From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Date: 1 Oct 92 20:25:04 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

> of the celebration yesterday. It was replaced by a minor  
commemorative
> meeting with technical lectures, but also presentations of the  
negative
> aspects of the V-2 as weapon in WWII.
> 


I've been watching this in the papers. I find it sad that there is  
such a fuss over a weapon that killed 3000 people in the UK... and  
yet there is a statue to "Bomber Harris", a man who could go down in  
history as one of the great mass murderers of WWII. His tactic of  
night time random bombing of civilians killed orders of magnitude  
more people than anything that happened at Penemunde, EVEN if there  
were slave laborers killed there. Which is more callous: shooting a  
conscript worker in the head or intentionally firebombing random  
residential and business areas*. If there is a moral difference, I  
sure as hell don't see it.

The bombing of Dresden was one of the greatest crimes against  
humanity in history. I put it in the same class as Auschwitz. Even  
the bombing of Hiroshima had an alibi: it did indeed make a costly  
(in american lives) invasion unnecessary and ended the war in short  
order. One can at least debate on that question. But Dresden was mass  
bombed by thousands of planes, day and night, for no better reason  
than to experiment to see if a fire storm would occur as theory  
predicted. I would put it's planners in the same category as Dr.  
Mengele, except he was a piker by comparison. His brutal experiments  
only killed hundreds. The planners of Dresden killed about 100,000  
innocents and got away scot free. They KNEW there were tens of  
thousands of refugees were in the city and that there were only  
trivial military targets in the city. It was done intentionally.

Only the war criminals on the losing side got the end of a rope that  
they so richly deserved. The winners got medals for their atrocities.  
An exception was some of the Japanese who were coopted by the  
victors** and are still in influential positions... 


Methinks they doth protest to much...


* The US carried out a similar project in Japan but had the partial  
excuse that the industry was widely dispersed as cottage industry,  
which was not the case in Europe. Zeroes were manufactured almost as  
home industry and stopping this required razing up to 75% (or more)  
of every city in Japan. I think they should have had to justify it in  
an international court. Maybe they could have. I really don't know.

And of course, the Luftwaffe attacked London and other cities  
(including Belfast). A little known fact is that the RAF bombed a  
German city first. It was a ploy of Churchill to get the erratic  
Hitler to fly off the handle and do something stupid. Up until that  
time Goering was focusing the Lufwaffe on reducing the RAF bases and  
aircraft manufacturing. After the British attack Hitler went berserk  
and ordered the retaliation against London which put the Luftwaffe  
into nice predicatable air corridors where the RAF had a chance to  
decimate them. A gamble that won. It also had the effect of  
stiffening some upper lips in London. Churchill was as ruthless as  
they came. He counted on causing the bombing of his own people, but  
England probably would not have survived without him. However, none   
of this justified the leveling of German cities after the tide began  
to turn.  


** The US did not prosecute certain individuals involved in the  
testing of biological warfare in China in which some US airmen are  
said to have been used as the guinea pigs for Anthrax infections. The  
experimental data was quietly taken over by the OSS. There was a bit  
of a flap about this roughly ten years ago, but it seems to have been  
forgotten again. 
Newsgroups: sci.space