It was late 1943 and Churchill was pissed off. The Yanks had nixed his pet project Operation Thunderclap, the one that aimed to kill 275,000 Berliners in one single 2,000-plane raid. As a consolation he asked Roosevelt for a supply of anthrax bombs that would be used to wipe out the population of Germany's six biggest cities. Again Roosevelt demurred. But he offered a glittering alternative: The Dugway villages.
Excerpt: Dugway was a high-security testing facility for chemical and biological weapons. The purpose of the replicas of German homes, which were repeatedly rebuilt after being intentionally burned down, was to perfect tactics in the fire bombing of German residential areas. In order to build a facility that was an authentic reproduction, studies were conducted to determine which materials and furnishings available in the U.S would closely match those in use in Germany. A group of German-American architects including prominent Jewish architects Eric Mendelsohn and Konrad Wachsmann, were employed to design the facility. To ensure that the fires spread as realistically as possible, typical German home-interiors were included, and the wood was periodically doused to simulate conditions in the more humid German climate.
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Churchill was delighted as was his Chief Scientific Adviser Frederick Lindemann. A German Jew described by Anthony Eden as 'bad, and quite possibly mad' his main purpose in life according to a colleague was 'to destroy every building in Germany, ideally burying his erstwhile fellow citizens under the rubble'. Lindeman insisted that "the bombing must be directed essentially against working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space around them, and so are bound to waste bombs." Nice chap.
According to the official document no effort was spared. The "German" architects used their knowledge of their former country to design the buildings and contents in such detail that even children's toys were included. The houses had to be built, burnt, built and burnt, again and again. Oy vey, the frustration! But it was vital that kids not escape lest they grow up to be Nazis. At last the happy day arrived and the go-ahead was given to drop the bombs on the by now virtually undefended cities. The net result was that within a year more than 40% of German housing stock had been destroyed and up to half a million defenceless men, women and children slaughtered.
Can you just imagine going to work in that facility? You asked yourself practical questions like 'how do we get the fire to spread spread quickly enough so that a mother doesn't have time to reach her baby in the cot?' Can such people be truly human or were they some form of demon from another universe? Either way they all went on to enjoy fame and fortune. And why not, were they not the Good Guys? Meanwhile the Bad Guys such as Julius Streicher was hanged after the war, essentially for saying nasty things about the Jews.
And people still say the truth always comes out....
Related post.
Excerpt: Dugway was a high-security testing facility for chemical and biological weapons. The purpose of the replicas of German homes, which were repeatedly rebuilt after being intentionally burned down, was to perfect tactics in the fire bombing of German residential areas. In order to build a facility that was an authentic reproduction, studies were conducted to determine which materials and furnishings available in the U.S would closely match those in use in Germany. A group of German-American architects including prominent Jewish architects Eric Mendelsohn and Konrad Wachsmann, were employed to design the facility. To ensure that the fires spread as realistically as possible, typical German home-interiors were included, and the wood was periodically doused to simulate conditions in the more humid German climate.
Churchill was delighted as was his Chief Scientific Adviser Frederick Lindemann. A German Jew described by Anthony Eden as 'bad, and quite possibly mad' his main purpose in life according to a colleague was 'to destroy every building in Germany, ideally burying his erstwhile fellow citizens under the rubble'. Lindeman insisted that "the bombing must be directed essentially against working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space around them, and so are bound to waste bombs." Nice chap.According to the official document no effort was spared. The "German" architects used their knowledge of their former country to design the buildings and contents in such detail that even children's toys were included. The houses had to be built, burnt, built and burnt, again and again. Oy vey, the frustration! But it was vital that kids not escape lest they grow up to be Nazis. At last the happy day arrived and the go-ahead was given to drop the bombs on the by now virtually undefended cities. The net result was that within a year more than 40% of German housing stock had been destroyed and up to half a million defenceless men, women and children slaughtered.
Can you just imagine going to work in that facility? You asked yourself practical questions like 'how do we get the fire to spread spread quickly enough so that a mother doesn't have time to reach her baby in the cot?' Can such people be truly human or were they some form of demon from another universe? Either way they all went on to enjoy fame and fortune. And why not, were they not the Good Guys? Meanwhile the Bad Guys such as Julius Streicher was hanged after the war, essentially for saying nasty things about the Jews.
And people still say the truth always comes out....
Related post.