Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 11:34:37 -0500 Reply-To: H-NET List on German History Sender: H-NET List on German History From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Subject: Re: Victimization Submitted by: David Neal Miller Re: >Submitted by: Roland Wagner [ . . . ] >Should we really not feel moved by those who died at Dresden? For the very many dead of Dresden who were committed national socialists, we should feel moved to grim satisfaction: grief for dead Nazis is misplaced, displaced from grief for their innocent victims. The not-yet-corrupted very young are exceptions, nearly the only exceptions. Better to apprehend the destruction of Dresden as a small moment of exemplary rightness in the massive wrongness of which Dresdeners were co-authors. Living Europeans might or might not do well to seek reconciliation, but the dead (and those who dare to speak on their behalf) are beyond reconciliation, nor should they, the ideas they believed in, and the actions they took or failed to take be beyond judgment with a rigor undiminished by the passing of time. And, yes--since this is, perhaps, an occasion to breech academic proprieties--we children of the victors might be permitted something akin to joy at the thought of Dresdeners and Germans as a whole getting the bombing they so willingly bestowed on others, hence so richly deserved themselves. -- David Neal Miller e-mail: ashkenaz@webcom.com .