Remembering Dresden

February 15, 2010 — admin

Abend - Sonnenuntergang hinter der Dresdener Hofkirche by Caspar David Friedrich. Both spires have been reconstructed since 1945

Sixty-five years ago today, the citizens of Dresden – the Baroque capital of the German region of Saxony – were going through what must have been the ultimate terror. After two nights of bombing, they found themselves in the middle of a firestorm, where the air in the city was hot enough to burn skin and the thirsty flames consumed the oxygen from miles around, making it a hellish inferno.

I have always believed that war makes the unthinkable thinkable and cast no blame on the RAF, USAF, Churchill or Arthur Harris for the decision to bomb the town. The historical revisionism of some (funding by the government in this instance) – to try and prove that Dresden was known to be an insignficant target and bombed for the sake of its cultural value, is as pointless as it is regressive. We mustn’t forget that London, Coventry and other British cities suffered equally.

Among my favourite artists is the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose contemplative landscapes include several interpretations of Dresden, his native town. Every time I look at them, they seem to reflect nostalgically on a landscape since destroyed; even though Friedrich could never have imagined what would happen to the landmarks he knew so well. In that context the picture seems to be a representation of how time, technology and politics change all of us – not only in the course of our lifetimes but from one era to the next.

I’m certainly not here to say that it was right or wrong to bomb Dresden – it was necessary to fight a total war in order to rid Europe of one of its most evil regimes. But it is right to remember Dresden and everything – lives, culture, art, human spirit and endeavour – that was lost 65 years ago.

And to understand that in 1945 it only took two nights to obliterate 700 years of Saxony’s history. Now it would probably take two hours.

Posted in history, news. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Security threat

January 22, 2010 — admin

The Home Secretary has revealed that the level of terror threat to the public has been officially increased to “severe” by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. This comes a few days after flights to and from Yemen were suspended. Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

I have said before that I anticipate more and more security alerts as we run up to an election as Gordon Brown appeals to us to believe that he is the only person able to look after us.

But let’s look at how likely this really is. Today, the threat level gets raised to “severe”, meaning an attack is “highly likely”. Yet Alan Johnson accompanies this move by stressing “there was no intelligence to suggest a terrorist attack was imminent“. Eh? Of course we wouldn’t expect him to release details of operations being picked up by GCHQ or MI6 but it’s still an odd thing to say given that the reason that the threat level is raised in the first place.

In addition, the threat level has been set at “severe” or higher since August 2006. In that time, we have had one very amateurish attack on Glasgow Airport where the perpitrators were the only victims (and they were only 50% successful in that given that they had both intended to die and only one did). Another very unsophisticated attack in London was foiled - both were also probably connected to Gordon Brown becoming PM that week and so might not have happened but for that event.

Nothing else has materialised that even comes close to the level of violence seen on the mainland at the height of The Troubles. During that time, there was no terror threat indicator made public via the BBC and Prime Ministers made speeches not outlining in the gravest terms actions that were being taken against a perceived threat but of defiance in the face of enemy action and sympathy with those killed.

In my view, the decision to make public the UK terror threat level is little but a publicity device that keeps terror in the news and in people’s minds when actually the security services would be much better left to their own devices to fight the issue out of the limelight. What possible use can it serve to tell people that they are in danger when you absolutely can’t tell them why? During the Second World War, the very opposite approach was used by the government and people were told that they should simply keep calm and carry on.

And why were they not given more information? Because the government believed, rightly, that the result would be a scared and frightened population. Which can be the only reason therefore that this government has chosen the approach it has - and we ought to ask ourselves why.

Posted in Labour, news. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Remembering them

November 11, 2009 — admin

poppyThere have been so many eloquent thoughts expressed about Remembrance that it is difficult to add anything further.

But this year is the first ever year of Remembrance without a living First World War veteran in the UK. It is an almost impossible thought – so many soldiers of that generation died in 1915 and 1916 and are nearly 100 years gone. Others such as Harry Patch and Henry Allingham are still fresh in our minds, having lived a brace of years for which they knew they owed immeasurably to their long-gone friends.

Inevitably the focus now shifts to the Second World War and preserving the thoughts of those that fought in a conflict that was in some ways very similar and in others totally different to the Great War.

Thanks to them, two successive generations have been spared the ordeal that a war for survival brings to a nation. Those on the home front in the Second World War and fighting abroad lived in an environment where life became a great deal cheaper yet more valuable, where everyone lived for each moment, minute and day and where the prospect of death was never far away. People did things that they would never normally do, made sacrifices of staggering bravery and selflessness and the prosperity of the 1920s might as well have been the 1720s.

It’s a difficult situation to imagine and my generation is lucky to not have experienced it. We owe a debt of opportunity to past generations that we have been able to live our lives in a way that war meant none of them ever could. And to our forces who currently serve in Afghanistan and elsewhere, we owe a similar debt as they fight while our lives with the opportunity given to us by our grandparents proceed without the ordeal of war.

Two minutes is the very least each of us can spare.

Posted in Military, history, news. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Operation Source

September 22, 2009 — simonashall
The fearsome Tirpitz

The fearsome Tirpitz

Today is the 56th anniversary of the part of Operation Source, the secretive mission to destroy German battleships in Norway, that saw direct hits on the Tirpitz .

It’s difficult to imagine getting into an X-Class midget submarine and being towed across the North Sea before being let loose and submerging. Then travelling at a painfully slow 2 knots towards a target many times bigger and more powerful than you before placing charges in a dangerous operation that leaves you vulnerable and escaping again as mind-crushingly slowly as you arrived, all the time looking over your shoulder and not knowing whether your pick-up craft has been lost.

There was no “Quit now” button for the crews to press, no shortcut out of that situation. Some men who went on the mission to destroy Tirpitz – a formidable battleship every bit as superior as her sister Bismark to anything the Royal Navy possessed – never returned and one craft’s fate remains a mystery to this day.

I think it is good sometimes to remember the people whose courage and duty, due to the missions they carried out, are not so widely recognised.

Posted in Uncategorized, history. Tags: , . No Comments »
«
»