Bombing of the palaces

[Tsarfan]

The symbolic burying of soldiers in front of something of cultural or personal value to an enemy was not unique to the Germans.  During the American Civil War, U.S. soldiers were buried on the front lawn of Arlington, the much-loved estate of General Robert E. Lee, who had resigned his U.S. Army commission to take command of one of the Confederacy's largest armies.  This was the origin of Arlington National Cemetery, today the largest burial site in the United States . . . and Lee's house still stands in the middle of it.

The Germans, however, do have a history of deliberate destruction of buildings of high cultural significance but no military value.  One of the events at the start of World War I that enraged western sentiment and helped brand Germans as "barbaric Huns" was their wanton destruction of the Library at Leuven, Belgium, where the oldest Catholic University in the world held a vast collection of irreplaceable medieval manuscripts.  I hate to say it, having gone to graduate school in Berlin and admiring much of German history and culture -- but there is a strain of a cultural inferiority complex in elements of German society that manifested itself in both World Wars I and II.

In some small way, though, the Russians gave the Germans their come-uppence.  The Berlin Stadtschloß, the winter headquarters of the Hohenzollern dynasty for over two centuries which was maintained as a state museum after the overthrow of the monarchy, was badly damaged during WWII, but reparable.  In 1950 the East German puppet soviet government demolished the building over howls of protest from West Germany.

[Robert_Hall]

Any idea of why they did that StrafingTsarfan.? The war was over and much reconstruction was and still going on. Also, a  bit of the detraction, putting it mildly was return  fire from the Russians.   Not that the Germans were at all innocent, It  was defence, after all.
 And, war graves, ever been to Gettysburg ? There are Confederates buried there as well. As an act of reconciliation, all men in uniform were buried equally.

[Tsarfan]

Any idea of why they did that StrafingTsarfan.? The war was over and much reconstruction was and still going on. Also, a  bit of the detraction, putting it mildly was return  fire from the Russians.   Not that the Germans were at all innocent, It  was defence, after all.
 And, war graves, ever been to Gettysburg ? There are Confederates buried there as well. As an act of reconciliation, all men in uniform were buried equally.

I've never been able to find out exactly why the East German government left the palace shell standing for five years and then decided in 1950 to tear it down.  (In fact, part of the structure was repaired in that interim for use as exhibition halls.)  My best guess is that it was less a question of the palace and more a question of its location.  The immediate environs of the palace, including the neighboring cathedral and the famous Lustgarten, had been identified in the German psyche for two centuries as the epicenter of Prussian government, its culture, and its militarism.  I suspect that, after the tensions of the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49 had abated and the East German government knew the status quo was going to hold, they were anxious to send a symbolic message to Germany and the world that they were there to stay as the legitimate government of a new German state.  Thus the tearing down of the palace would signal that all connections with the past were finally being severed.

Regarding Gettysburg, it follows the international practice of according equal honor to the dead soldiers of both sides, perhaps on the premise that soldiers do not make war but only respond to the calls of their countries.  Arlington was treated differently because Robert E. Lee, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a commissioned senior officer of the U.S., was viewed as a traitor when he decided his loyalty to his state trumped his loyalty to his country (which was actually one of the central questions over which the civil war was fought).  So there was something deliberately punitive in the decision to bury soldiers who had once been under his command and whom he was now complicit in killing on his front lawn.  In some ways, Lee presents the same issues to U.S. historians as does Alexei Brusilov to Russian historians.  Brusilov was one of the most revered commanders of World War I and certainly the most famous of the tsarist commanders, and -- to the horror of many of his former associates -- he switched to the Reds after the fall of the Provisional government.  As with Lee, Brusilov found himself caught between conflicting loyalties -- those to his class and its tsarist traditions and those to the Russian nation at large which in his view had, for better or worse, made a choice of the Reds over the Whites.  Lee opted for the parochial interests over the national.  Brusilov went the other way.  And it tortured both men.

[TimM]

During the American Civil War, U.S. soldiers were buried on the front lawn of Arlington, the much-loved estate of General Robert E. Lee, who had resigned his U.S. Army commission to take command of one of the Confederacy's largest armies.  This was the origin of Arlington National Cemetery, today the largest burial site in the United States . . . and Lee's house still stands in the middle of it.

The Lee family was later given monetary compensation for the property, if memory serves me.  

Robert E. Lee went with the Confederates because his home state, Virginia, did.  If Virginia had gone the other way, he would have stayed on the side of the Union.

[edubs31]

During the American Civil War, U.S. soldiers were buried on the front lawn of Arlington, the much-loved estate of General Robert E. Lee, who had resigned his U.S. Army commission to take command of one of the Confederacy's largest armies.  This was the origin of Arlington National Cemetery, today the largest burial site in the United States . . . and Lee's house still stands in the middle of it.

The Lee family was later given monetary compensation for the property, if memory serves me.  

Robert E. Lee went with the Confederates because his home state, Virginia, did.  If Virginia had gone the other way, he would have stayed on the side of the Union.

Yes I think that's correct. Of course it's still a complex issue. No one would ever accuse then Senator (and eventual President) Andrew Johnson of having great character and moral fiber and yet even he showed some courage by not bowing to the Confederacy. A "Jacksonian" Democrat at heart Johnson was the only southern senator in 1861 that did not resign his seat and join the new Confederacy. Of course he later made amends with the south once he assumed the Presidency but that's another story...

I find what the Germans did during the World War's in regards to the destruction of historical landmarks to have been an awfully shortsighted, narcissistic, and foolish act as well as being plan insensitive. So much for the adage that "the victorious in war shall be made glorious in peace." They obviously believed in their ability to defeat and conquer but I'm surprised that history taught them nothing about he consequences ruling over an embittered people...one that I would have to believe is more likely prone to rise up against them in the future, angered by such insults to their culture and history.

[Tsarfan]

While the government did eventually pay Lee's heirs $150,000 for Arlington, it was hardly done as a friendly gesture of rapprochement between North and South.  The U.S. government had seized the property shortly after Virginia seceded from the Union, claiming that a tender of estate tax in 1862 by the Lees was improperly made.  The property was seized and sold at auction in 1864, with the U.S. government being the only bidder.  Only in 1882 did the Lee family succeed in getting a court verdict that the 1862 refusal of the tax payment was improper and that the property had therefore been illegally seized.  In the ensuing years, Lee's heirs found themselves with no inheritance and needing money, and the U.S. government found itself with a cemetery that had begun as a insult to the Lee family but had grown into a national monument.  So, after years of legal wrangling that had begun with quiet inquiries by Robert E. Lee himself almost two decades earlier, the Lees got money and the government got its cemetery.

I should note that Arlington also had more significance than just being the home of Robert E. Lee.  The estate had been established by George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and adopted grandson of George Washington.  So it was viewed by some as a double insult to have it come under Confederate jurisdiction.  Moreover, the estate was on a promontory overlooking all of Washington, D.C. and was one of the earliest pieces of land that military authorities identified as necessary to control in order to protect the U.S. capital from artillery fire.

I fear I have pulled us off topic.  Suffice it to say that few things done in war are done for just one reason.  So it was with Arlington, and so it was with the looting and destruction of Russian palaces, which suffered a wide range of fates while all within equal reach of the Germans.

[TimM]

I should note that Arlington also had more significance than just being the home of Robert E. Lee.  The estate had been established by George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and adopted grandson of George Washington.  So it was viewed by some as a double insult to have it come under Confederate jurisdiction

The aforementioned Mount Vernon and Montecello (the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, also came under Confederate jurisdiction.  Both are in Virginia.

Suffice it to say that few things done in war are done for just one reason.  So it was with Arlington, and so it was with the looting and destruction of Russian palaces, which suffered a wide range of fates while all within equal reach of the Germans.

The main difference is that the Union may have seized Arlington, but they didn't totally destroy it.  And of course, the Lee family eventually got compensation for it.  The Germans would never have done that to the families of the properties they occupied and/or destroyed. 

[Tsarfan]

By the way, I should mention that there is an interesting blog where some Teutophiles are discussing the travesty that was the destruction of the Berlin royal palace by the East Germans.  They are wringing their hands over what the nasty Russians did to Berlin just as we wring our hands over what the nasty Germans did to St. Petersburg and its suburban palaces.  Of course, they ban all discussion about the war itself, apparently because mentions of who attacked whom first tended to go south rather quickly on that board.

In any case, in their view, what happened to Pavlovsk and the Catherine Palace is no worse than what their beloved Stadtschloß suffered.  I've seen innumerable photos and paintings of the Berlin buidling.  And I can assure you . . . it was to Pavlovsk what Hulk Hogan is to Margot Fonteyn.  

[TimM]

They are wringing their hands over what the nasty Russians did to Berlin just as we wring our hands over what the nasty Germans did to St. Petersburg and its suburban palaces.  Of course, they ban all discussion about the war itself, apparently because mentions of who attacked whom first tended to go south rather quickly on that board.

Well, Hitler was the one that attacked first.  He made a treaty with Russian (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) and then he broke it and launched his attack.  The Nazis devastated Russia.  So when the Russians got to Berlin, it was payback time (of course, the U.S. and British also did a lot of damage with aerial bombings).   So it was the Germans that started the war with Russia.

[Tsarfan]

Uh, really . . . ?

[Tsarfan]

The aforementioned Mount Vernon and Montecello (the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, also came under Confederate jurisdiction.  Both are in Virginia.

True, but at the outbreak of the Civil War they were not in the hands of U.S. officers who became enemy commanders.  Nor were they artillery-launching sites overlooking downtown Washington.

[TimM]

Yes, but they were homes of historical value to the U.S., and now they were essentially in a foreign country.  That must have really made some Unionists mad.  However, neither the Union nor the Confederats delibertely destroyed historical buildings.

The Nazis, on the other hand, considered everything not German to be expendible.

[Tsarfan]

The main difference is that the Union may have seized Arlington, but they didn't totally destroy it.

A matter of perspective, I suppose.  For many years after the Civil War, Mary Lee hung on to the hope of regaining her beloved home.  Finally she managed to get herself onto the property for an afternoon.  After seeing what had been done to it, she realized the home she had known was gone forever and she lost interest in trying to get it back.  She died a few months later.

[Tsarfan]

The Nazis, on the other hand, considered everything not German to be expendible.

The Nazis considered quite a few things German to be expendable.  Have you ever seen Hitler's plans to turn Berlin into Germania? 

[TimM]

Have you ever seen Hitler's plans to turn Berlin into Germania?

Yeah, I have.  he wanted his city to be the capital of the world.  I've seen Speer's drawings and pictures of the models he made, showing what Germania would look like. 

Anyway, this has been interesting, but I gotta take off now.