German atrocities in WWII, systematic or just like everyone else?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Bomber Command and the concentration camps are completely different.

The use of mass bombings was founded on the belief that it would shorten the war by destroying the other nation's military capacity.

The concentration camps, murder of POWS, etc, had no military purpose.

And if you condemn the Brits bombing attacks then you must also condemn the American bombing attacks.

By the way, you claim that the Brits committed mass rapes. Admit that you're wrong about that.

I think I said killing/rape, which is true when either is true, not both are true.

As to the US, we used daylight precision bombing and attempted to avoid civilian targets. Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exceptions, and many if not most Americans condemn our actions/participation in these attrocities.

It is amazing that you Brits justify mass slaughter of women and children by your Bomber Command.

When you said, "The use of mass bombings was founded on the belief that it would shorten the war by destroying the other nation's military capacity," you justified Britain's carpet bombing of cities with the strategic goal of the US Army Air Force. Britain's goal was entirely different. It was

TERRORISM!

[notyoueither]

Don't blow a blood vessel, Ned. I don't know many people in Britain or the Commonwealth who are happy about Dresden, that would include Churchill at the time.

And you are way off on the topic of Bomber Command's established objectives.

[Ben Kenobi]

God is a genocidal bastard.

You think that's a likely position for me?

You're headed in the wrong direction.

[Patroklos]

Actually Kenobi, it wasn't meant to say anything about you, it was just a generic lame comment. Sorry if you too offense, no foul intended.

Tingkai,

You claim "bull****" on everything and then chopping up quotes from our sources (then lieing about it) isnot you providing proof of YOUR position. You have been doing nothing but stating your opinion. You have not mentioned one book, journel, article, or any referance of any kind on this thread is support of what you say. You have asked for our sources, and we have given you plenty. We ask you for the same effort to verify your ridiculous claims and you, well, just ignore the posts and keep *****ing.

I hardly feel the need to suppy you with anymore referances untill you decide to participate as well. And attacking our respected sources is fine, unfortunetly you seem to be confused on how to do this. You find your own source that has the same respect but says the contrary.

I know you are not going to do this as

1. You won't find any sources that say why you are spouting above.

2. You know what will happen if you do go looking for them. You will discover what we have been telling you all along.

[Ben Kenobi]

it was just a generic lame comment.

Understood.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Patroklos
While the Btits do not belong anywhere near the category of the Russians or Nazis, and I am not sure why the discusion went that way, it should be noted tha the British colonial troops had the WORST record in killing POWS (to include Canadians). They just never made it to the rear period. Even factoring the Russians in the Geramans treated the POWs number wise with care these groups. 1005 dead is bette than 505, though admittedly they hardly had as many POWs to worry about like the Germans. (No I don't have the source off the top of my head, nore am I inclided to do so until some of you decide to produce a sorce or two).

This bit was pure horse hooey, and you cannot provide a source since none exist that would spout such nonsense.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned



As to the US, we used daylight precision bombing and attempted to avoid civilian targets. Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exceptions, and many if not most Americans condemn our actions/participation in these attrocities.

So the fire bombing of Tokyo was another one of those exceptions, was it? And the fire bombing of other Japanese cities were yet more exceptions?

You're living in a dreamworld- there was no such thing as precision bombing in the Second World War- and just like the pillaging of cities which resisted siege in earlier times, and just like massed human wave attacks in WWI, mass bombing of cities was a tactic/strategy accepted by all sides. Guernica was the theory put into practice, then Prague was threatened with the same fate if the Czechoslovaks did not cave in, then came Warsaw, Rotterdam and if the Dutch had not surrendered, Amsterdam would have suffered the same kind of indiscriminate bombing.

The Germans deliberately set out to destroy British cultural targets in the Baedeker raids- the city I was born in used to have a three spired cathedral in the English Perpendicular style, a preserved mediaeval centre where the Coventry Mystery Plays were performed, mediaeval almshouses and a guildhall- not any more.

After that, what do you think the Allied response should have been, to a nation that turned its own citizens into lampshades, soap and ash? Just say, o.k., we won't kill any civilians, just hit factories? And who exactly is it who works in factories?

http://www.billbrandt.com/Research/cathedrals.html

http://www.fortunecity.co.uk/meltingpot/oxford/330/arp/arp4.html

Any Prime Minister who responded to German bombing of British cities with a hands off approach for fear of killing civilians, would have been hounded out of office- if it had been a nation state that had ordered the murder of those civilians on September 11th and the destruction of the World Trade Centre, what do you think the American response would have been, Ned?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1892714.stm

And patroklos- please come up with a site which purports to detail atrocities by Allied troops- I'm sure we'd all be fascinated by anything along the lines of an Allied Lidice, Oradour-sur-Glane or Kharkov. I can't actually bring to mind any Allied Einsatzgruppen, but perhaps you know better.

It should be noted- the Germans killed prisoners of war (especially Russians) out of hand, and purposefully starved them to death, worked them to death, and allowed them to die of treatable diseases.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Would you rather the US let them go and then the British scooping them up a month later? It may have taken a while, but the American colony on the Phillipines always had the goal of independance after modernization as its goal. It was indeed a strange colony, where some Filipinos were in positions of greater power than some Americans in the same organizations.

Right. And how many Filipinos died to achieve that 'ultimate' goal, and how long did that independence take? And oh, gosh, was a pliant Third World dictator one of those Filipinos in a position of greater power, Ferdinand Marcos, by any chance?

Spare me your moral relativism- imperialism in American drag is just as obnoxious as any other kind. The notion that Great Britain would have 'scooped' them up is horse dung- like it 'scooped' up Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, et cetera, et cetera?
The fact that American history books have to rename the struggle for Filipino independence an insurrection gives the game away.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
My point is that I don't think Americans would willingly follow orders to gas millions of people to death. Our culture has "programmed" us to automatically question and resist abuses of power like that.

Nope. With the right incentive and conditioning, any nationality could do it.

'Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000 while civilian deaths numbered in 250,000 to 1,000,000 Filipinos. U.S. attacks into the countryside often included scorched earth campaigns where entire villages were burned and destroyed, torture (water cure) and the concentration of civilians into "protected zones". Many of these civilian casualties resulted from disease and famine. Reports of the execution of U.S. soldiers taken prisoner by the Filipinos led to disproportionate reprisals by American forces. Many American officers and soldiers called war a "n/igger killing business".

In 1914, Dean C. Worcester, U.S. Secretary of the Interior for the Philippines (1901-1913) described "the regime of civilization and improvement which started with American occupation and resulted in developing naked savages into cultivated and educated men." '

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War

One might be forgiven for thinking he was talking about
Native Americans, circa 1799, rather than, say, Manila in the 1900s.

http://showme.missouri.edu/~socbrent/tuskegee.htm

All you need is to believe that the other person is a savage, uncivilized, subhuman, or simply not like you. Then you can use all sorts of justifications- Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, scientific research, whatever. How the Tuskeegee study differs in any major respect from Japanese cholera, hypothermia or low pressure experiments on prisoners of war and Chinese civilians I'm unable to determine- except of course, that it was Americans conducting scientific research on unwilling uninformed African Americans.

[Kramerman]

so, what does this thread tell us? Everyone is evil? noooo, it tells us there is no such thing as evil, or good. Every nation does what it has to, and justifies it with relative moral values

[BeBMan]

Moral relativism sucks

[Kramerman]

so, i guess you think america is evil then, huh...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kramerman
so, i guess you think america is evil then, huh...

I think all humans have the potential for evil- unlike animals we seem to lack the Pavlovian surrender response. We also have the ability to project an outcome or envisage a possible future, so we know what our mistreatment of others is likely to result in.

I don't think any nation state is evil- and I think America's greatest mistake was to have such high goals and be unable to reach them all the time. It would still do many Americans (and others) a power of good to read Thomas Jefferson's writings on religious toleration for instance, and yet at the same time he thought seriously about plotting the downfall of free black Haiti with France, for fear of the effect Haitian blacks would have on black American slaves.

It ill befits anyone to assume a nationalistic morally superior position- a nation is made up of individuals, after all, and Germany had Willi Brandt, Bonhoeffer and Niemoller along with Goering, Hitler and Himmler.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Kramerman
so, i guess you think america is evil then, huh...

I don´t think in such simplistic ways

But I agree fully with Molly´s post(s) - I think in the end everyone is basically capable of doing evil things, but it is fortunately not a natural law that we all have to do such things.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by BeBro


I don´t think in such simplistic ways

But I agree fully with Molly´s post(s) - I think in the end everyone is basically capable of doing evil things, but it is fortunately not a natural law that we all have to do such things.

Deutsch Englische Freundschaft.

I used to know a woman at university whose father was Anglo-Indian, born in Coventry. Her mother was born in Dresden...

Christiane looked very beautfiul, could be mistaken for Turkish. When she was growing up, she was called a darkie at school, but her brother, Nick, was tall and blond, and was called 'Nick the Nazi.'

A family's worth of ironies.