Brilliant second world war books.

Michael86

Michael86

Active member
Hello all. I read a lot of Mr David Irving's work. I regard him as one of the finest historians in the world today. One of the most important books I have ever read was by him called "Hitler's war and the warpath". A 100% unbiased account of the second world war as seen from the German armed forces. Highly recommended people and available for free download. Please donate what you can, if you can to his website. Please see link.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/
 
Fair one Monty . Each to their own but he has carried out all his research and work with the full weight of the media against him. He even had his print works burnt down by communists. Censorship at it's most ugly.
 
True but if you look at his work on the bombing of Dresden, it is well written and well researched but the numbers have been grossly inflated it is the sort of book I thoroughly recommend reading but where ever he mentions a number you need need to halve it for more accuracy.

Further to this his desire to deny the Holocaust is not endearing him to anyone it does not make him a bad writer nor does it preclude him being knowledgeable about his topics but it does make you wary of what he accepts as fact.
 
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Yes, it's hard to figure out who's lieing and who isn't. I can imagine the latter months in the Reich being horrific. With the mass exodus of people fleeing the Russian advance, it is hard to imagine how they could get even rough estimates of victims.

I understand that Dresden had millions of refugees from the east has the Russians had just encircled Breslau (Wroclaw) adding more to the situation.

Never the less as an Englishman I am deeply ashamed of this dark secret of our history that they always manage to hide from TV documentarys and school text books.
 
The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing, which was classified until December 1978. This said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid. According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); as well as factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch & Sterzel AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebrüder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.

The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east-west along the central European uplands. The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig. Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."

There will always be controversy regarding the bombing of Dresden by the RAF and the USAAF, whether the attack necessary. If the above report is indeed correct, then yes, it was necessary.
 
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Michael86 said:
Yes, it's hard to figure out who's lieing and who isn't. I can imagine the latter months in the Reich being horrific. With the mass exodus of people fleeing the Russian advance, it is hard to imagine how they could get even rough estimates of victims.

I understand that Dresden had millions of refugees from the east has the Russians had just encircled Breslau (Wroclaw) adding more to the situation.

Never the less as an Englishman I am deeply ashamed of this dark secret of our history that they always manage to hide from TV documentarys and school text books.
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I see no reason to be ashamed, I doubt that the Luftwaffe felt bad about bombing Warsaw, London or anywhere else it was war.

I think it is more important that people understand that the Allies were not the choir boys that history paints them as they were just as ruthless and just as guilty of crimes as those they tried at Nuremberg but in the end the Allied cause was the right one even if its methods weren't all that different.
 
An American POW,???? Come on now Monty, you sound like an intelligent man. The saturation bombing of Europe's most beautiful cities was orchestrated by unscrupulous, corrupt scum, Churchill, Cherwell and Harris. Fire bombing women and children while the men was at the front.

Very honorable??
 
BritinAfrica said:
The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing, which was classified until December 1978. This said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid. According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); as well as factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch & Sterzel AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebrüder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.

The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east-west along the central European uplands. The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig. Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."

There will always be controversy regarding the bombing of Dresden by the RAF and the USAAF, whether the attack necessary. If the above report is indeed correct, then yes, it was necessary.
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All that may have been true but the fact that almost none of those targets were hit leads me to believe they were not the primary reason the bombers were there, the marshaling yards, rail lines, barracks, industry and bridges all suffered light to no damage.

The allies went out of their way to white wash and distance themselves from the Dresden attacks and that tells me that they knew they had gone too far.

However this would be a far better discussion in a thread of its own. :)
 
On 31 January, Bottomley sent a message to Portal saying a heavy attack on Dresden and other cities "will cause great confusion in civilian evacuation from the east and hamper movement of reinforcements from other fronts". British historian Frederick Taylor mentions a further memo sent to the Chiefs of Staff Committee by Sir Douglas Evill on 1 February, in which Evill states interfering with mass civilian movements was a major, even key, factor in the decision to bomb the city center. Attacks there, where main rail junctions, telephone systems, city administration, and utilities were located, would result in chaos. Britain had learned this after the Coventry Blitz, when loss of this crucial infrastructure had longer-lasting effects than attacks on war plants.

Bomber Harris wrote to the air ministry:-
I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.

An inquiry conducted at the behest of U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, stated the raid was justified by the available intelligence. The inquiry declared the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshal Konev's extended line or, alternatively, to retreat and regroup using Dresden as a base of operations, were important military objectives. As Dresden had been largely untouched during the war due to its location, it was one of the few remaining functional rail and communications centres. A secondary objective was to disrupt the industrial use of Dresden for munitions manufacture, which American intelligence believed to be the case. The shock to military planners and to the Allied civilian populations of the German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge had ended speculation that the war was almost over, and may have contributed to the decision to continue with the aerial bombardment of German cities.

The inquiry concluded that by the presence of active German military units nearby, and the presence of fighters and anti-aircraft within an effective range, Dresden qualified as "defended". By this stage in the war both the British and the Germans had integrated air defences at the national level. The German national air-defence system could be used to argue—as the tribunal did—that no German city was "undefended".

Marshall's tribunal declared that no extraordinary decision was made to single out Dresden (e.g. to take advantage of the large number of refugees, or purposely terrorize the German populace). It was argued that the intent of area bombing was to disrupt communications and destroy industrial production. The American inquiry established that the Soviets, pursuant to allied agreements for the United States and the United Kingdom to provide air support for the Soviet offensive toward Berlin, had requested area bombing of Dresden in order to prevent a counter attack through Dresden, or the use of Dresden as a regrouping point after a strategic retreat.
 
Hehe if that report had anymore double talk it would turn itself into a pretzel.

The fact that they ignored all the military targets listed and instead managed to hit the civilian part of the city tells me that these tribunals were little more than rubber stamping exercises.
 
This is the problem, the victors will never admit any wrong doing or they will deny any wrong doing, like Stalin did over the murder of thousands of Polish Officers in Katyn Forest.

Were aircrews ordered to ignore military targets and just bomb civi targets or was it bad targeting? I have no idea
 
Quite right BritinA, something they're still blamed for in some part of the world.

The victors write history, it does not necessarily make it the truth.

Glad I'm not part of the majority who believes everything that gets printed or broadcast.
 
BritinAfrica said:
This is the problem, the victors will never admit any wrong doing or they will deny any wrong doing, like Stalin did over the murder of thousands of Polish Officers in Katyn Forest.

Were aircrews ordered to ignore military targets and just bomb civi targets or was it bad targeting? I have no idea
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Hehe well Stalin went one better than denying it he actually found some Germans to blame and tried to introduce it at Nuremberg.

I suspect the aircrews knew what they were bombing as there is enough evidence from various briefings, log books and post war testimony to say they knew what the goal was and many of them were clearly unhappy about having to do it.

But I do not believe you can blame air crew for being put in the position of having to do this sort of thing and if you look at the Nuremberg trials you will notice that not one Luftwaffe air crew member was charged with raids on civilian centers and nor should they any more than individual RAF air crew should be held accountable for raids on Germany but just as Hitler and Goering considered guilty I do not see a huge difference with Churchill and Harris.
 
Well said, Monty. RAF performed heroically during the war and will always have my respect. Soldiers are never meant to question orders regardless of what others may say.

I would consider Hitler and Goering as Anglophiles whereas Churchill and Butcher had a burning hatred for the German people.
A fine quality in a Soldier, maybe not so much in a statesman?
 
Michael86 said:
Well said, Monty. RAF performed heroically during the war and will always have my respect. Soldiers are never meant to question orders regardless of what others may say.

I would consider Hitler and Goering as Anglophiles whereas Churchill and Butcher had a burning hatred for the German people.
A fine quality in a Soldier, maybe not so much in a statesman?
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I don't think I would describe them as anglophiles I think I would describe them more as a megalomaniac and his sycophant sidekick, Churchill I am not sure I do not share the views of many of the previous generations as he was always spoiling for war and he got what he wanted which in the end cost an empire.

Harris I really dislike however I agree with his speech:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a dozen other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
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The thing about the Bomber commands campaign is that in 1943 it is a valid war plan but by Feb 1945 it was bombing for the sake of bombing and to a large degree they became no different to those they were fighting.
 
I think Goering was a vain pig and I cringe at the thought that he held a place so high up in the nazi hierarchy.

Hitler on the other hand I will always regard as a great man who strived for peace with my country.

We tore each other to bits and in doing so gave up our claim to this Earth, England and Germany being the finest of the Germanic peoples.
 
Michael86 said:
Hitler on the other hand I will always regard as a great man who strived for peace with my country.

We tore each other to bits and in doing so gave up our claim to this Earth, England and Germany being the finest of the Germanic peoples.
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There's quite a few here who would argue with that, especially those who lived and fought in his name.

Then there are the RAF aircrews who you quite rightly applauded their courage, 50 of whom were murdered on his orders after their capture in the "Great Escape."
 
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Of course there will be, friend. I base all my comments and views on everything I read. I read from authors on both sides of the the debate.

I received a comprehensive education and I was constantly reminded how brutal the Nazi's was and how they threatened are very existence.

In school however, we never heard of Dresden, Mers El Kebir or the numerous peace proposals offered by Germany. So when I found this out by chance, I obviously became very suspicious of the accepted version of the war.

"Those who tell the stories also hold the power" - Plato.
 
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