"Michael Petukhov" wrote in message
om...
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message
...
This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a bad
news server.



Among the U.S. corporations that invested in Germany during the 1920s
were Ford, General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Texaco,
International Harvester, ITT, and IBM - all of whom were more than
happy to see the German labor movement and working-class parties
smashed. For many of these companies, operations in Germany continued
during the war (even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave
labor) with overt U.S. government support. "Pilots were given
instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S.
firms," writes Michael Parenti. "Thus Cologne was almost leveled by
Allied bombing but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for
the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed, German civilians began using the
plant as an air raid shelter."


This is nonsense.

From the diary entry of Warren C Brown who was a crew member of
a the 'Honey Chile' of the 486th bomb group

"Saturday, Oct 14 **
Thus begins our big 3 day adventure. We got up at 3:30 am (after two hours
of sleep) to eat breakfast and be at briefing at 4:30 am. We were briefed
for the same target (Cologne) as yesterday. We are to bomb it at 27,000 ft,
and our visual target is the German Ford Motor Company plant in Cologne."

The simple fact is that Ford at Cologne WERE an aiming point and
while the Ford plant itself was still 80% intact its production was
halved by June 1944 and stopped by October as a result of the
failure of power and destruction of transport infrastructure caused
by the heavy bombing of city. The Allies realised by 1944 that
if you bombed the power plants and railways you could stop
production much more effectively than trying to bomb dispersed
factory complexes.

Keith