Dresden

[Webb]

Aviation Feature – The Bombing of Dresden, 13/14 February 1945

We were told also at [the] briefing that if we in Mosquitos had any problems, we should under no circumstances fly eastwards and land, we should do our utmost to get as far away from the Russian front as possible before we landed. One drew one’s own conclusions from that…

Slaughterhouse Five - An American POW's reflection

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

[Anthindelahunt]

What a horror that was.250 thousand!
Hopefully never again.

Anthin.

[Webb]

It was really 20,000-25,000.

Kurt Vonnegut isn't much of a historian.

[Anthindelahunt]

Even that lower figure is terrible.

Read some of his books a long time ago. Was not
a fan.

Anthin.

[OldAirmail]

As far as I'm concerned, he wasn't much of a writer.

I'm sure that he was, probably, a "Great" writer.

But "Great" isn't always good.


In Slaughterhouse-Five the main character bounced back and forth in time so much that I simply gave up reading the book.

I've read two different translations of Homer's Odyssey with far more pleasure than the third of Slaughterhouse-Five that I managed to force down.



As to the bombing of Dresden, that was a time and place that few living today could understand.

[Webb]

You should read some more. Kurt Vonnegut is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, especially if you like science fiction.

Slaughterhouse Five uses WW2 as a backdrop. The novel is really about free will.

Few people today could understand the epic destruction and loss of life of a single WW2 battle.

[OldAirmail]

No thanks.

[PhantomTweak]

TABLE A: Estimates of Casualties Hiroshima Nagasaki
Pre-raid population 255,000 195,000
Dead 66,000 39,000
Injured 69,000 25,000
Total Casualties 135,000 64,000

Lots of confusion at the time and in the cities, but this is the Manhattan Project Engineer's best estimates of casualties from the two nukes we dropped. By the same token, if we had had to invade the Japanese Islands, those figures would have been much much higher, and on both sides of the conflict, with the Japanese fanatically resisting every step. To the death, much like Okinawa. There's something to be said for such resistance, as I am sure that many areas of this country would react the same way to invasion, but...

Essentially, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave their lives to save the rest of their country, if you care to look at it that way...
And I've been to both cities. You could hardly tell what happened there, by the buildings, countryside, and so on. Just plaques, memorials, museums, and so on remain to be a constant reminder. Pretty much the same as Dresden. Humans are nothing if not resilient. All these cities, and numerous others have been rebuilt and repopulated, as though these wars and their assosciated destruction had never happened. Heck, even Bikini Atoll, that got nuked more than any other place in the world, to date, is healing fast. About the only remains of all those bombs is a bunch of hulks of ships, planes, etc etc on the bottom of it's lagoon. And a higher than normal level of Iodine 131, the isotope caused by the bombs, concentrating in the palm tree's coconuts and the island's Bananas. Since these trees are fairly short lived, it's not a huge problem, not really...

History is always written by the winners, so our actions have been fully justified to History, in Dresden, Hiroshima, wherever. Whether these actions were fully justified, or even justifiable, is largely a matter of opinion.

And all that is just MY opinion...

Pat☺

[OldAirmail]

Despite the almost nightly bombings of their cities near the end of the war, Japan was planning a "last man" defense of their island.

Back in the '70s, one of the major TV companies - ABC, CBS, NBC - showed a documentary and included a Japanese film (an early form of video) of a classroom filled with very young children.

The children were being told that, even if all they could do was to stab an American in the leg with a sharp stick, THAT would help The Emperor. And it was everybody's duty to aid The Emperor.

No question about it - MILLIONS more, both young and old, would have died on both sides.


Volunteer Fighting Corps

The Kokumin Giyu Sentōtai units were theoretically armed with weapons including:
Type 94 8 mm Pistol
Type 30 rifle
Type 38 rifle
Type 44 Cavalry Rifle
Type 1 Heavy Machine Gun
Type 5 Anti-aircraft gun
Type 4 20 cm Rocket Launcher
Type 10 Grenade Discharger
Type 89 Grenade Discharger
Ceramic hand grenades
"Lunge AT Mine" (anti-tank mine on bamboo pole)


In actuality, mostly only much less sophisticated arms were available:
"Molotov Cocktails"
Simple pointed bamboo or wood sticks
Swords, bayonets, knives and even pole weapons & staff weapons (e.g. Guntō, Type 30 bayonet, Hori hori, Kamayari/Naginata & Hanbō/Jō)
Clubs and truncheons such as the Kanabō or even simpler
Antiquated firearms (e.g. Murata rifle)

Like it or not, dropping the nuclear bombs was the right decision.

[Webb]

No thanks.

I understand. Moby Dick is the worst piece of drivel I have ever set my eyes upon. I can't stand anything written by Ernest Hemmingway either.

On the other hand give me anything written by Charles Dickens and I won't set it down.

[OldAirmail]

There have been writers that I'll buy anything they write, and have seldom been disappointed.

Others are hit & miss.

With Slaughterhouse Five, I kept waiting for it to make it's point. To me it didn't seem to have one.

After that I never touched one of his books again.

The man himself, is another story. He is interesting.

[Webb]

Yes, Kurt Vonnegut lived an interesting life.

I am very real (after Slaughterhouse Five was banned in a high school for profanity)

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that ...