You forgot the French people by the way (mainly in Europe)... They were also allied forces .
I never talked about judging historical facts, I asked about the fact, who are they to tell who is innocent and who not. That is not the same. And it doesn't give them any rights anyway, no matter what they did or did not. We are not talking about a single person and a society. We are talking about an attack, that is - according to our laws today - are wrong. And I think law and morale are closely related.

You should know that there's a great difference between bombing a nation and freeing it. And your arguments are wrong: you can just free someone who wants to be free - so there couldn't be as much support as you are arguing in other points. If you said they were freed, then they wanted to be free and not kept surpressed.

You are wrong, if you think that attacking civillian targets is an german invention. I recall visiting a historical museum and remember a lot of pictures of attacks on Vienna, Linz, Graz, etc. with chemical weapons. And it hadn't been the germans .
Besides: Never heard of rethorical questions ?

So you are really convinced that Germany got more mercy than it deserved? Should all their people be enslaved or killed or whar do you think they deserved?

So you belive - considering your point, that all Germans are "Täter" - every German knew all crimes those days? Do you think you know everything that happens around you in your country? And just because there are just a few actively fighting rebells in a country doesn't meen all other hadn't been against the system or at least most people. I live in a democracy but just a minoriy supports the government actively. But a fascist regime with political and police-terror gains the hearts of the people?

And I never said anything about conspiration against the German people, we talk about the bombing of a city full of people that had to flee from war - as Churchill himself said - just as some sort of revenge. As far as I know and remember from history books at school. I don't know, if this is true, but I found these words (in German translated): "Ich möchte keine Vorschläge haben, wie wir kriegswichtige Ziele im Umland von Dresden zerstören können, ich möchte Vorschläge haben, wie wir 600.000 Flüchtlinge aus Breslau in Dresden braten können." And as far as I'm informed he wanted to use gas on German civillians too.

And if you still believe that a regime can't last for years against the will of the people, think of Irak, Kambodia, Italy (their regime lasted from 1922 to 1943 - more than 20 years!) etc.

I'm not good at quoting...
"It's cruel to say, but their death was also a consequence of the abominable and dreadful crimes committed by Germany."
If Germans bombs a city (and kills, as said before, children, etc.) - blame Germany. No doubt.
If G. Britain does the same - blame Germany. No matter what I say everything is Germanys fault. The Germans must also be guilty of the nuclear attacks on Japan because they started a war, Einstein had to move out of Germany and had to take part of the engineering of the A-Bomb, which resulted to the bombardements with A-bombs. I guess this is also your point of view as well (?)

"Furthermore the first isn't even a comprehensible reason for the rise of German fascism"

You don't have to swear - swearing is for people you are wrong or can't discuss properly . Just take a look at wikipedia, thare you can read my points I said for the result of the second world war. And fascism wasn't part of just a few countrys these days. There were other fascist regimes:
-Soviet Union (well, you can argue about this point - it depends what you call fascism)
-Japan
-Italy
-Austria (before the Nazis came)
-Spain
-Portugal
-Romania
-San Marino (don't start laughing because it is so small ) etc.

"But the German government succeeded in revising the condtions of the Treaty of Versailies, so the burden of this treaty wasn't that hard any more at beginning of the thirties as in 1919."

You speak German, as far as I know, right? "trat der Versailler Vertrag am 10. Januar 1920 in Kraft."
France for example fought also against a financial crisis and wanted payments from the Treaty of Versailies early to solve them. Germany paid the democratic system these days for other countries. Do you know why they had to pay less than before in the 1930s? Because in the 1930s other countries recognised it was impossible to pay anymore for Germany. Germany was officially bankrupt. A bankrupt country in economic crisis? That's not an easy situation for a country and many countries lose their democracy.

Perhaps you know Viktor Emil Frankl, born in Vienna, Jew and brought to a KZ. He said once, "Schuld kann nur persönliche Schuld sein – Schuld für das, was einer selbst getan oder auch unterlassen hat, was er zu tun verabsäumt hat.“

PS: Explain some of your political ideals and then I can see myself wheter you are an extreme left-winger or not.

This post was last modified: 24.02.2008 19:39 by fleischidambach.

To the Versailler Vertrag Germany had to pay 200.000.000 Goldene Reichsmark. Today that would be ca. 1.000.000.000€ (!!) and that in a financecrisis. Think about that today, Germany has to pay 1.000.000.000€ to a country in a few years. So don't wonder why the democratie went down.

You are getting a bit off the track, so i try to get back to the beginning of the discussion and the question "if there were international laws against attacking unarmed civilians" at that time.

The beginning of the law of nations - if this is the right term for "Völkerrecht" - started early in the 17th century with Grotius in a more academic way. But the impact on real warfare becomes obvious in Clausewitz's "Vom Kriege", where he is - among others - discussing the role of civilians in war, and especially how to distinguish combatants from non-combatants.
The juridical basis of warfare at the time of WWII are basically the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and their " Laws and Customs of War on Land" and in some parts the Kellog-Briand Pact - banishing war as instrument of politics.
More important in this case is the Hague convention. There is a destinctive definition of a combatant, who is the only one to be attacked in war
Article 1.
The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions:
To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
To carry arms openly; and
To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

and what is allowed and what`s not

Art 23: "it is especially forbidden -
To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
To destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;
Art. 25.
"The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited."
Art. 27.
"In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes."

Having no more time for an analysis of this facts by now, I will leave this without commentary so far.

Sorry, I knew I was off the track, but I really felt hurt by some words above - I really can't stand the glorification of inhuman acts (I guess the people of Sorbia/Gregorowitjsch thought the same thing )

Finaly just one sentence (for now):
inter arma enim silent leges
(of course I didn't mean this phrase positive)

aerial warfare was new and not covered by the conventions. bombardment of a city under siege was considered acceptable in military tradition and was not prohibited by any new convention. i read some books about the nürnberg process and that was the argument of the lawyers who defended german officers.

germany was the pioneer and showed other countries how to do massive aerial warfare against troops, civilian populations and production capacities. the british and us airforce only perfected this system further. now you can go and blame, germany, britain or the us. but basically killing a whole bunch of civilians to achieve their ambitions of world domination is what capitalist regimes do. its a part of their lifestyle. get used to it. or get rid of them.

there were some general rules of war conduct at the time. but most of them were non-binding and/or had loopholes. even today there are no effectively enforced conventions about warfare. the only convention that isnt systematically ignored is the one called "if you attack, i'll shoot my nukes". hence nuclear powers are the only ones who are safe from direct foreign invasions. though subversive activity and economic attacks are still possible of course. as we can see in the case of iran (which is threatened by a possible US invasion, war propaganda and economic sanctions) and the case of north korea which has nukes and therefore receives money from the US.

otherwise there are a bunch of things like the "geneva convention". but even when those are binding and are not simply ignored - they involve only the protection of combatants, not of civilian populations. most casualties in modern wars are civilians who did not willingly participate in combat. most modern wars are civil wars. but the geneva convention only protects recognized soldiers of recognized countries. and it has some loopholes on top of that. plus there is absolutely no effective control over its implementation. the bill of human rights looks fancy (though actually insufficient) but more importantly it has a loophole which allows any state to ignore it for any reason at any time. in other words: it can be ignored at whim without breaking the treaty. on top of that there is no democratic and internationally accepted body which could enforce global laws. The UN is just a collection of independent states which is dominated by a single superpower, protecting the interests of a few superpowers against the rest and incapable of implementing decisions even if it can ever agree on a decision.

so basically: the behaviour of states toward each other or toward their own populations is not coded into any effective international laws. it never really was. there were a few conventions to limit agression and to curb the arms race. such as the league of nations or the treaty which guaranteed the unchangability of borders in europe after WWII. but all of those treaties have meanwhile been broken or made obsolete by changes in technology and the political situation.

some people (like albert einstein) argued to make a sort of global judicial body which would intervene and bring an end to the aggressions and lawlesness. the UN was supposed to become that body. then many countries sabotaged the creation of the UN and made it into what it is today - an organization which exists mostly for show and lives for the purpose of its own bureaucracy and to allow an open area for plotting between states.

since then there have been no major attempts to create an actually functioning UN. the open hostility of the US toward any form of binding global treaties (be it to stop invasions against other countries or to contain the environmental damage) simply makes it impossible. at least so long as the US has so much influence and remains the main global superpower.

adding to the part about aerial bombardment... i'd like to say a few words about the city where i was born...

- during the invasion in 1941, the jugoslav government withdrew its troops from belgrade and declared it an open city (to spare it the destructions of war)

- on the next day, the german airforce launched a massive aerial bombardment against belgrade, aiming specifically for the old city and the residential areas.

- 1941 german troops faced relatively high armed resistance from civilians who mostly fought alone or in small groups... but no serious military opposition when occupying the city. occupying the main areas took only 1 day. serious shootings continued for a week.

- 1941-1944 mass murders and deportations of residents. also mass deportations from other places to belgrade. rough estimate 100000-250000 refugees from the nazi state of great croatia, from kosovo and from areas occupied by bulgaria. theoretically 100000 of those in a gigantic refugee camp on the left bank of the sava river. keep in mind that no numbers from that time were really reliable. some sabotages happened inside the city and a few shootings here and there when the resistance fighters couldnt get around the patrols. but it was mostly quiet though as the rebels gathered in the mountains and the fascists held the cities. belgrade was one of the main centers of pro-german fascist militias and the "quisling government".

- 1941 the uprising against the occupation doesnt really happen in belgrade. a group of students and workers attempts to capture an arms arsenal but is ambushed and massacred. rebels reach the southern outskirts of the city before they are driven back by the counter-offense of the powerful city garrison and aligned fascist troops.

- toward the end of 1943 allied bombers (us/british) fly over belgrade. crowds gather to stare at them. a few cheer them. at this time the red army was on the advance. the yugoslav partizans had survived a major offensive of axis troops around bosnia while gaining ground elsewhere. the war seemed already lost for germany. so the crowd is out there... like "they're our allies. they wont bomb us"... and they dump the bombs directly into the crowd and the residential areas. nice easy target, eh? many died and the hospitals were filled with people.

- 1944 - red army advances along the morava valley, partizans advance along with the red army and cover the remaining areas. germany is evacuating its remaining troops from the balkan peninsula. at this time the allied bombers come again and bomb the city again. this time no cheering crowds though.

- 1944 - artillery bombardment and fighting as the german garrison is defeated by the red army (the officers fled beforehand. most of the troops and most of the nazis were already evacuated or fled on their own). many citizens are killed or sent to camps due to being of german or other axis nationality. some known fascists are caught and executed or sent to camps.

- 1944/1945 - "voluntary" and forced conscription hits the city as the "yugoslav national liberation army" gathers unloyal citizens and sends them on massive infantry attacks against a line of heavily fortified german positions in the flatlands of srem and slavonia. apparently the german army ran out of ammo down there after several weeks of shooting down infantry attacks or watching the attackers get blown up in minefields. though some say that the german army withdrew because partizan forces had cut off their supply lines and the red army had already taken baranja further to the north.
this amazing ability of the yugoslav national army to carry out frontal warfare against axis troops was then used to get a better negotiating position for yugoslavia with the allied powers and to achieve a quick withdrawal of the red army. the red army only occupied small parts of yugoslavia for a few months (though they kept a military presence for a few more years). this allowed yugoslavia a much more independent position than other countries in the region.

- 1945 - hundreds of belgraders reported dead in the liberation of the city of trieste. apparently massive infantry attacks against heavily fortified positions were still popular among the communist party leadership...
soon after: facing a US/british ultimatum and threats of war, yugoslavia hands them over the control of trieste and some flatlands in ex-italy. it withdraws its forces to a solid defensive line along hills and mountains. this becomes the new effective border to the us/british occupation zones and becomes the official border to italy later when ex-italy is resurrected.


overall: i'd say aerial bombardment was just a part of the big picture and caused only a small part of the casualties. it had some effect on production capacity but was not decisive. its biggest success was directly on the battlefield, in cutting supply lines at critical moments and places. it also had a tremendous moral influence.
the bombing of dresden was used for propaganda purposes in a similar way like the bombings of warsaw, moscow, belgrade and london. in a similar way like hiroshima and nagasaki, it became a symbol for local nationalists to fly their flags and to claim how their innocent civilians were unjustly bombed by the evil foreign powers. the truth of course is never quite so simple.

No matter whether some people abused the bombardments for their own purposes - this shouldnt influence an (as far as possible) objective opinion at all. Neither in the one direction nor in the other.

So from what I know, it wasnt really necessary and thus a crime... :hm:

so you think there are "good" bombardments?

war is a crime. especially industrial warfare is a crime against humanity. and it is unnecessary.

i'd say the whole hype over "war crimes" is to give people the impression that war is ok but that there are a very few bad criminals in it. which is simply not true. usually it requires support from at least 5% of the population to carry out an aggression.

take a look at austria today. we have 2 political parties which continue the good old nazi tradition of spreading hatred and fuelling aggression against ethnic non-germans. together they got 20% in the last election. which is thankfully less than their result in the year 2000 (27%). they enjoy support not only from skinheads and SS veterans but also from university professors, students, about 40% of the policemen, many bureaucrats, private enterpreneurs, social aid receivers, workers, retired people, young people... from all layers of society.
their entire political agenda is to wage a low key civil war against "the foreigners" (meaning ethnic non-germans/non-austrians). both the socialdemocrats and the neoliberals are considering to enter into a coalition with these parties, as the neoliberals already did in the years 2000-2006.

there are political parties very similar to those in practically every country on the european continent. some places they are weaker like in scandinavia, other places they get over 30% in elections like recently in Serbia and in Kosovo. the support for oppression on ethnic/religious/class basis, for plundering, for aggression and even for mass murder simply does exist among parts of the population throughout europe. poor people of the "good" ethnicity hope to get out of poverty that way. arms manufacturers hope for an improved market situation. employers who employ "foreigners" hope to pay even less and get even more work out of their workers. security companies hope for more contracts. private company owners hope to knock out market competitors... there are literally hundreds of interest groups who wish to add more gasoline to the fire.

it is usually those people who use trumped up stories about war crimes from WWII (or more recent ones) to justify the crimes which they are trying to carry out now.

Well, it is completly off-topic, but:
Your politcal few of Austria isn't correct.

During the last election (NÖ) they (you must mean BZÖ and FPÖ accoording to your description) got together (and they are not a team, they are enemys) less than 7 %. 2006 in national elections they (FPÖ and BZÖ) got just 15,1 %.
And you mean the results of 1999, not 2000. And this was just the "old" FPÖ, the BZÖ is a small party that seperated from the FPÖ and they don't have much future outside of Kärnten.
Who knows if your other informations about who else voted for those parties are true. Sorry, but it looks like a mixture of memories and speculations, not facts.
And talking about civil war sounds a bit strange in this case .

I don't have a study to proof, but I guess most voters of BZÖ/FPÖ are underprevileged people, not people from univesity (http://www.oeh.ac.at/wahl07/ergebnisse/b...ertretung/). I can't take people like Strache too seriously. But those parties are a necessary part of democracy from my part of few - just like communist parties.

true i got the last election result wrong. together it was around 15.1%. thank you for correcting me.

now allow me to correct you: the truly underprivileged dont even have the right to vote. hence they cannot be voters for the extreme right wing even if they wanted to.

the latest provincial elections in NÖ arent representative for the entire country, so i'll avoid talking about those. you'll notice that NÖ has different results in national elections than in provincial ones. likewise i could take the elections in corinthia to "prove" that all of austria is fascist. but thats not even true for corinthia. corinthia simply has a higher percentage of extreme right wing voters. just like "the red vienna" has a somewhat higher percentage of left wing voters.

i spent about 2 years working in "public opinion research" and about 10 years observing austrian politics while living in the country. as i said before - these parties get votes from all layers of society. even from some ex-immigrants who got austrian citizenship. their highest support percentage is among the police (who are mostly male and roughly 98% ethnic germans). the support of policemen for the FPÖ was estimated at 60% in 2000 and has dropped to an estimated 40% in 2007.
when the BZÖ splintered off from the FPÖ, i believed that it had no chance of staying in the parliament after the next election. but they proved me wrong (by a small margin). so i wouldnt make any prognosis there. we can wait and see.

now i could pull out some quotes like "beseitigung der ausländer" by jörg haider, "mit dem auto, mit dem bus, mit dem zug, mit dem flugzeug" by westenthaler, the good old "ehre und treue" quotes, etc. etc.
but i dont feel like it. its old news. its boring.

i could pull out the fact that the two parties in question have open cooperations with almost every major extreme right wing party on the european continent - including the ones from croatia, serbia, bosnia, kosovo and turkey - which were involved in heavy war crimes in their respective civil wars, actively held or still hold armed paramilitaries. those paramilitaries did or still do carry out ethnic-based murders and "ethnic cleansing" (forced evictions from homes, plundering, general terror against civilians, including rape, destruction of property, etc)
now before you go calling that "speculation" too, let me say this: i grew up in that region and my information comes mostly from discussions which i have personally had with members of some paramilitaries about their war experiences.

or i could pull out the statistics about "voluntary returns" and deportations of non-citizens from the last 10 years. just looking at the numbers, austria has "removed" more people than some countries which were publicly acused of ethnic cleansing. then i could point to these two parties who are publicly cheering for more of the above.

but i think that would lead us into the wrong form of discussion. assuming that you are an ethnic german, you would probably argue that this is not ethnic cleansing because other countries are doing the same. because if everyone commits a crime then its supposedly no longer a crime. which is, by the way, a traditional way in which criminals justify their actions. and it also the traditional way in which sympathizers of the nazis justified nazi crimes. some habits simply die harder than others. anyway this would lead us into a flaming argument about the resurrection of fascist tendencies throughout europe. and thats not very productive.

instead i think its better to simply look at the kind of propaganda which those two parties do and the kind of laws they demand in public. like the 3 major changes to the "law about foreigners" which were made during their participation in the government of austria. foreign nationals with a low income have already been prohibited from gaining austrian citizenship ever (regardless of years spent in the country). most non-EU citizens around the planet have no legal way of entering austria. the only half-legal way being to apply for political asylum. asylum seekers are treated worse than ever and usually with complete disregard to international treaties about refugees - depending on how the middle-aged german bureaucrat who interviews them feels at the moment. yet these parties feel that the laws are still far too lax and that foreigners should be removed from the country altogether. except the few good foreigners who already have citizenship and already vote for them (and are therefore not criminal).

as for the ÖH (students representation) elections - you must consider that the election participation was very low. hence not representative for all students. of course extreme right wing parties get less votes from the universities than from other places while left wing parties get more. at least in vienna it is so. but in vienna there are also several extreme right wing student associations, etc.

i see those two parties more as the negation of democracy - since they openly aim to deny all rights (including voting rights) to a very large (and growing) part of the country's adult population on an ethnic basis. permitting these parties to carry out their propaganda in public and to participate in elections, supporting them with plenty of unpaid air time on state TV... while at the same time using the force of the state apparatus (ranging from state TV to police and courts) to demonize and criminalize the more left wing oriented parties and barring them from the election (through a clever set of election laws - such as the "4% mark" and the "law about foreigners") would be proof enough that austria's democracy only exists for the more right-wing oriented part of its population. but that proof isnt needed, as the austrian state has supplied a form of proof which is less susceptible to free interpretation... read on...

instead of my "speculation", lets look at the statistics made by a serious state-funded organization: the agency Statistik Austria claims that roughly 20% of austria's adult population doesnt have the right to vote. (i estimate this number closer to 25%). an attempt by the city of vienna to allow non-citizens to vote for the local government in that city was brought down in court...
the word "democracy" simply doesnt apply anymore. austria calls itself a republic. so lets call it a republic. at least thats not too far off the mark. and it nicely reminds of the election system of ancient rome ("non-romans" were prohibited from voting even if they lived their entire life in rome). which is the direction where austria is going.

i can understand (not approve, but understand) if an ethnic german person doesnt see the acceptance of such parties ("a part of democracy") as a big problem. but you must understand that being a non-german who lives in austria, i see them as the #1 threat to public safety and social peace. that is how the majority of the population in my district feels. you guessed correctly - it is a foreigner district. about 40% of that district's adult population has no voting rights while paying taxes and working. most of the persons who do have voting rights are retired people, social aid receivers and private business owners - most of which are of course ethnic germans. and of course the youths here get busted by the police for smoking hashish - because a lot of them are turks. meanwhile youths three districts away smoke marijuana mostly undisturbed because they're upper middle class germans who can do it in their apartments while the turkish kids do it on the street as they still live with their parents. hence juvenile foreigners are criminal. and of course the "patriotic" masses applaud the police for "combatting foreigner criminality".
i'm not saying that those kids should stay on the street. just see no reason for the special treatment. same goes for people who lose their jobs and cant find a new one or who work in the shadow economy. ethnic germans receive social aid for doing that. non-germans receive a police raid, are dragged out of their homes, imprisoned and deported. of course only unless they "voluntarily remove" themselves before that happens.
i've seen it in my building through the spy hole, with the cops (all of which were of course ethnic germans) dragging out this woman from bosnia. she had a student visum. as 50% of all students do these days, she also had a job. but she wasnt allowed to have a legal job. so she had an unregistered job. actually she had two unregistered jobs. the first job the employer let her work for three months and paid her a total of 200 euros, promising to give her the rest of her pay "later" until she quit. she couldnt do a thing against him. even if she could have proved in court that she was employed there, he would only have received a fine while she would have been arrested, deported and banned from re-entering the EU for the next 10 years at least. the second job she did 60 hours per week and got barely 1200 euros (of course without any insurances or pension plan or whatever). then she asked for slightly shorter working hours cause it was messing up her studies... and she got fired for it. this is the way she got fired: the employer stopped paying her wages but let her continue working until she quit. so she was in a bit of financial trouble and couldnt afford to get an appartment elsewhere when her visum ran out. she couldnt get a new visum despite being an inscribed student. because the condition for getting a visum in the first place had been to sign a contract that she would not study in austria for more than a few semesters.
so the cops come up her door and she opens it. they're like "you got 5 mins to get your things and come along". and she's like "no. i live here. i study here."
the part where i could see something through the spy hole - she had relaxed all her muscles and they were trying to drag her. that wasnt working well, so they started beating her in the kidneys and they were shouting "do you speak german! do you speak german!". the cop with with mustache called her a "scheisstschusch". then this neighbor woman comes out. she was from yugoslavia but she already got austrian citizenship some decades ago, so she dared to confront them. and she starts shouting at them to stop. they keep shouting at her to get back in her aparment. she doesnt. so they say they would arrest her for disturbing police work and resisting state violence. cop woman tells her to "come along", then her husband comes out with a mobile phone, claiming that he has a journalist on the other end of the line. which unfortunately wasnt true. but they got "civil" after that and carried the bosnian woman down the stairs. only reason i didnt charge out and shoot the bastards that time was cause i didnt have a personal firearm at home. you may consider that a good thing. but ever since that happened, i am deeply ashamed of myself. then i watch those guys on TV saying that it's not enough and that "we need stricter measures against the foreigners".
barely two months later middle-aged ethnic german men in civilian clothes ring my door. first mental reactions: "oh shit the cops... but i didnt do anything. nevermind a foreigner doesnt need to do anything" and "why oh why didnt i buy a gun when i had the chance..."
so i decide to try the "integrated" approach, wear my eyeglasses and go out talking in a perfect local german accent, making double sure that they dont notice any hint of foreignness in my speech. of course i was correct - it was the cops. they're very nice and friendly due to my perfect german. it turns out that they are the "fremdenpolizei". they correctly show their id cards, surprisingly dont ask for mine and instead kindly ask if i have seen my vietnamese neighbor who lives a couple doors down. sorry didnt see him in the last few months but you can try asking the old janitor (who is not german and unlikely to tell them anything they didnt already know). *doesnt know what this is all about but makes note to warn the neighbor if he sees him*
couple days later i'm going out to walk my dog in the middle of the night. its a puppy. cant hold the water. cop cars driving around like they're raiding a terrorist stronghold... 5 cops storming the staircase with more cops waiting around in cars... and he wasnt there. apartment empty.
btw. that vietnamese guy has some gray hairs and moves slowly due to the pain in his back. he probly cant even run and some neighbor told me that he makes his money from cleaning appartments. since it was the "foreigners police" looking for him and not the "criminal police", it is safe to assume that his worst crime was not succeeding to prolong his permit of residence. another criminal foreigner on the run. a good excuse for a higher police budget...

now you could argue that civil war is not possible because non-germans are so heavily outgunned, uncapable of agreeing about anything and totally unprepared. but a civil war only requires one armed faction which makes no secret of its readiness to commit mass crimes and which is ready to use the full power of the state to destroy or at least heavily oppress a large part of the population. we already have that.

of course we dont have the exact same conditions like back in the 1930s. and of course this time the society can develop in a completely different direction. i am just shocked that you refuse to recognize some facts of life. if a neonazi party got over 20% votes in a national election and held roughly half of the ministries in a government for 6 years, i think its about time to start taking it seriously. if people are dragged out of their apartments at night and deported due to being of the wrong ethnicity while major parliamentary parties openly demand more of that - then words such as "democracy" are simply out of place.

while this may seem very far from the dresden topic... it is really the same topic. it is about criminals trumping up some crimes of previous generations to justify their crimes of today. the bombing of dresden is one of the gathering topics for the modern german fascists. so i didnt want to miss the opportunity to renew an old quote:
when they took away the niggers, you did nothing
when they took away the voting rights, you did nothing
when they took away the non-germans, you did nothing
when they...
to be continued...

you expect sympathy after that? i'm a more educated person. but one of my neighbors feels that the only mistake made in dresden was that the city still exists. i disagree with him. but i can completely understand his point of view. and rather than than bringing up the second world war, i can see enough crimes happening right outside my window that would need some talking about.