People of the New World can't differanciate when it comes to Europe.

[Arrian]

Yep, WWII has a lot to do with Serbs and Croats not liking each other much.

Look, Paiktis, I didn't see the movie, so I don't really know what set you off, but I really don't think that anyone seriously contends that "the nazi scums were [not] #1 responsible for the massacres of peoples." Of course they were. To say otherwise is ridiculous... and to the extent that someone claimed that other people were more culpable than the Nazis, or that other people's actions "forced" the Nazis to do the horrible things they did, that person is an idiot.

Ok, I think this discussion is effectively done. I should get some work done.

-Arrian

[Bereta_Eder]

OK. We agree. Have a good work.

[VetLegion]

uh oh

[Ned]

paiktis, As to the Germans being the only ones responsible for deliberately killing innocents, you must remember the British bombing campaign had only one objective: to destroy German cities. The US got into that act from time to time at British request, for example, when they wanted to take out Hamburg and Dresden. (Dresden, however, was destroyed at the insistence of Uncle Joe Stalin.) The US Air Force also destroyed nearly 80 Japanese cities in 1945, including the two destroyed by atom bombs.

In all this, the objective was to kill and terrorize the civilian population. What the Nazi's did to ordinary civilians in occuppied territories was problably insignificant compared to the civilian deaths caused by British and American bombing campaigns.

Also, getting back to the "collaboration bit," the question still remains: How much did the collaborators know, and when did they know it, about the ultimate fate of the Jews. There is a story running today about the French courts releasing Papon who was convicted of crimes against humanity for rounding up Jews and turning them over to the Nazi's. Those Jews ultimately met their fate in the death camps. But did Papon know that at the time?

As I said in the analogy to the US treatment of the Japanese in the United States - was rounding them up and putting them in camps a crime against humanity? The answer cannot be yes unless the people at the time knew that their fate was death.

[VetLegion]

your anti-french feelings are clouding your judgement on who the real and only ones scumbags of modern european history were: namely the nazi germans. without them nothing would have happened.

collaborators are guilty, those of all nations, imho

Yep, WWII has a lot to do with Serbs and Croats not liking each other much.

a bit more complex then that and going a little more back, to Yugoslavian monarchy under the Serbian king.

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by Ned


Hey paiktis, did you read that Jager link I posted. Anyone who reads it will know that Hitler was killing a lot of people (communists, Gypsies, the handicapped and the mentally diseased) besides the Jews and that the locals were highly invovled in the round up and the slaughter.

Deep in the report is fact that they executed one German who had converted to Judaism. Why? if the whole point was killing for racial purposes.

But back to England and France: Does anyone here realize that the slaughter of the Jews, et al., began after the war started? Hitler declared that if German soldiers and citizens (English bombing of German cities) were being killed, the enemies of the Reich would suffer a similar fate. While there is no guarantee that Hitler would not have eventually killed all the Jews, et al., that he could lay his hand on, the proximate cause of their death was the declaration of war by England and France.

I've read some umitigated ****e on these forums but this takes the biscuit.You are sounding more and more like a holocaust apologist, there is no suggestion the jews were killed because britain declared war, and even if they did so what it doesn't make britain or france responsible.

BTW Germany bombed british cities first, they wern't as good at it as the British but hey thats life

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Originally posted by Arrian
Paiktis,

I understand that Vichy France was under duress - the threat of occupation by the Germans. Thus, they aren't as bad as the Nazis. The Vichy French elements (police force, upper levels of government) that actively collaborated in rounding up victims and sending them to Germany, while not being as evil as the Nazis, are IMO in the same ballpark. Duress lessens the blame, but it does no absolve.

Some key member of Vichy Gouvernment were antisemit scums ready to sacrifice french in order to keep power. Vichy gouvernment sent jew kids to German, an act that germans didn't order them first.

A key member of the Vichy gouvernment Maurice Papon, convicted for "collaboration in a crime against humanity", was released yesterday because of his health problems. He's still guilty, but free.

A shame. He should have die in prison.

Yet USA, have free europe against German Nazi scums. Surely US gouvernment didn't do it only for our blue eyes, and had world-political objectives. Since many US guys died for us, and we have to thanks them for such sacrifice.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Originally posted by Ned
The US Air Force also destroyed nearly 80 Japanese cities in 1945, including the two destroyed by atom bombs.

American used terrors tactics on civilian, it is true. I don't like that is no more human than tactics used by "illegals" terrorists. Through I don't like war neither.

But it's different than the plan used by nazy to remove from europe all Jews, Gypsy, Gays ...
They were not killed because their death had a tactical purpose, but because they were considered as subhuman who didn't deserve to live.

[Heresson]

Ned, You can't call the lands that Germany lost after ww1 "stolen" ones or even "German". They weren't inhabited by Germans, and they belonged to Germany for 150 years only - Poland got back only a part of lands that it lost to it during the partages and only some of the lands inhabited by Poles. Some Czech lands were inhabited majorly by Germans, but they never belonged to the Kingdom of Germany, though they belonged to "Roman" (German) Empire and Austrian one - with all
Bohemia, however.

[mactbone]

Well, considering that at the time of WW1, Germany was only ~40 years old, they probably had next to no claim on a lot of land.

[Heresson]

What do You mean by that? Poland didn't exist before the war - so we shouldn't have any claims?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Heresson
Ned, You can't call the lands that Germany lost after ww1 "stolen" ones or even "German". They weren't inhabited by Germans, and they belonged to Germany for 150 years only - Poland got back only a part of lands that it lost to it during the partages and only some of the lands inhabited by Poles. Some Czech lands were inhabited majorly by Germans, but they never belonged to the Kingdom of Germany, though they belonged to "Roman" (German) Empire and Austrian one - with all
Bohemia, however.

Heresson, I am only being half serious about “German” lands. The real problem I see is that England and France spent a lot of time drawing lines on maps at Versailles, restructuring the world to suit their interests, rewarding their allies and punishing their enemies and best of all, enriching themselves. Much of world conflict since has been about undoing what the Brits and French did then. Palestine/Israel, Iraq/Kurdistan/Kuwait are problems that remain today.

In the case of Poland, Poland was enlarged with lands both from Germany and Russia, I believe. Russia even got some of those former German lands.

Of course, if one goes back just a few years before others may have held those same lands, including Poland. So, in a view, what France and England may have been doing was to undo historical injustices.

This new world order may have been viable if all parties agreed to it. But as we see in the case of Palestine, the locals did not agree to a Jewish homeland and the war against Israel continues to this day.

Germany and Austria certainly did not agree to the Versailles Treaty. As defeated enemies, they had the terms dictated to them. You could expect that this created long-term bitterness and the desire to undo Versailles in both countries.

Now what did the Brits and the French do to make sure that terms of Versailles stuck in Europe? Well, when one looks at the record, they did nothing when Hitler began to re-arm, to rebuild the fleet, to move forces into the Rhineland, to absorb Austria, to take Czechoslovakia. Had they acted immediately to German violations, perhaps Germany would have backed down without a war. Regardless, a war would have easily been winnable early on. But they delayed.

Even if one believes that Britain and France had the power to do what they did to Germany at the close of WWI, they clearly had lost that power and therefore the right (might makes right) by the time Hitler demanded that Poland as well restore the Corridor.

In one view, Germany started the war because they had no right to use armed force to retake their land from Poland. In another view, England and France started the war by first imposing the Versailles treaty, then failing to enforce it, and then by telling Poland that they would protect it they chose to fight rather than negotiate.

At the time Britain and France declared war, they no longer had the power to win it. Perhaps they didn’t know this at the time. But their actions soon after of going into a defensive posture seem to indicate that they knew they could not win it. I believe declaring war without clear ability to win the war is stupid at best, insane at the worst, but certain unjust because all it will do is result in tremendous loss of life and property to one’s own people without purpose. America itself learned this lesson in Vietnam.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Stinger
BTW Germany bombed british cities first, they wern't as good at it as the British but hey thats life

Hitler specifically banned bombing of civilian targets until the raid on Berlin by the RAF, (which happened for several reasons). The Germans bombed our cities first, but only by accident - unless you include WW1 where Zeppelins and shore bombardments were deliberately used to strike civilian targets.

Tactically we preferred our cities to be bombed, rather than our airfields. I am surprised that "bomber" Harris thought that bombing cities would work, when it was shown to be quite ineffective against Britain.

[Ned]

SD, I see some degree of justification for England to retaliate. But England went far beyond this and were quite effective in completely destroying German cities and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. The only way they were able to do this and continue to do this throughout the war was a complete news blackout. When the news of Dresden became public in in early 1945, the American people, indeed the world, reacted with outrage.

[TheStinger]

Ned

The UK lost over a million people in WW1 those sort of casualties affect your policies. When Hitler took back the Rhineland, something shold have been done , however as that was one of the more blatantly unfair provisoions of the treaty of versailles its not surprising people wern't going to go to war for it.

The country had lost an entire generation, my Grans mother lost 6 brothers in WW1, people were reluctant to go through it again.

Obviously it would have saved alot of lives to have stopped Hitler earlier, however at the time people in britain were trying to forget an earlier war and get over a depression, fighting Hitler over a bunch of countries no one cared about was not top of anyones priorities.

Germany had grievances over WW1 and found it diffcult to accept they lost, however for the people of britain and France it was quite difficult to accept they won.