 35 years ago when much less of WWII had been declassified. He might have gotten to it since but I haven't read the revised edition yet.
David Irving's book on Dresden (free download; needs Adobe Acrobat reader):
[url]http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Dresden[/url]
2004-02-15 16:25 | User Profile
Thanks for the link. I'm downloading right now.
Dan