Talk:Bombing of Dresden/Archive 11

message: :"As acts of retaliation, they were at best vicarious (even if entire nations are seen as morally competent agents)." Can someone explain this sentence? My understanding was that a vicarious act was one undertaken on behalf of another? I don't understand how this applies here? Cheers, User: Badgerpatrol 01:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "vicarious act of retaliation"

message: I would suggest that the balance of weighting given to the case for and against classifying the bombing as a War Crime/Crime Against Humanity is unbalanced. This makes the article suffer from lack of NPOV and justifies that tag. I'd invite someone to expand the argument for, or curtailing the latter.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alex Obradovic (talk • contribs) 21:54, 12 March 2006  (UTC)
:You are encouraged to sign you comments on a talk page with four tildes as in:~~~~
What is unbalanced about it? It took a long hard fight to get the wording that is there at the moment. I am going to remove you NPOV notice as you have not explained what you think is non Neutral Point of View in the section. What do you think is missing from the for argument given the details of the lack of treaties as detailed in the link Area bombardment#Aerial area bombardment and international law? Or what is OTT for the for side? --Philip Baird Shearer 00:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weighting of arguments 

message: Was this intended as fratricide?  IP Address 12:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Saxe-Coburg and Gotha]] and the [[Kingdom of Saxony]] 

message: I understand that this article has a long history of editing, and a huge talk archive, but despite that, my reaction to the reading of this article is surpise. It seems both apologetic and completely out of line with what I learned in college. I don't think this article tells the entire story, I also think that the entire article has been worded in favor over one point over the other. Case in point: the length of the 'for war crime' argument vs the 'against war crime.' Another point is that a substantial portion of the 'for war crime section' is rebuttal to the point of view it is supposed to be 'for'. As for comparison, in the 'against war crime section' with the bombings of Tokyo, John Mcnamara himself believed they were committing war crimes as he himself said in the documentary 'The Fog of War' so that's not a very good argument is it. (Bjorn Tipling 00:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slanted 

message: This excellent article on a very difficult subject helps restore my somewhat battered faith in Wikipedia. I recommend a new book, Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden 1945, by Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang, Pimlico 2006. The chapter "The Dresden Raids: Why and How" gives a very good concise summary of the decision making process which led to the bombing. Adam 08:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll be interested to check that one out - literally.--72.92.8.6 08:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Excellent

message: It seems that everywhere we look (not just Wikipedia), we get the following two assertions:
Dresden War Crime? NO = smart, well researched, scholarly people who are correct.
Dresden War Crime? YES = crackpot, Nazi apologists who are incorrect.
<Insert POV here>  I think we can never get away from a little bit of Victor's History here.  Some enterprising Wikipedia poster above said it took very hard work to get the wording as it is.  It's laughable that it took such hard work to get it as slanted to the "not war crime" POV as it is.  Why do people not even want to consider the fact that the Allies commited war crimes?  Are we so holier than thou that we cannot accept any smirch on our history?  If so, we are deluding ourselves.  In their pasts, all of the Allied countries of WWII have committed genocide (Americans and Canadians wiping out native American populations (and Canadians doing Mengele like medical experiments on the mentally ill (Duplessis incident)), Britain in Kenya, France with its own people (Vendee during the Revolution), Poles killing themselves at Jedwabne, Soviets at Katyn, and many others).  With so much blood on our hands, how can we possibly make NPOV judgments about war crimes and atrocities?
There are also neutral and enemy parties from WWII who committed genocides, notably the Turks wiping out the Armenians and the Japanese murdering tens of millions of Chinese and Koreans.  Spanish genocide against the New World is also horrific.  
It seems we have much work to do to get this article neutral.  The folks involved are trying hard, but not hard enough.
<End POV>
TheKurgan 14:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do know whether it was a war crime. But it was wrong. Then again, war is wrong. Wallie 18:05, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting concept 

message: "Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt.[26] There were around 25,000 officially buried dead by March 22, 1945, war related or not, according to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47"). There was no registration of burials between May and September 1945.[27]" Since these are only officially registered and found victims, the total number of casualties must be far higher...
When you become a registered Wikipedian and sign your comments, I will be happy to discuss this question. Adam 11:28, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties