AuH2O is really misunderstood by you folks. I know what he is saying and I agree with about 99% of his beliefs. He is correct however saying that the British provoked the Germans into bombing British civilian targets. I know what Hitler did in Poland and the like but the British DID start civilian bombing German targets first and the Germans retaliated against them. So in that respect Goldie was right.
Actually, it didn't quite happen that way. The first thing that happened is that a German bomber strayed, and bombed the outskirts of London by mistake. Churchill thought it was deliberate, and didn't think he could leave it unanswered, so he bombed Berlin. So it was the Germans who did it first, albeit by accident.
But the reality is that the Germans planned to switch to terror bombing of London anyway if their attempt to defeat the RAF's air control over the English Channel failed, and they were therefore forced to abandon their invasion plans. As bad as it sounds, the British took the switch to terror bombing of civilians as a positive sign that the Germans had given up their quest to shoot the RAF out of the skies over the channel, so the switch to terror bombing was regarded as a sign that the German intention to invade had at least been postponed. Terror bombing was a fallback position for the Germans, who hoped to create enough suffering among the population as to induce Churchill's replacement with somebody ready to surrender to them.
The important thing to remember is that (a) Germany was a dangerous aggressor in the war; and (b) at the time of the terror bombing of London, the British were severely outmanned by the Germans, and were unable to deliver anywhere near the attacks on the Germans that were being inflicted on them. It wasn't until later, after the Americans entered the war, that the Germans got a good taste of what they had been dishing out, and they got it back in spades, and richly deserved it.
While AuH2O may have been partially right, technically, it is a severe overreach, and smacks of apology for the Nazis, to fail to look at the big picture, and basically proclaim the Nazis blameless for all the suffering they inflicted on people without provocation.
That's like saying that the person who walks through a questionable neighborhood at night is solely to blame if he gets mugged or beaten up. While it may not be prudent to be in that neighborhood, that still doesn't give the perpetrators the right to mug you and beat you up. To argue otherwise is basically the logic of liberal Demcrats, who effectively absolve the perpetrator of guilt. That is effectively the logic that AuH2O is using with respect to the German bombing of British civilians. We really ought to leave that kind of logic to the liberal Democrats.
