It's 1984...

when did they move Dresden to Japan?

 

darsy posted:

Ah, my misreading. I did wonder why you'd be asking a question I
thought you'd know the answer to quite easily.

Dresden: because they could.

 

Have you ever thought about sailing? It's like that, but with
something to do between drinks.

 

Why was bombing an enemy city a war crime?

Ok, it was an old city and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction
but bombing enemy cities isn't in itself a crime. Compare the bombing
of Dresden with the gassing of a few million Jews and come back and
tell me which one was unjustified.

 

To demonstrate to the rest of the country exactly what they had coming
to them?

I accept that it wasn't strictly necessary to bomb Dresden until it
was a smoking ruin but they started it by invading Poland.

 

Ha. Before, during or after?

Was the genocide known to the Allies at the time of the bombing of
Dresden?

Either way, they rebuilt it, and they were only Germans, so who cares?
And without Dresden there'd have been no Slaughterhouse Five!

 

On which note, Vonnegut put it better than most:

I will say again what I have often said in print and in speeches, that
not one Allied soldier was able to advance as much as an inch because of
the firebombing of Dresden. Not one prisoner of the Nazis got out of
prison a microsecond earlier. Only one person on earth clearly
benefited, and I am that person," said Vonnegut, referring to his
bestselling novel. "I got about five dollars for each corpse, not
counting my fee tonight."

 

As far as I'm concerned, the war started again on the 3rd of September
2009.

 

ditto. I thought it was appallingly bad, in every way.

 

Started? All I saw was a defeatist attitude, "never coming back."

The blitzkrieg assault is something they fuckers understand and can
resisit. Solo, stealthy infiltration is the way to deal with them.

 

If I'm ever there again, I'm crossing the border, hitting the autobahn
and bouncing it off the speed limiter til I'm out of the country.

 

@news.eternal-september.org:

there may be a flaw in your plan...

 

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:25:12 +0200, vulgarandmischevious

[...]

It almost reaches the "so exceedingly bad it's actually quite good"
territory.
(Like the Eye of Argon)

Almost, but not quite, unfortunately. And yet I've read it to the end.
It's like watching a train crash in slow motion.

No more Dan Brown for me, though. I've learnt my lesson, guv, please spare
me, I have a family to feed and so on.

 

The Dresden firemen got a bit of overtime in as well so it was a win -
win situation.

 

1. Made no difference to the course of the war
2. Killed huge amounts of civilians in a particularly painful fashion
3. Even the people who ordered it considered it a crime

Phil

 

I love boats and would happily spend my life on one. C on the other
hand hates them (despite being dragged up on the Devon coast).

I've managed to get her to do a motor-cruiser holiday on the Caledonian
canal and even then she was having kittens when we were going up Loch
Ness in a mild Force 6.

And the less said about her boathandling skills the better..

Phil

 

No, as a page turner it was fantastic. It wasn't until I finished it I
realised the whole bloody thing was unalderterated tripe. Didn't stop
me reading it in the bath tought Tbf, I never read another Dan Brown
book after that.

 

Or some ponsey drink....

 

I'm with you here, no need at all for Dresden.

Simplest of terms: Revenge.