The Scouring of Germany: the Cultural Legacy of the Allied Bombing with Alexander Adams

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The book called "Hellstorm" by Thomas Goodrich is about this very topic. It made me sick to my stomach. My heart goes out to all of those men, women, and children who suffered and parished. May they find peace in the arms of the Lord.

Thank you gentlemen, for discussing this sensitive topic. 'Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich' by Harald Jahner describes how, at the end of the war, a narrow guage light railway system, with seven lines, was constructed to remove the debris of Dresden. The railway system employed 5000 staff and 40 trains and remained in service until 1958, although the last debris clearance team did not officially disband until 1977. The devastation of Dresden was terrible.

It's about time someone put out a video/stream on this topic that's actually good and not just kissing Bomber Harris' arse

My grandmother and her mother were refugees in Dresden during the bombings. As a child I spent much time in Dresden, both before and after "reunification" and the resulting restoration. Thank you both for doing this stream. One of the best conversations on this topic I've ever listened to. Very much historically accurate and interesting points.

There is a great newsreel of the Gordon Highlanders in 1934 receiving their drums from a delegation of German Officers (still wearing their Reichswehr uniforms) which the Highlanders had left behind in Ostend during the war of movement in 1914. In his speech General Hamilton extolls the virtue of their `Allies of Waterloo`. Hard to imagine within half a decade they would be bombing churches and trying to cremate the each other`s children in their own beds.

Sorry I missed this talk! Very glad you guys covered this one. This is a topic which I feel very strongly about. No matter which way you cut it these fire bombings were an unjustified crime. As for Dresden - It was a deliberate act of pure and heinous destruction. There was no strategic justification in my opinion. It was done out of pure spite. The war was over, the Soviets were already advancing rapidly in the aftermath of the Vistula-Oder offensive. Nothing but a crime and if the other side had won we’d be seeing ‘Bomber Harris’ at the Nuremberg trials. Thank you gents, good day.

The loss of heritage and history is so sad, it makes my Teutonic blood boil

My Dad was in Hamburg at the time of the attack, a young soldier, in the barracks at Barmbeck. The troups had to assist the firefighters, and when the attacks finished he was court marshaled for shooting at a Hitler portrait, but because he was very young 20yo, and a veteran, he luckily survived ... But seeing the incredible devastation done mostly to civilian homes he never became a friend of GB or USA...

Great topic, great stream. Going to revisit this no doubt.

Thank you once again AM for giving me a new perspective and knowledge

I don't care about your reasoning, who you're fighting, or why, the complete destruction of culture and cultural artifacts or heritage is a grotesque crime against humanity

This was an excellent stream. I've never heard such harrowing descriptions of the bombings and you picked an excellent angle from which to approach. Thank you to Mr Dee for giving this a shout out, even if he ultimately couldn't attend.

What penance do I deserve for missing this live?

One does wonder which German targets would have been chosen had they been hit rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as what effect such bombs being used on European cities would have had on the cold war psyche - as opposed to those far from the iron curtain in a Pacific country.

I actually just found out about Imperium Press before this stream. Nice to see it mentioned here.

Thank you for filling in a huge gap in my knowledge regarding the fate of cultural treasures of Germany during and after the war. In a rather sick way the destruction of these would facilitate the transition of Germany into a more democratic state in line with the values of other Western powers. You even shed light on Dresden as a show of force to the Soviets; something that never entered my mind before. Well done.

When Vonnegut (who survived the Dresden Firebombing as a young PoW) wrote "Slaughterhouse 5" in the 1960s he assumed Dresden as the biggest recorded massacre with up to 300k deaths. Current estimates are at 1/10 of this as you say, so the older numbers were probably exaggerated but I am a bit surprised that all corrections only went in one direction. It was bad enough in any case and this was recognized and acknowledged by someone like Vonnegut.

-Vienna was bombed quite throughly and the main cathedral, built in the 15th/16th century burnt down -Vienna fell before Berlin, by the 8th of May the Soviets had pushed into Steiermark and along the danube reached around halfway between Vienna and Linz -Vienna has several Flak towers -One side of the danube channel was completely leveled as the local Flak towers were used as the last holdout of the encircled defenders

AM, why do you have the Star of Remphan hidden in your logo?