Patton and War Crimes

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

Are you serious? You throw up the extremely weak and dubitable argument that, magically, famine brought on by war declared by Nazi Germany and Japan (respectively) is to be blamed on the Soviet Union and the Chinese (which never would have experienced those famines if they hadn't been invaded by these two murderous regimes) and you're arguing numbers? :dizzy2:

Get real, PJ. Your entire argument rests on thin air, namely the complete flaming :daisy: that is asserting that famine brought on by war is to be blamed on the attacked and not the attacker. Best argument ever: the Nazis occupying the breadbasket of the Soviet Union means it's Stalin's fault Russians starved! :idea2: I guess the same is true for the Javanese famine, which caused the deaths of over 4,000,000 people during the Japanese occupation! Wow, I could have never imagined. When not even remotely in control of a place, you can still be blamed for what happens there! This is an amazing innovation in logic!

Switching cause and effect is the only thing enabling you to posit the preposterous mound of steaming :daisy: that is your argument.

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I'm not really sure what to make of that other than a strong suspicion that you didn't read my post thoroughly. It may be a daisy emoticon too far for me.

Let me ask you if you believe civilian deaths caused by the conflict between the various Chinese factions, which ran into the millions, should be attributable to the Axis?

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As for claiming the shooting of surrendered Japanese soldiers puts the Rape of Nanjing "to shame"... holy crap. Again, no comment. Just no comment. I don't even have to deal with this, it's that ridiculous.

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Those that were shot before they were torn limb from limb were the lucky ones. Again, I'm waiting for you to disprove what I said. You'll need a little more than hysterics to do that.

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Then give me some different numbers to talk about. You say those are incorrect. Let's hear the correct ones and we'll go from there.

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So you post a misleading graphic and I go to the trouble to go through the footnotes in an effort to help you understand why it is misleading and now you want me to do more of your homework?

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Let's forget about all Chinese and Russian civilian casualties. If all the rest Allied civilian casualties are smaller than German and Japanese ones, I'll concede that Allies were just as bad as the Axis.

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Again, you're arguing against positions I have not taken. You keep trying to broaden the argument to enhance your position. I did not take a position as to which side was "worse". I don't quantify morality through body counts. I took the position that the wiki graphic you posted was inaccurate in relation to the point you were making. Allow me to quote myself again.

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Originally Posted by me

As to your point - that the Axis killed more civilians than the Allies during the war - I've never argued otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Sarmation

Well, let's see. You provided that some German POWs were killed under Patton. Ok, I believe that's correct. You said what American marines did to the Japanese puts what happened in Nanjing to shame - that I have serious trouble believing, especially unless it backed up by hard facts, meaning time, place and numbers. So far you're several hundreds thousands people killed and tens of thousands of women raped short.

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As I've said, the information is all out there. I would recommend War against subhumans: comparisons between the German War against the Soviet Union and the American war against Japan, 1941-1945, by James Weingartner, as a decent start.

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So, you're saying American soldiers didn't perform more humanely than the Japanese? They behaved the same? There is no difference between them? Is that what you're saying or we have a bad connection?

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That is what I am saying.

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Yeah, based on our earlier discussions, I didn't expect this from you. From a person conducting a scholarly discussion you've come real close to being a Nazi apologist.

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That is a strong accusation. I'm wondering how you justify it. Considering the only statements I've made that you question are about the US soldiers behavior towards the Japanese - wouldn't that make me a Japanese apologist? :dizzy2:

double post

double post mate.

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

double post mate.

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:bow:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Those that were shot before they were torn limb from limb were the lucky ones. Again, I'm waiting for you to disprove what I said. You'll need a little more than hysterics to do that.

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This is textbook argumentum ad ignorantiam. You are making the assertion, therefore the burden of proof is on you. Hitler had sex with goats, prove to me that he didn't. :yes:

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Originally Posted by drone

This is textbook argumentum ad ignorantiam. You are making the assertion, therefore the burden of proof is on you. Hitler had sex with goats, prove to me that he didn't. :yes:

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I'm sorry. I assumed the others were being coy. I thought it was common knowledge among people interested in the period.

Here's some wiki info for ya...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ja...g_World_War_II

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U. S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two key factors: a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs."[11] The latter reasoning is supported by Fergusson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians [sic] — as Untermenschen."[12] According to Weingartner, many U.S. troops regarded fighting the Japanese as more like hunting inhuman animals than a war.[11]

The U.S. conviction that the Japanese were subhuman or animals, together with Japanese reluctance to attempt to surrender to allied forces, contributed to the fact that a mere 604 Japanese captives were alive in Allied POW camps by October 1944.

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Weingartner also sees a connection between the mutilation of Japanese war dead and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[15] According to Weingartner both were partially the result of a dehumanization of the enemy. "[t]he widespread image of the Japanese as sub-human constituted an emotional context which provided another justification for decisions which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands."[16] On the second day after the Nagasaki bomb, Truman stated: "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him like a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true".

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_...g_World_War_II

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Allied soldiers in Pacific and Asian theatres sometimes killed Japanese soldiers who were attempting to surrender or after they had surrendered. A social historian of the Pacific War, John W. Dower, states that "by the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."[29] Dower suggests that most Japanese personnel were told that they would be "killed or tortured" if they fell into Allied hands and, as a consequence, most of those faced with defeat on the battlefield fought to the death or committed suicide.[30] In addition, it was held to be shamefully disgraceful for a Japanese soldier to surrender, leading many to suicide or fight to the death regardless of beliefs concerning their possible treatment as POWs. In fact, the Japanese Field Service Code said that surrender was not permissible.[31] And while it was "not official policy" for Allied personnel to take no prisoners, "over wide reaches of the Asian battleground it was everyday practice."[32]

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American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[39] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[32] According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.[40] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[41] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[42]

Ferguson states such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes,[42] among their own personnel (as these were affecting intelligence gathering) and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead, resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, taking no prisoners was still standard practice among U. S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.

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Similar observations have been made regarding British Commonwealth personnel in South-East Asia. For instance, historians Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper state that, during the Assam campaign of 1944, "...British, Indian, and African troops methodically and ruthlessly killed all Japanese, [because they were] enraged by cases of atrocities against their own wounded... Lieutenant General William Slim wrote laconically: 'quarter was neither asked nor given.'"[48]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...n_World_War_II

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It has been estimated that between 19,500 and 50,000 Japanese military personnel surrendered to Allied forces prior to the end of the Pacific War in August 1945.[1] The number of Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen who surrendered was limited by the Japanese military indoctrinating its personnel to fight to the death and Allied personnel often being unwilling to take prisoners.[2]

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Allied forces continued to kill Japanese personnel who were attempting to surrender throughout the war.[35] It is likely that more Japanese soldiers would have surrendered if they had not believed that they would be killed by the Allies while trying to do so.[36] Moreover, fear of being killed after surrendering was one of the main factors which influenced Japanese troops to fight to the death, and a wartime U.S. Office of Wartime Information report stated that it may have been more important than fear of disgrace and a desire to die for Japan.[37]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...anese_war_dead

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During World War II, some United States military personnel mutilated dead Japanese service personnel in the Pacific theater of operations. The mutilation of Japanese service personnel included the taking of body parts as “war souvenirs” and “war trophies”. Teeth were the most commonly taken objects, but skulls and other body parts were sometimes also collected. This behaviour was officially prohibited by the U.S. Military, but the prohibitions against it were not always enforced by officers in the field.

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Only a minority of US troops collected Japanese body parts as trophies, and it is not possible to determine the percentage who did. However "their behaviour reflected attitudes which were very widely shared."[3][4] In addition to trophy skulls, teeth, ears and other such objects, taken body parts were occasionally modified, for example by writing on them or fashioning them into utilities or other artifacts.[5] "U.S. Marines on their way to Guadalcanal relished the prospect of making necklaces of Japanese gold teeth and "pickling" Japanese ears as keepsakes."[6] In an air base in New Guinea hunting the last remaining Japanese was a “sort of hobby”. The leg-bones of these Japanese were sometimes carved into letter openers and pen-holders,[5] but this was rare.[3]

Eugene Sledge, private, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, also relates a few instances of fellow Marines extracting gold teeth from the Japanese dead. In one case, Sledge witnessed an extraction while the Japanese soldier was still alive. A Marine Sledge did not know drifted in after an engagement to take some "spoils." As the Marine drove his knife into the still live soldier, he was promptly shouted down by Sledge and others in Company K, and another Marine ran over and shot the wounded Japanese soldier. The Marine took his prize and drifted away, cursing the others for their humanity. (With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. p 120 )

In 1944 the American poet Winfield Townley Scott was working as a reporter in Rhode Island when a sailor displayed his skull trophy in the newspaper office. This led to the poem The U.S. sailor with the Japanese skull, which described one method for preparation of skulls (the head is skinned, towed in a net behind a ship to clean and polish it, and in the end scrubbed with caustic soda).[7]

In October 1943, the U.S. High Command expressed alarm over recent newspaper articles, for example one where a soldier made a string of beads using Japanese teeth, and another about a soldier with pictures showing the steps in preparing a skull, involving cooking and scraping of the Japanese heads.[7]

Charles Lindbergh refers in his diary to many instances of Japanese with an ear or nose cut off.[7] In the case of the skulls however, most were not collected from freshly killed Japanese; most came from already partially or fully skeletonised Japanese bodies

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Most U.S. servicemen in the Pacific did not mutilate Japanese corpses. The majority had some knowledge that these practices were occurring, however, and "accepted them as inevitable under the circumstances".[8] The incidence of soldiers collecting Japanese body parts occurred on "a scale large enough to concern the Allied military authorities throughout the conflict and was widely reported and commented on in the American and Japanese wartime press", however.[9] The degree of acceptance of the practice varied between units. Taking of teeth was generally accepted by enlisted men and also by officers, while acceptance for taking other body parts varied greatly.[3]

There is some disagreement between historians over what the more common forms of 'trophy hunting' undertaken by U.S. personnel were. John W. Dower states that ears were the most common form of trophy which was taken, and skulls and bones were less commonly collected. In particular he states that "skulls were not popular trophies" as they were difficult to carry and the process for removing the flesh was offensive.[10] This view is supported by Simon Harrison.[3] In contrast, Niall Ferguson states that "boiling the flesh off enemy [Japanese] skulls to make souvenirs was a not uncommon practice. Ears, bones and teeth were also collected".[11]

The collection of Japanese body parts began quite early in the campaign, prompting a September 1942 order for disciplinary action against such souvenir taking.[3] Harrison concludes that since this was the first real opportunity to take such items (the battle of Guadalcanal), "Clearly, the collection of body parts on a scale large enough to concern the military authorities had started as soon as the first living or dead Japanese bodies were encountered."[3] Eric Bergerud explains the attitudes which led to this behavior by noting that the Marines who fought on Guadalcanal were aware of Japanese atrocities against the defenders of Wake Island, which included the beheading of several Marines, and the Bataan Death March prior to the start of the campaign.[12] When Charles Lindbergh passed through customs at Hawaii in 1944, one of the customs declarations he was asked to make was whether or not he was carrying any bones. He was told after expressing some shock at the question that it had become a routine point.[13] This was because of the large number of souvenir bones discovered in customs, also including “green” (uncured) skulls.[14]

On February 1, 1943, Life magazine published a famous photograph by Ralph Morse which showed the charred, open-mouthed, decapitated head of a Japanese soldier killed by U.S Marines during the Guadalcanal campaign, and propped up below the gun turret of a tank by Marines. The caption read as follows: "A Japanese soldier's skull is propped up on a burned-out Jap tank by U.S. troops." Life received letters of protest from mothers who had sons in the war and others "in disbelief that American soldiers were capable of such brutality toward the enemy." The editors of Life explained that "war is unpleasant, cruel, and inhuman. And it is more dangerous to forget this than to be shocked by reminders."

In 1984 Japanese soldiers' remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands. Roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls.[14]

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And on and on and on...

Much better. :bow:

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According to James D. Morrow, "Death rates of POWs held is one measure of adherence to the standards of the treaties because substandard treatment leads to death of prisoners." The "democratic states generally provide good treatment of POWs".[64]

Death rates of POWs held by Axis powers

• Chinese POWs held by Japan: > 99%[citation needed] (only 56 survivors at the end of the war)[65]
• U.S. and British Commonwealth POWs held by Germany: ~4% [64]
• Soviet POWs held by Germany: 57.5% [66]
• Western Allied POWs held by Japan: 27% [67]

Death rates of POWs held by the Allies

• German POWs in East European (not including the Soviet Union) hands 32.9%[66]
• German soldiers held by Soviet Union: 15-33% (14.7% in The Dictators by Richard Overy, 35.8% in Ferguson[66])
• Japanese POWs held by Soviet Union: 10%
• German POWs in British hands 0.03%[66]
• German POWs in American hands 0.15%[66]
• German POWs in French hands 2.58%[66]
• Japanese POWs held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides according to James D. Morrow[68] or according to Ulrich Straus high as many prisoners were shot by front line troops.[44]
• Japanese POWs in Chinese hands. 24%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_...II#The_Pacific

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The pattern seems clear.

In every instance, the survival rate for Axis POW's in Allied hands is much, much higher than the reverse. Whether it be China - Japan, Germany - SU, or US/UK/France - Germany.

I've got mixed feelings here. PJ is an interesting member. Sometimes I worry about his motivations or prejudices, but he usually posts factual information and makes reasonable arguments. In spite of some asides, I have not got the impression in this thread that he is trying to argue that allied war crimes are as bad as axis ones, or that war crimes on the allied side make the allies as bad as the axis. He may think this himself (I'm not rightly sure), but regardless, he's made some assertions in this thread that are worth critical consideration, and should not be dismissed based on ideas of his possible intentions. We do not have to grant Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan any absolution in recognizing the existence of allied atrocities. To refuse to consider allied war crimes would be intellectually dishonest.

Ajax

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

The pattern seems clear.

In every instance, the survival rate for Axis POW's in Allied hands is much, much higher than the reverse. Whether it be China - Japan, Germany - SU, or US/UK/France - Germany.

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Louis, your own quote seems to betray the point you are trying to make.

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Japanese POWs held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides according to James D. Morrow[68] or according to Ulrich Straus high as many prisoners were shot by front line troops.[44]

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Allow me to re-quote.

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American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[39] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[32] According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.[40] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[41] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[42]

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Why is it so difficult to accept that both sides practiced dehumanization and their conduct in the war reflected that? For the Germans, it was the Eastern Peoples, for the Western Allies, it was the Japanese. For the Japanese, it was everyone. When the Germans and the Western Allies fought, it was generally far more civil because they saw each other as human. Interestingly, the Nazi dehumanization was a top-down campaign to induce cruel attitudes and hatred in their soldiers, while the Allied racism came directly from the people and was - at least on paper - frowned upon by at least some of the military and civilian higher-ups, like when Roosevelt sent back an envelope opener given to him by a congressman that was made from a Japanese shin bone.

I don't doubt that the US servicemen took some liberties in the Pacific. Much if this was due to the actions of the Japanese themselves (Pearl, Bataan, Nanking, etc.), which fed the US propaganda machine, and the IJA's Senginkun code which made taking prisoners a dicey prospect at best. The Japanese also lied about following the Geneva conventions on POWs (even though they did not ratify the treaty, they still said they would abide by it). All in all, a vicious fight, fought by different cultures, with less attention in theater than the fight in Europe.

The problem with Panzer's argument is both the scale factor, and the victims. The Axis is responsible for many more atrocities, and these were largely targeted against civilians. The atrocities of the Allies were largely targeted against the enemy combatants.

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Originally Posted by drone

I don't doubt that the US servicemen took some liberties in the Pacific. Much if this was due to the actions of the Japanese themselves (Pearl, Bataan, Nanking, etc.), which fed the US propaganda machine, and the IJA's Senginkun code which made taking prisoners a dicey prospect at best. The Japanese also lied about following the Geneva conventions on POWs (even though they did not ratify the treaty, they still said they would abide by it). All in all, a vicious fight, fought by different cultures, with less attention in theater than the fight in Europe.

The problem with Panzer's argument is both the scale factor, and the victims. The Axis is responsible for many more atrocities, and these were largely targeted against civilians. The atrocities of the Allies were largely targeted against the enemy combatants.

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Read descriptions of the London Cage. The read descriptions of Mengele's and Unit 731's activities. Then find somewhere to vomit. Read PJ's comparison of the London Cage with those Axis butchers. Then vomit again. The greatest Allied atrocity of WW2 was the decision not to prosecute Shiro Ishii.

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

Read descriptions of the London Cage. The read descriptions of Mengele's and Unit 731's activities. Then find somewhere to vomit. Read PJ's comparison of the London Cage with those Axis butchers. Then vomit again. The greatest Allied atrocity of WW2 was the decision not to prosecute Shiro Ishii.

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I'm quite aware of how ridiculous that claim was. We did worse at Abu Ghraib.

This thread is about Allied war crimes. Did some Allied soldiers torture or shoot prisoners? I don't think that can be denied. But PJ seems to be playing loose and fast with the numbers in an attempt to... what? He hasn't really come up with solid numbers for his claims, the wiki quotes are anecdotal at best. The important questions are: how prevalent were these crimes, and to what extent were they accepted within the chain of command? Comparisons to Axis crimes are meaningless, because there is no comparison.

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Originally Posted by drone

I'm quite aware of how ridiculous that claim was. We did worse at Abu Ghraib.

This thread is about Allied war crimes. Did some Allied soldiers torture or shoot prisoners? I don't think that can be denied. But PJ seems to be playing loose and fast with the numbers in an attempt to... what? He hasn't really come up with solid numbers for his claims, the wiki quotes are anecdotal at best. The important questions are: how prevalent were these crimes, and to what extent were they accepted within the chain of command? Comparisons to Axis crimes are meaningless, because there is no comparison.

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This thread struck a nerve because at TWC there was a thread showing North Korean propaganda pictures of US soldiers bayoneting helpless Korean civilians. That made me think of accounts of US soldiers pleading with Japanese civilians not to jump off cliffs, children in their arms. On the ground at least, the western Allies were probably the most humane army of that size ever to have existed, and by extension, the Americans the most humane hegemon there has ever been. The isolated cases are absolutely nothing in the wider context of history. The subject may be of academic interest, but when it's used to whitewash the activities of the Axis in comparison, it offends me.

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Originally Posted by drone

. But PJ seems to be playing loose and fast with the numbers

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I resent this, far more than the juvenile accusations of Nazi apologism and other hostility expressed toward me in this thread. I understand that it is easier to malign my intentions than accept reality; however, I do present factual information.

You were correct in your earlier post to remind me that the burden of proof, as it was, rested with me. I assumed that this information was common knowledge. It has been widely discussed on the WW2 forums I frequent and I have read about it often in books and articles on the subject. Tom Hanks has even been discussing it in relation to his new mini series on HBO. However, the information has apparently not filtered down to those who do not study the war.

I posted several well-sourced wiki entries as well as hard copy sources all highlighting the fact that there was widespread refusal to take prisoners, killing of those who did manage to surrender, and mutilization of Japanese soldiers. I can post plenty more if you'd like. The US military's own correspondence explicitly acknowledges the widespread nature of these practices, as do the films shown to soldiers imploring them not to kill surrendering Japanese. You want hard numbers? How about the fact that there were only 604 Japanese POWs in Allied hands in October of 1944. What about these historian's research do you dispute? How am I distorting it?

Now, if you and Pan want to bury your heads in the sand and talk of "isolated incidents" and how humane the US military was in the Pacific, that is your prerogative; but please don't act as though historical consensus favors that position. I've done all I can do.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

And sure enough, a simple perusal of the footnotes to that chart shows that counted in "Allied Civilian Deaths" include millions who died in ways that are somewhat difficult to blame on the Axis. Here are some of my favorites:

-famine in unoccupied zones
-disease in unoccupied zones

-French killed during Allied air raids

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I hold the Nazis responsible for all of these.

When the nazis hide in a French city to prevent any allied bombing of their position, I place full blame on the nazis. Allied mistakes that were made are the ultimate responsibility of Berlin too. One can argue about the wisdom of bombing mediaeval Caen...
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Charnwood
http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/20...ime-de-guerre/)

...but at the end of the argument, the Nazis had no business being there in the first place. The allies, French and otherwise, had a moral greenlight to kick them out. This greenlight sits somewhere between the equally preposterous 'destroying and killing the whole of France', and 'enormous allied casualties to save a two French roosters and a wooden shack'. At the final balance, I think the allies did alright, really.


As for famine and disease in unoccupied zones of French territories, I place full blame on the Axis powers too.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

I hold the Nazis responsible for all of these.

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You're missing the point. He posted that graphic to illustrate how many more civilians the Axis countries directly killed than the Allies. However, the chart is full of Allied (and presumably Axis) civilian deaths that were not intentionally inflicted by their respective enemies. If he had said, "the Axis and Russians started the war, and are thus ostensibly responsible for all civilian deaths that occured during the war" there would not be an issue. However, he was taking a more nuanced position that the graph did not represent.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Now, if you and Pan want to bury your heads in the sand and talk of "isolated incidents" and how humane the US military was in the Pacific, that is your prerogative; but please don't act as though historical consensus favors that position. I've done all I can do.

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I'm not burying my head in the sand, I would like to know the truth. Those wiki articles have lots of examples of war crimes and trophy hunting, but they are light on the detail of how widespread the acts were. I'm not doubting that they happened, I'm just not clear of the extent. And I'm fairly certain they pale in comparison to the actions of the IJA.

Regarding the lack of Japanese POWs, like I said before, the fault lies on both sides. The reputation and the IJA's official code of military conduct meant the Allied forces would have to treat "surrendering" combatants with extreme caution. The Japanese themselves did not care about their own troops that surrendered. What percentage of potential POWs were killed as a result of Senjinkun, and what percentage were just killed out of hand by Allied troops? Unfortunately, it's unlikely we will ever know the answer to this.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

You're missing the point. He posted that graphic to illustrate how many more civilians the Axis countries directly killed than the Allies. However, the chart is full of Allied (and presumably Axis) civilian deaths that were not intentionally inflicted by their respective enemies.

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No, you missed the point. The graph says WW2 casualties not civilians directly killed. Now, I posted it to give an impression of a huge disrepancy between Allied and Axis civlian casualties. I'm fully aware that graph isn't 100% accurate but even with taking everything you said into account, it doesn't change the ratio that much, therefore it was accurate enough for the point I was trying to make.

Also, you said Can you expand on this a bit in regard to the Soviets? I'm trying to think of the worst things the Nazis did off the top of my head, and everything I can think of was either comparably duplicated by the Soviets or even worse. and American soldiers were just as bad as the Japanese.

That's two major axis and two major allies and you're saying that Soviets were just as bad, or even worse than the nazis and that Americans were just as bad, or even worse, than the Japanese. It doesn't take a huge leap of faith to see that this is basically saying Allies were just as bad, or even worse than the Axis - which is what I'm arguing. I'm not arguing that Americans, Soviets... didn't commit crimes, there is substantial proof that they did, I'm not disputing that, it's just that figures don't add up if you say they were just as bad as the Germans or Japanese.

So, if you want to discuss Allied crimes, as far as I'm concerned, go for it. I'd like to read more about it, but when you put "=" between Allies and Axis, we're gonna have a problem.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Not true. The Marines [...] put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war.

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You post unsupported tripe like this, and you wonder why this thread is an explosion of hostility toward your position? Good lord, man. It's one thing to point out that some Marines committed war crimes, it's quite another to equate their behavior with that of the Japanese Empire.

Out of curiosity, based on your history of posting, why is equating the behavior of Axis and Allied soldiers such a consistent PJ theme? Did you have a great-grandfather in the Wehrmacht or something? The way this keeps coming up, it seems as though there's some sort of personal motive.

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

No, you missed the point. The graph says WW2 casualties not civilians directly killed. Now, I posted it to give an impression of a huge disrepancy between Allied and Axis civlian casualties. I'm fully aware that graph isn't 100% accurate but even with taking everything you said into account, it doesn't change the ratio that much, therefore it was accurate enough for the point I was trying to make.

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And 2+2=5.... or close enough. I'm sorry, that's just sloppy, misleading, and over-inflates your point.

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That's two major axis and two major allies and you're saying that Soviets were just as bad, or even worse than the nazis and that Americans were just as bad, or even worse, than the Japanese. It doesn't take a huge leap of faith to see that this is basically saying Allies were just as bad, or even worse than the Axis - which is what I'm arguing. I'm not arguing that Americans, Soviets... didn't commit crimes, there is substantial proof that they did, I'm not disputing that, it's just that figures don't add up if you say they were just as bad as the Germans or Japanese.

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This, I think, strikes at the heart of the disagreement. You and the others are taking solace in the fact that the Allies killed less than the Axis. As I've said and re-quoted over and over, I don't disagree. I just don't quantify morality through body counts. Is a man who kills 5 people worse than one who kills 3? Does the fact that Stalin's final body count is some x millions more than Hitler's make him a slightly worse person? Does your equation mean that Mao was the worst person in the world? Certainly the outcome is worse, but does it really take slightly more moral depravity to kill x than y. I think not. Once that line is crossed, once you begin to see people as disposable, body counts are just a function of the amount of power a person wields and how long they are allowed to continue killing.

I judge morality, who was "worse" if you will, based on the depths that the government and people are willing to sink to. It is obvious that the Russians, like the Nazis, had no problem with launching wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and internal repression. The Western Allies were certainly different from the Nazis and the Soviets, but it is also clear that they engaged in the same kind of dehumanization and illegal war practices that the Nazis did in the East, as much as some here want to put their fingers in their ears and hum the Star Spangled Banner. I guess it's just a subjective measurement.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

You post unsupported tripe like this, and you wonder why this thread is an explosion of hostility toward your position? Good lord, man. It's one thing to point out that some Marines committed war crimes, it's quite another to equate their behavior with that of the Japanese Empire.

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Unsupported tripe? I feel like I've stumbled on to StormFront or something. "They changed the Auschwitz sign from saying 4 million were killed to 1 million, therefore if they can overestimate the numbers by 3 million then they don't really know, therefore it didn't happen!!1" The denial is thick. Have you read anything, anything at all, on the subject? Have you read the US military's own correspondence on the issue?

“You and Brenus seem to know more about my intentions than I do.”
I just read your posts. You are always trying to equal Allies war crimes with Nazi Genocide.
I do not know you intention and in fact I do appreciate your post in term of History.
However, one fundamental in History is to analyze texts in the context and to question who wrote what, to whom and for which purpose.
Your apparent will to equal Nazism with Communism lead me to conclude it is a political issue.
You are not alone in this trend as Poland just passed a motion stating this.

“I just don't quantify morality through body counts. Is a man who kills 5 people worse than one who kills 3?” Nor I do. So to built Extermination camps in order to kill human being just in denying them humanity is worst than to created harsh work camps.
The ideology qualifies for the morality. Japanese and Nazi Germany were based on racism.
The others criminals as Stalin and Mao killed who challenged or were perceived as a potential dangers without race discrimination and that is why they are dictators.
It is said that Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler, due to the length of time of his dictatorship…

You were not without noticing that for the Gulag and Kolyma link, no figures are really given for 1932 to 1954.
The fact that there were still prisoners to grant an amnesty is something that couldn’t happened in Sobibor or Treblinka…
From your source: “The Kolyma authority, which was reorganised in 1958/59 (31 December 1958), finally closed in 1968. However the mining activities did not stop. Indeed, government structures still exist today under the Ministry of Natural Resources. In some cases, the same individuals seem to have stayed on over the years under new management.”
Hardly imaginable in Auschwitz/Birkenau isn’t it?

“Why is it so difficult to accept that both sides practiced dehumanization and their conduct in the war reflected that? For the Germans, it was the Eastern Peoples, for the Western Allies, it was the Japanese.”
I do agree that the US war propaganda was a bit racist against the Japanese. However, if you just consider how the Japanese treated the Asian Countries they “liberated” (2.000.000 dead just for Vietnam thanks to the razzia on rice) and how the US treated Japan…
Some US soldiers commited war crimes and did collect bones, and gold teeth etc. Now it was not a governmental request/duties as in Nazi Germany Camps.
Some did try to save the women jumping with their babies as well.
Some risk their lives to save injured Japanese even if the risk of a grenade explosion was not to underestimate…
This can’t be said for the Japanese side.

Just read about what happened to the French garrisons of Langson or Dong Dang..

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Unsupported tripe?

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Indeed.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

I feel like I've stumbled on to StormFront or something.

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The difference being that white supremacists, much like truthers, birthers and tinfoil-hat wearers of all stripes, stake out a position that is contrary to consensual history. So they have rather a lot more to prove. Analogy: If I assert that gravity exists, there is no overwhelming obligation for me to prove this assertion, as it is in line with just about every respectable physicist. If I assert that gravity does not exist, I have my work cut out for me.

You are the one staking out a minority viewpoint, i.e., that the behavior of the United States Marines was somehow equivalent to the worst excesses of the Japanese Empire. When you make that assertion, you have a lot of work to do, and those telling you to your face that your ideas are nuttier than a granola bar are not out of line.

And even though your motives are entirely salient, you skitter away from addressing them. Again, why is this dubious point so important to you?

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

I judge morality, who was "worse" if you will, based on the depths that the government and people are willing to sink to. It is obvious that the Russians, like the Nazis, had no problem with launching wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and internal repression. The Western Allies were certainly different from the Nazis and the Soviets, but it is also clear that they engaged in the same kind of dehumanization and illegal war practices that the Nazis did in the East, as much as some here want to put their fingers in their ears and hum the Star Spangled Banner. I guess it's just a subjective measurement.

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I'm sympathetic to this view right up to the part about Germany on the Eastern front. The Germans were conducting a race war, a war of extermination - not just for the Jews, but to get the inferior Slavs out of the picture. It was far more systematic and intentional than simply shooting POWs because they're Asian. The goal of the war in the Pacific wasn't to clear out all the locals, and I don't think you've shown that the American high command issued orders that POWs should be shot. American massacres of POWs are obviously horrible and possibly (maybe even probably) racially oriented, but they were standard operating practices (or at least not as you've demonstrated).

If you want to make the case that the US was fighting a war of extermination in the Pacific, and you come up with evidence to back that up then maybe you could call the sides somewhat equivalent. But I don't see that from what you've posted.

I think in this PJ your position is untenable. Crimes happen in wars, but there is no proof of systematic murder some axis countries involved themselves from Western Allied. Soviets are another story. Hell even Finland was involved in deaths of Soviet civilians, since great many of them that had been put in refugee camps, plus prison camps died in starvation during winters of 1941-2 simply because of failed harvest Finland couldnt even feed her own population and was reliant on German shipping of foodstuff. War is full of crimes and tragedies. But the systematic slaughter Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan engaged was one of a kind.

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“I just don't quantify morality through body counts. Is a man who kills 5 people worse than one who kills 3?”

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I do. reasons FOR killing people can make all the difference

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Originally Posted by Brenus

I just read your posts. You are always trying to equal Allies war crimes with Nazi Genocide.
I do not know you intention and in fact I do appreciate your post in term of History.
However, one fundamental in History is to analyze texts in the context and to question who wrote what, to whom and for which purpose.
Your apparent will to equal Nazism with Communism lead me to conclude it is a political issue.
You are not alone in this trend as Poland just passed a motion stating this.

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You're mixing threads now, and making this about me and my motivations instead of the issues.

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Nor I do. So to built Extermination camps in order to kill human being just in denying them humanity is worst than to created harsh work camps.
The ideology qualifies for the morality. Japanese and Nazi Germany were based on racism.
The others criminals as Stalin and Mao killed who challenged or were perceived as a potential dangers without race discrimination and that is why they are dictators.
It is said that Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler, due to the length of time of his dictatorship…

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First of all, I'm not sure killing innocents based on race is somehow worse than killing based on any other pretext. Was the elimination of the Kulaks somehow morally superior to the ideology behind the Holocaust because it was based on a social class instead of a racial group?

Second, your point is somewhat undercut due to the fact that Stalin did indeed target a multitude of ethnic subgroups in Russia, exterminating some completely.

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Originally Posted by Brenus

The fact that there were still prisoners to grant an amnesty is something that couldn’t happened in Sobibor or Treblinka…

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This is more of a structural distinction than a moral one. The Nazis had concentration camps and then later separate extermination camps. People were released from the concentration camps up until the war started. In Russia, everyone got sent to the Gulags - common criminals, political dissidents, targeted groups, etc. That doesn't mean that those that were marked for death received anything but.

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Originally Posted by Brenus

This can’t be said for the Japanese side.

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That’s not true. There are certainly stories of compassionate Japanese soldiers, some of them risking severe punishment to help POWs and civilians. If we’re going to use stories of Americans begging people not to jump off cliffs to exonerate them from the endemic racism and war crimes they engaged in, the same standard must be applied to all sides.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Indeed.

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You've got some reading to do, sir. As they say, you can lead a horse to the well, but you can't make him drink. I can guide you toward the truth by posting multiple well-sourced wikis and hard copy sources all supporting the fact that dehumanization, refusal to take prisoners, and mutilization were endemic among Allied forces in the Pacific, but I cannot hold your hand and walk you to the library to do the research yourself.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

You are the one staking out a minority viewpoint, i.e., that the behavior of the United States Marines was somehow equivalent to the worst excesses of the Japanese Empire. When you make that assertion, you have a lot of work to do, and those telling you to your face that your ideas are nuttier than a granola bar are not out of line.

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Well, we need to separate the discussion over the objective facts from the discussion of my subjective opinion.

Some people dispute the widespread nature of the atrocities committed by American forces. I think the research I've highlighted speaks for itself.

You seem to be disputing my subjective opinion that the moral depravity of the US forces was equivalent or worse than that of the Japanese. In this regard, I would place the "excesses" of the Marines on the same level as those of the Japanese. I'm not aware of Hirohito ever receiving any gifts made out of Americans, although I cannot be certain without further research.

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And even though your motives are entirely salient, you skitter away from addressing them. Again, why is this dubious point so important to you?

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From your Backroom contributions, I have noted that your standard operating procedure is to paint people in to boxes and then dismiss their comments outright. "Coming from a guy who is an admitted fan of Sarah Palin, anything you say must be stupid..." and so on.

My beliefs, motivations, etc. are not germane to the discussion.

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Originally Posted by Alexander

I'm sympathetic to this view right up to the part about Germany on the Eastern front. The Germans were conducting a race war, a war of extermination - not just for the Jews, but to get the inferior Slavs out of the picture. It was far more systematic and intentional than simply shooting POWs because they're Asian. The goal of the war in the Pacific wasn't to clear out all the locals, and I don't think you've shown that the American high command issued orders that POWs should be shot. American massacres of POWs are obviously horrible and possibly (maybe even probably) racially oriented, but they were standard operating practices (or at least not as you've demonstrated).

If you want to make the case that the US was fighting a war of extermination in the Pacific, and you come up with evidence to back that up then maybe you could call the sides somewhat equivalent. But I don't see that from what you've posted.

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As I said in the quote, there is certainly a significant moral distinction between the motivations of the German, Russian and Japanese leadership and those of the Western Allies. As you correctly note, the Nazis and Japanese, to a lesser extent, sought extermination, while the Allied leadership did not. I'm not arguing that.

What I am arguing is that the conduct of the US military forces in the Pacific sunk to the depths of that of the Germans in the East and the Japanese in China, etc; that there was the same belief in racial superiority, dehumanization, and related atrocities committed on the same scale, ie., not "isolated incidents".

In essence, FDR was no Tojo, but the similarities between the Japanese Marines and American Marines, on a moral level, are far closer.

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Originally Posted by Kag

I think in this PJ your position is untenable.

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I think you misunderstand my position. See my response to Alexander the Pretty Good.

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My beliefs, motivations, etc are not germane to the discussion.

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HAHAHAHAAHAHA

Intentional???

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

HAHAHAHAAHAHA

Intentional???

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Can you please explain what you mean?

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Can you please explain what you mean?

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lol read what i said we are talking about axis allies here no? you had a bit of an unintentional pun i presume. dont get your panties in a bunch :wink:

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

lol read what i said we are talking about axis allies here no? you had a bit of an unintentional pun i presume. dont get your panties in a bunch :wink:

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Oh, my panties are unwound and fitting comfortably; I just don't understand. Not your fault, I'm sure, as I can be pretty dense. :yes:

we are talknig about the axis and allies of world war two and you said your

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beliefs, motivations, etc. are not germane to the discussion

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funny because its what everyone is accusing you of.

ahhhh not that funny i got a chuckle though.

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

we are talknig about the axis and allies of world war two and you said your

funny because its what everyone is accusing you of.

ahhhh not that funny i got a chuckle though.

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Ahh, I gotcha. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

And 2+2=5.... or close enough. I'm sorry, that's just sloppy, misleading, and over-inflates your point.

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In a way, yes. When I know that X is in the range of 1-5 and Y is in the range of 500-1000, I have no troubles claiming Y is bigger than X. Whether it is 500 or 750 or 1000, it is bigger and by a big margin and my point stands.

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This, I think, strikes at the heart of the disagreement. You and the others are taking solace in the fact that the Allies killed less than the Axis. As I've said and re-quoted over and over, I don't disagree. I just don't quantify morality through body counts. Is a man who kills 5 people worse than one who kills 3? Does the fact that Stalin's final body count is some x millions more than Hitler's make him a slightly worse person? Does your equation mean that Mao was the worst person in the world? Certainly the outcome is worse, but does it really take slightly more moral depravity to kill x than y. I think not. Once that line is crossed, once you begin to see people as disposable, body counts are just a function of the amount of power a person wields and how long they are allowed to continue killing.

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That's not the half it. Nazism was an evil ideology based on racism and total contempt for human life that treated various people as vermin, rats and sub-humans, fit only to be exterminated or to be slaves. That ideology got a hold of a powerful country and managed to act on it. Had it been succesful, the world would have been a terrible place to live. Allies on the other hand, with all their quirks and flaws, were fighting a defensive war for the defeat of that ideology, and after that ideology had been defeated, Allies didn't take vengeance but had rebuilt Germany and Japan and allowed them to take their place in the world as influental and successful nations. That is not what would have happened had the Axis won the war. In the process of defeating that evil ideology, Allies also committed far less war crimes and killed far less innocent civilians.

I can not equate Allies with the Axis, unless it is proved to me that Allies started an aggressive war, whose goal was territorial expansion and extermination and enslavement of millions.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

What I am arguing is that the conduct of the US military forces in the Pacific sunk to the depths of that of the Germans in the East and the Japanese in China, etc; that there was the same belief in racial superiority, dehumanization, and related atrocities committed on the same scale, ie., not "isolated incidents".

In essence, FDR was no Tojo, but the similarities between the Japanese Marines and American Marines, on a moral level, are far closer.

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You have avoided addressing my two points on this.

One (POWs), that fate of "surrendering" Japanese troops is largely due to the IJA's official stance on surrender, and the false promises of adhering to the Genevea conventions regarding Allied POWs. Not an excuse, but an understandable result. How were Japanese POWs treated once they were processed and away from the combat zones? How were Allied POWs treated in the same situation?

Two (civilians), that while Allied POWs were subjected to illegal treatment, the war crimes committed against civilians by the Japanese forces were worse, and on a far grander scale, than anything the Allied troops can be accused of.

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

In a way, yes. When I know that X is in the range of 1-5 and Y is in the range of 500-1000, I have no troubles claiming Y is bigger than X. Whether it is 500 or 750 or 1000, it is bigger and by a big margin and my point stands.

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Your attempts to retroactively justify the use of that graphic are undercut by the unfortunate fact that it inflates your point by millions of people, which is neither a small number on its face nor a statistically insignificant figure in relation to the chart. Sloppy and inaccurate.

And I'm not even challenging counting the Soviets with the Allies, which is questionable at best as they were just as responsible as Germany for starting the war and then went on to launch their own expansionist war against Finland. Only circumstance eventually forced them on to the Allied side, not any sort of idealogical similarities.

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That's not the half it. Nazism was an evil ideology based on racism and total contempt for human life that treated various people as vermin, rats and sub-humans, fit only to be exterminated or to be slaves. That ideology got a hold of a powerful country and managed to act on it. Had it been succesful, the world would have been a terrible place to live. Allies on the other hand, with all their quirks and flaws, were fighting a defensive war for the defeat of that ideology, and after that ideology had been defeated, Allies didn't take vengeance but had rebuilt Germany and Japan and allowed them to take their place in the world as influental and successful nations. That is not what would have happened had the Axis won the war. In the process of defeating that evil ideology, Allies also committed far less war crimes and killed far less innocent civilians.

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First of all, historical supposition has no place in this thread. We don't know what the world would have looked like had the Axis won. I could say, with some degree of historical evidence, that Stalin would have overrun Europe both in late 1941 or early 1942 had the Germans not invaded and again in 1945 had the US not used nuclear weapons. And...? Second, Germany and Japan were rebuilt for a very specific purpose, not out of some altruistic Allied intentions.

Other than that, you've got no arguments from me. Nobody is arguing that Nazism was about peace, love, and dandelions.

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I can not equate Allies with the Axis, unless it is proved to me that Allies started an aggressive war, whose goal was territorial expansion and extermination and enslavement of millions.

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I feel like we've come full circle. Again I must ask, don't you think you should separate the Western Allies from the Soviets?

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Originally Posted by Drone

You have avoided addressing my two points on this.

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I have not avoided your points. They have been noted and I think addressed in earlier posts. I can only continue to repeat my points to a certain extent before monotony ensues.

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One (POWs), that fate of "surrendering" Japanese troops is largely due to the IJA's official stance on surrender, and the false promises of adhering to the Genevea conventions regarding Allied POWs. Not an excuse, but an understandable result.

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The research seems to indicate otherwise, that racial superiority and dehumanization of the Japanese lead to widespread refusal to take prisoners from the start, which did not happen in Europe. As you said, though, there really is no excuse.

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How were Japanese POWs treated once they were processed and away from the combat zones?

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You mean those 600 hundred who survived to get there by '44? I'm not sure you're making the point that you intended.

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Two (civilians), that while Allied POWs were subjected to illegal treatment, the war crimes committed against civilians by the Japanese forces were worse, and on a far grander scale, than anything the Allied troops can be accused of.

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Well, I have already touched on one mass rape by American forces and there are others, but yes, the war ended before Japan proper was invaded.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The research seems to indicate otherwise, that racial superiority and dehumanization of the Japanese lead to widespread refusal to take prisoners from the start, which did not happen in Europe. As you said, though, there really is no excuse.

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And the fact that IJA troops wouldn't surrender as a general rule, or would fake a surrender for an ambush, etc. You are glossing over the fact that the command structure wanted POWs, for intelligence and propaganda. Prisoner execution was not condoned, if anything the propaganda machine was too effective in this case. The same cannot be said within the IJA. Given the nature of the fighting, I'm certain Marines shot surrendering Japanese troops. In some circumstances, these actions would be understandable, if not excusable. In other circumstances, an outright war crime. The scale of the latter is still in question.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

You mean those 600 hundred who survived to get there by '44? I'm not sure you're making the point that you intended.

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Those, and the ~40-50k taken before the end of hostilities. When you say "by '44" are you talking '41-43, or including '44? Wiki has 921 POWs at Saipan (1944) alone. The Marines didn't have a chance to start taking prisoners until, what, Guadalcanal, and didn't really get moving until 1944, after sorting out their island assault issues from Tarawa. Again, how were the processed Japanese POWs treated, compared to the Allied POWs?

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Well, I have already touched on one mass rape by American forces and there are others, but yes, the war ended before Japan proper was invaded.

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So Hiroshima/Nagasaki saved the Japanese from the predations of American forces? ~;)

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war.

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You still have yet to justify this claim. It fails on both acts and scale.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

I'm not really sure what to make of that other than a strong suspicion that you didn't read my post thoroughly. It may be a daisy emoticon too far for me.

Let me ask you if you believe civilian deaths caused by the conflict between the various Chinese factions, which ran into the millions, should be attributable to the Axis?

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Don't try to change the subject. Fact is, war-related famine in a country that is the victim of aggression by another is the fault of the latter. This is undeniable, and I see you've wisely chosen to stop trying to deny it.

As for the victims of Chinese civil war being included in the number of victims of the Japanese invasion and occupation: I really, really doubt that takes place anywhere except the official PRC history of the war (and maybe the ROC version, too). But academic studies on the subject? Don't think so.

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Originally Posted by PJ

Those that were shot before they were torn limb from limb were the lucky ones. Again, I'm waiting for you to disprove what I said. You'll need a little more than hysterics to do that.

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You may notice, if you read my post, that I said nothing regarding the veracity of your claim about U.S. war crimes. All I did was ridicule the assumption that the war crimes carried out by individual Marines or even units of Marines can somehow, in any way, equal a crime on the sheer scale of the Rape of Nanjing.

The point is really that you're trying to morally equate the Allies with the Axis on false grounds. The two are so far apart in number and scale of crimes that it isn't even funny. Just take one look at Louis's post. It would have ended this thread, if you had had the courage to simply distance yourself from the ridiculous claims you're making.

EDIT: I mean, all I really have to do to put your utter nonsense to rest is quote from one of your own posts:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The US military's own correspondence explicitly acknowledges the widespread nature of these practices, as do the films shown to soldiers imploring them not to kill surrendering Japanese.

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The U.S. Armed Forces made movies to dissuade its own troops from killing surrendering members of the enemy. What more proof do you need that you are trying to compare incidents to policy of the highest order? What next, PJ? Are you gonna tell us that Goebbels and the Japanese made movies telling their soldiers not to kill the Jewish pest and Slavic Untermensch, or the inferior Chinese? :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

We are talking about the south not the north. The north was constantly drafting and conscripted soldiers, most southern men signed up right off the bat except for the rich. The men who fought the war for the south were poor Scots-Irish from the Appalachian mountains for the most part.

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No, I responded to A Very Super Market talking about the motivations of Northern soldiers.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Your attempts to retroactively justify the use of that graphic are undercut by the unfortunate fact that it inflates your point by millions of people, which is neither a small number on its face nor a statistically insignificant figure in relation to the chart. Sloppy and inaccurate.

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Still doesn't change the point. Take away those millions and still a huge difference remain.

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And I'm not even challenging counting the Soviets with the Allies, which is questionable at best as they were just as responsible as Germany for starting the war and then went on to launch their own expansionist war against Finland. Only circumstance eventually forced them on to the Allied side, not any sort of idealogical similarities.

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Debatable, but that's for another thread.

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Other than that, you've got no arguments from me. Nobody is arguing that Nazism was about peace, love, and dandelions.

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Unfortunately, it seems you do. Ok, you say that it wasn't your intention to equate Axis and Allies, I'll accept that and let it rest, we're really not getting anywhere. It's just that it wasn't only my impression but pretty much everyone involved in the discussion got the same impression. So, if that wasn't your intention, maybe you should worry about how you're coming off.

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Originally Posted by drone

You still have yet to justify this claim. It fails on both acts and scale.

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On the contrary, the research indicates that racism, dehumanization, refusal to take prisoners, executions, mass rapes and mutilazation were common and widespread among US forces in the Pacific. Maybe it would be helpful if you told me what you feel the Japanese did that sinks to an even lower moral level.

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

The U.S. Armed Forces made movies to dissuade its own troops from killing surrendering members of the enemy. What more proof do you need that you are trying to compare incidents to policy of the highest order? What next, PJ? Are you gonna tell us that Goebbels and the Japanese made movies telling their soldiers not to kill the Jewish pest and Slavic Untermensch, or the inferior Chinese?

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You are making my point for me.

German soldiers, for example, were compelled to commit atrocities through a carrot and stick approach by the top Nazi leadership. First, they were force-fed a daily diet of propaganda that dehumanized the Eastern peoples and justified German manifest destiny. Hitler himself used all his charismatic might to fill them with feelings of racial superiority and talk of "subhumans" and "vermin". They were given every excuse in the book from their leaders to justify their actions from the fight against bolshevism to the need for German living space. When encouragement wasn't enough, they used punishment. Those German soldiers who refused orders could expect a wide range of reprisals. They could only hope to be sent to a harsh front, and not wind up in a concentration camp themselves. Still, the Nazi leadership felt the need to continually sanatize their genocide. IIRC, by the time Treblinka was set up, no more than 50 or 100 Germans ever worked there at one time.

American soldiers, on the other hand, had no such encouragement. IIRC, FDR never denigrated the Japanese on a racial basis, and soldiers committing atrocities could technically be charged - although the vast majority of officers looked the other way, if they didn't support it outright. As I pointed out, the military even made an effort to increase live prisoner taking, for intelligence purposes. Despite all that, American soldiers engaged in racism, dehumanization, and atrocities on a wide scale. American culture - from Time Magazine to Hollywood - relished in the same type of racism that Goebbels worked so hard to foster. Unlike the top-down nature of the war crimes committed by the Axis dictatorships, these American war crimes were cultivated from the bottom. American soldiers needed no carrots or sticks to boil the flesh off of Japanese skulls and send them home to their girlfriends, such behavior just came naturally to them.

This is why body counts are not the best context in which to judge morality.

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Originally Posted by Sarmation

Unfortunately, it seems you do. Ok, you say that it wasn't your intention to equate Axis and Allies, I'll accept that and let it rest, we're really not getting anywhere. It's just that it wasn't only my impression but pretty much everyone involved in the discussion got the same impression. So, if that wasn't your intention, maybe you should worry about how you're coming off.

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I long ago stopped bothering. My perspective on the war is not aligned with the black/white, good/evil narrative that has emerged, and any deviation from said narrative usually yields hostility.

As for this discussion, it is all just an intellectual exercise for me. I am not of the belief that we should apply 2010 moral norms to people who lived in 1940. It has been interesting to challenge some established perceptions, and I do think I have opened some people's eyes to elements of history that they may not have known about before, so it has not all been for naught.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

German soldiers, for example, were compelled to commit atrocities through a carrot and stick approach by the top Nazi leadership. First, they were force-fed a daily diet of propaganda that dehumanized the Eastern peoples and justified German manifest destiny. Hitler himself used all his charismatic might to fill them with feelings of racial superiority and talk of "subhumans" and "vermin". They were given every excuse in the book from their leaders to justify their actions from the fight against bolshevism to the need for German living space. When encouragement wasn't enough, they used punishment. Those German soldiers who refused orders could expect a wide range of reprisals. They could only hope to be sent to a harsh front, and not wind up in a concentration camp themselves. Still, the Nazi leadership felt the need to continually sanatize their genocide. IIRC, by the time Treblinka was set up, no more than 50 or 100 Germans ever worked there at one time.

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That's quite the contrary position to develop - that the Germans wouldn't have committed atrocities without being poked by their commanding officers. The Germans basically agreed with the Nazis and weren't troubled at all by the "purge the Jews" business - which was no Nazi secret. And how many German soldiers were actually punished for refusing to participate in the race war on the Eastern Front? It's a pretty small figure, and the book discussed here a few months ago found just one corporal, who was executed for hiding Jews (and having more courage than the entire Wehrmacht put together).

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

American soldiers, on the other hand, had no such encouragement. IIRC, FDR never denigrated the Japanese on a racial basis, and soldiers committing atrocities could technically be charged - although the vast majority of officers looked the other way, if they didn't support it outright. As I pointed out, the military even made an effort to increase live prisoner taking, for intelligence purposes. Despite all that, American soldiers engaged in racism, dehumanization, and atrocities on a wide scale. American culture - from Time Magazine to Hollywood - relished in the same type of racism that Goebbels worked so hard to foster. Unlike the top-down nature of the war crimes committed by the Axis dictatorships, these American war crimes were cultivated from the bottom. American soldiers needed no carrots or sticks to boil the flesh off of Japanese skulls and send them home to their girlfriends, such behavior just came naturally to them.
.

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Clearly the Germans are better than us....perhaps some type of supermen?

So why in your opinion are Americans so ready to commit ethnocide?

The war is a soft spot for you as the best you can do is cherry pick examples of trinkites taken by American soliders with the rape of nanking and auschwitz

You're fair and balanced veiw is bordering on relativism and trying to reconcile the NAZIs...the schtick is growing old

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

That's quite the contrary position to develop - that the Germans wouldn't have committed atrocities without being poked by their commanding officers.

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My position - as I clearly stated - was that the Germans received both encouragement from their political leaders to commit war crimes and feared reprisals for not doing so, and that the Americans were not under such constraints, but still engaged in atrocities. I was discussing context, not guessing about hypotheticals. It is obviously impossible to know the extent to which the Germans would have engaged in such behaviors without inducements from their leaders.

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Originally Posted by SFTS

Clearly the Germans are better than us....perhaps some type of supermen?

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Certainly not. While FDR's governing intentions were far from altruistic, they were many levels above those of Hitler and the Nazis in a moral context. America in general was far better than Nazi Germany in that regard, which should be obvious. I'm discussing specifics and you're trying to turn this into a question of who was better - Germany or the US. The answer to that is not in dispute.

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So why in your opinion are Americans so ready to commit ethnocide?

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Some researchers have hypothesized that cultures in which hunting is extremely prevalent are more likely to dehumanize their enemies - making them little more than animals to be hunted. As a hunter myself, I have my doubts about that, but I really have no idea. War brings out both the best and the worst in people.

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The war is a soft spot for you as the best you can do is cherry pick examples of trinkites taken by American soliders with the rape of nanking and auschwitz

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I don't think killing people to take their teeth is exactly equivalent to a trip to the souvenir shop. If you're going to accuse me of bias, minimizing what the Americans did only weakens your position.

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You're fair and balanced veiw is bordering on relativism and trying to reconcile the NAZIs...the schtick is growing old

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What is growing old is people reading what they want to into my statements instead of what I actually write.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

My position - as I clearly stated - was that the Germans received both encouragement from their political leaders to commit war crimes and feared reprisals for not doing so, and that the Americans were not under such constraints, but still engaged in atrocities. I was discussing context, not guessing about hypotheticals. It is obviously impossible to know the extent to which the Germans would have engaged in such behaviors without inducements from their leaders.

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But that's basically what you're implying by bringing it up - that the US troops committed these crimes voluntarily (which is true) in contrast to the Germans who were forced to (which is false).

Additionally, you haven't really shown the scale of the atrocities the US troops committed. You've shown that the Americans killed a lot of surrendering Japanese POWs (I don't think you've given an estimate though) and you've alluded to some rapes. But we can't say for instance whether a majority of US units stationed in the Pacific committed war crimes or not because you haven't really said anything except "the research is there." Give us some links with the parts you think are important quoted for us.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Certainly not. While FDR's governing intentions were far from altruistic, they were many levels above those of Hitler and the Nazis in a moral context. America in general was far better than Nazi Germany in that regard, which should be obvious. I'm discussing specifics and you're trying to turn this into a question of who was better - Germany or the US. The answer to that is not in dispute.
.

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You post implies the Germans showed restriant while being encouraged while the Americans were licking there chops while being restrained

Unless you can point to some factor in American society that is vastly different from German society I have a hard time beliving you.

I'm sure Bavarians hunt as much as Texans no?

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

You are making my point for me.

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On the contrary. What you wrote has barely anything to do with what I did. Except to underwrite it, that is.

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Originally Posted by PJ

Unlike the top-down nature of the war crimes committed by the Axis dictatorships, these American war crimes were cultivated from the bottom.

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And that's why they occurred far less often and far, far less systematically than in the German or Japanese militaries. As you yourself point out. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by PJ

This is why body counts are not the best context in which to judge morality.

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Indeed, I agree. Rather, intent is. And the American intent was clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible. German and Japanese intent was to maximize them to the fullest. Need I say more?

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Some researchers have hypothesized that cultures in which hunting is extremely prevalent are more likely to dehumanize their enemies - making them little more than animals to be hunted. As a hunter myself, I have my doubts about that, but I really have no idea. War brings out both the best and the worst in people.

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Dude... you're the one claiming the Americans/Allies were just as bad as the Axis. You're the one claiming what Marines did to surrendering Japanese soldiers was just as bad as the Rape of Nanjing. In other words, you're the one trying to generalize. Now you're complaining when we argue on that premise? Come again?

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Originally Posted by PJ

* who were the racists back then? *

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There is always one weak spot in the mainstream historical narrative. Namely, that is it focused on Europeans, or by extention, to 'civilised' non-Europeans.

A certain discrepancy was not felt back then, which we do nowadays. Namely, there is outrage over German genocidal acts against Jews and others, outrage at their treatment of Poland, which had to dissapear in genocide, enslavement, suffocation, outrage at Japan's cruelty, its perverse sadism, in East Asia . But this outrage was not extended to the treatment of non-Europeans / non-Europeans considered uncivilised.

Yet, what is the history of the Western liberal-democratic powers? Was the fate of the Aboriginals in Australia not what the Germans had in mind for the Poles? What did the French, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch, Americans do in their colonies, and at home? The period of Germany's imperial warmongering, 1870-1945, roughly corresponds with that of the French second colonial Empire, 1870-1960's.

Racial superiority thinking was the norm for all. The Germans, whose colonial empire 'consisted of a single sausage factory in Tanganyika', were exceptional for bringing racial superiority thought to Europe. What Germany learned fighting the Herrero, it brought back home and applied in Europe. Including the wholesale murder of Germans - those first victims of the Nazis.


More briefly, killing all Poles is wrong, killing all native Americans is okay.


There is a moral lesson there. I disagree that it was not learned, or has been brushed aside. The very realisation of it was instrumental in de-colonisation, in the creation of multicultural societies, and in the extention of civil rights in the US and eventually South Africa. (One funny irony is that a lot of people admire the Nazis because they abhor multiculturalism, because they dislike Blacks. Little do they realise that it was the very example of moral bankruptcy of Nazism that created the multicultural society in the West.)

I would agree that this perspective remains underappreciated in any moral narrative of the history of the period. But as so often, once a historical narrative has taken hold, it is nigh impossible to replace. Even serious scholarship often limits itself to dutifully filling in the footnotes.


(One caveat: Nazism, then and now, is founded on the principle of inequality. The nazi can rightfully call out western liberalism for their not living up to their own liberal standards of equality. But nazism glorifies it, whereas liberalism is disgraced by it. Some hypocricy there is, moral equivalence not)

My apologies for overlooking this thread.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

But that's basically what you're implying by bringing it up - that the US troops committed these crimes voluntarily (which is true) in contrast to the Germans who were forced to (which is false).

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I was not implying anything; I was stating facts in order to give the discussion a different dimension. So far, the entirety of the debate has revolved around body counts. Is it not also valid to look at the context in which the atrocities were committed in judging the morality of the soldiers involved? The Japanese and Germans were under very different conditions than the Americans. So, for example, while it is justified to note that the American soldiers did not participate in the kind of government orchestrated genocide that some German soldiers did, it is also justified to note that some American soldiers took it upon themselves to engage in widespread atrocities without any prompting from their government. The point being, moral superiority between the soldiers is illusory.

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Originally Posted by Alexander

Additionally, you haven't really shown the scale of the atrocities the US troops committed. You've shown that the Americans killed a lot of surrendering Japanese POWs (I don't think you've given an estimate though) and you've alluded to some rapes. But we can't say for instance whether a majority of US units stationed in the Pacific committed war crimes or not because you haven't really said anything except "the research is there." Give us some links with the parts you think are important quoted for us.

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I have posted as much information as I could find from Wikipedia and referred readers to hard copy sources including the US government's own research on the subject and several postwar historians. In the realm of an internet discussion board, I'm not sure what else I can do.

I am not going to repost the entirety of the wikis (they are on page three) but I think these get to the heart of the issue:

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Originally Posted by wiki

U. S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two key factors: a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs."[11] The latter reasoning is supported by Fergusson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians [sic] — as Untermenschen."[12] According to Weingartner, many U.S. troops regarded fighting the Japanese as more like hunting inhuman animals than a war.[11]

The U.S. conviction that the Japanese were subhuman or animals, together with Japanese reluctance to attempt to surrender to allied forces, contributed to the fact that a mere 604 Japanese captives were alive in Allied POW camps by October 1944.

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Originally Posted by wiki

American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[39] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[32] According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.[40] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[41] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[42]

Ferguson states such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes,[42] among their own personnel (as these were affecting intelligence gathering) and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead, resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, taking no prisoners was still standard practice among U. S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.

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Originally Posted by SFTS

You post implies the Germans showed restriant while being encouraged while the Americans were licking there chops while being restrained

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My post only implied that German soldiers and American soldiers were in very different situations, which should be kept in perspective during the discussion. My overarching point throughout this discussion has been that Allied soldiers were not particularly morally superior to those of the Axis. I don't think the German soldiers of the time were any better than their American counterparts, besides, of course, in combat. :grin:

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

And that's why they occurred far less often and far, far less systematically than in the German or Japanese militaries. As you yourself point out.

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Less systematically, but less often? Not in the Pacific. And that is at the heart of my point. Axis war crimes were perpetrated within a system that both ordered them and punished those who refused the orders. Allied war crimes emanated from the feelings and beliefs of the soldiers themselves with little encouragement from their leaders. How does that make them particularly morally superior?

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

Indeed, I agree. Rather, intent is. And the American intent was clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible. German and Japanese intent was to maximize them to the fullest. Need I say more?

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You're talking about governments, I'm talking about soldiers. And I would hardly describe the American intent as "clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible". In actuality, throughout much of the war the American military took a laissez-faire approach to war crimes committed in the Pacific, until it was realized that refusing to take prisoners and killing those that were taken damaged intelligence gathering. Morality had nothing to do with their attitude toward the Japanese.

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

Dude... you're the one claiming the Americans/Allies were just as bad as the Axis. You're the one claiming what Marines did to surrendering Japanese soldiers was just as bad as the Rape of Nanjing. In other words, you're the one trying to generalize. Now you're complaining when we argue on that premise? Come again?

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I don't understand how my response about possible motivations for committing atrocities can be construed as a complaint.

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Originally Posted by Louis

...good post...

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Interesting observations. It is important to note that Hitler was most likely influenced by, and certainly justified his expansionist policies on, European colonialism and particularly the American extermination of the natives. Lebensraum was very much a 20th century update to American Manifest Destiny.

Doesn't make him any less guilty, but it is worth noting.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

I disagree that it was not learned, or has been brushed aside.

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In many ways, I suppose you're right. Still a long way to go; it's not an easy thing getting an entire race back up on their feet after centuries of genocide, you know? But at least it is happening, little by little, in spite of the mixed messages the provincial and federal governments have been sending.

Anyways, it would seem that Canada is finally getting aboard with that Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Can you imagine it? With this coming by, all sorts of things are possible: for one thing, imagine Canada actually agreeing to a satisfactory reformation of the Indian Act! Within my lifetime, and hopefully with my eager participation, my First Nation(-state) may one day have our right to regulate our citizenship recognized by the Canadian government.

As it stands right now, our citizenship is controlled by that same Indian Act, which is simply some stupid **** Canada pulled out of their ass to control our lives. Imagine how much they'd be laughed at if they came up with something called the "French Act" and told France which Frenchmen were eligible for French citizenship and which weren't (among other things)? I don't see anyone laughing at the Indian Act, though.

I want to echo Louis's post just because I think it really cuts to the heart of the matter. Massacring POWs was discourage by Allied brass and we (as part of the generally liberal West) view it with horror as a shameful act. In contrast, the Wehrmacht atrocities were celebrated by the Nazis and were the whole point of the Nazis and their Wehrmacht henchmen. That's the difference between the Allies and the Axis. There's the superiority.

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Originally Posted by Centurion1

We are talking about the south not the north. The north was constantly drafting and conscripted soldiers, most southern men signed up right off the bat except for the rich. The men who fought the war for the south were poor Scots-Irish from the Appalachian mountains for the most part.

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you are basically correct, but that part is actually misleading: correct, the North did institute the draft (in 1863), and their aggressiveness in pursuing it did cause the draft riots in NYC that year (among other factors), but the way the draft worked was such that only a minority of the soldiers were actually drafted (~6%). here is a source that describes the draft in its basic process.

the south also instituted a draft (in 1862), but also, as in the north, it didn't account for the majority of troops that served.

either way, both armies were mostly-ney, overwhelmingly-manned by volunteers, not draftees.

here is a source with the number I mentioned.

anthony beevor on allied war crimes:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...692037,00.html

This will certainly be an interesting read, although nothing in the article is particularly new information to those who know the truth. I will be interested in his research on Allied commanders issuing take no prisoners orders. It further deteriorates the standard "random acts of violence" line...

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According to the findings of German historian Peter Lieb, many Canadian and American units were given orders on D-Day to take no prisoners. If true, that might help explain the mystery of how only 66 of the 130 Germans the Americans took prisoner on Omaha Beach made it to collecting points for the captured on the beach.

It is also conspicuous that the Allies rarely captured members of the Waffen SS. Was it because the members of this organization -- with its Totenkopf (death's head) insignia -- had sworn allegiance to Hitler until death and often fought to the last man? Or did the Allied propaganda about the SS have its desired effect on soldiers? "Many of them probably deserved to be shot in any case and know it," a British XXX Corps report bluntly stated.

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Given the high number of casualties they suffered, Allied paratroopers were particularly determined to exact bloody revenge. Near one village, Audouville-la-Hubert, they massacred 30 captured Wehrmacht soldiers in a single killing spree.

On the beaches, soldiers in an engineering brigade had to protect German prisoners from enraged paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division, who shouted: "Turn those prisoners over to us. Turn them over to us. We know what to do to them."

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American troops, literally begging to kill POWs. Where is the moral superiority?

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

American troops, literally begging to kill POWs. Where is the moral superiority?

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I'd say it's with the American engineers.

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Originally Posted by Azathoth

There's certainly some interesting parallels between that war and the Vietnam War.

• Guerrilla War in Southeast Asia
• Americans + Collaborators vs Revolutionaries
• America Asked by Revolutionaries For Aid Against Colonial Oppressors (Spanish)
• Previous War of Independence Against Said Oppressors
• Similar War Crimes on Both Sides (killing of civilians by Americans, collaborators by Filipinos, the old "bury-them-neck-deep-in-dirt-and-leave-them-for-the-ants" trick)
• Exposure of Brutality of War by American Media
• Anti-war Activism by Well-Known Figures/"Celebrities"
• Ridiculously High Native Casualties (Philippines - up to 1.2 million (~15%), Vietnam - up to 5 million (~12%)

I guess America technically beat the Filipinos, but they had to give up the islands 30 years later.

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Actually, Max Boot does lump them into the same category -- small wars -- but uses Vietnam as proof that the USA was able to ignore lots of lessons on how to fight such a war effectively (he notes that Vietnam was not a small war numerically by any means, only its limited war concept).

We conquered Cuba, Peurto Rico, Guam, and the Phillipines. All but Guam were either granted independence or given the option to do so. America's "imperialism" has never really been whole-hearted. Heck, we even paid Mexico for the land we took at the end of that war. I'm sure the Europeans of the time thought we were idiots for buying land that we'd conquered fair and square.


RE: Patton and "take no prisoners"

Sounds like Patton's variant on the "too late chum" rule from WW1. Soldiers throughout history have enforced (informally) variations on that one. Shouldn't have applied to a group who'd already managed to get their surrender accepted, though. Bradley was a straight shooter and wanted that sort of thing stopped. Patton probably couldn't care less save to minimize the potential distraction.


Remember, at its core, there is nothing elegant or particularly noble about war. The basic model of warfare goes back to the bronze age if not earlier: win by any means fair or foul, murder all those capable of bearing arms against you or who are too weak/frail/whatever to sell, then take all their stuff, take all their women, and sell the kids as slaves. Any result that is less brutal reflects some degree of civilization.

“Where is the moral superiority?” In the fact that it was not an order issued by the President of the United States of America.
Did the engineers give the POW? No soldier of the Wehrmacht would have resisted a SS order…
Question: I thought the101 Airborne was inland (St Marie de la Mer)… How did they arrive on the beaches to ask for the prisoners? It is a long walk...

Now, about the make-no-prisoners things, it is a reality of war that the assault troops don’t do them.
I do remember when in training it was this kind of sentences we were told as you have no time to waste and men to spent for guards…
I know as well it is this kind of things that are said to galvanise the troops, as fixing bayonet…

The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.
Nothing compare with Oradour Sur Glane where the village was picked at random as the released SS was not able to point out in which of the Oradour he saw armed Partisans…

Now, after a long though I have to say that one PZ argument is quite valid.
The SS and soldiers of the Heer were raised in a universe of violence and des-humanisation of the enemies. So for them, killing was not a problem as such.
An Allies soldiers from Democratic Countries, they knew in theory the right from the wrong…

“Totenkopf (death's head) insignia”: Probably the letters SS did the job as the Skulls and Bones were also on the Tank Crew uniforms, heritage from the Ulhan.
And as Allies Propaganda for the SS, I think the German Propaganda was largely responsible for the well earned reputation of brutality and merciless conduct in war of the SS troops.
So, the SS have only Goebbels and Himmler to blame for the US soldier to know who they were...

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Originally Posted by Brenus

“Where is the moral superiority?” In the fact that it was not an order issued by the President of the United States of America.

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I don't think anyone is claiming that FDR was on the same moral level as Adolf Hitler. The point that I've been making throughout the thread is that the average Allied soldier was not morally superior to his Axis counterpart; and the scale of the crimes is a function of their leadership, not superior ethics. Just as the Germans did, the Allied soldiers had no qualms about following immoral orders, whether they were to drop fire bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent woman and children or to kill POWs; and just as the Japanese engaged in independent horrible acts of savagery that necessitated no orders, so to did the Allied troops in the Pacific.

The illusion of the "Good War" is just that - an illusion. Not even the legacy of the Normandy campaign is safe anymore from the truth about Allied war crimes.

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Did the engineers give the POW? No soldier of the Wehrmacht would have resisted a SS order…

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Why do you say that? The Waffen SS was subordinated to Wehrmacht commanders throughout most of the war. Such a situation would have depended on the ranking officer, not the branch.

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Now, about the make-no-prisoners things, it is a reality of war that the assault troops don’t do them.

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Many of the SS were assault troops, as well.

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The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.

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It is hard to say that the firebombing of cities was small in scale. And if you put any stock in primary sources, the killing of German POWs was not small scale either.

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Originally Posted by Stephen Ambrose

"I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."

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So, the SS have only Goebbels and Himmler to blame for the US soldier to know who they were...

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And if they were killed after surrendering, they have no one to blame but their killers. :shrug:

Amborse Sucks as a historian.

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Originally Posted by Strike For The South

Amborse Sucks as a historian.

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Well, quite. He and his family business of plagiarised popular history.

Oh I agree. What he did to the legacy of the Fallschirmjäger in his rendition of the battle of Brecourt was nothing short of a travesty.

However, he did conduct thousands of primary source interviews with veterans and I have no reason to doubt his findings. His distortions are in his unwillingness to fact check those findings and his flair for the dramatic, not in the alteration of the interviews themselves. As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.

“The point that I've been making throughout the thread is that the average Allied soldier was not morally superior to his Axis counterpart”
I would disagree on this part: The average Allied soldier was morally superior to his Axis counterpart, and the scale of the slaughter shows it.
And the fact that the Allis mostly liberated territories, not participating (more or less willingly, I give you this –134,000 Germans arrested by the Gestapo in the first three month of 1944)) in a war of aggression…
I don’t know if the book, Lieutenant de Panzers, from August von Kageneck is translated in English. Read it, and you will see that the average German soldier was aware of what happened in the name of Germany as they witnessed the slaughter from their eyes. Thanks to their officers’ apathy, they didn’t react then participate to it.
“I saw, several times, corps of men with long hair in the ditches. They had been executed. So the German Army was drawn down the rank of witches hunters” (p125).
Here, it is not the result of a revenge due to battle, but the cold blood operation, the same than the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto of Tarnopol (p123) by the SS.

You can gather hundred of case of Germans POW killed by allies’ soldiers. However you hardly find complete Germans villages and populations killed or burned alive by Allied Soldiers, even when the Werewolves tried in vain to conduct a guerrilla war fair. Temptation was there, especially in the French side, but it didn’t happened.

Now, about war veterans (1 on 3) saying they saw somebody else killing at list one prisoner: Absurd.
I interviewed War Veterans of another war (Indochina) and one thing is difficult for them is to admit bad conduct on the field. It took ages that the French acknowledge the fact that in Algeria not only the Paratroopers and the Legion did torture but the Chasseurs Alpins, the usual conscript did it as well…
And having interview war veteran, I can tell you that they tell what you want to heard… This kind of research has to be back up with statistic, and graves…

“And if they were killed after surrendering, they have no one to blame but their killers” and the fact they were in political units supporting a racist ideology that told the world they will give no mercy and expect none…

“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.

“Just as the Germans did, the Allied soldiers had no qualms about following immoral orders, whether they were to drop fire bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent woman and children or to kill POWs”
Do you have the proof that the killed POW in following orders? No, because it was none.
We have the document signed by Hitler ad the OKW, we have the speeches from Himmler, Goebbels, Hitler, Goering and all the others.

And about the killing of innocent by bombing, it was a war that the German started (and the Italians as my grand mother would have testified being under their bombs).
And it was a war that the German innocent population loved, until they realised too late the surge was turning…

“We fought hard, meter per meter, for nothing, no even not honour.
For which honour would we be able to fight for? For the honour of the SS who took refuge, like us, in this hiding place, and executed the last prisoners? For the honour of a German Army that blindly serve the will of the criminal fool who yet prepared in his bunker in Berlin his suicide-escape? For the honour of a Regime we all desired but we ignored the sinister goals? For the honour of the Flag, but which one? We had none from long time ago.” P 180

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Originally Posted by Brenus

“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.



And it was a war that the German innocent population loved, until they realised too late the surge was turning…



“We fought hard, meter per meter, for nothing, no even not honour.
For which honour would we be able to fight for? For the honour of the SS who took refuge, like us, in this hiding place, and executed the last prisoners? For the honour of a German Army that blindly serve the will of the criminal fool who yet prepared in his bunker in Berlin his suicide-escape? For the honour of a Regime we all desired but we ignored the sinister goals? For the honour of the Flag, but which one? We had none from long time ago.” P 180

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Sad truths, all three statements above.


I couldn't say which of the three I find most frustrating...

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Originally Posted by Brenus

The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.
Nothing compare with Oradour Sur Glane where the village was picked at random as the released SS was not able to point out in which of the Oradour he saw armed Partisans…

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It says much that Oradour Sur Glane was but a minor incident in the overall picture of German atrocities. For the western armies, an incident like that would be a major cause for shame, and a permanent black mark on their military. For the Germans, an entire village, men, women, elderly, children, all massacred, mown down in a building or locked in a church and burned to death, is but another small detail in the devastation of Europe and the systematic extermination of certain of its peoples. Not even the most murderous of ancient civilisations ever got close to the levsls of barbarity which the Germans and Japanese set in WW2.

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Originally Posted by Brenus

I would disagree on this part: The average Allied soldier was morally superior to his Axis counterpart, and the scale of the slaughter shows it.

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This is where it gets tricky. For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system, yet only an extraordinarily tiny percentage of German soldiers actually had anything to do with them. IIRC, Treblinka, the site of the killing of nearly 1,000,000 people, was operated by no more than 25 SS officers and 100 guards of mixed nationality. What people often fail to realize is just how few people it took to kill so many, and how much of an effort the Nazis made to hide what they were doing.

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I don’t know if the book, Lieutenant de Panzers, from August von Kageneck is translated in English. Read it, and you will see that the average German soldier was aware of what happened in the name of Germany as they witnessed the slaughter from their eyes. Thanks to their officers’ apathy, they didn’t react then participate to it.
“I saw, several times, corps of men with long hair in the ditches. They had been executed. So the German Army was drawn down the rank of witches hunters” (p125).
Here, it is not the result of a revenge due to battle, but the cold blood operation, the same than the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto of Tarnopol (p123) by the SS.

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I appreciate the depth such anecdotal commentary brings to the discussion, but I'm not sure it makes much of a point. I can produce accounts of Allied soldiers witnessing Allied crimes. :shrug:

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You can gather hundred of case of Germans POW killed by allies’ soldiers. However you hardly find complete Germans villages and populations killed or burned alive by Allied Soldiers, even when the Werewolves tried in vain to conduct a guerrilla war fair. Temptation was there, especially in the French side, but it didn’t happened.

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You can certainly find plenty of German villages and populations killed by Allied soldiers. Think about that.

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Now, about war veterans (1 on 3) saying they saw somebody else killing at list one prisoner: Absurd.
“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.

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That would apply to someone like James Bacque, but Ambrose is on the other end of the spectrum. He made his living glorifying Allied soldiers, so I'm not sure what he would gain from falsifying such a claim - which leads me to believe there may be some merit to it.

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Do you have the proof that the killed POW in following orders? No, because it was none.

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Well, such a case was the genesis of this thread. Another example would be Major-General Raymond Hufft, who admitted to ordering his troops to take no prisoners during the crossing of the Rhine. That wasn't very hard.

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And about the killing of innocent by bombing, it was a war that the German started (and the Italians as my grand mother would have testified being under their bombs).

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And that gave the Allies carte blanche to dump millions of tonnes of bombs on civilian centers with the intent of killing and terrorizing as many as possible? Again, where is the moral superiority in that?

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

It says much that Oradour Sur Glane was but a minor incident in the overall picture of German atrocities. For the western armies, an incident like that would be a major cause for shame, and a permanent black mark on their military. For the Germans, an entire village, men, women, elderly, children, all massacred, mown down in a building or locked in a church and burned to death, is but another small detail in the devastation of Europe and the systematic extermination of certain of its peoples.

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It must require some great measure of cognitive dissonance to highlight with such righteous indignation an incidence of a church with people inside being burned down to show how horrible the German soldiers were, considering the Allies burned down entire cities full of people with the expressed purpose of inflicting terror and death on the civilians inside.

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Originally Posted by Arthur Harris

The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated as the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

Not even the most murderous of ancient civilisations ever got close to the levsls of barbarity which the Germans and Japanese set in WW2.

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That is, of course, patently false. Ethnic cleansing has been around as long as humanity has. Ironically, the earliest genocide that comes to my mind was committed by the Jews.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJager

For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system

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Not the race war on the Russian front?

Excellent thread, well argued with reference to sources, its very stimulating to see.

I'd observe war is all hell as W. Tecumseh Sherman said. You start groups of people killing and tell them to stop at certain arbitrary points. Its all horrible.

As an Australian I was raised with the view "we were good and they were bad" whoever they were. Japanese "revisionism" is still derided, Italian cowardice is a byword and WW2 is seen in clear terms of good vs evil. In fact WW1 is still largely seen as good vs evil (yay the justice of Aussies attacking Turks so the Romanovs can rule Greece...wtf?).

A mate of mine met an old German Wehrmacht veteran OS and they chatted (he had broken english) about his serrvice in WW2 and the german was not impressed that my mate was Aussie. We, like our American allies, have a reputation for shooting prisoners. I suspect it stems from our distance from the formal military traditions of the continent. A French or German soldier might expect "one fights hard but when the opponent raises the white flag then the rules of war apply", whereas I can easily imagine an Aussie thinking "ten seconds ago that Jap/Kraut/Turk was machine gunning my mates so cop this". Thats a war crime and I'm sure we are as guilty of it as any other country-in fact more guilty of it than countries with a more formal military tradition.

On the matter of "reputation" the Australians copped some blame for disorder in Singapore and later a lot of rape in Japan. I read (but where is the source? can't recall) an English journalist's diary recording he heard the screams of Japanese women in an occupied town in Japan in 1945 as the Australian occupation troops headed out for an evenings "recreation": the editor noted the date was a month before any Australians arrived in Japan, so it appears some Englishmen were in the habit of blaming British crimes on wild colonials.

Its very shameful to contemplate the alleged cowardice and disorder of Australians at Singapore (specifically deserters throwing women off escaping ships at gunpoint) but most likely it happened and AFAIK we downplay or deflect it in our histories, refuse to aknowledge it or punish the offenders. I actually find it hard to type that last sentence.

As losers the Germans and Japanese and Italians will never receive justice for crimes committed against them in WW2, crimes my country either participated in or applauded eg bombing civilian targets.

I understand Japanese reluctance to accept the western version of WW2 where our crimes are left out: they most likely think why shouldn't they whitewash if we do (and I think we do at least to some extent). I think our American allies do the same, for the same reasons we do.

Germans (writers, historians, tourists I have met, my friends GF) seem to take a great deal more responsibility for their nation's actions in war than any other example I can think of. They are a leading european culture, a major force of western civilisation so their crimes seem more shocking somehow.

The episode of Nazi rule is a lesson to any country that the fall from civilisation to mass murder is a very quick one. All you need are unscrupulous leaders, an economic crisis and an atmosphere of terror.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

This is where it gets tricky. For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system, yet only an extraordinarily tiny percentage of German soldiers actually had anything to do with them. IIRC, Treblinka, the site of the killing of nearly 1,000,000 people, was operated by no more than 25 SS officers and 100 guards of mixed nationality. What people often fail to realize is just how few people it took to kill so many, and how much of an effort the Nazis made to hide what they were doing.

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So few at the tail end of the disassembly line, but so many more dealing with the infrastructure. The Economic and Administrative Department, General Government, RSHA, various corporations, etc. It takes a lot of logistical planning, organization, and manpower to round up, rob, transfer, rob more invasively, temporarily house, kill (outright, or through starvation/overwork), and dispose of a few million people.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

And that gave the Allies carte blanche to dump bombs on civilian centers with the intent of killing and terrorizing many as possible? Again, where is the moral superiority in that?

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No, I think the Blitz did that.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

Not the race war on the Russian front?

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Shhhhh. :quiet: The godless commies don't count, even the planned extermination via starvation of about 25 million of them. And since they only accomplished about half that, it counts as a failure and doesn't advance the notion of German efficiency. No one must know. ~;)

On-topic, for the most part PJ has been arguing that US troops treated Axis troops about the same as the other way around. Probably a fair assessment at the individual level, but I think his moral equivalency argument falls apart due to the treatment of civilians by the armed forces, as well as the organizational acceptance of the war crimes. I'm more interested in this aspect.

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Originally Posted by Alex

Not the race war on the Russian front?

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You mean the race war inspired in part by America's actions against the indians and British and French colonial policies?

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Originally Posted by drone

So few at the tail end of the disassembly line, but so many more dealing with the infrastructure. The Economic and Administrative Department, General Government, RSHA, various corporations, etc. It takes a lot of logistical planning, organization, and manpower to round up, rob, transfer, rob more invasively, temporarily house, kill (outright, or through starvation/overwork), and dispose of a few million people.

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I think you have to use a bit more specificity when dealing with crimes of such magnitude. Lots of perceived enemies were rounded up and sent to camps during WW2 in both Germany and the US by soldiers who had no real idea what would happen to them and probably didn't care. It was war and they were the enemy. But can you then say that the German private at the beginning of the disassembly line was complicit in the murder of those people? Unknowingly, yes. But there is a reason so few Germans actually spent time at the death camps and why the Nazis made such efforts to keep the final part of the final solution a secret. While standing idly by as the government rounds up your fellow citizens and ships them off to camps during wartime in the name of final victory is certainly immoral (although by that point the Nazis had unquestioned control of the country), it is on a completely different moral level than willfully supporting the gassing of said fellow citizens.

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Originally Posted by Drone

No, I think the Blitz did that.

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I think we may have different definitions of moral superiority. To me, moral superiority is not responding to immoral behavior in kind (or in a far greater magnitude). That would be... moral equivalency. :idea2:

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Shhhhh. :quiet: The godless commies don't count, even the planned extermination via starvation of about 25 million of them. And since they only accomplished about half that, it counts as a failure and doesn't advance the notion of German efficiency. No one must know. ~;)

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The Allies certainly weren’t above forced starvation of POWs. But really, all mocking aside, your statement highlights the point I was making above. German food policy was planned at the highest levels of the Nazi regime. How many German soldiers knew Germany was intentionally thinning out Soviet POWs through starvation and how many simply thought the dangerously thin food rations simply weren’t enough to go around? (they weren’t) And how many on the front lines had any real knowledge of what was going on in the POW camps at all?

Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of German soldiers were involved in war crimes against Russian POWs. It was a barbaric war on both sides. My point is that when generalized statements attributing things to a collective group are more deeply analyzed, often the reality turns out to be different than what was presented. The knowledge and complicity in Nazi war crimes deviated greatly among German soldiers and the German people, but it is a fundamental misconception to assume that the vast majority of Germans had full knowledge of and supported the worst of those policies. There was no free press, no internet, no real way of knowing the full extent of what the government was doing other than what the government told them.

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Originally Posted by Drone

On-topic, for the most part PJ has been arguing that US troops treated Axis troops about the same as the other way around. Probably a fair assessment at the individual level, but I think his moral equivalency argument falls apart due to the treatment of civilians by the armed forces, as well as the organizational acceptance of the war crimes. I'm more interested in this aspect.

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Again, I do not understand how one can favorably compare the Allies to the Axis based on their treatment of civilians. There is no question that the massive bombing of German cities was a war crime of epic magnitude. The commander of the Royal Air Force himself stated that the bombing of cities was an intentional targeting of German civilians meant to kill and terrorize as many as possible, not collateral damage from targeting military facilities. Unlike the Holocaust, for example, this widespread, targeted killing of civilians was widely known, accepted, and even celebrated throughout the Allied armed forces and greater populations. They even made movies celebrating the heroics of dropping bombs on defenseless civilians.

The only valid argument supporting your point I have seen in this thread is based on scale. There is certainly no doubt that the scale of Axis crimes was greater than those of the Allies – although not by as much as some here seem to believe.

However, as I’ve said before, I’m just not convinced that scale has as much weight as some here would like. Once the collective group accepts and even celebrates the intentional killing of civilians, does it matter how big the final body count turns out to be from a moral perspective? Does murdering 5 people make one morally superior to someone who murdered 10?

I just don’t view the morality of mass killing as a sliding scale. I see it more as two pieces of land separated by a river and connected by a bridge. Once you cross that bridge, once you knowingly accept that your government is killing innocent people in your name, the body count is just a sad function of the means and length of the killing.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

I think we may have different definitions of moral superiority. To me, moral superiority is not responding to immoral behavior in kind (or in a far greater magnitude). That would be... moral equivalency. :idea2:


Again, I do not understand how one can favorably compare the Allies to the Axis based on their treatment of civilians. There is no question that the massive bombing of German cities was a war crime of epic magnitude. The commander of the Royal Air Force himself stated that the bombing of cities was an intentional targeting of German civilians meant to kill and terrorize as many as possible, not collateral damage from targeting military facilities.

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No, moral equivalence would have been for the allies to stand by and do nothing, instead of stopping these murderers with the means the allies had at their dosposal.



The total civilian victims of the allied bombings stands at some 300/600k Germans. About the number of what the Germans managed in murdered citizens in their best months. The overwhelming amount of bombs were dropped in 1944, when the scale of the German atrocities had become clear.

Total number for Japan is some 300/500k. Again, overwhelmingly in 1944/5.

http://en.allexperts.com/e/h/hi/hist...tionism%29.htm

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

I think we may have different definitions of moral superiority. To me, moral superiority is not responding to immoral behavior in kind (or in a far greater magnitude). That would be... moral equivalency. :idea2:

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I wasn't commenting on the moral superiority of the bombing campaigns, just the direction of the air war started by the Germans. There were no conventions covering the conduct of air warfare, the Allies just followed the leader. Double whammy, really, since the Blitz lost the Luftwaffe the Battle of Britain.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The Allies certainly weren't above forced starvation of POWs. But really, all mocking aside, your statement highlights the point I was making above. German food policy was planned at the highest levels of the Nazi regime. How many German soldiers knew Germany was intentionally thinning out Soviet POWs through starvation and how many simply thought the dangerously thin food rations simply weren't enough to go around? (they weren't) And how many on the front lines had any real knowledge of what was going on in the POW camps at all?

Don't get me wrong. Plenty of German soldiers were involved in war crimes against Russian POWs. It was a barbaric war on both sides. My point is that when generalized statements attributing things to a collective group are more deeply analyzed, often the reality turns out to be different than what was presented. The knowledge and complicity in Nazi war crimes deviated greatly among German soldiers and the German people, but it is a fundamental misconception to assume that the vast majority of Germans had full knowledge of and supported the worst of those policies. There was no free press, no internet, no real way of knowing the full extent of what the government was doing other than what the government told them.

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I wasn't talking about Russian POWs. Soviet citizens were to be starved from occupied lands through food management. ATPG might think the way I do about it. The brutality between the armies on both sides in the East is fairly well known, and the Holocaust has better PR, but in terms of scale the Slav civilians caught the brunt of it.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Again, I do not understand how one can favorably compare the Allies to the Axis based on their treatment of civilians. There is no question that the massive bombing of German cities was a war crime of epic magnitude. The commander of the Royal Air Force himself stated that the bombing of cities was an intentional targeting of German civilians meant to kill and terrorize as many as possible, not collateral damage from targeting military facilities. Unlike the Holocaust, for example, this widespread, targeted killing of civilians was widely known, accepted, and even celebrated throughout the Allied armed forces and greater populations. They even made movies celebrating the heroics of dropping bombs on defenseless civilians.

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See my first.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The only valid argument supporting your point I have seen in this thread is based on scale. There is certainly no doubt that the scale of Axis crimes was greater than those of the Allies – although not by as much as some here seem to believe.

However, as I’ve said before, I’m just not convinced that scale has as much weight as some here would like. Once the collective group accepts and even celebrates the intentional killing of civilians, does it matter how big the final body count turns out to be from a moral perspective? Does murdering 5 people make one morally superior to someone who murdered 10?

I just don’t view the morality of mass killing as a sliding scale. I see it more as two pieces of land separated by a river and connected by a bridge. Once you cross that bridge, once you knowingly accept that your government is killing innocent people in your name, the body count is just a sad function of the means and length of the killing.

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Scale matters a lot, since large scale generally means there is an organizational and institutional approval of the deed.

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Originally Posted by drone

I wasn't talking about Russian POWs. Soviet citizens were to be starved from occupied lands through food management. ATPG might think the way I do about it. The brutality between the armies on both sides in the East is fairly well known, and the Holocaust has better PR, but in terms of scale the Slav civilians caught the brunt of it.

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That's what I was getting at. To my knowledge only Germany fought a campaign whose purpose was one of ethnic cleansing (though Japan's actions in China are pretty horrific and may have been very deliberate; I am unfamiliar with it). German conduct (both SS and Whermacht) on the Eastern Front went way beyond shooting POWs (or not taking prisoners).

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Originally Posted by drone

I wasn't commenting on the moral superiority of the bombing campaigns, just the direction of the air war started by the Germans. There were no conventions covering the conduct of air warfare, the Allies just followed the leader. Double whammy, really, since the Blitz lost the Luftwaffe the Battle of Britain....

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They lost the Battle of Britain by bothering to fight it at all. Total waste of resources and the death of many skilled aircrew to achieve more or less nothing. Even if they had won hands down, shattering the RAF, they would have achieved nothing strategically. Pointless vanity by Goering as near as I can figure it.


PJ:

Neither side treated civilians appropriately according to modern expectations of combatants. That having been acknowledged, it simply isn't accurate to stack the often programmatic efforts of the Germans against that of the Western Allies.

Did we bomb civilians? Yes, as had the Germans. In the first days of the war, the UK bombed Germany....with leaflets. The Germans bombed Warsaw, to scare the Poles into quitting. They would do the same in Rotterdam 9 months later. They had done the same in 1937 at Guernica. All three attacks were carried out despite the Luftwaffe's official stance opposing the terror bombing theory of Douhet.

More later

“I appreciate the depth such anecdotal commentary brings to the discussion, but I'm not sure it makes much of a point. I can produce accounts of Allied soldiers witnessing Allied crimes”
PJ, you should have check who is August Von Kageneck:
Brother of Erbo von Kagueneck (Luftwaffe, 67 victories, Oak Leaves to Knights Cross) and Clemens-Heinrich Graf von Kageneck(1913-2005), Panzer commander, Oak Leaves to Knights Cross.
Nephew of Von Papen.

Books:
Lieutenant de Panzers (Lieutenant in the Panzers)
Examen de conscience: nous étions vaincus mais nous nous croyions innocents (Conscience examine: we were vanquish but we believed we were innocents)
La guerre à l’Est (War in the East)
Lieutenant sous la tête de mort (Lieutenant under the Death Head)
De la Croix de Fer à la potence: Roland von Hoesslin, un officier allemand (From the Iron Cross to the Gallows: Roland von Hoesslin, a German Officer).

So I do think that his writings are more than anecdotes:yes:

Most war crimes by both sides went unpunished, but the German war crimes do outnumber allied and are on a much higher scale. At least German and Allied soldiers usually treated each other well (which is why the Germans flocked to surrender to the western allies at wars end), but remember the Eastern front? I don't think I need to elaborate further.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

The overwhelming amount of bombs were dropped in 1944, when the scale of the German atrocities had become clear.

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Are you attempting to make the case that the buildup in Allied bombing from earlier years to '44 was a response to - or even had anything to do with - German atrocities? That runs counter to everything I've read on the subject, which maintains that said buildup was a function of Allied production capacity and the Luftwaffe's ability to resist. Either you've uncovered some shocking new information, or I'm going to have to call this a clear example of negationism.

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Total number for Japan is some 300/500k. Again, overwhelmingly in 1944/5.

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So, using your own numbers, the Allies killed between 600,000 and 1,100,000 civilians just through the bombing of civilians centers in Germany and Japan and not counting the bombing of Italy, the killing of POWs and surrendering soldiers, or anything else. That's what you're defending so adamently? :inquisitive:

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http://en.allexperts.com/e/h/hi/hist...tionism%29.htm

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I don't appreciate the implications. I'm not the one trying desperately to explain away the intentional targeting and murder of millions of civilians. I'm not the one justifying unjustifiable war crimes. I'm not the denier in this discussion.

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Originally Posted by Drone

I wasn't talking about Russian POWs. Soviet citizens were to be starved from occupied lands through food management. ATPG might think the way I do about it. The brutality between the armies on both sides in the East is fairly well known, and the Holocaust has better PR, but in terms of scale the Slav civilians caught the brunt of it.

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Of course. Not sure why I went off on a tangent about POWs... was trying to pay attention to a lecture at the same time. Anyway, my comment applies to the Russian civilians as well.

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Scale matters a lot, since large scale generally means there is an organizational and institutional approval of the deed.

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That applies to the Allies as well. Would you agree that there was certainly organizational and institutional approval of destroying large civilian centers? I don't think Harris' words can be interpreted any other way.

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Originally Posted by Seamus

They lost the Battle of Britain by bothering to fight it at all. Total waste of resources and the death of many skilled aircrew to achieve more or less nothing. Even if they had won hands down, shattering the RAF, they would have achieved nothing strategically. Pointless vanity by Goering as near as I can figure it.

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It was meant to gain air superiority in preparation for Operation Sea Lion.

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Neither side treated civilians appropriately according to modern expectations of combatants. That having been acknowledged, it simply isn't accurate to stack the often programmatic efforts of the Germans against that of the Western Allies.

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You wouldn't say that the Allied bombing was a programmatic effort with the expressed intention of killing civilians?

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Originally Posted by Brenus

PJ, you should have check who is August Von Kageneck:
So I do think that his writings are more than anecdotes.

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I am aware of who he is, but his recollections are one set out of tens of millions.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

...It was meant to gain air superiority in preparation for Operation Sea Lion.

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Bollocks. The Germans made virtually no preparation whatsoever for anything resembling an invasion of England. Hitler was, at best, lukewarm about the whole idea. The aerial bombardment, coupled with low morale following France, was supposed to bring England to the negotiating table.

There never was going to be a Sea Lion, and it could never have been successful had one been staged. Absolutely nothing in the figures on sealift, naval covering forces, etc. give any hope for a sustained effort by Germany following an amphibious strike. Total pipe dream.

The Germans badly under-estimated England's will to resist and wasted a ridiculous number of pilots from what was probably the premier tactical support air force in existence at the time (better even than the USMC who pioneered the close support stuff).

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

...You wouldn't say that the Allied bombing was a programmatic effort with the expressed intention of killing civilians?

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The aerial bombardment of Germany was specifically designed to kill as many Germans as possible. We didn't think it would break their will to resist, we wanted them to die. If we killed enough of them and broke or disrupted enough of their infrastructure, then maybe they wouldn't be able to fight so effectively. We were every bit the coterie of heartless murderers they were and have no right to take a moral high ground approach on anything aside from the Holocaust. We also did it a heck of a lot better than they did and killed scads more of them then they did us.

On the other hand, we didn't start the killing -- they did. We were not the first to expressly target civilians in that war -- they were. What we did was classic tit-for-tat, a system of behaviorial response that has worked effectively for a few millenia. So if you accept reciprocity as a valid response, then you shouldn't have a problem with what happened. If you don't then you always will. You burden either way.

Why do you always push it with WWII Germany, PJ? Is there something about you that revels in all of us having a moral equivalence to that regime of sick, twisted fucks? Ultimately, we simply don't. I guess for me the real core issue of the whole thing is pretty simple. That regime was evil and its leaders and key supporters knowingly did evil. The Allies did some horrific things in pursuit of a larger and more worthwhile goal. Does the end justify the means? Sadly, sometimes, it does.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

The aerial bombardment of Germany was specifically designed to kill as many Germans as possible. We didn't think it would break their will to resist, we wanted them to die. If we killed enough of them and broke or disrupted enough of their infrastructure, then maybe they wouldn't be able to fight so effectively. We were every bit the coterie of heartless murderers they were and have no right to take a moral high ground approach on anything aside from the Holocaust. We also did it a heck of a lot better than they did and killed scads more of them then they did us.

On the other hand, we didn't start the killing -- they did. We were not the first to expressly target civilians in that war -- they were. What we did was classic tit-for-tat, a system of behaviorial response that has worked effectively for a few millenia. So if you accept reciprocity as a valid response, then you shouldn't have a problem with what happened. If you don't then you always will. You burden either way.

Why do you always push it with WWII Germany, PJ? Is there something about you that revels in all of us having a moral equivalence to that regime of sick, twisted fucks? Ultimately, we simply don't. I guess for me the real core issue of the whole thing is pretty simple. That regime was evil and its leaders and key supporters knowingly did evil. The Allies did some horrific things in pursuit of a larger and more worthwhile goal. Does the end justify the means? Sadly, sometimes, it does.

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RaF, and USAF targetted German Military Infrastructure Industrial production, Oil Production, and other essentials for warfare. It is unfortunate that all of those happened to be housed in German cities, and the smart bomb wasn't invented yet. The allies needed to harm German factories. Today it would be a war crime, but back then it wasn't.

The German Airforce at first did the same thing, and the RaF was very nearly destroyed by non stop air raids. Hitler ironically saved the RaF by switching the order from military and other infrastructure to just killing Britons. It was when the population instead of the RaF became the target that the Battle of Britain was won.

We can't take the absolute morale high ground, but we could say that what we did was required to win the war, and that arguably the ends justify the means because the nazis donated their name to meaning an ultimate evil for a reason, and Germany was fighting to at least take over large portions of the world in the name of racial purity.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Bollocks. The Germans made virtually no preparation whatsoever for anything resembling an invasion of England. Hitler was, at best, lukewarm about the whole idea. The aerial bombardment, coupled with low morale following France, was supposed to bring England to the negotiating table.

There never was going to be a Sea Lion, and it could never have been successful had one been staged. Absolutely nothing in the figures on sealift, naval covering forces, etc. give any hope for a sustained effort by Germany following an amphibious strike. Total pipe dream.

The Germans badly under-estimated England's will to resist and wasted a ridiculous number of pilots from what was probably the premier tactical support air force in existence at the time (better even than the USMC who pioneered the close support stuff).

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You have to separate your opinion about the success of a possible invasion from the fact that an invasion was planned. Hitler issued Directive No. 16 and preparations were made at every level of the German military. Gaining air superiority in preparation for Sea Lion was the purpose of the Luftwaffe operations during the battle.

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The aerial bombardment of Germany was specifically designed to kill as many Germans as possible. We didn't think it would break their will to resist, we wanted them to die. If we killed enough of them and broke or disrupted enough of their infrastructure, then maybe they wouldn't be able to fight so effectively. We were every bit the coterie of heartless murderers they were and have no right to take a moral high ground approach on anything aside from the Holocaust. We also did it a heck of a lot better than they did and killed scads more of them then they did us.

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Thank you. Acceptance of reality is all that can be expected.

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Why do you always push it with WWII Germany, PJ?

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I don't understand the attitude of moral superiority. I mean, why were the British fighting the Japanese half way across the world in the first place? Think about that one...