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

[Alexander's Horse]

One of the things about the bombing campaigns on both Germany and Japan is that it showed to the civilian populations of both countries the evils of war and made their utter defeat plain for all to see.

There are visible reminders in both countries today of bomb damage which I think helps to keep a lid on resurgent militarism. I saw it all over Germany - the scorched foundations of a bombed out church in Hamburg, the miraculous Cologne cathedral.

After World War I the nazis could claim the old stab in the back because German cities were hardly touched by the war. Pretty hard to do that after WWII. Same with Japan thanks to massive war damage, the bomb and a long occupation.

[Ned]

Well, NYE, Molly et al., you have gone a long way to convincing me that our efforts in Japan were authorized at the highest levels and were not just LeMay getting a little ahead of himself. Still, it appears that no one in the administration was completely honest with the people of America about what was really going on as they kept talking about attacking military bases and production facilities, not residential areas housing woman and children.

I was looking online for a contemporaneous newspaper article on the Tokyo raid. I could not find one. However, I found the following which implies that the people knew full well what we were doing and approved of it.

"Yet apart from the atomic bomb victims, almost nothing has been done to honor Japan's civilian dead, partly because this might raise awkward questions about Japanese leaders during the war and partly because of the avid pursuit of friendship with America after 1945.

"Until the San Francisco Treaty in 1952, Japan was under control of the occupation forces, and when they arrived, they applied media restrictions, saying that one should not report things which reflected negatively on the United States," said Shinichi Arai, a historian who has written a comparison of European and Japanese civilian bombing. Later, as the country formed a close alliance with the United States, he said, "we were too busy trying to rebuild our country, and trying to forget the past."

For Japanese leaders, remembering the firebombing victims could mean explaining things like the deliberate placement of war industries in dense residential areas, or the prolongation of the war for many months after its outcome was clear — topics that even now have rarely been discussed here.

For Americans, it would raise questions about the prosecution of the war according to standards that Washington had long denounced as inhuman. "With the firebombings, we crossed the line that we had said was clearly beyond the pale of civilization," said John Dower, a leading American historian of Japan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The American reaction at the time was that they deserved it. There was almost a genocidal attitude on the part of the American military, and it extended to the American public."

from

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0314-01.htm

[Ned]

Also, Shawn, here is an interesting article that says that Japanese research has confirmed that the use of nuclear weapons was necessary to end the war after all.

"http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/08/05/1060064179100.html

[Ned]

I still cannot find a contemporaneous report. However here is a bit from a leftist piece that quotes articles from June 1945 describing both the Tokyo and later the Hamburg firebombings. It throws into question whether earlier accounts of what was going on were honestly described to the American people.

"More than 100,000 residents of Tokyo burned to death. A report filed at the time by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that "probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a six-hour period than at any time in the history of man."

Area twice as big as Manhattan

This was only the beginning. As the ferocious raids on Tokyo and other cities continued apace, the Militant pieced together some of the facts from media sources. In the June 19, 1945, issue, Joseph Hansen reported that an area "twice as great as New York's Manhattan...has been burned out by fire bombs" in successive raids on Tokyo. "Other Japanese cities are being similarly obliterated and their inhabitants incinerated.

"The press account of this slaughter," wrote Hansen, "reads like the routine report of a government agency on the extermination of vermin: 'The population concentration in that area runs, or rather ran, between 75,000 and 110,000 persons per square mile.... Thus, in the 51 miles burned to ashes there lived approximately 4,500,000 of Tokyo's 7,000,000 people. None of them could be living in that area now if the pictures tell the story.'"

It was not only Japanese cities that were targeted for the kind of intensive incendiary bombing that left much of Tokyo in ashes. Later the same month the Militant printed an article from a Swiss newspaper reporting the firebombing of the German city of Hamburg by British and U.S. planes. The concentrated bombing of "densely populated residential districts" creates a "blanket of fire, covering the entire area and rushing up to ever greater heights," in what is known as a firestorm, the article reported. "The sea of flames sucks in air from its surroundings."

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00578.html

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
The thing that gives me pause here is that Germany certainly did attack Britain's civilian areas. Perhaps this did justify retaliatory attacks on German civilians in response in a effort to get Germany to stop and perhaps for revenge.

I know how I felt when we were attacked on 9/11, so I can understand Britains emotional reaction to Germany's bombing raids.

The British bombing raids were not done simply out of vengence and 9/11 pales in comparison. Britain was fighting for its life. The Germans were bombing its cities on a daily basis during 1940-41 and later with V-1s and V-2s. U-boats were cutting off supplies leading to food shortages.

As mentioned by others, British daylight bombing raids resulted in high RAF losses. As a result, Bomber Command switched to night raids.

[Ned]

Looking back, did we have the right to try German and Japanese leaders for war crimes? Except for the genocide against the Jews and Roma, the Allies were as guilty as the Germans and Japanese, if not more so in the case of the Japanese. McNamarra event admits that he was guilty of war crimes because of his participation in the bombing of Japan.

I saw, but did not read, a story on an 86 year old German arrested for war crimes. Perhaps the Germans or the Israeli's have a right to try these people. But certainly not the WWII Allies Britain, Russia and the USA.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Ned
Looking back, did we have the right to try German and Japanese leaders for war crimes? Except for the genocide against the Jews and Roma, the Allies were as guilty as the Germans and Japanese, if not more so in the case of the Japanese.

I don't think you can say that - WWII was a just war.

[Tingkai]

Ned:
The Germans and the Japanese committed far more war crimes than just the Germans trying kill all the Jews and Romas.

Germany and Japan murdered millions of people, deliberately and without justification. The worst that can be said of the UK and US is that while trying to defend themselves they were forced to kill enemy civilians.

- The Germans and the Japanese enslaved people and worked them to death or murdered them; the UK and US did not.
- The Germans started a war that killed 40 million people in Europe, The Japanese started the Pacific War; the Allies did not start these wars.
- After occupying a country, the Germans routinely massacred civilians on a large scale for no justifiable reason. The Japanese also committed massacres, such as the Rape of Nanking. The Allies did not.
- The Germans and Japanese tortured civillians. The US and UK did not.
- The Germans and Japanese conducted sadistic experiments on living people. The US and UK did not.
- The Germans and the Japanese killed and tortured POWs in prison camps. The US and UK did not.

The list goes on and on.

Germany and Japan were guilty.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Ned
Looking back, did we have the right to try German and Japanese leaders for war crimes? Except for the genocide against the Jews and Roma, the Allies were as guilty as the Germans and Japanese, if not more so in the case of the Japanese. McNamarra event admits that he was guilty of war crimes because of his participation in the bombing of Japan.

I saw, but did not read, a story on an 86 year old German arrested for war crimes. Perhaps the Germans or the Israeli's have a right to try these people. But certainly not the WWII Allies Britain, Russia and the USA.

Why not? Germany surrendered unconditionally, and they were the occupying forces that did hold the power.

Also it doesn´t make sense to say "let them get away with the Holocaust or the mass executions on the Eastern front or killings of POWs or slave labour because we bombed Dresden and Tokyo and more cities". After all the axis powers were those who started the war, and did the most horrible atrocities. That the allies did horrible things as well doesn´t put them automatically on the same level and it doesn´t eliminate the fact that they weren´t the aggressors.

It was important for the world as well as for Germany itself that the Nuremberg trials were hold.

[Patroklos]

Just because your enemy resorted to the same underhanded tactics doesn't let everyone call it even. Just because the Germans can point to the Soviets and say they did the same thing does not absolve them.

It also means that the Soviets can't use the same tactic. However, as we all know the end of WWII didn't leave everyone free to hold hands and dance around rainbows. There were lots of real world factors that led both Cold War victors to gloss over their wartime transgressions.

I don't think that is right, but the real world doesn't always lend itself to fairness. Considering that it was the first genocidal war in human history in which the perpetrators were held accountable at all, and there were many such wars before WWII, I think we did a good job.

[notyoueither]

I read him as saying that the Nazi state being held to account, and some specific individuals, was important, Allied actions notwithstanding.

[Patroklos]

I honestly wonder if we would have won without the "atrocities" of Allied bombing campaigns and such. As you all have been debating it is pretty much assumed that as far as destroying German production the best it did was interfere. But still as far as resources consumed to try and ward off the bombings as well as keep the cities working, that made it worth it.

Can we make the blanket statment that it was just using a lesser evil to get rid of a greater one? Is that a justifiable way of looking at it?

[Serb]

Originally posted by Sandman
Stalin was an imbecile. His repeated interference and inability to command led the Russians to numerous defeats, until he finally butted out and let the generals do their job. Instead of allowing the Red Army to retreat in good order, he insisted upon a series of useless last stands, allowing millions of soldiers to be killed or captured.

A more competent leader could have beaten the Germans with an 'agricultural' Russia.

It's my translation from Russian, so it may contain some errors, but I hope you'll understand the meaning:
The big happiness for Russia was that within its hardest times it was headed by the genius and unshakable strategist Stalin. It has created and has subordinated to itself huge empire. Stalin was the greatest, not having to itself equal in the world dictator who has accepted Russia with a wooden plough and has left her with nuclear weapons

Guess who?
Sir Winston Churchill. His speech to the members of the house of commons. Dec 21 1959 (pages 249-250).
He said it after six years since Stalin's death, after years of anti-Stalin's campaign started by Khrushev.
If anyone will ask me to whom of two, unknown internet spamer or one of the greatest mans of 20th century I trust the most, I'll answer- I trust to Churchill.

[notyoueither]

I'm pretty sure that if that is being shown to you in Russian, the original version of what Winnie would have said in English would not have been that flattering.

I'd love to see an original English text though.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Patroklos
I honestly wonder if we would have won without the "atrocities" of Allied bombing campaigns and such. As you all have been debating it is pretty much assumed that as far as destroying German production the best it did was interfere. But still as far as resources consumed to try and ward off the bombings as well as keep the cities working, that made it worth it.

Can we make the blanket statment that it was just using a lesser evil to get rid of a greater one? Is that a justifiable way of looking at it?

In the final analysis, it destroyed the Luftwaffe as a force capable of opposing Allied power in both the East and West, as well as hindering German production.

I do think the bomber campaigns led to a shorter war with less loss for all of the Allies. Normandy with contested air space would have been... very messy if not totally impossible. Similarly, the Soviets would have faced much harder going if the Luftwaffe were not compelled to bleed itself in trying to defend from the bombers, while at the same time failing to prevent the loss of critical segments of the economy for itself (fuel).

Much is said about how much the Germans produced in general, as if the bombing had no effect on that count. However, how much more would they have had had there been no bombing?

Still, I would prefer that certain raids had never taken place, and I think 'we' went over the line in a few cases. No matter how much I try, I cannot come up with a good reason for the nature of the Dresden raid. I think it is telling that Churchill could not defend it either.