http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZyNRnJFvLg&feature=related
February 12, 2001
I Shall Remember Dresden
by MacKenzie Paine
What is the "Holocaust" and why is it unique? I ask because Great
Britain recently celebrated a "Holocaust" Remembrance Day. It was,
apparently, a most moving day and Jewish survivors shared the
stage with survivors of other episodes of brutality and tyranny. It is
not objectionable, in my mind, to remember those who suffered and
died during times of horror and destruction. It is objectionable
however, in my mind, when our collective memory becomes so
selective.
If we take the term "holocaust" literally, it clearly no longer fits
the
Jewish experience during WWII. There were stories after the war,
most notably told by Elie Wiesel, that part of Hitler's mass
extermination program included throwing Jewish babies into great
burning pits where they were roasted alive. This is today conceded,
however, to be a falsehood and today's version of the story is that
the Nazis murdered six million civilians in homicidal gas chambers,
along with five million "others" thrown in for good measure.
Therefore, the most common definition of holocaust, "death by fire,"
no longer applies to German concentration camp internees during
WWII.
This is not to say that there was no holocaust, because indeed there
was, if by "holocaust" we mean that Jews were put to suffering
and
many Jewish people died. What I find odd, though, is why the
United States and Great Britain are seemingly inflicted by endless
guilt for what the Nazis did to European civilians, while not having
the slightest recollection of our own brutalities. If the "holocaust"
was
death by fire, and killing civilians is a crime against humanity, then
our guilt is sorely misplaced and we're commemorating the wrong
victims. In the heat of battle, we committed our own sins. Please
consider the following quotes from a slender volume, first published
in 1947, entitled Gruesome Harvest. (Liberty Bell Publications)
"All German cities above 50,000 population and many smaller ones
were from 50 to 80 percent destroyed. Dresden, as big as
Pittsburgh, was wiped out . . .Cologne, with a population of 750,000
was turned into a gigantic wasteland. Hamburg, with its 1,150,000
people, was blasted by huge attacks, in one of which the flames
rolled a mile into the sky and roasted alive hundreds of thousands of
civilians in street temperatures of 1,000 degrees." (Associated
Press, London, March 24, 1945)
"Great though it was, the destruction resulting from ground fighting
pales in comparison with that caused by our gigantic air raids. The
two atom bombs dropped on Japan may have been more dramatic,
but they could hardly have been more destructive than the millions of
phosphorous, fire and 'block-buster' bombs dropped on Germany.
Near the end we were using 11-tonners which crews said caused
their planes to bounce up over 500 feet when the huge 25 foot
missiles were released, sending up 'a tremendous pall of black
smoke and a fountain of debris' which dwarfed the terrific explosions
of the six-ton earthquake bombs. During the war more bombs were
dropped on Berlin alone than were released over the whole of
England. So great was the ruin that General Eisenhower was
constrained to say, 'I have seen many great engineering jobs during
the war-such as the clearing of the port of Cherbourg-but I just
wouldn't know where to begin to rebuild Berlin.'" (Gruesome Harvest,
p. 4)
I cannot imagine how painful it must be for German survivors of our
Allied firebombings-civilians who lost their babies or their parents in
those fire storms-to have to sit quietly by while Great Britain and the
US continue, a half a century later, to condemn the Germans for
crimes against humanity.
I suppose some will say that I am being too literal in my search for
the uniqueness of the Jewish "holocaust." Perhaps the term is used
figuratively. If so, then we must examine the other aspects of the
crime, other than the method of killing. Certainly one of the great
injustices of the Nazi era was the rounding up of Jews for
deportment to the concentration camps. We all know well the stories
of Jews being uprooted by the Gestapo and packed onto cattle
trains to be taken to the various camps. The US has already
apologized to our Japanese citizens and paid them reparations for
our own uprooting and deporting of them to concentration camps in
the Midwest, Arizona, etc., during the war. We, too, ignored our
citizens' constitutional rights to protection. We, too, were guilty of
civil rights violations.
German institutions have paid $61.8 billion as reparations to Jewish
organizations. Individuals have paid tens of billions more, although it
seems that they still haven't paid enough. Jewish organizations such
as the Jewish World Congress and various survivor organizations
complain that Germans still haven't paid enough.
A small, forbidden voice keeps asking, "Who is going to pay the
Germans for their suffering and loss when they were rounded up,
enslaved, starved to death or murdered?"
Or haven't you heard that part of the story? Three months after V-E
Day, Winston Churchill spoke of, ". . .a tragedy on a prodigious
scale. . .imposing itself behind the iron curtain which presently
divides Europe."
It seems that he was on to something, as is suggested in the
following quote:
"Since the end of the war about 3,000,000 people, mostly women
and children and overaged men, have been killed in eastern
Germany and through out south-eastern Europe; about 15,000,000
people have been deported or had to flee from their homelands and
are on the road. About 25 percent of these people, over 3,000,000,
have perished. About 4,000,000 men and women have been
deported to eastern Europe and Russia as slaves." (Quoted by Sen.
Homer Capehart in speech before US Senate, Feb. 5, 1946).
We know of the tearful, frightening train rides endured by Jewish
concentration camp deportees, shown over and over again in
documentaries and major motion pictures like "Schindler's
List."
Was this part of the Jewish experience unique? I quote an
American reporter describing a scene repeated a thousand times
over:
"Nine hundred and nine men, women and children dragged
themselves and their luggage from a Russian railway train at Lehrter
station today, after 11 days traveling in boxcars from Poland. Red
Army soldiers lifted 91 corpses from the train, while relatives
shrieked and sobbed as their bodies were piled in American lend-
lease trucks and driven off for internment in a pit near a
concentration camp. The refugee train was like a macabre Noah's
ark. Every car was jammed with Germans. . .The families carry all
their earthly belongings in sacks, bags and tin trunks. . .Nursing
infants suffer the most, as their mothers are unable to feed them,
and frequently go insane as they watch their offspring die before
their eyes." (Henry Wales, Berlin, Nov. 18, 1945, Chicago Tribune
Press Service)
When the war was over, it was over for the US and her Allies. It was
over for the Jews. But the suffering of the German people had only
begun. Millions worked as virtual slaves in Russia, France and Great
Britain, some until the 1950's. Hundreds of thousands more died of
disease and starvation in the carnage that was left of Germany.
Orphaned children were homeless and lost, their lives forever
shattered. No one remembers these German civilian victims. I know
of no films about them. There are no memorial museums or
memorial days set aside to remember their suffering and their
losses.
But I digress. There is still the question in my mind as to the
uniqueness of the Jewish "holocaust." Perhaps the uniqueness isn't
ascribed strictly to death, or bondage, or loss of ancestral land.
Perhaps it is deemed unique because the governmental goal of the
"holocaust" was the extermination of an entire people? This would
certainly be racism in its most violent form. Even allowing the
thought to cross one's mind, is evil. Civilized people should never
allow it. This seems to be the common meaning of "Never again."
Sadly, however, "Never again" only applies to Jews. No one invokes
these words when remembering the near annihilation of the German
people during and after WWII. Certainly, few would even dream of
reminding certain people of this oft'-used phrase when discussing
the fate of the Palestinians in the Middle East, yet here is a quote
from a Jerusalem newspaper from just last month. The author is a
Russian Jew who writes for the largest Russian-language paper in
Israel:
"The Russian language paper, Direct Speech, published in
Jerusalem, asked hundreds of Russian Jews about their feelings
towards the Palestinians. Typical answers were: 'I would kill all
Arabs,' 'All Arabs must be eliminated,' 'Arabs must be expelled,' An
Arab is an Arab. They have to be eliminated.' I am not sure you
would get better results in Germany in 1938. Even Nazis did not
intend to kill their Jewish enemies until 1941. Let us put it straight,
we were against racism so long as it was somebody else's racism.
We were against death squads and Sonderkommando as long as
they acted against us. Our own killers, our Jewish
Sonderkommando is the object of our tender admiration. The
Jewish state is the only place in the world possessing legitimate killer
squads, embracing the policy of assassinations, practicing torture
on a medieval scale. Do not worry, dear Jewish readers, we torture
and assassinate Gentiles only." (The Handwriting on the Wall, Israel
Shamir, Vesti, Jan. 23, 2001)
So what are we left with when asking the question, "What is the
'Holocaust' and why is it 'unique' when compared to all others?" It
wasn't death by fire. It isn't the unique experience of having been
denied civil rights and taken by cattle cars to concentration camps.
It isn't specifically about civilian deaths and suffering, since so many
millions of others shared the same fate. It cannot be about forced
labor or loss of property. It cannot be about forced expulsions and
loss of ancestral lands, since this was the fate of 15 million
Germans, and continues to be the miserable fate of Muslim and
Christian Arabs, at the hands of the Israelis. It cannot possibly be
about institutionalized racism, since Israel's policies and
mistreatment of the Palestinians far exceed any of Germany's laws
and treatment of the Jews under Hitler.
So what is so "unique"? The "gassing" of the Jews?
Shortly after the war ended, then Major Charles P. Larson, M.C., a
pathologist in the employ of the US Army War Crimes Investigations
Unit, was sent to Germany by the US War Department to perform
autopsies on concentration camp inmates. He performed hundreds
of autopsies on disinterred cadavers, determining death from
starvation, typhus, pulmonary tuberculosis and other infectious
diseases.
He did not determine any deaths due to gassing, even though it was
widely rumored that the Nazis had gassed hundreds of thousands of
civilians in the camps.
There do not appear to be any autopsy reports from any sources
near or far which assign "gassing" as a cause of death in the
concentration camps.
February 13th is the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Allied firebombing
of Dresden, where untold thousands were taken from this life in a
hellish firestorm. While Americans believed that our boys were
bombing military installations and infrastructure, the actual orders
were to bomb civilian populations into oblivion. Genocide by fire.
Holocaust.
I shall remember Dresden, with deep apology and prayers for
forgiveness.
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Sites for the open minded to explore:
http://www.zundelsite.org
http://www.codoh.org
http://www.russgranata.com
http://www.adelaideinstitute.org
http://www.vho.org
http://netjunk.com/users/library/dresden.htm
The night of February 13th,
and February 14th, Valentine's Day, mark an ominous anniversary in the history
of Western Civilization. For beginning on the night of February 13th, 1945,
occurred the destruction of Dresden.
On the eve of Valentine's
Day, 1945, World War II in Europe was nearly over. For all practical purposes
Germany was already defeated. Italy, and Germany's other European allies, had
fallen by the wayside. The Red Army was rushing to occupy vast areas of what
had been Germany in the East, while the allies of the Soviets, the British and
Americans, were bombing what was left of Germany's defenses and food and
transportation infrastructure into nonexistence.
And what was Dresden? Most of
you have probably heard of Dresden China, and that delicately executed and
meticulously detailed porcelain is really a perfect symbol for that city. For
centuries Dresden had been a center of art and culture, and refined leisure and
recreation. She was a city of art museums and theatres, circuses and sports
stadia, a town of ancient half-timbered buildings looking for all the world
like those of medieval England, with venerable churches and centuries-old
cathedrals gracing her skyline. She was a city of artists and craftsmen, of
actors and dancers, of tourists and the merchants and hotels that served them.
Above all, what Dresden was, was defined during the war by what she was not.
She had no significant military or industrial installations. Because of this,
Dresden had become, above all other things that she was, a city of children, of
women, of refugees, and of the injured and maimed who were recovering from
their wounds in her many hospitals.
These women and children,
these wounded soldiers, these infirm and elderly people, these refugees fleeing
from the brutal onslaught of the Communist armies to the East, had come to
Dresden because it was commonly believed at the time that Dresden would not be
attacked. Its lack of strategic or military or industrial significance, and the
well-known presence of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian refugees and
even Allied prisoners of war, seemed to guarantee safety to the city. Surely,
it was thought, not even a the most powerful and determined enemy would be so
depraved and sadistic, and so wasteful of that enemy's own resources, to attack
such a city. But the people of Dresden, who were happily attending the cinema
or eating dinner at home or watching the show-horses in the circus on that
fateful night were wrong, wrong, wrong. And their leaders were also wrong, for
the city was virtually open and undefended and only minimal civil defense
preparations had been made.
Dresden's population had
almost doubled in the months before the attack, mainly as a result of the
influx of refugees from the Eastern Front, most of them women and young
children. According to British historian David Irving, the briefings given to
the British bomber squadrons before the attack on Dresden were curiously
different. In one, the soldiers were told that their target was the railway
center of Dresden. In another, they were told that the target was a poison-gas
factory. In yet another, they were told that the target was a
marshalling-grounds for troops in the city. Another was told that the target
was a major arsenal. These were all lies.
The only marshalling-grounds
for what few troops were in the area were located well outside the city. The
arsenal had burned down in 1916. There were factories for toothpaste and
baby-powder in Dresden, but none for poison gas. There were, in fact, no fewer than
eighteen railway stations in Dresden, but only one was hit by the bombing, and
that was barely touched and in fact was operating again just three days later.
According to copious
documentation unearthed by David Irving from the archives of the American and
British governments, the point of the attack was in fact to inflict the maximum
loss of life on the civilian population and particularly to kill as many
refugees as possible who were fleeing from the Red Army. In achieving these
goals it was highly successful. It was thus planned and executed by those at
the very highest levels of the British and American governments, who to attain
their purposes even lied to their own soldiers and citizens, who to this day
have never been told the full story by their leaders.
How was this devastating
effect accomplished?
At 10:10 PM on February 13th,
the first wave of the attack, consisting of the British Number 5 Bomber Group,
began. The attacking force consisted of about 2,000 bombers with additional
support craft, which dropped over 3,000 high explosive and 650,000 incendiary
bombs (more commonly known as firebombs) on the center of the city. Incendiary
bombs are not known for their efficiency per pound in destroying heavy
equipment such as military hardware or railroad tracks, but are extremely
effective in producing maximum loss of human life. The loads carried by the
bombers were over 75 per cent incendiaries. In fact, the goal of the first wave
of the attack was, according to British air commander Sir Arthur Bomber Harris,
to set the city well on fire. That he did.
The
lack of any effective anti-aircraft defenses allowed the bombers to drop to
very low altitudes and thus a relatively high degree of precision and visual
identification of targets was achieved. Despite the fact that they could
clearly see that the marked target area contained hospitals and sports stadia
and residential areas of center city Dresden, the bombers nevertheless obeyed
orders and rained down a fiery death upon the unlucky inhabitants of that city
on a scale which had never before been seen on planet Earth. Hundreds of
thousands of innocents were literally consumed by fire, an actual holocaust by
the true definition of the word: complete consumption by fire.
after its holocaust |
|
The incendiaries started
thousands of fires and, aided by a stiff wind and the early-on destruction of
the telephone exchanges that might have summoned firefighters from nearby
towns, these fires soon coalesced into one unimaginably huge firestorm. Now
such firestorms are not natural phenomena, and are seldom created by man, so
few people have any idea of their nature. Basically, what happened was this:
The intense heat caused by the huge column of smoke and flame, miles high and
thousands of acres in area, created a terrific updraft of air in the center of
the column. This created a very low pressure at the base of the column, and
surrounding fresh air rushed inward at speeds estimated to be thirty times that
of an ordinary tornado. An ordinary tornado wind-force is a result of
temperature differences of perhaps 20 to 30 degrees centigrade. In this
firestorm the temperature differences were on the order of 600 to 1,000 degrees
centigrade. This inward-rushing air further fed the flames, creating a literal
tornado of fire, with winds in the surrounding area of many hundreds of miles
per hour--sweeping men, women, children, animals, vehicles and uprooted trees
pell-mell into the glowing inferno.
But this was only the first
stage of the plan.
Exactly on schedule, three
hours after the first attack, a second massive armada of British bombers
arrived, again loaded with high explosive and massive quantities of incendiary
bombs. The residents of Dresden, their power systems destroyed by the first
raid, had no warning of the second. Again the British bombers attacked the center
city of Dresden, this time dividing their targets--one half of the bombs were
to be dropped into the center of the conflagration, to keep it going, the other
half around the edges of the firestorm. No pretense whatever was made of
selecting military targets. The timing of the second armada was such as to
ensure that a large quantity of the surviving civilians would have emerged from
their shelters by that time, which was the case, and also in hopes that rescue
and firefighting crews would have arrived from surrounding cities, which also
proved to be true. The firefighters and medics thus incinerated hadn't needed
the telephone exchange to know that they were needed--the firestorm was visible
from a distance of 200 miles.
It is reported that body
parts, pieces of clothing, tree branches, huge quantities of ashes, and
miscellaneous debris from the firestorm fell for days on the surrounding
countryside as far away as eighteen miles. After the attack finally subsided,
rescue workers found nothing but liquefied remains of the inhabitants of some
shelters, where even the metal kitchen utensils had melted from the intense
heat.
The next day, Ash Wednesday
and Valentine's Day, 1945, medical and other emergency personnel from all over
central Germany had converged on Dresden. Little did they suspect that yet a
third wave of bombers was on its way, this time American. This attack had been
carefully coordinated with the previous raids. Four hundred fifty Flying
Fortresses and a support contingent of fighters arrived to finish the job at
noon. I quote from David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden:
"Just a few hours before
Dresden had been a fairy-tale city of spires and cobbled streets .... now total
war had put an end to all that. ...The ferocity of the US raid of 14th February
had finally brought the people to their knees... but it was not the bombs which
finally demoralised the people ... it was the Mustang fighters, which suddenly
appeared low over the city, firing on everything that moved .... one section of
the Mustangs concentrated on the river banks, where masses of bombed-out people
had gathered. ... British prisoners who had been released from their burning
camps were among the first to suffer the discomfort of machine-gunning attacks
.... wherever columns of tramping people were marching in or out of the city
they were pounced on by the fighters, and machine-gunned or raked with cannon
fire." [Image: Dresden skyline after Allied saturation bombing.]
Ladies and gentlemen, on this
program I can only give you a bare glimpse of the inhuman horror of the
holocaust of Dresden. In Dresden, no fewer than 135,000 innocent victims died,
with some estimates as high as 300,000. More died in Dresden than died in the
well-known attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More destruction befell Dresden
in one day than was inflicted on the whole of Britain during the entire war.
And yet you haven't been told.
I urge every one of you to
read The Destruction of Dresden by David Irving. I assure you, after
reading Irving's book, you will never take seriously the Establishment's
version of what happened in that war again.
What you ought to take
seriously, though, is the fact that the same clique that controlled the
traitorous Roosevelt and Churchill governments, whose hatred of our race and
civilization and whose alliance with Communism were the real causes of the
holocaust of Dresden, still controls our government and our media today. It is
they who are pushing for a disarmed, racially mixed America. It is they who
promote the teaching of sodomy to our young children. It is they who are
destroying our industrial infrastructure in the name of a global economy. It is
they who created the drug subculture and then also the police state agencies
which pretend to fight it. The hour is very late for America and indeed for all
of Western civilization. But if patriots will heed our call, then there is no
reason for despair. For the enemies of our nation may have power, but their
power is based on lies. Won't you help us cut through the chain of lies that
holds our people in mental slavery?
Every year, families should
commemorate the anniversary of the holocaust of Dresden on the eve of 13th
February.
Free Speech — March 1995. David Irving has
generously made his Destruction of Dresden available as a free download, in PDF format, at his
Focal Point Press website.