[littlefieldjohn]

The recent 71st anniversary of the bombing of Dresden has highlighted the deliberately-obscured fact that the British, and not the Germans, started the mass bombing of civilians in World War II, and that this remains one of the great unpunished war crimes of the Twentieth Century.


The British establishment in particular likes to perpetuate the “Blitz” story every year around September, as another way of claiming victimhood status—when in fact the German bombing of London only took place after months of incessant attacks by the Royal Air Force (RAF) on German cities had passed without retaliation.

As part of a general post-World War II propaganda campaign to paint the Germans in as bad a light as possible, the controlled media has always claimed that the Germans started the bombing of civilians, using the two examples of the Luftwaffe attack on Warsaw, Poland, in September 1939 and the May 14, 1940 bombing of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.


The propaganda story goes along the lines that the Germans bombed these cities and thereby set the example of the mass bombing of civilians—and then followed this up with the “blitz” on London.

Only after all this, it is claimed, did the Germans “get back” what they had dished out.

This myth has been stated over and over so many times by the controlled media that it has become the “popular” understanding of the course of the war.

The reality, like so much else about World War II, is completely the opposite.


It was in fact the British RAF, under the direct orders of Winston Churchill, which started the saturation bombing of civilians—on May 10, 1940, the day the new Prime Minister took office. On that day, British bombers attacked the German city of Freiburg-im-Breisgau in southwestern Germany, killing fifty-seven people.


From May 10, 1940 onwards, British bombers bombed German civilian targets almost every night.

Even then, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe not to respond in kind, and only to bomb military targets in Britain, such as airfields and ports, in preparation for a planned invasion of the United Kingdom.

On August 25, 1940, a German raid on an oil refinery on the banks of Thames River in east London took place as part of this tactical assault. Some of the bombs landed next to the refinery, in London’s East End, causing no casualities—but in response to this bombing, described by the post-war Official History of the Defence of the United Kingdom as “unintentional”—the first mass raid on Berlin by British bombers took place six days later.

After that, regular British raids on Berlin’s non-military targets took place—and escalated throughout the war.

Despite these attacks on Berlin, Hitler still refused to retaliate. But this situation could not last, and after nearly four months, the Luftwaffe was finally ordered to strike back.

In a speech in the Berlin Sportspalast on September 4, 1940, Hitler announced the German retaliation this way:

“Whereas German aviators and German planes fly over English soil daily, there is hardly a single Englishman who comes across the North Sea in daytime. They therefore come during the night, and as you know, release their bombs indiscriminately and without any plan on to residential areas, farmhouses and villages. Wherever they see a sign of light, a bomb is dropped on it.

For three months past, I have not ordered any answer to be given; thinking that they would stop this nonsensical behavior.

“Mr. Churchill has taken this to be a sign of our weakness.

“You will understand that we shall now give a reply, night for night, and with increasing force. We will put a stop to the game of these night-pirates, as God is our witness.”

As J.M. Spaight detailed in his book, it was the British who were to “realise the full potential” of saturation civilian bombing, and that the British bombers were designed to bomb cities, he said, while the “Teutonic mind” never even considered such a policy, and instead viewed an air force merely as a tool to “blast open” a path for attacking armies.

Spaight also wrote that Hitler’s hope that “Churchill would stop this nonsense” was “stupid” and furthermore the “blitz” on London which followed was actually minor by comparison to what had already been thrown at German cities by the RAF, and to what occurred in 1943 and 1944 (the bombing of Hamburg, Cologne, and Munich—where, Spaight boasted, the fires could be seen 150 miles away).

Furthermore, Spaight said, the German air force was never used for anything else until ordered to retaliate against the British campaign. As Spaight put it:

“Whatever Hitler wanted or did not want, he most assuredly did not want the mutual bombing to go on. He had not wanted it ever to begin. He wanted it, having begun, to be called off. There was ample evidence that he did not want the latter kind of bombing to become the practice. He had done his best to have it banned by international agreement.”


Some 700,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on Dresden, one bomb for every two inhabitants. Temperatures above ground reached up to 1,600 degrees Celsius, or 2912 degrees Fahrenheit. Unknown thousands of people—estimates vary up to 135,000 or more—were killed in the resulting firestorm, and the entire city was laid waste.

The controlled media is equally reticent over the role of Churchill and the RAF in the bombing of Dresden, and are always seeking reasons to excuse this war crime.

The reality is that Churchill and the RAF bomber command under Sir Arthur Harris knew very well what was going to happen and also that there was no military justification for the attack.

The truth about Churchill’s role in the destruction of Dresden was revealed in a memo held by the RAF’s Air Historical Branch, which quotes the British Prime Minister as only being interesting in how many civilian refugees he could “fry” with the attack:

“I do not want to receive any suggestions how we can destroy militarily important targets in Dresden’s hinterland, I want to get suggestions how we can fry 600,000 refugees from Breslau in Dresden.”—Winston Churchill, as quoted in a Minute by A.P.S. of S.—Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman—Jan. 26, 1945 in Air Historical Branch file CMS 608.

http://newobserveronline.com/dresden...ilians-wwii-2/