A visit to Dresden provides proof
positive that Germans, staggering under a monumental weight of white guilt,
lead the way in the suicide of the west.
On a recent
visit to Germany I was quickly disabused of my notion that atonement for the
sins of the fathers would be perhaps subject to some kind of statute of
limitations. Surely, generations after the cataclysm of the Second World War,
Germans would be entitled to feel at least some diminution of the guilt
attached to their country’s supposed single-handed initiation of a world war (no,
make that total blame for two world
wars) and the alleged attempted genocide of a charmingly innocent racial/religious
group.
But no, this
peculiar brand of evil appears to have leached into the very DNA of the Germans.
It is as though babies born in Germany of white mothers arrive with indelibly blood-stained hands. Like children born into
religions, they are born into guilt. Ironically, the efforts of Hitler and the
entire apparatus of the Third Reich in tirelessly identifying who were Germans
and who were not has made it ridiculously easy to determine who to pin the
everlasting blame on – those who are unable to identify as anyone other than a
German. Proliferating non-German citizens of Germany need not be concerned.
What has led
me to so unshakable a conviction? In a word, Dresden – more specifically, the
murder of Dresden over two apocalyptic days in February 1945. This is a subject
which has fascinated and appalled me since long ago reading The Destruction of Dresden by David
Irving. It is this book from which most of the facts and figures relating to
the atrocity given here come, as well as from Thomas Goodrich’s Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944 –
1947. One cannot read these two books without being forced to conclude that
the holocaust that consumed Dresden was a war crime reaching a level of evil on
a par with those committed against Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo. But guilt in
these atrocities has never been expressed, let alone admitted, nor will ever be
admitted. Platitudes and rationalizations are offered instead.
Minutes
after arriving in the city a garrulous receptionist informs me of a
not-to-be-missed tourist attraction. It’s an exhibition purported to be a
memorial to the city’s destruction over seventy years ago. My interest is
immediately piqued. I naively presume, that if guilt is not actually being
shelved home to where it belongs, at least a finger – even the tiniest pinky – of
blame, may be pointing in the right
direction.
I hire a
bicycle and pedal out to where the receptionist has directed me. The
exhibition, truly on a giant scale, is housed within perfectly suited
accommodation. It is a converted gas storage unit, located unsurprisingly on Gasanstaltstrasse.
If the type of hulking water reservoirs that sit astride hilltops can be
imagined, this provides a good facsimile of the housing of the Panometer, the
exhibition I’ve come to see. It is thirty meters high. On entering the gloom and resounding funereal
music of the exhibition, one is struck by the cathedral-like inner space. In
the center is a winding steel staircase leading to three platforms spaced
evenly apart. Each platform naturally provides a different perspective of what
makes the exhibition so phenomenal – a gigantic, seamless 360-degree
photographic montage of Dresden not long after the attack. One becomes
effectively wrapped around in a scene of total devastation. This in fact would
have been the perspective of the photographer snapping the originals from what
obviously must have been an exceedingly precarious vantage point. He evidently
revolved while photographing to achieve the circular panorama that lead one
into into the present illusion of being at his side while he worked. Adding to
this eerie, alternate reality is the alternatively dimming and brightening
lighting as well as flashes of light and synchronized musical percussion to
approximate exploding bombs. This is a uniquely moving experience.
However, I
was expecting more: some kind of homage – or at least even a mention – of the multitude
who met such horrible deaths. But no, not even a mention even of the absurdly
low official estimate of 25,000.
But that’s
not to say there were no victims. As I explored further, I found them – small
photographic portraits with accompanying accounts of tormented lives. Of
course! Like everything else about the war, especially in Germany, it was all
about the Jews. The sad faces frozen by photography were all Jewish faces – the
true victims of the Dresden atrocity.
That they weren’t there at the time is a fact not allowed to spoil a good
story. They had been removed prior to the attack and who knows how many may
have popped up again in Israel in the following years, quite unlike the
Dresdeners whose numbers would have overflowed a major sports stadium. They
would not be popping up again anywhere. But ‘Oh voi how ve’ve suffered!’.
The unremitting tale of woe remarkably avoids
any mention of the tens of thousands of Germans incinerated, atomised, crushed like
bugs or simply driven insane on the 13th and 14th of
February 1945 when the war was all but lost and largely only continuing because
of the demand for unconditional surrender. This had been adroitly exploited by
Goebbels to convey the not unfounded impression that Germany would be erased
either way. The infamous Morganthau Plan, the implementation of which would have
resulted in millions of German deaths, and Kaufman’s book Germany Must Perish advocating genocide through sterilization, did nothing to allay those fears. So, better
to die on your feet.
In line with
the assertion that the Jews had been the true victims of Dresden, comes the
astonishing opinion that ‘[t]he destruction of the cultural metropolis of
Dresden had long since begun with the assumption of power of the National
Socialists.’ It is an accepted fact that history is written by the winners, but
it beggars belief that the losers could be acquiescing so enthusiastically.
The
methodology of the attack on Dresden had been honed to perfection by Arthur
“Bomber” Harris, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, who’d been charged
by Churchill with the total destruction of German cities and its concomitant
maximum death toll. It was a given that this could be achieved by targeting
densely populated working-class areas. The bonus here was the attendant
disruption of war production because of dead or homeless workers. Inexhaustibly
energetic, he’d gone about his task with the dedication and efficiency of an
evil genius. He’d, for example, had typically amoral scientists working out formulas
showing deaths to be caused per ton of explosive.
Before Dresden, the destruction of Hamburg the
previous year in which more people were killed in one night than the number of
deaths caused during the entire London blitz was a triumph that needed to be
studied. An evidently unintended or even foreseen consequence of the Hamburg
attack was the firestorm. This was a hurricane of flame engendered by a myriad
of incendiaries causing winds violent enough to roll locomotives. They rushed
into the vacuum left by a volcanic up-draught of super-heated air. The city was
effectively converted into a blast furnace. This must have come to the
perpetrators as the type of surprise one might experience on discovering an
extra present under a Christmas tree. All the while, the fiction was being
maintained that the infernal destruction of Germany was merely the surgical
elimination of military/strategic targets.
Through more
than four years of the most savage war ever fought, Dresden had led something
of a charmed life. Barely damaged by the violence swirling about them,
Dresdeners had slipped into a comfortable sense of indeed false security. After
all, apart from an east-west rail-line along which soldiers were transported,
the city was devoid of military value. In their naivety, the inhabitants also
reasoned that a kind of tacit agreement had been established whereby if the
cultural equivalent of Oxford was left alone, the architectural treasure-house
of the Dresden Altstadt, the old city,
that had earned the city the reputation of being the ‘Florence of the North’,
would be spared. It was after all a cultural heirloom, not just to Germany, but
to the civilized world. It was inconceivable that it would be specifically
targeted, and by racial kinsmen, but that is exactly what it was. Consequently considered a safe haven, it was packed
with those fleeing the primitive barbarity of the Red Army. The Dresden
population of 650,000 had become swollen by another 400,000 refugees, wounded
soldiers and POWs.
How could
they possibly have suspected they were about to become pawns in a game played
with the devil? They would be destroyed not because of a military rational that
may have shortened the war by even an hour, but simply for political reasons.
Because of Stalin’s unquestionable assertion that the Soviet Union was bearing
the brunt of the European war and his complaint that his allies weren’t doing
enough to help (notwithstanding the torrential flow of arms and equipment from
the US), it was decided that some of the wind needed to be taken out of his
sails. What better, more impressive way to do it than to remove an entire city
from his path. (Somewhat ironically however, when towards the end of the war
and spreading knowledge of the atrocity had incensed people world-wide, Stalin
was adamant that he’d never asked for this. Likewise, Churchill was beginning
to try to distance himself from the obscenity, leaving Harris out to dry, as
the saying goes.) Harris in turn pleaded the Nuremburg defence: 'I was only following orders.' Works for some.
As
efficiently and as scientifically as ever, Bomber Harris, in conjunction with
US Army Air Force, prepared for his latest assignment. The attack would
comprise a triple blow, the first two at night, and closely spaced – the better
to catch rescuers and fire brigades out in the open with the second – and a
daylight attack the following day by US Flying Fortresses capable of carrying
even greater bombloads than the British Lancasters. It would be a stroll in the
park. With Luftwaffe pilots fighting desperately elsewhere, or kept on an
airfield nearby because destroyed communications meant permission for take-off
could not be obtained from Flight HQ. And with the feared 88 mm flak cannon
removed elsewhere because considered
unneeded at Dresden, the city was as defenseless as a man without limbs.
The
three swarms of attackers would comprise the staggering numbers of bombers that
had become the norm. The amount of explosives dropped on Dresden would total
almost 35 thousand tons. Bombs as various as clubs in a golf-bag would be used
including the two and four ton ‘blockbusters’, so named because they could take
out entire city blocks, time-bombs to catch the unwary after the bombers had
turned homewards, and deep-burrowing bombs to find those hard to reach spots
where victims would have been trembling uncontrollably underground. Of primary
importance though were the thousands of incendiaries that would be used to deliberately
replicate the firestorm of Hamburg. The phosphorous of the incendiaries, had a
way of sticking to people, turning them into human torches.
And so it began. With sirens blaring and the cities inhabitants descending into
makeshift, cellar shelters that would prove to be eventual death traps, what
had become known the length and breadth of Germany as ‘Christmas tree lights’
began falling from the sky. These were the magnesium marker flares dropped by a
squadron of Pathfinder Lancasters. Then
the hellish incendiaries began falling. With fires lighting up the city, it was
then a simple matter to follow up with earth-quaking explosions. A short time later a bomber crew member
reported what he estimated to be ‘forty square miles of fire’. Another wondered
what it must have been like for ‘the poor sods below’.
Down below,
the most fearful artistic imaginings of hell did not come close to what was
actually happening. The lucky ones were being asphyxiated because of oxygen
being consumed by fire or the buildup of carbon monoxide in basement shelters.
The not so lucky caught out in the open were being picked up like rag dolls and
flung into the flames by cyclonic winds or having clothes, then skin, then
flesh burnt from them as they ran before dropping. Others became bogged in
melted bitumen where their bodies would be later found face down and have to be
pried away from the once again solidified blackness. Many women still clutching
babies or infants would be found like this. The melting point of glass is
around 1,600 degrees centigrade.
Shattered window panes began to melt. Sandstone melted and ran like
lava.
The main
railway station had become a city within a city with refugees, wounded soldiers
and POWs constantly arriving by train and being crowded also with people having
nowhere else to go. Because of its large underground area forming a de facto shelter - no proper public
air-raid shelters existed in the city - it acted as a magnet for the panic
stricken as soon as the first bombs began falling. It proved however to be of
little protection against the many direct hits that peppered it. The first to
die of course were those still huddled in crowded train carriages and then
death pried more determinedly to find those so desperately trying to escape it.
From this location alone, many thousands
of bodies were recovered in the following days. As across the entire city, many
more would never be found. However, the rail line running through the station,
arguably a genuine military target, would be repaired, allowing trains to be
running again within days.
As bombers
of the second wave finally headed for home, fire reaching high into the
atmosphere could still be seen 100 miles behind. The more sensitive of the
bomber crewmen were beginning to feel shame that would haunt them the rest
of their days.
But for the
Dresdeners who had escaped the inferno and were now shivering in the frigid
cold, it wasn’t over yet. The new day brought a new attack. It was now time for
the US force – of similar magnitude to the preceding British waves – to launch
its daring daylight attack, daring that is if those who could see it coming
could have done anything about it. But they could only watch. The still roiling
clouds of smoke did though present a degree of difficulty. But no need to be
too finicky about where the bombs landed; they would more than likely be only
smashing rubble anyway. For mopping up, P51s streaked down low from the sky to
strafe burnt and bleeding survivors huddled in the parks and on the banks of
the Elbe with cannon and machine gun fire. One American pilot, possibly annoyed
with a low score swept over what remained of the zoo. Most of the animals had
been killed or had escaped but a lone giraffe remained wandering and
dazed. A burst of machine gun fire from
the Mustang riddled the giraffe and dropped it to the ground. Such was the
heroism displayed on that day.
Irving gives
the figure for the dead left lying in and under the smoking rubble of Dresden
of 135,000. To do this he simply followed his modus operandi of researching
primary sources. In this case, it was the record compiled by Hans Voigt, a
teacher unemployed since Dresden schools had been recently converted into
military hospitals. By order of the Vermissten-Nachweis-Zentrale
(Central Bureau of Missing Persons) he was tasked with setting up and
organizing an Arbteilung Tote (Dead
Persons Department). This would ultimately be the be the most enormous
enterprise of its kind in history. With typical Teutonic efficiency he assembled
a crew of seventy. This was backed up by a further 300 from the VNZ. The system
worked out was a kind of complex double entry ledger whereby bodies were head
counted by one team and tagged by another, the two totals then being
cross-checked.
The first
major accomplishment was the identification of around 40,000 bodies via
identifying documents and valuables. But that was where the total of identified bodies remained. From there on, the teams were often counting
three feet long, charcoal human effigies. All the while the counters were
interrupted by the bereaved wanting to take either identified bodies or bodies
thought to be relatives in order save them from the mass graves. They were
forbidden to do so. Time was not on the side of the counters. Working in a
miasma of reeking death, the outbreak of disease was becoming an increasing
dangerous probability. When it became too great, burial was abandoned and soon
as bodies were counted they were stacked on grills of iron girders in the streets and set on
fire .
A scene in the film Slaughterhouse-Five,
based on the book by Kurt Vonnegut who was one of the many POWs assisting
in rescue operations, shows a POW being shot for picking up from the rubble a
Dresden doll. Summary execution was in fact the fate of anyone even suspected
of looting.
Where no
actual bodies could be identified as such, such as when a cellar was opened and
what had been the people cowering inside had become layers of fine ash,
educated guessing and inductive reasoning was the only recourse. A similar problem attached to scene described
by Voigt and related by Irving: ‘The bottom steps were slippery. The cellar
floor was covered by an eleven or twelve-inch deep liquid mixture of blood
flesh and bone; a small high explosive bomb had penetrated four floors of the
building and exploded in the basement.’ The number of bodies contributing to
the nightmarish mixture was easily ascertainable however; it was discovered
that at every previous air raid alert, although not followed by an air raid,
the cellar usually contained around 300 people.
Not a word
of all this however is contained within the Panometer. I exit the building so
distracted I hardly notice the chemtrails painted across a cloudless sky. Back
at my hotel I obtain a city map and begin to take note of the suggestions of
places of interest crowded in its fringes. Curiously, the Panometer isn’t
included but in a small section entitled ‘5 min of history’ I notice this: ‘13th February 1945 – the Old
Town was almost completely destroyed [almost? The city had become a charred
apple with the core removed, ten square miles being totally destroyed] and thousands of people died [at
least here is an acknowledgement that people actually died] … However, we
should also not forget that many Dresdeners … participated willingly in the Nazi regime. [italics mine] …’ I go
over this part again to check that I haven’t misread it. But no, that’s what it
says. So those tens of thousands of souls that were destroyed so terribly were
simply getting what they deserved. They had been infected with Nazism so it was
only right that they were burnt out like a cancer. But these are the writer’s
own people he’s speaking of – ancestors, who in many cultures are worthy of
respect and reverence, even worship. How can they be disowned so simply, so
brutally? On further reflection, the answer -one of
desperate but futile psychological processing – crystallizes. If the blood-line
can be severed, so can the blood guilt. If
that doesn’t work, which it doesn’t, there’s a fallback, and that is a common
German sentiment expressed as ‘we’re proud of not being proud.’
This lack of
pride is truly astounding. While all over Germany little brass plaques set into
foot-paths outside the homes once inhabited by Jews reminds Germans of their
guilt, the most common word in the details of their fate being ‘emordet’ (murdered) and a lavish
Holocaust museum stands accusingly in the center of their capital city, not one
stone exists in memoriam of the millions of Germans who perished – and in the
case of Dresden and every other city that was carpet-bombed, emordet – in the Second World War and for several years afterwards. (For
the full horror, Goodrich is required reading.) Because of suppressed
knowledge, it’s unlikely that the millions of German POWs, robbed of that
status, and perishing in Eisenhower’s death camps are even mentioned.
While the
landscapes of the victors are dotted with war memorials you will find no such
tribute to the vast number of German men, and in the end, boys, who fought with
superhuman bravery and gave their lives for their people and nation. It doesn’t
matter that, in the end, ragged and starving, they fought to the last bullet
simply for each other and to protect their people fleeing an unimaginably bestial
horde being urged on by Comrade Ehrenburg: ‘… break the racial pride of these German women’
and ‘kill, kill, kill!’ There is however a war memorial in the Harz Mountains
town of Bad Harzburg. It commemorates the soldiers who fought and died in the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870 – 71. This is the last war about which Germans have
a right to express pride.
The sad
irony is that however much Germans try to dissociate themselves from their
ancestors, it is all to no avail. Even the cartoon renditions of a
blood-dripping Adolph Hitler with which the German left likes to amuse
themselves will not save them. This is evidenced by the ongoing need to atone,
most graphically illustrated by Frau Merkel’s invitation of the refugee crisis
and the deadly virus of Islam. To certain others, German guilt is far too
valuable to ever let expire. Germans will forever remain ‘Hitler’s willing
executioners’. Forever, or until Zionist Satanism is finally excised from
humanity – more than likely an exact same time frame. The miracle is that,
through some kind of mental alchemy, what should have been venomous, undying
hatred because of what was done to them, has been turned into everlasting
guilt.