Reading Notes

The R.A.F raids on Hamburg which began on the night of the 24th. July, 1943, known as Operation Gomorrah, culminated in an inferno four nights later – a fireball that surged two kilometres into the night sky, imploding oxygen and raising furious wind storms strong enough to uproot trees. Sugar boiled in cellars, glass melted and people were sucked down into the asphalt on the streets. On that night an estimated total of 45 000 Germans died (most probably not one of them responsible for the war – my comment) compared with a similar number killed in Britain during the course of the entire war. German estimates of civilians killed by allied bombing of cities and towns in the Reich are 450 000 killed and 600 000 injured." Like the dropping of the H-bombs, little or none was necessary as the war was virtually won and military targets were low on the priority list.
- Re WWI, " Fritz Haber, now a professor at Berlin University and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, had broken atrociously the acceptable norms of warfare in the early twentieth century. He claimed, as would other gas poisoners, like the British physicist, J.B.S.Haldane, who swiftly emulated Haber's example, that new technology in weapons had the power to save lives since it could achieve swift victory. Haber believed, or at least said so, as did Haldane, that gas warfare was `a higher form of killing' – that to be injured by gas was better than being blown up by a conventional shell." Somehow the logic escapes me! Only in capitalism, eh? Who are the terrorists? Both quotes come from "Hitler's Scientists" by John Cornwell.

For socialism, John Ayers