Far-Right German Party Belittles Holocaust | Current Affairs | Deutsche Welle | — Interesting sub-trend worth following. But is this really a surprise to anyone? Note the shift of focus from the extermination camps to the Dresden bombing. This sets up a future “blame America” scenario. This is all so transparent.
Instead of being a solemn moment of reflection, the tribute turned into a political bashing as 12 regional lawmakers for the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) refused to participate and stormed out of the chamber.
Earlier in the week the NPD, which rocked mainstream political parties in Germany by winning a surprising 9.2 percent of the votes in last September%u2019s state election, had filed a motion asking that the minute of silence be restricted to commemorate the victims of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Saxony%u2019s capital, in February 1945. The parliament overwhelmingly rejected the request.
Since it is illegal in Germany to deny the holocaust, I wonder how far this party can go with this?
Seems like the right-wingers do this sort of thing every ten years. Didn’t it happen in Austria last time?
But why is Dresden no big deal to people? Look it up on the internet: it was the deliberate firebombing of a non-military target packed with refugees. It was done with the deliberate attempt of demoralizing the civilian population. If ever there was a war crime, a crime against humanity, this was it, and it involved the consent and participation of the top brass. The allies knew exactly what would happen in this. But I guess it’s true, the winners aren’t the ones who go to jail.
(Slaughterhouse five includes an “entertaining” account of Dresden)
Funny how Coventry, London, Warsaw and Rotterdam never come up in these debates about how bad it is to bomb cities. Not to mention the prototype: Guernica. The Germans seem to have basically invented the mass bombing of urban centres by air. Seems a bit much for them to use someone else’s success at it as a example of how bad that someone else is. Incidentally, the bombing of Dresden was initially a RAF mission…the USAAC pitched in to help, but it was a Bomber Harris plan.