Allied Morality Questioned in Bombing of German Cities

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
For sure, Britain was the main proponent of the carpet bombing of Germany, my point to you was that the US did partake, in a big way and without hesitation when asked. Even though the US was mostly complicit in Europe it was explicit in Japan.

Your statement that I was replying to was "the UK owes Germany an apology, not the US." This is patently false. Both do if anyone does.

Yes, but we can blame Japan on America's inherent racism, can't we?

SD, our respective air forces, the UK and the US, should have refrained from sinking to the level of the Nazi's. When we, the US, bombed Japanese cities, except for the A-Bomb, we dropped leaflets warning that we were going to bomb a particular city. The Japanese then evacuated that city.

So, I still maintain, there is a major difference in conduct between the UK and the US. We joined our ally Britain and the USSR on their request for a raid against a German city. But we did not lead the effort to destroy German cities. That honor goes to Bomber Harris and the British government.

[Shi Huangdi]

MtG: Just wondering, do you feel as though the Terror tactics by General Sherman of the Union army were justified?

As for WWII, you can definitely question the morality of several actions taken by the Allies. I think no matter what though I think it goes without saying the Allies were better in their actions then the Axis was, and given the magnitude of the evil we were fighting it goes without question that the allies were the "good guys"

[Col Bigspear]

Ok afew points.
1. The british bombed in daylight from day 1. Targets were mainly ports and U-boat bases in Kiel and willemshaven. Before long losses per raid averaged 60% !!!!!!!!. Bomber Command retreated to lick its wounds and decided to bomb by night. The Carpet bombing was supposed to demoralise the Germans. Would the citizens still want the war to continue, when all the workers were without homes?. The problem was it worked in the opposite way. A german saying from the later war years was "Enjoy the War while it lasts, because Peace is going to be Hell" Germans in the front lines had nothing to go home to. Saying the night campaign achieved nothing is wrong. About 50 squadrons were devoted to night Fighters and a large percentage of industry supplied them. Countless AA guns, search lights, RADAR networks and command centres had to be manned. In all the night campaign tied up nearly 1,500,000 German personnel.

2. The fact that France and Britain Declared war first IMO, was not an act of aggression. Prime Minister Chamberlain was into the policy of appeasement. Hitler had Annexed Austria, The Studatedland, Czeh......(How the hell do u spell that?) and the Rhur de-militrized zone. The invasion of Poland after they refused to give up Danzig was the last straw.
Hitler did'nt want a war with the west, he was looking for labensraum(SP?)or "living space" for his Aryian empire. For this living space he looked to the east, to the "Inferior races". The reason I don't think it was an act of aggression was because from Sept '39 to May '40 nothing was done. This period was known as the "Phoney War" during this time the British dropped leaflets on german cities suggesting they should pull out of Poland and the French could have launched an offensive in to germany. There were only a few German Corps on the western front at this time as the rest were in Poland.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ned

So, I still maintain, there is a major difference in conduct between the UK and the US. We joined our ally Britain and the USSR on their request for a raid against a German city. But we did not lead the effort to destroy German cities. That honor goes to Bomber Harris and the British government.

Yes you keep the moral high ground. Would you feel differently if Washington, or say New York, had been bombed. High ground my ass. I know the losses to my family from the Blitz. Tough **** to the Germans.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SpencerH
So the Germans didnt drop any bombs on civilians? Maybe those attacks were not atrocities? Hows about the millions of civilians the Germans killed without planes? Germany should still glow in the dark.

Read the whole damn thread. This isn't about saying which atrocities were worse, or which side was more "right" in the war. It's not about excusing any atrocities.

For the upteenth time, the immoral actions of a government do not justify the genocide of their people. Advocating this is taking a stance little different than what the Nazis felt towards the Jews.

It's a barbaric policy to target civilians, PERIOD. There is not a single adequate justification for it.

[Ned]

Originally posted by SpencerH
So the Germans didnt drop any bombs on civilians? Maybe those attacks were not atrocities? Hows about the millions of civilians the Germans killed without planes? Germany should still glow in the dark.

SpencerH, Did it ever occur to you that at least some of what Hitler and is troops did was in response to Allied attrocities and partisan attacks? I know at least some of them are because I have read transcripts of Hitler's orders. For example the raids on each other's cities began by a German accidental bombing of London, followed by a deliberate British attack on Berlin, which caused Hitler to attack London in response.

How much of this *** for tat barbarity went on during the war? Clearly, the Allies were willing participants in this sick game.

We know that two wrongs do not make a right.

[Boris Godunov]

Forget it, Ned. In his eyes, if you show any sympathy for the innocent victims of war on the other side, you're a Nazi sympathizer. Pathetic attitude.

[monkspider]

I am in agreement with you Boris, attrocities can never be justified for any reason, ever. Regardless of what country partook in them, and whether they were in response to attrocities by other countries.

[Drake Tungsten]

The better question is why anyone cares about moral justifications anyway. It's not like moral rules actually exist.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Forget it, Ned. In his eyes, if you show any sympathy for the innocent victims of war on the other side, you're a Nazi sympathizer. Pathetic attitude.

Not everyone, but you cross the line too often. I think this quote by you sums up your opinions quite well.

"Hitler was less evil than Stalin, IMO. He certainly wasn't intending to be "evil," as he thought he was doing stuff that was really good for the world and for Germany"

I doubt that you're a Nazi sympathizer, but you are a germophile (its a new word for the other thread).

[Boris Godunov]

I make no apologies about being a lover of much of German culture, especially in terms of classical music. But please point me to anywhere where I have excused Nazi crimes, or expressed anything but disgust for them.

And I stand by quote about Hitler--I think he was deranged and thought he was doing "good." He did not view his own actions as evil. His twisted mind allowed him to see genocide as a positive thing. Stalin, I think, knew full well his actions were morally wrong and didn't care so long as it consolidated his grip on power. That in no way mitigates Hitler's crimes or lessens their horrificness.

Regardless, how does any of that make me a Nazi sympathizer? Unless you're equating being German to being Nazi, which speaks for itself in terms of ignorance.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I make no apologies about being a lover of much of German culture, especially in terms of classical music. But please point me to anywhere where I have excused Nazi crimes, or expressed anything but disgust for them.

Its true that I havent seen you excuse Nazi crimes, but I havent seen you stand up and denounce them in the same way in which you denounce the bombing of Dresden. I think you're opinion of Hitler is an example of this i.e. he was bad but he was crazy- so he thought he was doing good.

Regardless, how does any of that make me a Nazi sympathizer? Unless you're equating being German to being Nazi, which speaks for itself in terms of ignorance.

Maybe you should read the posts. I said I doubted you were. As for equating Germans with Nazi's, guess what? They were. Stop coddling the Germans.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Its true that I havent seen you excuse Nazi crimes, but I havent seen you stand up and denounce them in the same way in which you denounce the bombing of Dresden. I think you're opinion of Hitler is an example of this i.e. he was bad but he was crazy- so he thought he was doing good.

I haven't seen any threads here particularly addressing Nazi crimes. That's pretty much a no-brainer, though. I mean, can you think of people standing up for Nazi crimes? Has that been a problem here? If someone created a thread about Nazi crimes, I'd be happy to denounce them. And there have been past threads about Nazi crimes in which I've talked about them. In fact, look in the thread about Nanjing. I think you're just only seeing what you want to see.

Another point here is that Dresden NEEDS to be discussed more. History has done plenty on the Holocaust, and everyone is aware of it. But Dresden is something many people are still unaware of, or worse, it is rationalized by bull**** "we were at war, so anything went" mentalities. You hardly have to contend with the same attitudes about the Holocaust, because only Neo-Nazis would be here saying such things. And I don't know of any around here.

I think you're opinion of Hitler is an example of this i.e. he was bad but he was crazy- so he thought he was doing good.

How is giving my opinion that Hitler wasn't the most evil man in history remotely excusing the Nazis? So anyone who doesn't feel he was quite the most evil is sympathizing with the Nazis? Come on. And can you say he wasn't deranged? That he didn't think he was doing something he believed was good? He laid out his philosophies extensively. His was a twisted worldview, warped beyond my recognition. And he indeed felt it was a moral good to exterminate "inferior" people. It was the basis of much of his doctrine. In that sense, he did not think of his actions as conscious evil.

Maybe you should read the posts. I said I doubted you were. As for equating Germans with Nazi's, guess what? They were. Stop coddling the Germans.

German history extends for 2000 years. Nazism was a factor for a very, very small part of it. And even when it was in control, most Germans were never Nazis. To associate all Germans with Nazism is unfair bigotry, no different from Nazi bigotry against other races.

Oh, and as for the Germans I admire from the WW2 time period, they are the ones who abhored/resisted the Nazis (Schindler, Einstein, Bruno Walter, Furtwangler), or even a Nazi like John Rabe. He certainly didn't deserve to die.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
MtG: Just wondering, do you feel as though the Terror tactics by General Sherman of the Union army were justified?

They damn sure were effective, I'll give you that.

There's a big difference in land warfare and aerial bombing, in that ground troops can physically seize, control and search an area for contraband and enemy troops/caches.

To the extent that Sherman (may he enjoy eternal barbecue ) ordered the destruction or confiscation of war supplies or materiel, that is entirely justified. If someone was found to be an active collaborator - say an arms cache is found in their farm, or hidden troops who are not wounded and hospitalized, then turning them out and razing the buildings is harsh, but permissible treatment of collaborators.

Wholesale destruction of non-military supplies such as all farm buildings, all food, residences not used for military non-hospital purposes, etc., is not acceptable, if it is feasible to distinguish them from military supplies or support. The notion that soldiers eat food, therefore all food is a military supply doesn't wash, but if you have a town of 300 with food supplies adequate to feed 15,000, well, there's a bit of a problem.

The big difference is that invading ground forces with a permanent occupying ability (more than a small force cavalry raid) has the ability to separate items with military use from normal levels of civilian supply and commerce.

[David Floyd]

loinburger,

That's what I expected you to say. Yes, you are responsible for your own actions. If the action you take is to "do nothing," even though by "doing something" you could have done good and/or prevented evil, then by "doing nothing" you have caused less good and/or more evil to result. If you know that John wants to find Joey in order to murder him, and yet when John asks you where Joey is at you give him the information "because it would be wrong for you to lie," then you are going to be culpable in Joey's murder -- you share John's responsibility for the murder because you assisted him. If John is in the act of attempting to kill Joey (say he has a loaded gun pointed at him), and you are able to prevent the murder (by, say, breaking John's arm, or shooting him with your own gun) but do nothing "because John has done nothing wrong to you, so it would be wrong to harm him," then you share John's responsibility for the resulting murder because you had the ability to hinder/prevent the murder but did not do so.

Very nice argument. Also very irrelevant. You see, the German civilians we are referring to were NOT the ones with the proverbial gun to the head of an innocent. That was the leadership of the Nazi Party, the SS, and that kind of thing.

You are very correct. If I allow a murder to happen when I have a reasonable chance of stopping the person committing murder (note, though, that I am under NO moral obligation to give my life in the process), I am in the wrong in terms of morality.

However, if I attempt to stop a murder - no, let's make it a mass murder, or a genocide, even - by spraying machine gun fire into a crowd in the hopes of either turning the crowd against the murderer or killing the murderer, but in the process slaughtering dozens of innocents, EVEN IF the murder/genocide is prevented, I have committed murder.

Apathy is not always an ethical response to a dilemma. You are responsible for your own actions, so if your action or lack of action causes harm or does not result in good then you are culpable.

Where would you like to draw the line? Perhaps it would be OK for us to nuke every inch of Iraq in order to stop Saddam from killing the Kurds? Hell, it would be an effective tactic, and would prevent Saddam's wrong from being committed - but it would not be RIGHT, because then WE would be committing a wrong.

It is what we're talking about -- was there a net loss of life as a result of allied bombing, or did allied bombing reduce the number casualties that would have been inflicted by the Nazis and the IJA thus resulting in a net gain of life?

This isn't relevant - if you want to boil everything down to hard numbers, you are simply talking about egalitarianism, ie, a system where it is acceptable to kill 50 innocents to save 100 other innocents. I just cannot comprehend how one can defend that system.

You've somehow reduced the question to "Is it wrong to kill innocents," which is irresponsible of you -- you've tried to present your own position as a tautology that pretty much everybody else on the thread already agrees to (while you imply that they disagree with it and thus that they aren't even worth debating with),

Obviously, "Is it wrong to kill innocents?" IS the question this thread is dealing with, and asking that question is not irresponsible at all. It is an attempt to tie people down to a position. If killing innocents is wrong, then bombing civilians is wrong, but if killing innocents is OK, or "dependent upon circumstances", then the Holocaust can be justified.

Ogie,

As for the piece in question, I believe the commanders had moral misgivings before they pulled the trigger on these operations,

I doubt it, and even if they did, I seriously doubt that the average US soldier felt any qualms in bombing German or Japanese cities, given the level of hateful propaganda they were being fed.

DanS,

It seems likely that the US didn't have a sufficiently advanced protocols to make these trade-off decisions.

I'm not sure I see what you mean. Is it your position that in the 1940s, people did not know it was wrong to kill civilians? If so, why the Nuremburg trials?

Since then, and especially since Vietnam, we've taken great pains to make our weapons more precise. There is a moral element to that.

Come on. The primary element to that is military efficiency. If morality factored in there, we wouldn't be targeting cities with ICBMs, and, for that matter, we wouldn't do lots of the things we do today.

Ozz,

The Germans, Japanese got exactly what they deserved.

Really? The average German got what he deserved when he was burned to death? I'm not sure, but I bet certain people would say that same thing about certain other people. You work out what I mean.

Voted for Hilter, They knew what He and his party
stood for.

Sang "Bombs on England", worked in factories making war materials. Called Hilter "Lord of Battle". Supplied Hilter with men, money and weapons. Danced in the streets when Paris fell. Joined and worked for the Hilter youth.

The children paid for their parents hatred and greed.

Interesting. So, if you vote for a militaristic government, believe propaganda, produce war materials for an aggressive war, and celebrate military victories, you deserve to be incinerated?

How many people in the world today do you imagine fit that framework? Hint: A lot.

Hilter stood for exactly the same greed and oppression that
caused WW1.

Umm, WW1 was ultimately caused by imperialism, military buildups, and entangling alliances. Churchill stood for that stuff too.

Collective guilt, yes,

So where, then, is your condemnation of American and British actions throughout history? Why aren't you calling for trials for US Presidents?

Gatekeeper,

Isn't this debate sort of misleading, in the sense that we're applying 2002 sensibilities — and are a two, sometimes three, generations removed from 1939-1945 — to a point in time when "being nice" was the last thing on anyone's mind?

Just because someone doesn't want to "be nice" doesn't mean that excuses them when they incinerate innocent civilians.

Drake,

Looking for moral behavior in a war is like looking for crack at Whitney Houston's house. You aren't going to find it.

As I've pointed out, we can't control what other people do, but we can control what we ourselves do.

DanS,

WWI was due to Germany's negligence.

Yes, it had nothing to do with Russian influence on Serbia

Ozz,

We're talking shell fillers, machinists...

Looks like you just condemned every industrial worker in the world, pretty much.

Never said that, i said they paid the price for their
greedy and cruel society.

So, basically, they got what they deserved, right?

DanS,

While true (there was enough war fever to go around), Germany provided the trigger, and German troops were the first ones to cross borders.

I'm certainly glad you agree with me that the Mexican War was the US's fault, then

Ozz,

Since when did OBL become a legalimate government.

Or, for that matter, one could argue, how is George W. Bush legitimate?

Targeting civilians is wrong? How about a factory, who
do you think is in there turning out shells. Civilians.

Absolutely. War is wrong, with no exceptions except for the case of defending yourself against blatant military aggression against yourself only, reliant TOTALLY on volunteerism.

There ARE no civilians, never have been. You should
read up on your history. Name one war where the
civilian population was NOT massacred.

I quite agree. That doesn't excuse those actions, of course, and it only supports my position that fighting a war is morally wrong.