Viewpoints

As some of you will be aware it was the 70th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. There was a fair amount of coverage of it this week.

Obviously this is controversial, some believe Dresden was a war crime others that it was necessary to shorten the war and anyway the Luftwaffe did similar and worse things to us. I can't claim to be able to judge.

Dresden saw 25,000 civilian casualties (Goebels claimed 200,000) and some have questioned the BBC Today programmes coverage - given one of the critics is the Daily Mail guess where I stand :).

The BBC had a discussion on one of their programmes today and was discussing this. One of the guests was Peter Bush (a German Historian at a British University). He was asked if the British should know more about the hardships of German civilian his response was very measured

He said he was not that there was any reason we should but that we might find it interesting but it was his final point that was to me more telling. He said that perhaps we should know more about the suffering of Russian Civilians as it might help us understand Russian attitudes in Ukraine.

If we don't understand the past we won't understand the future.