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Police said at least 2,000 people joined the march.

Politicians voiced concern the march might turn into Germany's biggest far-right demonstration since the war -- that neo-Nazis might clash with residents planning to turn out in their thousands wearing white roses in a counter-protest.

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CNN

Still, I wonder about that word "overshadowing" in the CNN intro. A turnout of 2,000 is pretty small in a European city, no? It's still disturbing, but it sounds as though the official ceremonies were larger, and I suspect that that 2,000 would be the maximum ever available to these people.

The intro is an impressive exercise in deconstruction of prejudices on both sides -- and by both sides, I mean the British and American bombing crews on the one hand (plus the British civilians back home) and the German civilians on the other.

[ 13 February 2005: Message edited by: skdadl ]

I agree with skdadl that this is tragic in many ways - one being the fact that it overshadows the need to commemorate and remember the most dubious decision to bomb Dresden and kill so many innocent people, including refugees who had taken refuge there. Many historians and writers who have no sympathy whatsoever for Nazism consider the bombing a war crime.

Nowadays Hiroshima and Nagasaki are seen as war crimes, and that does not play down the cruelties of Japanese militarism in Asia.

The Neo-Nazi use of the term "bombing holocaust" is a deliberate slur on the memory of the victims of Nazism - the contrary would be surprising from fascists; Jean-Marie Le Pen is also a master of that sort of thing, but it is not technically inaccurate. A holocaust means a burnt offering, a wholesale sacrifice or destruction, especially by fire. That is exactly what happened to the beautiful city of Dresden and its inhabitants.

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Britain's ambassador to Germany, Sir Peter Torry, told Sunday's Tagesspiegel newspaper likening the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust was "highly problematic" but played down the threat posed by the NPD. The Nazis killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during World War Two.

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This is a very delicate situation and the Brits really don't want to go there because Dresden was their idea and the Americans were along for the ride.

No one wants to lend any credence to neo Nazi parties in modern Germany - this is reprehensible. But in light of the actual history it seems sickly ironic that 60 years later, "Bomber Harris" and his group would give these assholes a legitimate issue to twist in memoriam.

I thin Schroeder should stop talking about re-interpreting history and simply encourage a serious memorial with serious people who would state unequivocably what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five -- the bombing of Dresden was militarily unnecessary, did nothing to hasten the war and was simply an act of savage retribution for the Nazi bombings of British cities.

Alas among the antifascists there is a group from the "Antideutsch" movement (their opposition to fascism actually drives them to uncritical support for Israel - including a refusal to criticise the Occupation - odd for a left group) with the most offensive name "No Tears for Krauts" (deliberately in English on their website and banners - moderator please tell me if I must delete that direct quote of an ethnic slur). Lots of sensitivity to the victims of the Dresden firebomings there, eh? But such folks are a minority among antifascists, rest assured.

At the beginning of the rally I met up with my brother who'd met an elderly lady who'd survived the bombing. She told us her story and gave each of us a white rose to wear for the day which I thought a graceful thing. She was 13 at the time, her house was bombed and all her family except her were killed. She tried to cross the river to find an uncle but could not get over the Elbe because of too many strafing aircraft.

Note on a point of detail over accounts of the actual bombing. I've heard it argued from various quarters that Allied fighter aircraft who were escorting the bombers did NOT swoop down on the city on strafing runs, particularly on the exposed banks of the Elbe. But this woman provides the third account I've heard first or secondhand from witnesses who've mentioned the strafing. This lady observed that the Elbe floodplain was littered with bodies but no bomb craters to suggest how they came to be there, other than strafing.

The troglodyte's rally passed by a well-ordered counterdemonstration before it ended in the town center. It was moving to hear these scruffy youngsters shouting 'Nazi Raus!' with real feeling, and there were some clever jokes about the skinheads' intellectual abilities. As all around the church bells tolled in memorium, under a turbulent purple February sky. I looked up and saw a huge flock of large black...crows I think...swirling over the Zwinger, I decided this is where all Dresden's ghosts had gone.

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There is an interesting long article on the fire-bombing of Dresden in a recent issue of the NY Review of Books. I'll see if I can find a link.

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www.dw-world.de dossier on Dresden also has a piece on the myth of the lack of military targets in the town. None of this detracts from the horror of what happened to the people there, and the beautiful town...

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Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945(The Fire: Germany in the Bombing War, 1940–1945) by Jörg Friedrich

Brandstätten: Der Anblick des Bombenkriegs(Scenes of Fire: A View of the Bombing War) by Jörg Friedrich

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I don't have my copy of the article any longer, but it was my impression that neither of those had been translated yet. (I think the second is a photo collection.)

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For decades it has been assumed that the Allied bombing of Dresden -- a cultured city famous for its china, chocolate, and fine watches -- was militarily unjustifiable, an act of retribution for Germany's ceaseless bombing of London and other parts of England.

Now, Frederick Taylor's groundbreaking research offers a completely new examination of the facts and reveals that Dresden was a highly militarized city actively involved in the production of military armaments and communications. Incorporating first-hand accounts, contemporaneous press material and memoirs, and never-before-seen government records, Taylor proves unequivocally the very real military threat Dresden posed -- and how a legacy of propaganda shrouded the truth for sixty years.

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And a mini-biography of the author

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Frederick Taylor studied history and modern languages at Oxford University and Sussex University, specializing in the history of the extreme right in Germany during the early years of the twentieth century. The award of a Volkswagen Studentship enabled him to research and travel widely in both parts of divided Germany at the height of the Cold War. He has edited and translated a number of works from Germany, including the Goebbels Diaries, 1939–1941. Frederick Taylor is married with three children and lives in Cornwall, England.

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Originally posted by Briguy:
Bastards. Can you imagine how survivors of the Dresden inferno would feel about their suffering being co-opted by these thugs? Not to mention survivors and descendants of the actual Holocaust?

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The author of the Deutsche Welle column "Confronting Myth in Dresden" strikes the right note in her conclusion, I think:

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On the Frauenkirche site, Dresden will commemorate the victims of the firestorm on Feb. 13, while protesting against neo-Nazis and their attempts to monopolize remembrance.

Peace and freedom are not a condition but a process that can only be successful if dialogue continues with democracy's opponents -- including an honest analysis of one's own history. Slowly, carefully Germany is developing such a new approach to the burdens of history. Nowhere is that as apparent as in Dresden.

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It seems to me an important problem: if, in their justified desire to admit and document and condemn Germany's Nazi past, German leaders have suppressed the ordinary human need to commemorate horrible loss, then the neo-Nazis are left free to exploit simple human sentiment.

It is a tough paradox, but it needs confronting.

I even have a DVD copy of conspiracy if anyone wants to borrow it. Stanley Tucci and Kenneth Branagh are chilling in their roles.

[ 14 February 2005: Message edited by: Bacchus ]

While there is extensive new building it seems to follow the prior city layout so you really have to go to the outskirts, or certain quarters, to get that nice feeling of existential despair that only bleak eastern European modern architecture can induce.

I've not read the Taylor revision of Dresden's suitability as a military target but I'm skeptical. First of all many targets of military value, such as the train station, survived the bombing. It was up and running two or three days after the raids despite thousands of casualties.

If you read the technical details of the raid it seems clear that the objective was to create a firestorm in the city center and not to target specific military installations. The dropping of high explosives to rip off rooves and open up buildings followed by incendiaries to set them ablaze, dropped in a sufficiently close pattern to allow individual fires to merge...

Finally, if Dresden was such a tempting military target why was it stripped of its minimal anti-aircraft defences two weeks prior to the raid?

Der Spiegel has an English on-line edition, featuring an in-depth story about some of the underlying issues behind the Dresden march ... and the planned march to "mourn" the defeat on the 8th of May. The march course is hotly contested.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,339833,00.html

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A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.

To do so, he gave them huge tax breaks and introduced social benefits… He also ensured that even in the last days of the war not a single German went hungry. Despite near-constant warfare, never once during his 12 years in power did Hitler raise taxes for working class people… Peace would have meant the end of his predatory practices and would have spelled "certain bankruptcy for the Reich."

Aly's theory (is causing a) ruckus in Germany, where lately the trend has been to accept that Germans, too, suffered under Hitler and under the Allied bombing raids at the war's end. Aly is now negating much of that suffering, insisting that every single German benefited from Hitler's culture of killing.

“What were the most important elements that allowed this criminal regime to thrive? So much came out of the German middle class. That is the most troubling aspect of the history."

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