There were 28,410 houses in Dresden out of which the bombing incinerated 24,866.1464 The Allied bombing also torched and destroyed at least thirteen square miles. Just that night, the Allies dropped more than 2,600 tons of high explosives and incendiaries on Dresden, including the historic city center, the site of treasured works of art and beautiful buildings. 1465 As I mentioned, the death toll varies. They stopped counting after they had identified 35,000 bodies. German authorities estimated, within just a few days of the attack, that the death total was somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000. 1466 Jörg Friedrich states that there were at least 800,000 people and maybe as many as a million on the night of the firebombing. Yet, only 640,000 were regular inhabitants of the city. 1467
America and Britain destroyed from fifty to eighty percent of all German cities with a population over 50,000. They similarly reduced smaller cities to rubble. Between February 13 and 15, 1945, British and American forces firebombed Dresden, in four separate raids, using over 3,900 tons of high-explosive incendiary bombs. Dresden, the Baroque capital of Saxony, was a non-military target about the size of Pittsburgh. It was home to over 600,000 of which the United States and the British incinerated at least 40,000 civilians. 1468 The Allied pilots could only produce a fire storm if they were exceptionally accurate and if the Germans were unable to defend a particular city. The fire storm in Dresden was the most effective from the Allied viewpoint. 1469 The Allies saw it as a hole in one similar to a game of golf. The city had little if any military significance and “the slaughter came too late to have any serious effect on the war.” 1470
The once-beautiful city burned for five days. The bombing destroyed all five theaters. Nine churches, out of fifty-four, were totally gone while the bombing severely damaged thirty-eight. They destroyed sixty-nine out of 139 schools while seriously damaging fifty. The wounded animal survivors from the city’s zoo panicked and attempted to escape the city. Workers had to shoot some of the seriously wounded as they could not take care of them, given the circumstances where even the human survivors were in a desperate situation. 1471 What kind of people target the wounded and the fleeing crowds after the hospitals, churches, schools and zoos had already been assaulted by their partners, the British? It was not warfare; it was genocide. While the bankers hated Hitler, they wanted to make certain, through the media and controlled education, that everyone else hated him, including the surviving Germans who they de-Nazified after the war.
By February or March 1945, the Allies had destroyed Germany’s transportation, oil supply and morale. Harris and his Bomber Command really did not have to continue the bombing and razing of cities as it was not necessary to the war efforts. For instance, the town of Pforzheim, in southwestern Germany, was bombed numerous times. The most devastating assault took place on the night of February 23, 1945. Pforzheim, in addition to Hamburg, Kassel and Dresden, was another one of about a dozen cities where a firestorm erupted. 1472
On May 20, 1945, Pastor Karl Seifert and some elderly peasants stood by the banks of the Elbe River approximately fifteen miles upstream from Dresden. The leader of the Soviet occupation permitted this pastor and the peasants to bury the bodies that floated ashore, “day after day.” Thousands floated by, children, women, old men and soldiers. The pastor and the peasants said a prayer as they buried the bodies. The river delivered bundles tied with barbed wire, corpses without tongues, eyes, breasts, testicles and even a wooden bedstead, floating like a raft. The Soviets had nailed a family to the bedstead using long spikes. As the pastor and his helpers pulled the spikes out of the children’s hands, envisioning the horror that this family must have experienced, said, “Lord, what have we done that they must sin so?” He could say nothing more except, “Lord, have mercy on their souls.” 1473
Kassel
A YouTube film shows some pre-destruction footage, when the Allies had already bombed the city ten times. On October 22, 1943, they totally destroyed this beautiful old city in one night of conventional and fire-bombing. They dropped 420,000 tons of bombs. Two hours later, there were 150,000 homeless people. Per the official statistics, the bombing killed 10,000 and severely injured another 10,000. In comparison, 20,000 British people died as a result of German bombing. Britain used four-engine Lancaster bombers and that carried a maximum payload of 6,000 metric tons. That is over four times the maximum load of the largest German twin-engine bombers, which they did not design for this purpose. 1474
Within a few hours, the Allies torched almost 10,000 people during a firestorm in Kassel on the evening of October 23, 1943. Bomber Arthur Harris’ crew dropped over 1,823 tons of high explosives and firebombs. Kassel consisted of 960 acres of buildings, houses and factories. Out of that total, the Allies destroyed 615 acres, including 300 acres of working-class housing. On November 30, 1943, a preliminary damage report stated that 26,702 homes were destroyed rendering over 120,000 people homeless. Of the 55,000 homes within the city, sixty-five percent were uninhabitable. On December 7, Kassel’s police chief thought that the Allies had either seriously damaged or destroyed about 10,000 homes. He estimated the number of homeless as 150,000. The U.S. Bombing Survey said in 1945 that 91,000 people were homeless because of the bombing that night. They thought that they had destroyed about sixty-one percent of the housing. Kassel’s pre-bomb population was 228,000. 1475
Kassel’s deaths totaled about 10,000, which were relatively low, unless you happened to be one of them or a family member. The initial report, on November 30, 1943, represented 5,599 with only 3,782 actually identifiable. A police report of October 1944 stated that the death toll was 5,830 and they could only identify 4,012 as the other people were so badly burned. By the end of October, authorities reported the death total as near 10,000. The United States, not satisfied with the count, adopted the figure of 5,248. The meticulous Germans kept thorough records, even of their livestock. The bombing of Kassel caused the deaths of 108 horses, 68 pigs, 26 cows, 8 dogs, 6 goats, 3 calves, and one sheep in addition to household pets that died immediately or that people had to put out of their misery. 1476
Pforzheim
Bomber Command had compiled a report, June 28, 1944, defining Pforzheim as “one of the centers of the German jewelry and watch making trade and is therefore likely to have become of considerable importance to the production of precision instruments.” The Allies claimed in August that “almost every house” was a “small workshop” supporting the production of a few larger factories in the south and north section of the city, thus justifying numerous attacks. The United States government used this same rhetoric regarding the destruction of non-combatant housing in Japan. Therefore, in November, Pforzheim was on the list as a category five target. The Allies also recognized that Pforzheim’s infrastructure was highly flammable. Pforzheim was just one of thousands of easy targets.
The USAAF first raided Pforzheim on April 1, 1944 with relatively little structural damage but the raid killed ninety-five people. The USAAF attacked again, their Merry Christmas attack, on December 24, 1944 and January 21, 1945. The January attack generated fifty-six casualties. Americans, many of whom were of German descent, admired Germany in the early years of the 20th century. The two nations shared Catholic and Protestant religious values. World War I government propaganda destroyed the commonality they had once enjoyed and now American animosity towards the Germans was even more intense, shown by men’s willingness, as ordered by their government, to kill people they previously respected and admired. 1477
The Allies destroyed about eighty-three percent of Pforzheim on the night of February 23-24, 1945 while killing 17,600 residents, or about one in four people as opposed to one in twenty in Dresden. It was, in terms of death percentages, the most deadly attack of the war. People referred to the town as the “Gateway to the Black Forest. A week later the Allies bombed Würzburg with more than 1,100 tons of bombs, the majority of which were incendiaries. They destroyed at least ninety percent of the city including numero
us medieval and rococo buildings. The raid immediately killed at least 4,000 residents. Many citizens hiding in their cellars perished because of suffocation when the gas wafted in; others burned to death. 1478
Famine and Genocide
Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, was the home of traditional farmers, ethnic Ukrainians and Volga Germans, who still owned and farmed the land. Volga Germans had settled in Russia before 1775 at the invitation of the government. The Germans grew rye, sunflowers (for oil), potatoes, millet, oats, and barley, both used mostly as animal fodder, and hemp and flax. They did not use commercial fertilizers and practiced a three and four year crop rotation. Each colony had vast fields surrounding them to supply sufficient food for everyone. 1479
The Bolsheviks took measures to seize food and starve the population. From a letter dated July 4, 1921, a Volga German writes, “Now I want to tell you how it is here at home. It is very difficult. We have not had any bread all summer long. We do not have any white flour. We have to cook with waste. The summer is so bad. Many people did not receive any seed. Many people are starving and many have died of starvation… Father wants you to write sometime… Write if we could come. Here is hardly survival.” 1480 Stalin imposed the First Five-Year Plan on January 5, 1930, which implemented a shift from independent to collectivized farming. American firms, with U.S. government knowledge and approval were involved in the development of Russia’s First Five-Year Plan. 1481
Following Czar Alexander II’s liberation of the serfs, many of them acquired title to their land which accelerated agricultural production. However, with Stalin’s new system in full operation, between February and March 1930, the number of collective farms grew from 59,400, with 4,400,000 families, to 110,200 farms, with 14,300,000 families. The government confiscated the peasant’s land and murdered or exiled those who resisted collectivism. People refer to this as “the liquidation of the kulaks,” a process that affected five million families. Instead of relinquishing their animals to the state’s collective farms, many peasants killed them, while state policies reduced the number of cattle from 30.7 million in 1928 to 19.6 million in 1933. During the same time, the number of sheep and goats fell from 146.7 million to 50.2 million, hogs from 26 to 12.1 million, and horses from 33.5 to 16.6 million. State activity disrupted the 1930 planting season and the years thereafter which dramatically reduced food production. The government insisted on seizing the food from the rural population to support the urban population. With insufficient food, the peasants starved. 1482
The plan called for a massive reduction in the Ukrainian livestock population. Soviet officials enforced systematic starvation on the previously self-sufficient souls who opposed collectivism following the authorized confiscation of all of their grains and stock from their personal and national supplies. At least twenty five percent of the Ukrainians starved to death during this orchestrated famine. Conservative estimates indicate that about 4,800,000 individuals perished while others estimate the number of dead as high as 10,000,000. In 1945, Stalin admitted to Winston Churchill that twelve million peasants died during the transition to collective farming, a catastrophic manufactured famine. 1483
Then in May 1942, Japan totally vanquished Burma. Britain thought that the Japanese would invade British-dominated India through the province of Bengal. Therefore, the British implemented a scorched earth operation close to the Burmese border. They destroyed the rice paddies in some of the coastal districts, confiscated all fishing boats, motor vehicles, carts and even elephants, in order to prevent the Japanese from commandeering them if they tried to go through Bengal to reach India. The army did not bother to compensate the residents for their transportation or distribute replacement rations for what they destroyed or supply them with fish that they would have caught had the British had not seized their boats. Bengal, no longer able to grow sufficient for her needs, became wholly dependent on rice imports from French Indochina, Thailand, and Burma, also a ravaged war zone. 1484
Bengal is the site of the world’s largest river delta and boats are essential for the distribution of food grains. Because of Britain’s egregious policies, 30,000 families were unable to obtain food. The British military ultimately relocated some of them in order to try to relieve starvation. However, inadequate food throughout the area escalated into a serious situation and, by January 1943, The New York Times and Time Magazine reported that men, women, and children were starving after officials had forcibly relocated them to Calcutta’s streets. It was not until January 11, 1943 that London acknowledged that its policies had created India’s food shortage. Now India depended on imports. Yet, Churchill reduced transportation to the Indian Ocean by sixty percent despite the warnings that such an action would greatly affect the seaborne commerce of India and adjacent countries. 1485
Starving refugees continued to flood into Calcutta during the British-inflicted monster-made famine. Indian novelist, Bhabhani Bhattacharya attests to the fact that these starving people did not beg for rice, they were so incredibly desperate they begged for fanna, the wastewater from the rice pan. Calcutta’s streets, to this day, are overflowing with people existing in wretched poverty, all attributable to British imperialism, their local agents, and their insatiable greed, without regard for India’s population of men, women and children. During the Bengal famine, both men and women fought each other over rubbish attempting to find food. People ate roots, twigs, leaves in order to try to survive. Meanwhile, people, who thought that God had imposed the famine, did not realize that people like Samarendra Basu sold rice at high and unaffordable prices. Women often resorted to prostitution to feed their families. Interestingly, UNESCO verified that out of 128 countries where Jews lived before they created Israel, only India allowed the Jews to prosper and practice Judaism. 1486
India’s food situation was perilous. The Board of Economic Warfare published a document in July 1943, Indian Agriculture and Food Problems, which predicted famine and “hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation.” On August 25, The New York Times printed a cabled message from Calcutta’s mayor to New York City’s mayor and to FDR, “Acute distress prevails in the city of Calcutta and province of Bengal due to shortage of foodstuffs. Entire population is being devitalized and hundreds dying of starvation. Appeal to you and Mr. Churchill in the name of starving humanity to arrange immediate shipment of food grains from America, Australia and other countries.” 1487
British censors in India removed disturbing words like starvation, corpses and famine from the news reports of correspondents in India. However, by September 1943, articles in American newspapers reported the abject conditions of the people in Calcutta and the rural areas. By October, Calcutta soup kitchens attempted to feed at least 60,000 people out of the expanding hoard of impoverished and famished people. In September, Churchill and Roosevelt met to correlate their military strategies and the logistical needs of the Allied soldiers. Records do not indicate any discussion of India’s famine. Yet, the State Department received regular reports about the desperate plight of India’s mass starvation. However, Churchill and Roosevelt were more concerned with the Allied invasion of Italy. 1488
The two leaders, possibly both psychopathic given their apparent lack of empathy concentrated on adequate provisions for the Allied troops in Europe and food aid to the Soviets. India’s starving population was evidently inconsequential, currently referred to as collateral damage. In October 1943, with nary a word about Bengal’s widespread famine, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, a Freemason, spoke to the National Consumers’ Food Conference held in Cleveland. He said, “The more food we can put into Russian stomachs, the more American blood will be saved.” 1489
In November 1943, FDR invited delegates from forty-four countries to meet with him at the White House in order to establish the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). He appointed Herbert Lehman as its director. The organization’s purpose was to provide food, clothing, medical supplies, and other ai
d people seeking repatriation. In May 1944, the agency would accept managerial responsibility for the Middle East refugee camps, which held about 37,000 Yugoslavian, Greek, Albanian, and Italian DPs, a number that dramatically increased as the Allied forces advanced into Germany. Because of understaffing and insufficient funding at UNRRA, SHAEF took over the responsibility for the millions of DPs and refugees. On November 25, officials from the two entities agreed that SHAEF would direct UNRRA which would focus on postwar issues. 1490
The U.S. Congress enacted legislation in February 1944 authorizing UNRRA to provide India with food relief. However, Churchill, to avoid condemnation and responsibility, consistently claimed that there was no famine so the suffering, starving population did not receive the assistance they desperately needed. Certainly, the politicians were aware of the severe situation, but India’s officials, under Churchill’s tight control, did not request UNRRA assistance, yet the British-controlled Indian government contributed $24 million to UNRRA. 1491
On February 9, 1944, Field Marshall Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India (1943-1947) wrote to Churchill, asking for food for the starving Bengalis. He responded to Wavell on February 15, “We have given a great deal of thought to your difficulties but we simply cannot find the shipping. Everything is involved in the Operation and our own import cut to the barest minimum. The Secretary of State is cabling you at length. Every good wish amidst your anxieties.” Wavell cabled him the next day asking for reconsideration but received the same response. 1492
The Ruling Elite Page 54
