Slashdot Mirror
WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online
aquarium writes "The Guardian Unlimited reports that unique aerial photographs of some of the key events of the Second World War are to be made available for the first time over the internet. The photographs are being made available through a website created by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University - an official place of deposit for the National Archives at Kew, West London. The entire archive of more than five million aerial reconnaissance photographs, shot by the RAF over Western Europe during the conflict, is going online starting Monday. They include American troops landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the seizure of the Pegasus bridge by British paratroops, the aftermath of the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, and the German battleship Bismarck as the Royal Navy hunted her down. The multiple photographs taken by the high resolution cameras meant they were able to create 3-D images through an instrument called a "stereoscope". The technique was used to construct a detailed picture of the Normandy terrain ahead of the D-Day landings."
Will they also have pictures of the devastated dresden after they bombed the city center crowded with hundreds of thousands civilian refugees and no military targets in sight?
...more people understand what a tremndously heroic thing all those soldiers did can only be a good thing.
For those of you who have never seen "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", I recommend them. Remember, freedom comes at a price, and we should all be very thankful to all those who have paid it, and one way is by learning about, and appreciating the sacrifices made. As this archive will only further add to our accuracy or the historical events, this can only be a Good Thing.
libertarianswag.com
There's a reason they use AC for their trolling: being cowards, they prefer anonymity.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
you're killing the "righteous guilt" trip. "Historical context"? thats doesn't matter, whats important is pissing off the old folks and finding some bubble headed chick who'll be impressed by your sensitivity and daring in expressing an "unpopular" opinion you read about on some Tides Foundation funded website.
"He started it" carries a lot of weight when Western civilization is at stake.
If the Germans had not placed Hitler in power, if the Germans had not sustained him in power, if Hitler had not plunged Europe into a war of conquest and genocide, then not a single Allied bomb would have ever fallen on German territory.
To use another cliche, you reap what you sow.
Hitler and the other fascists, including those ruling Japan, had to be stopped, at any cost. The cost of defeat was unthinkable.
Trying to take the moral high ground in war is pointless. Death is death, regardless of motive. But, that is no reason to avoid fighting to win.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"They committed senseless crimes, so we responded the same way" - this is pretty lousy argument if you think about it for a second.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Even so, it was a fiasco. We British made an AWFUL lot of mistakes in WWII, it's still a fucking mystery why the Germans failed to capitalise on them.
Why didn't the Germans invade England? Why didn't the Germans support their U-Boats properly? Why didn't the Germans use chemical weapons in their V1s and V2s? etc etc etc I think, in the end, that it comes down to one simple ting, Hitler was not only evil, he was really fucking stupid too.
That was classic intercourse!
Indeed they do, but a lookup shows that they have chosen to host this site away from Janet... hence its dotted.
Actually, the RAF had a very rough time of it in 1940 after Germany overran France. They were just barely able to defend their nation and came very close to capitulation. The RAF became stronger only after Hitler turned his attentions to Russia and when the US entered the war. The US was responsible for the destruction of the Luftwaffe and the British never would have made it without America's industrial ability.
The entire Allied strategy in Western Europe before the landings in Normandy was to destroy Germany's ability to make war. This included destroying any and all factories, oil fields, railroads, and military targets. In doing this, the Allies achieved another goal: complete air superiority over the occupied nations by reducing the Luftwaffe to a token force.
The Americans version of this strategy involved daylight precision bombing on actual military targets at hight cost through the use of the highly secret Norton bombsight. The American goal, at least was not to kill civilians but to destroy the German war machine. They did not have the same level of hatred for the Germans that the English did. Maybe if Germany had been able to bomb American cities, the US would have seen things differently then and now but the continental United States escaped all damage from both enemies in the war.
The British thought daylight bombings were too costly in lives and material and stuck to night bombings throughout the war. This and the fact that they did not have the Norton bombsight did not led itself to bombing accuracy since all of Europe was under a strict blackout policy. As a payback to Hitler's official policy of bombing civilian targets like the city of London, the British went out of their way to terror bombing German cities with high explosives and incendiary bombs. This is a terrible policy which did not work on the Germans, just as it did not on the British who re-employed it. The civilians of Germany did not give up just as those of Britain did not. The UK has escaped the criticism it deserves for what they condoned during the war and the US has gotten far more criticism it deserves for it's part in the bombing of the most evil nation in modern history.
As I mention above, by the time most of these bombing raids were occuring against Germany, the war was lost for them anyway, making the raids purely gratuitous.
The war may have been lost for them but that doesn't mean the leaders of Germany believed it. The Germans did not surrender until May 8th, 1945 and I think you'll find none of those raids took place after that date. The Germans should have surrendered much earlier but Adolf Hitler would not allow it. The only reason Nazi Germany gave up when it did was because Hitler had committed suicide some days earlier and was no longer there to keep up the fight against the Allies who had clearly won months before. Right up to his last day, he was throwing lives away and he was the one completely responsible for all of those deaths.
Even though Germany is a united country now, its borders were shrunk significantly by the Russians - where Poland is today used to be a major German state, and historically, Poland was farther to the east. The allies let all this happen, because they wanted to turn Germany into a minor agricultural state.
Much of Prussia was taken away from Germany after WWI, the result of European rivalries and hatred, not because America had anything to do with it (remember, the US did not want anything to do with the Treaty of Versailles). That more of it was taken after WWII is regretable but that was a result of Russia being unreasonable and wanting more of a buffer between themselves and Western Europe.
Germany is where it is today because of America. They would be that minor agricultural state you mentioned if America had not helped it become a world power again.
The attack on Dresden has been justified by others and I won't defend it myself though I will say the 6 million+ people murdered by the Nazi regime and those who lived in occupied Europe at the time would most likely have had very little problem it.
Because the Germans couldn't win.
Don't know if I'm so sure about that, I think there are only 1 or 2 things that they really did wrong (or rather, right for all of us offcourse)
Why didn't the Germans invade England?
Because they didn't have air superiority over the channel and lacked amphibious capabilities. The Allied raid on Deppe in '42 showed that it was folly to attack without specialized ships and craft. Had the Nazis gone across in 40-41 in ferries and river barges they'd have failed.
You're right, the question should should have been: why did they give up on England or rather give up on pummeling the RAF. I think the battle of Britain is the one point in the war where they could have won everything.
The RAF was on the brink of collapsing, giving the germans the air superiority they needed to invade. If they could have subdued England it would have been very bad for all of us indeed.
Luckilly for us Hitler was an idiot so he was dead set on going against Russia and wanted vengeance for the bombing of Berlin, but I think it was pretty close.
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?