Churchill fought the good fight, but committed war crimes in the process with the fire bombing of Dresden in the dieing days of the war, so he is no saint either.... Churchill's propoganda gave him credit for a war that was won with Canadian and American blood and sacrifice. If not for Canada.. Churchill would have had no such lagacy as a leader winning a war. His war crimes stained Canada's involvement and sacrafice for the allies IMO.

Fight fire with fire. Keep in mind who Britain and the Allies were fighting at the time. Churchill's peccadilloes were minor compared to Hitler's atrocities. Criticise the bombing of Dresden to a person living in London during the Blitz. See what they say about it. Put it in context. At the time he was considered Britain's savior, and still is, correctly I might add.

His only major error was after the war when he wanted to initiate a third world war with the Soviet Union. Fortunately, others had more sense.

The deliberate fire bombing of a refugee city (Dresden) with no war industry was a peccadillo?

Quite a statement.

Once again, keep it in the context of nightly bombing runs on London and the Home Counties with the thousands killed. The buzz bombs were notorious for producing terror in Londoners. The Nazi raids were for terror purposes, killing and maiming adults, pregnant women with their unborn babies and young children. Schools were as likely to be bombed as hospitals or anything else.

The Nazi bombs were completely indiscriminate as they could not be aimed with any accuracy, just somewhere over there. So, yes, compared to the Nazi raids on London, bombing Dresden - a response I might add to the terror bombing and destruction of Winchester - was a peccadilloe.

Keep it in context of a vicious world war and nightly terror bombing. If you want to understand it, talk to people who lived it as I have, not revisionist amateur historians.

Remember also, Canada would now be a fascist state if Britain had not given up everything to fight the Nazis. The collapse of Britain would have signaled the collapse of the Commonwealth, and since Canada declared war on Germany very early on, you can bet it would have been next. Be thankful Britain did what it did under Churchill.

No doubt Churchill stood strong against a ruthless enemy, but he also ordered the biggest one night killing of civilians in human history (larger death toll than even the two atomic bombings of Japan combined).

Whether in the context of a bloody war or not it does not make him a saint and he himself was responsible for bloodying his own legacy. The war was over at the time and he did not have to snuff out 800,000 civilians just for simple revenge with no military justification. Even Stalin the biggest murderer in history (our ally at the time) did not do something like that; and he is a guy that marched over a million soldier POW's to their death and subsequently murdered 60 million Christians for his communist/zionist handlers consolidating his evil empire.

Had Britain fallen I have no doubt the British Empire would have fell as well, as it did regardless with the creation of the commonwealth at Canada's urging. Had Britain fallen we would likely be American today and not German.

The facts are it was Canada that gave Churchill the backbone he required to save his nation and he paid that back by committing a horrible war crime in our allied name. It hasn't been politically correct to say this in the past because of the emotions of that war, but I'm sure that is the way future historians will see things.

BTW I think it is not appropriate to compare our political leaders of modern day Canada to political leaders of a different era especially when using selective reference to state Churchill was above all others in morality among other uses of selective comparisons. As much as I hate the communist Chretien/Trudeau or despise the Mulroney free-trade sell out of Canadian sovereignty they should not be compared in that way to historical figures of an entirely different context.

History: *Britain, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany, followed later that day by France. Soon afterwards, South Africa, Canada and Nepal also declared war on Germany. Immediately, the UK began seizing German ships and implementing a blockade.*

Only fools would have expected that one can declare war against another country, seize its ships and blockade its trading ships and all that without any retaliation by that country.

Ammonra: "Keep it in context of a vicious world war and nightly terror bombing. If you want to understand it, talk to people who lived it as I have, not revisionist amateur historians."

You are indeed addressing the right person. I as a child did indeed live through the nightly terror bombings and a vicious war.
I do not need to talk to someone who lived through it as I myself remember it lucidly!

German refugees in Dresden were ordinary human beings, just like the people were in Britain who were bombed.

Madmen come to power and to them human beings are expendable, numbers only.

To trivialize the death and sufferings of non-combatants plays directly into the hands of these cruel madmen and their ideology.

Ammonra: "...bombing Dresden - a response I might add to the terror bombing and destruction of Winchester - was a peccadilloe."

It was not, it was an atrocity. And now the people of Britain have put their finest coppersmiths to work and built a beautiful cupola for the rebuilt Frauenkirche Cathedral in Dresden. The cupola was funded by donations from wonderful British ordinary people who regret what happened in the past and given by them as a gesture of peace and friendship.

Peccadilloe? Most certainly not!

I feel genuinely sorry for you, Sir! You haven't learned much! You have not learned that war is hell for everyone who participates in it, but especially for civilians who are unable to defend themselves.

Winners and losers alike must learn that there are never any reasons powerful enough to forsake negotiations in favour of mass killings and destruction.

All unprovoked wars are atrocities against mankind, as the war against Iraq is demonstrating again today.

Have a wonderful day!

Peccado = a sin.

Peccadillo = a small sin, a tiny flaw, a
small insignificant side step.

Hmmm.

I was born un Britain during the war, sir, and I was almost killed when the ceiling of the house I lived in fell down on me from a bomb blast across the street. You are not the only one who was affected by bombing.

Your attempt to infer that Britain and the Allies were responsible for the second world war is disgraceful and a historical lie. Hitler had already attacked several countries to get living room for the German people, including Poland. Britain had a treaty with Poland to defend it if germany should mount an attack. Hitler knew that, yet still attacked because he did not understand Britain and her people.

Hitler and his supporters were responsible for everything that followed, including the fate of Dresden. If Hitler had not mounted a unilateral, unprovoked attack on Poland there would have been no war.

If he had not bombed London there would have been no bombing of Dresden. It was bombed only after extended attacks by the Nazi air force during the Battle of Britain and Hitler's buzz bombs terror attacks. Why do you think that ANY German city was safe from retaliation. It was an all out war, and that is what war does to people. Now, 60 years later, we are all supposed to pretend that Britain committed atrocities while Nazi led Germany were saints.

Single out one solitary event and contrast it out of context - that really proves the point. Contrast Dresden to terror bombing of London, night after night after night. Contrast it with babies being blown to pieces in front of their parents. Contrast it to husbands listening to their wives and children burning in bombed houses. Then explain to me how what Britain retaliated was committing atrocities while the Nazis and their supporters were innocents.

Only a madman would have been stupid enough to believe that he could run roughshod over the nations of Europe without provoking an eventual retaliation. Defend the German war effort if you must, just explain it to the millions that were killed because of Hitler's madness. Explain to Israel how Hitler's Germany was a victim. Explain it to Jews, to Gypsies, to Jehovah's Witnesses. Explain it to the people of London, how they were being nasty to Germany.

Compared to the disgusting filth of Nazi war atrocities, Britain's actions were minor sir. Put it in context. Dresden in comparison to 20 million murdered and war dead.

I don't know where Chadermando's 800,000 comes from as there were not that many people in Dresden at the time. The most reliable estimates, since nobody knows the actual number, is in the 25,000 to 35,000 range and is similar to other German cities bombed in that manner by the Allies.

Anybody who wants to read an objective report should go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

According to the article the war was not over when it was bombed, it was in its last push to completion and the bombing was to facilitate the Russian advance.

I want you to note that I have made NO attempt whatsoever in my remarks to assign responsibility for the Second World war to either Britain or its allies! Hitler was determined to right some perceived historical wrongs and nobody would have been able to persuade him not to do so.

You are accusing me of acting disgracefully and attempting to spread historical lies.

Far from it!!!

The only way to get what he wanted was through war. His grab for dictatorial powers was not sanctioned by a majority of the German people, but it was made possible by the Reichs President and the Cabinet which conferred these powers upon him without the democratic approval of the German people. If you are unaware of these basic facts I urge you to consult any historical account of these events. Once in power he banned all other parties and the rest is history.

You are wrongly assuming that I am a defender of Nazism and Nazi atrocities. Far from it. My own mother barely escaped being classified into the wrong racial category.

I am very sorry that you cannot/will not understand that ALL attacks by anyone in any war at any time under any circumstances on civilian populations fall by the rules of warfare (that existed then and now) in the category of war crimes and atrocities.

Trivializing war crimes and atrocities by measuring one atrocity's size and perceived justification against others is missing the point entirely.

It is entirely your privilege to continue to call the mass incineration (by white phosphorous bombs) of approximately 300,000 civilians, women and children in Dresden as a minor slip and a justifiable retaliation.

I, for one, prefer to condemn all wars and the atrocities that result from them as sinful, inhumane, unethical, immoral and regrettable. It is a matter of conscience and ethics.

And, I have long forgiven those who long ago attempted to kill me and my family on more than one occasion.

Let the new generations deal with the warmongering that is going on right now - perhaps finally mankind will tire of all this, although it sure doesn't look like it.

Shalom!

Diplomat has it right.

And yet, Diplomat, you continue to repeat Goebbels' propaganda numbers. I gave a reference to a wikipedia article. it discusses the numbers in detail, including Goebbels's big lie of adding a zero to the correct estimate so he could use them to influence neutral nations. The 300,000 is Goebbels' number

Your first paragraph initally said that certain countries attacked Germany. That was the historical distortion because it omits Poland and the events there.

I do not condone war, and never have. I consider it a mark of failure. However, taking a historical event and categorizing it as an atrocity from a perspective completely divorced from the actual event is a gross distortion of history. Such events can only be understood in the context of the times - a vicious war in which Britain had been under attack for years with daily bombings over London. That may not justify retaliation in today's society, but it did back then.

So that you don't get the wrong impression. I despise nazi philosophy and fascism. I have no ill feelings towards German people. In fact, some German friends will be staying with me during the olympics. A family that opposed Hitler, as it happens.

Our discussion was about whether or not it is correct to call the fire bombing of a city full of desperate refugees (Dresden in this instance) a piccadillo, which means a very minor *sin* or slip.

I picked a moment in historical time to make a point, namely that Britain itself declared war on Germany first and shouldn't have been surprised about any attacks.

There was no intent to *manufacture* any history, I simply thought that everyone knows that WWII was simply a continuation of WWI and what sense would it have made to go all the way back to before WWI to make a point about 1939.

I also did not say that certain countries attacked Germany - I said that history reports that Britain declared war on Germany first and seized/blockaded its ships.

I take your other points to heart, although what is done is done and can never be undone.

300,000 or 30,000 - what difference does it make? - as both numbers are estimates of the same atrocity where only piles of ashes remained as testimony to the barbarism of war.

Nobody knows for certain, but the city was jammed chock full of people fleeing from Stalin's advancing troops.

May you enjoy the Olympics in the company of your visitors.

Cheers!

A few facts about the Dresden holocaust. Also how this relates to our current and past politicians.

The city of Dresden had 1.2 million people crammed into it fleeing the Soviets only 60 miles away and was considered a hospital city with not one single military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery deployed.

Chuchhill, asked for suggestions on "how to blaze 600,000 refugees" as a "thunderclap" (shock & awe) to impress Stalin with at Yalta. It was purely political and had nothing to do with military strategy.

The answer was 700,000 phosphorus bombs dropped on 1.2 million people. One bomb for every 2 people. Two waves one followed by another 3 hours later calculated to lure civilians from their shelters into the open again, with the second having twice as many bombers. The temperature in the centre of the city reached 1600 centigrade. More than 260,000 bodies and residues of bodies (some were melted up to 4 feet into the ground) were counted. But those that perished in the centre of the city could not be counted raising speculation that between 500,000 and 800,000 people were actually burned alive in that 14 hour period of Feb 13/14 1945 (Valentines Day).

The London Blitz destroyed 600 acres over the course of the entire war.
The Dresden firebombing destroyed 1600 acres in 14 hours.

This is to say nothing of who started the war or who was right or wrong, but just a statement that it is ridiculous to compare Chrétien and Mulroney as statesmen not good enough to pour a cup of tea for Churchill on the issue of morality.

Personally I think hitler was a ghoul and a half retarded dupe run by the nazi/zionist bankster for the illuminati (City of London Rothschild’s) Martin Bormann, a Jew, as well as an organizer, treasurer, and paymaster for the nazi party and controller of its power - the conduit of the banksters financing. Also known as the deputy fuhrer and hitlers secretary. Bormann determined who saw hitler and for what reasons and had the power to act in hitlers name. Bormann was the Executor of hitlers will. In 1972 it was revealed by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen (head of Wehrmacht Soviet Intelligence) that Bormann was also a Soviet spy, a view shared by top nazi generals. Bormann was responsible for setting up over 750 corporations in neutral countries that were known about, and he personally was never was found after WW2, with some speculating that it was Stalin that provided for his escape from Germany. Nuremberg prosecutors described the man as a "prime mover in the program of starvation, degradation, spoliation and extermination".

The nazi financed goal was to achieve the aim of annihilating Germany as viable nation outside the banksters NWO, as well as threaten European Jews with extermination so as to capture them as future slaves for the state of Israel acting as a crime base to a war mongering NWO aspiring syndicate of banksters.

Martin Bormann was a NWO financier for political motivations of the banksters primarily the Rothchild banking dynasty based in the 'City of London' banking centre. Ditto for Churchill and Stalin and Dick Cheney and the Bush family today.

In "The Bormann Brotherhood" (1972) William Stevenson says Bormann "gave the lowest priority to the fate of Germany.. He was concerned instead with a future based on nazi philosophy(zionism), financed by nazi loot, supported by a personally loyal brotherhood" (NWO).

Winston Churchill said, "This is not a war against hitler or national socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless whether it is in the hands of hitler or a Jesuit priest" (Emry's Hughes, ?Winston Churchill, His Career in War and Peace/ p.145)

"Winston Churchill said, 'This is not a war against hitler or national socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all..."

Obviously he failed miserably, if indeed that was the goal of his participation in the war.

Not really when you look at who controls the global order. The world wars were wars to remove competing potential global empires from the Rothschild's bankster global empire.

First Russia ‘pan-slavic’ was removed through the Bolshevik Revolution and brought under the Rothschild's control.

Then WW1 was used to submit the Germans with Rothschild's people actually writing the League of Nations and related treaties imposed on Germany, which set the stage for WW2.

Then WW2 removed the prospect of a German-European ‘pan-Germanic’ based world control as well as the prospects for a Japan-Asia ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ base of world control.

The only competitor to the heirs of the British Empire left are the Americans and they are in the process of being righted by the bankers at this moment.

A problem for the banksters is the rise of Putin; who has removed the banksters from Russian control after nearly a century. The CEO of Yuko's for example had all his wealth transferred to the Rothschild's when he was thrown in jail. Putin would have none of it and in effect dissolved Yuko's as a result.

Germany today is under the same bankster control the rest of us live under. They have a fractional banking system with debt that is integrated into the global federal reserve banking system. That is what WW2 was fought for after all.

Today the B’nai B’rith is the Rothschilds intelligence cover in Canada when operating out of the banking circles for political or social agitation.

It just goes to show that nobody should go to war and become cannon fodder for any gloriously promoted schemes of empire building or rebuilding.

Empires come, empires go.

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi