[Bewolf]

Well, everything's been said about this topic before anyways, so I do not think it is nessecary to open another fruitless can of "you are to blame!".

Let's just say that I consider this monument quite...voluptuous. Like out of an american hero flick, Armageddon style, lacking any subtlety.

I also find it hard to part the men from the deeds. "They just followed orders, those poor brave men" is an argument long deconstructed in debates over war crimes.

Or if you recognize that this is how society works, you would have to lift countless sentences in the Nuremberg Trials.

However, those snippets aside, my gripe with this whole topic, always has been, probably will be so in the future, is not so much the deed in itself. From a purely human perspective, if I were a british citizen back then, I doubt I would have much problems in bombing the country that bombed mine into smitherness, regardless of who started it.

No, what gets my blood boiling is the lack of honesty in these kind of debates by people who are uneffected by that war, born long after and with an educational background that should make a more objective, principle based debate possible.

It hardly ever is and this monument, in it's final appearance and especially because it is dedicated to that time period instead of a broader tackle, gives this initellectual dishonesty visual appearance. It is a "feel good" monument.


Something to chew over:
Not a single german military branch was solely created to kill civilians on a massive scale.
Those organisations and units geared for mass extermination were of Nazi origin. From a german perspective, that gives you an idea of what kind of connections Bomber command evokes here.