WWR 2

[la-troy]

I have recently reading up on the actions of the allied forces towards the end of world war 2. Some of these acts seem outrageous to me but I think some of them might have been necessary. I would like to know what you people think about it?

Also i would like to you know who you think committed more war crimes, give some examples please.


Didn't mean to place it in chit chat, don't know if I can switch it.

[Tower of Bebel]

The biggest war crime is the atom bomb. It wasn't necessary at all, as Japan offered a surrender several weeks before the first bomb exploded. The atom bomb needed to be used as to show Stalin the the US was more powerful.
I also like to point out that there were crimes committed just after the war. like the deportation of the Balts to working camps.

[Red October]

Read Howard Zinn's account of the bombing of Royan. It was a city in southern France with German forces dug in outside it, so the Allies firebombed it into the stone age a few weeks before the end of the war, resulting in countless civilian deaths. There is also the bombing of Dresden, which is typical of Allied efforts to break the will of the Germans by killing all of them.

And don't forget the systematic internment of Japanese Americans during the war.

[Sir_No_Sir]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 07, 2007 08:03 pm
And don't forget the systematic internment of Japanese Americans during the war.
If you want to count on the domestic side, obviously the holocaust.


But not counting that, the atomic bombs, and i think thats fairly obvious.

[la-troy]

Don't think I would be able to find the Howard Zinn thing, but thanx.

yes, I know about most of the war crimes in Japan but what about Germany. Or are we saying they deserved it?

[Sir_No_Sir]

Oh, I honestly dont know much about the crimes in germany-theyve never been publicized as much as the a-bombs in japan.

[Red October]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 03:29 pm
Oh, I honestly dont know much about the crimes in germany-theyve never been publicized as much as the a-bombs in japan.
The media likes to keep that hushed up. Everyone in America thinks of WW2 as the best war ever, a war that was absolutely infallible in purpose. If people knew about the Allied atrocities, it would make WW2 look bad.

[Sir_No_Sir]

In prupose-good.I'd rather live with what we have now then naziism.

Did we fight as humanely as we should have?

That's an almost definite no.

[Wiesty]

lets not forget all the german citizens that were raped in Berlin by allied forces (mostly russia)

[Red October]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 09:44 pm
lets not forget all the german citizens that were raped in Berlin by allied forces (mostly russia)
That's true too. Russian soldiers did commit war crimes against the German people, though it's understandable why they would do that, though not excuseable.

[Fightin Da Man]

A-bomb, Japanese internment, firebombings (Dresden, Tokyo) are a few.

[Goatse]

War crimes?

Complete destruction of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo...

[Red Flag Rising]

The A-bomb was an atrocity

Dresdan and Royan were not. Crimes cannot be committed against fascist vermin. And the Russian rape stories have been demonstrated to have been anti-Soviet propaganda to stir anti-communism in Western Europe.

The USA and the UK raped and pillaged their way through Europe in WWII then the Americans colonized the place.

[Oedipus Complex]

Dresdan and Royan were not. Crimes cannot be committed against fascist vermin

You're forgetting one word of much importance, Civilians

[gilhyle]

I happened to hear on the radio recently a memoir of one of the british troops who discovered Dachau - he said they took the german garrison out into the woods and shot them.

[Wiesty]

Originally posted by Red Flag [email protected] 08, 2007 11:24 am
The A-bomb was an atrocity

Dresdan and Royan were not. Crimes cannot be committed against fascist vermin. And the Russian rape stories have been demonstrated to have been anti-Soviet propaganda to stir anti-communism in Western Europe.

The USA and the UK raped and pillaged their way through Europe in WWII then the Americans colonized the place.
Actuall accounts of this takens of this have been given. Sorry to say but Russian Communists were not perfect human beings who loved mankind, it is very likely that they raped and murdered many civillian when they reached Berlin. I think the figure was close to 100,000.

[Spartacist]

You're forgetting one word of much importance, Civilians

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.

[Oedipus Complex]

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.

The Dresden and Royan bombings (especially Dresden) killed quite more than just a few innocnet civilians, and ridiculous amount of damage to infrastructure in order to justify it by saying "they just got caught in the way" I'm not defending anything about the disgusting fascists but that I'm disgusted by the needless killing and destruction of buildings. Here is an excerpt from wikipedia's article on the Dresden bombings just to give you an idea of the devastation:


A Dresden police report written shortly after the attacks stated that the old town and the inner eastern suburbs had been engulfed in a single fire which had destroyed almost 12,000 dwellings including residential barracks. The report also said that the raid had destroyed "24 banks; 26 insurance buildings; 31 stores and retail houses; 6470 shops; 640 warehouses; 256 market halls; 31 large hotels; 26 public houses; 63 administrative buildings; 3 theatres; 18 cinemas; 11 churches; 60 chapels; 50 cultural-historical buildings; 19 hospitals including auxiliary, overflow hospitals, and private clinics; 39 schools; 5 consulates; 1 zoological garden; 1 waterworks, 1 railway facility; 19 postal facilities; 4 tram facilities; 19 ships and barges." The report also mentioned that the Wehrmacht's main command post in the Taschenberg Palais, 19 military hospitals and a number of less significant military facilities were destroyed.[19] Almost 200 factories were damaged, 136 seriously (including several of the Zeiss Ikon precision optical engineering works), 28 with medium to serious damage, and 35 with light damage.[20]

"British assessments ... concluded that 23 percent of the city’s industrial buildings were seriously damaged and that 56 per cent of the non-industrial buildings (exclusive of dwellings) had been heavily damaged. Of the total number of dwelling units in the city proper, 78,000 were regarded as demolished, 27,700 temporarily uninhabitable but ultimately repairable, and 64,500 readily repairable from minor damage. This later assessment indicated that 80 per cent of the city’s housing units had undergone some degree of damage and that 50 per cent of the dwellings had been demolished or seriously damaged." and that the USAAF "raids against the city’s railway facilities on 14 and 15 February resulted in severe and extensive damage that entirely paralyzed communications.…" and that "The railway bridges over the Elbe river — vital to incoming and outgoing traffic — were rendered unusable and remained closed to traffic for many weeks after the raids."[21]

The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Estimates are made difficult by the fact that the city and surrounding suburbs which had a population of 642,000 in 1939[22] was crowded at that time with up to 200,000 refugees,[23] and some thousands of wounded soldiers. The fate of some of the refugees is not known as they may have been killed and incinerated beyond recognition in the fire-storm, or they may have left Dresden for other places without informing the authorities. Earlier reputable estimates varied from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000–35,000 as the likely range[24][25] with the latest (1994) research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert pointing toward the lower part of this range.[26] It would appear from such estimates that the casualties suffered in the Dresden bombings were similar to those suffered in other German cities which were subject to firebombing attacks during area bombardment.[27]

Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt.[28] There were around 25,000 officially buried dead by March 22, 1945, war related or not, according to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47"). There was no registration of burials between May and September 1945.[29] War-related dead found in later years, from October 1945 to September 1957, are given as 1,557; from May 1945 until 1966, 1,858 bodies were recovered. None was found during the period 1990–1994, even though there was a lot of construction and excavation during that period. The number of people registered with the authorities as missing was 35,000; around 10,000 of those were later found to be alive.[25] In recent years, the estimates have become a little higher in Germany and lower in Britain; earlier it was the opposite.

There have been higher estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as 300,000. They are from disputed and unreliable sources, such as the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels, Soviet historians, and David Irving, the once popular but now discredited self-styled 'historian'[30] who retracted his higher estimates.[31] Both the Columbia Encyclopedia and Encarta Encyclopedia list the number as "from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead", the higher figure of which is in line with Irving's incorrect retracted estimates.

[Wiesty]

You can't generalise saying "people got caught in the way" For many attrocities, the attack is aimed at civillians in hopes of weakening the country, or causing surrender. Look at the Japan Fire Bombings for example, the Americans purposeley attacked a heavily populated area to inflict a great death toll, not to take out a few factories.

[Oedipus Complex]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 12:35 am
You can't generalise saying "people got caught in the way" For many attrocities, the attack is aimed at civillians in hopes of weakening the country, or causing surrender. Look at the Japan Fire Bombings for example, the Americans purposeley attacked a heavily populated area to inflict a great death toll, not to take out a few factories.
That's not directed at me, is it? Because if it was I wasn't saying that, but rather though, I am complete agrrement with you.

[Wiesty]

Twas directed at sparacist

[Comrade Castro]

Dresden was, like the atom bomb, an attempt to scare the Soviet Union in the upcoming cold war. The intense bombardment of it and other East German cities near the end of the war that at the time had absolutely no strategic importance were British-American strikes against the future state that would come up there. Plus the Americans weren't heroic little angels like is believed in the US, but generally executed captured German (and especially Japanese) troops at about the same rate that the axis executed them when captured. I've seen videos of it, lines of tied German troops gunned down. It was just a brutal war, fought just as brutally by everyone involved. There's never been a war where everyones been perfectly civil and honorable. There's nothing exceptional about it, its the same thing that always happened.

[Marukusu]

All capitalist wars are crimes.

[RedKnight]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 11:13 pm

You're forgetting one word of much importance, Civilians

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.
Couldn't the same also be said of the Iraq war, and Saddam Hussein?

[rouchambeau]

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.
Donny, please...

Those who died in Dresden were not "a few unfortunates". There were over one-hundred thousand who died there.

They did not get "caught in crossfires", it was a city wtih a handful of troops in it; hardly enough to warrant the firebombing of the entire city.

[Avtomat_Icaro]

Originally posted by Red Flag [email protected] 08, 2007 05:24 pm
The A-bomb was an atrocity

Dresdan and Royan were not. Crimes cannot be committed against fascist vermin. And the Russian rape stories have been demonstrated to have been anti-Soviet propaganda to stir anti-communism in Western Europe.

The USA and the UK raped and pillaged their way through Europe in WWII then the Americans colonized the place.
Dresden and Royan were civilian targets which were targetted specifically to kill high numbers of people, it had little to do with removing infrastructure or beating back German soldiers, these were specific civilian targets.

As for the rapes commited by the Soviets, yes they happened, same way they happened as those rapes commited by other Allied (US, Canadian, British, Brazilian, etc) soldiers who fought in the war. Its a bit one sided to simply deny the crimes the Soviets commited while calling the US move into Western Europe a colonisation by rape and pillaging. Look at what happened to the Eastern European states after WWII...Soviet imperialism :ph34r: Perhaps thats why the whole WWII monuments thing is so controversial is Estonia...

[Lenin II]

The Nuremburg Trials, the bombing of Dresden, Japanese Americanssent to concentration camps, the atomic bombing of Japan, the illegal killing of German prisoners, mass rape and other war crimes by the Red Army under Stalin, Canicattì slaughter, Biscari massacre, Dachau massacre, not to mention the treatment of POWs after the war by all involved Allied countries.

[Lenin II]

Originally posted by Red Flag [email protected] 08, 2007 05:24 pm
The A-bomb was an atrocity

Dresdan and Royan were not. Crimes cannot be committed against fascist vermin.
What about crimes against civilians? And history?

[Wiesty]

Nuremberg Trials? I don't know, but i'd say Jew killing nazis deserved to hang after the war.

[Oedipus Complex]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 10:44 pm
Nuremberg Trials? I don't know, but i'd say Jew killing nazis deserved to hang after the war.
The death penalty even when applied to people as disgusting as the nazi's is even more revolting than that. The only time executing someone is appropriate is when it is during a revolution and the bourgeiose are attempting a counter-revolution.

[whoknows]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 11:13 pm

You're forgetting one word of much importance, Civilians

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.
1. Not all revolutions demand mass murder. We have seen many in Europe during the past decade (all full of promess but so far disappointing) and Mr. Chavz' noble efforts. Which I hope he will not mar by making himself a red king.

2. The massacre of baroque Dresden was an English raid ment to be revenge
for the distruction of medievil Coventry. First the local people were killed, the good ones the bad ones and the indifferent ones. Then our patramonie of the work of their artists and artisans were robbed from us, even before our birth.

3. one crime does not justify another crime.

[Wiesty]

Originally posted by Oedipus Complex+May 10, 2007 06:34 pm--> (Oedipus Complex @ May 10, 2007 06:34 pm)
[email protected] 10, 2007 10:44 pm
Nuremberg Trials? I don't know, but i'd say Jew killing nazis deserved to hang after the war.
The death penalty even when applied to people as disgusting as the nazi's is even more revolting than that. The only time executing someone is appropriate is when it is during a revolution and the bourgeiose are attempting a counter-revolution. [/b]
Lol, ahh politics are so contradicting

[Oedipus Complex]

Originally posted by Wiesty+May 11, 2007 01:17 am--> (Wiesty @ May 11, 2007 01:17 am)
Originally posted by Oedipus [email protected] 10, 2007 06:34 pm

[email protected] 10, 2007 10:44 pm
Nuremberg Trials? I don't know, but i'd say Jew killing nazis deserved to hang after the war.
The death penalty even when applied to people as disgusting as the nazi's is even more revolting than that. The only time executing someone is appropriate is when it is during a revolution and the bourgeiose are attempting a counter-revolution.
Lol, ahh politics are so contradicting [/b]
It's not really contradicting, but only appears as such. Stopping the bourgeios from oppresssing the working class is a must, and if you only were to incarcerate them, would then arise an even stronger movement to help take back their leaders. And since often times during revolutions there is instability they could successfully gather back their leaders and successfully crush the revolution. By executing those who refuse to give up their preset conditions in which they perpetually exploit people, then to a communally shared society deserve nothing more than an execution.

The Allies on the other hand had the Nazi's successfully captured and had no reason to kill them other than pure vengeance. Although yes there was still a strong Nazi movement they would have had to go up against many countries to successfully take them back. A much different situation than a revolution.

[Avtomat_Icaro]

Wait...Nazis simply were captured and should be kept alive. While during the Revolution the bourgeoise should be captured and then killed. So bourgeoise are worst than Nazis if I get your logic right? Dont get me wrong, I dont like the bougies...but Nazis are fucking worse, hunt those fuckers down and hang them from trees or something!

[Oedipus Complex]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 08:31 am
Wait...Nazis simply were captured and should be kept alive. While during the Revolution the bourgeoise should be captured and then killed. So bourgeoise are worst than Nazis if I get your logic right? Dont get me wrong, I dont like the bougies...but Nazis are fucking worse, hunt those fuckers down and hang them from trees or something!
I knew my statements would cause unintended consequences but that's ok. I didn't make a value judgment on whose crimes are worse but simply that the death penalty serves no purpose unless the victim will likely be able to escape, or evade imprisonment and therefore return back to power. I don't think too many people could have come up with a plan in order for the Nazi's to escape and actually take back power, however during a revolution since class antagonisms will be extremely sharp, hence it will be a must to rid those who refuse to assimilate into the new society.

[quirk]

I agree with you Oedipus Complex. I think the only time the death penalty should be applied is during a revolution as at this time the revolutionary state will be weak and cannot afford to allow any possibility that certain counter revolutionaries will escape or even by being alive inspire others.

After WW2 there was no chance of the Nazi's making a comeback yet this could not be said for the few years following the revolution in Russia.

[sexyguy]

King Henry V.
Shakespeare

Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Umberto [email protected] The Intolerable, in Five Moral Writings
- We were accostumed to the fact that war was a regulamented game, and that, at the end, the defeated king would hug his winning cousin, and what do you do? Pick the losers and hang us?

- Yes, sir (...) we consider that in this war things beyond tolerable happened, and, so, we are changing the rules.

- But intolerable to your, winner's, values; we have different values, aren't you going to respect them?

- No; since we won, and among our values is the celebration of force, we shall apply force: we shall hang you.

- But what will happen in future wars?

- Those who start them will know that, if they lose, they will be hanged; that they think before they start.

- But you also committed atrocities!

- Yes, but it is you, who lost, that say it; we won, therefore we shall hang you.

- But bear, then, the responsibility!

- The responsibility, we bear it.

[kingbee]

Every side committs atrocities: that's war. But whether you can somehow objectively measure atrocities...? I suppose that's why a new category is used in WWII context: that of genocide to create sometype of atrocity hierarchy.


The massacre of baroque Dresden was an English raid ment to be revenge
for the distruction of medievil Coventry

They truly did a great job of making Coventry into a hole...

[bolshevik butcher]

I think what's perhaps being missed here is that the second world war was an Imperialist war like any other. The second world war was not some sort of great war absent from the contradictions of class society. Like all wars the second world war was a result of class society. We shouldn't justif any atrocity committed by any ruling class. The ruling class' fought the second world war in their own intersts, in competition for markets and resources not because they were well meaning or cared for the people oppressed by the nazis.

[chimx]

WW2 was a "total war" and both sides had policies of attacking civilians. Given what the Germans had been doing to civilians in other countries, I don't know if it should be a surprise that Allied forces bombed citizens in return.


The biggest war crime is the atom bomb. It wasn't necessary at all, as Japan offered a surrender several weeks before the first bomb exploded.

Source? Everything I have read on the period says the last part of this statement is completely untrue. At best the US suspected that Japan might surrender once Russia got involved with the war.

[Friedrich Nietzsche]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 11:13 pm

You're forgetting one word of much importance, Civilians

I am sorry but civillians die, civillians get caught in crossfires, civillians catch bomb schrapnel, flak and stray bullets that is the nature of war. Just as Revolution is war, so is the extermination of fascism war. The goal outweighs the lives of a few unfortunates caught in the way.
Ah! So the ends justify the means, does it? Normally, I argue for this concept, but I shall make a special exception to play Devil's Advocate(a most fun game...).

So, you would agree with the mass-extermination of all fascists, even though they are as just as human as you are? Now, you could argue that they are trying to "Force their ideology apon the world"...but you, are doing the same, albeit, from a different angle. Granted, I understand that, during war, there *will* be civilian casualties, it is an unavoidable part of war itself, but to fire-bomb an entire city...with *no* military value, is just madness.

Although, I view the Atomic Bombings differently. Yes, they are horrible weapons, the most horrible weapons mankind has ever unleashed apon the world, but they are a required evil. We had to do what we did in Nagasaki and Hiroshima to scare Stalin. We had to, or else his T34s/IS3s would've rolled over Europe, bringing with it Stalin's own demonized and bastardized form of communism, of which is only different from nazism in that the ones who are going to die...don't know it. At least, with national socialism, the lines are clear as to who is going to be prosecuted, and who is not.

It was required to maintain peace in the world. After 6 years of straight global conflict(not counting the mainland war in Asia), the world was simply tired of it. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not die totally in vain. Because of their sacrifice, the world could rest from the atrocities committed on all sides.

The allied fire bombings.

The nazi concentration camps.

The red army's rape of women and small girls (reports say that girls from the age of 10 and up...)

And the Japanese atrocities in Asia.

[luxemburg89]

There is also the bombing of Dresden, which is typical of Allied efforts to break the will of the Germans by killing all of them.


Now I'm not condoning the act whatsoever, but Dresden was revenge for the Axis bombing of Coventry - (although some may argue some form of reward may be in order, not a punishment) lol I'm joking Coventry is a fine example of human civilisation.

[Coggeh]

In Dresden the allied's used incenditory bombs aimed at killing people and destroying industry (admittedly this was after alot of warnings by the british for the surrender of the germans ) but none the less they went ahead . Thats not to say the germans didnt use the same bombs in poland,russia and britain itself .

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 11:22 pm
Now I'm not condoning the act whatsoever, but Dresden was revenge for the Axis bombing of Coventry - (although some may argue some form of reward may be in order, not a punishment) lol I'm joking Coventry is a fine example of human civilisation.
Maybe, but Coventry is - or at least was, during WWII - an important center of Bristish belic industry. So there is a difference between bombing Dresden and bombing Coventry.

There is, also, a difference between Allied and Axis atrocities. Allied atrocities were consequence of the fact that war is war and war is about atrocity. You don't win wars without killing innocent people. Axis atrocities were committed for the sake of it; they were planned genocide, based in a "theory" of genocide. The Allies winning the war would bring, well, what we have today, since they won. The Axis winning the war would bring a kind of "peace" in which entire populations would be physically exterminated without no other reason than the Nazi "ideas" about racial purity.

Luís Henrique