Sent: Sat, 3 May 2008 5:41 pm
Subject: Re: Let's Koventrier Teutonophobia

Dear Toni,

For a moment, I checked to see if the sender of your email might have been the Reverend Wright.

When it comes to the WWII conflict, we might have to go back to Nanking, Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and yes, Coventry before retaliation rained on Germany and Japan.

Duringthe "funny war" French and English bombers were instructed to untie the bundles of leaflets being dropped on Germany "for fear of injuring civilians"

I guess you never saw the German propaganda newsreels and magazines (e.g. Signal) where German crews were shown delighting in dropping bombloads on German cities.

After that, anything went. "Who sowns the wind will reap the tempest".

I have become reconcilled with Hiroshima, but I still have very strong reservations about Nagasaki. I often feel that it was dropped in a hurry to be able to compare results from two different bomb designs.

As far as Teutonophobia ( I love the word) my credentials as a Holocaust Survivor might give me an edge, although I do not blame the sons for the sins of the fathers. I do remember being at JFK airport waiting in line for a long time because two Germans were loudly assailing an airline clerk. My wife mentioned to me that the "Boches" were holding up the line.
Another clerk admonished us that it was not nice to say "Boches". I suggested that since both my wife and I had endured many harms during the nearly 5 years of the German occupation of Belgium, we had earned the right to use the term "Boche" whenever we felt the need to.

I do agree with you that there are NO humanitarian bombings.

In friendship.

Rudy