Lest We Forget: Aug 6 1945: Part II

@ Frmrsldr #1

With respect to extermination of the Jews as a policy, I'm not with you on that.

There is a Nazi textbook with an ironic title: "Antisemitism of the World - in words and pictures", published in 1935 which considers the possible solutions to the Jewish Question. Eight solutions are mentioned. Pogrom - persecution and extermination - is number seven. Expulsion is another, so I don't think the pogrom is intended as a method of driving them out.

So although no, the Nazis probably didn't want to lay the details out on the table (as you say, they had not worked some of those out before Wannsee), the question of killing all the Jews was VERY public information long before Kristallnacht and long before the war even began.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

@ Frmrsldr #1

With respect to extermination of the Jews as a policy, I'm not with you on that.

There is a Nazi textbook with an ironic title: "Antisemitism of the World - in words and pictures", published in 1935 which considers the possible solutions to the Jewish Question. Eight solutions are mentioned. Pogrom - persecution and extermination - is number seven. Expulsion is another, so I don't think the pogrom is intended as a method of driving them out.

So although no, the Nazis probably didn't want to lay the details out on the table (as you say, they had not worked some of those out before Wannsee), the question of killing all the Jews was VERY public information long before Kristallnacht and long before the war even began.

There's a huge difference between philosophically entertaining an idea aloud and actually doing the action.

The point I was making was that prior to the 1942 Wannsee Conference there was no detailed drawn up blueprint for the Holocaust.

When Hitler, the nazis, Wermacht generals, the industrialists and ministers of the German Agricultural Ministry looked at the map of Russia, they looked at figures like industrial output, the total sq. km. of agricultural land, estimates of the size of grain and other foodsuffs output, the size of various livestocks production, the estimated volume of oil in the ground and oil production, the estimated tonnes and volumes, etc., of natural and strategic resources, the size and capabilities of Russia's armed forces and how much of a threat Russia posed both militarily and in the form of the spread of communism, for reasons to invade Russia.

THEY DID NOT SEARCH FOR CENSUS POPULATION DATA ON THE NUMBER OF JEWISH PEOPLE LIVING THERE THAT THEY COULD ETHNICALLY CLEANSE as a reason for invading Russia. That information only became desirable to Himmler and the leaders of the SS after Russia was invaded and Germany was in command of occupied territory. Again, it was not a necessary causal reason for the invasion of Russia, unlike Russia's vast natural resources.

Frmrsldr wrote:

THEY DID NOT SEARCH FOR CENSUS POPULATION DATA ON THE NUMBER OF JEWISH PEOPLE LIVING THERE THAT THEY COULD ETHNICALLY CLEANSE as a reason for invading Russia. That information only became desirable to Himmler and the leaders of the SS after Russia was invaded and Germany was in command of occupied territory. Again, it was not a necessary causal reason for the invasion of Russia, unlike Russia's vast natural resources.

That's not what I was challenging. I am saying that the notion of extermination was not just cooked up at Wannsee.

Yes I agree, a notion. And I think that as war broke out, they thought that the cover of war would make realizing their notions easier. Some say Tommy Douglas was the first western politician to interpret the notions and denounce Hitler. Stalin is also said to have read Mein Kampf before the Nazis began marching into various countries. A HNN documentary reported that Stalin studiously underlined all references to Bolsheviks and Jews. It's good to pay attention to notions however small, and even better to anticipate the end results.

@ Frmrsldr

Not to get us even further off-topic, but speaking of the legacy of the great war...

I suspect the Germans in WWI (and the Americans, for different reasons) made the same short-sighted mistake as the U.S. later did in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. They figured sending Trotsky and Lenin back to Russia would just destabilize the situation (and in the case of the Germans, allow them to win the war - the Americans wanted Russia's oil). In fact, it did a good deal more which they did not expect.

Not drawing a parallel between the Taliban and the Bolsheviks of course... just the tactic of exploiting a popular uprising to destabilize one's enemy.

Frmrsldr wrote:

Stalin took great pains to ensure that NO ONE could ever say that Russia provoked Germany into attacking.

Nope they invited themselves into Russia and were treated poorly as they say. There was no UN at the time and communications between countries was often misinterpreted and especially throughout the war. The cold war wasn't much better.

After the initial attacks on Russia, Stalin went home to his Dacha where he stayed for two weeks. He waited for the people's justice.  They never came for him.

FrmrSldr wrote:

As for Jewish people, Stalin didn't hate them, just like he didn't hate anyone else. He had a 'don't give a shit attitude' towards Jews, just like he did everyone else. Stalin was an equal opportunity paranoid maniac.

Yes, some of Stalin's most willing executioners were ethnic Jews. He wasn't as choosey as the fascist invaders were and would have continued to be had they won the war. Russians, Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Poles etc didn't figure in their plans for the future.

FrmrSldr wrote:

Which is worse? Or is an atrocity an atrocity and they are both equally morally repugnant and pernicious?

I think Hitler and the Nazis were the most prolific mass murderers in the shortest time frame. As a reference point for me, I can not imagine one Jewish person from that era referring to him as 'Father Hitler.' Stalin's memory when invoked has caused some to express anger and some to describe him as a father figure who led them through extreme hardships.

And I think that it's the mark of a real historian to mention the other tyrants of that general era who were rabid anticommunists and propped up by western finance and industrialists: the USSR's main opponents, the Nazis, of course, as well as Franco, Mussolini, and Chiang Kai-shek rounding out the fascists' A team in China. And they were right, brutal, bloody bastards in their own right. The western world elite feared communism as much as they coveted Asia's treasures.

Stalin may have prevented fascist takeover of Asia, but he was also ruthless motherf#&#er. They were dangerous times. He correctly anticipated the fascist attack on Russia's revolution part two. War museums in Russia still refer to all western nations as fascist even today.

@ Fidel

I'm not saying there weren't Nazis in the west. They were everywhere because some of them were damned good at their jobs and frankly most countries that are after power aren't too particular about who they hire.

Fidel wrote:

6079_Smith_W wrote:

@ Fidel

I'm not saying there weren't Nazis in the west. They were everywhere because some of them were damned good at their jobs and frankly most countries that are after power aren't too particular about who they hire.

The Nazis preferred to surrender to western allied troops as the war ended.They were treated fairly well compared to Soviet justice, yes I agree. And we welcomed thousands of Nazi war criminals into Canada and the US alone.  One former Nazi living in the states told 60 Minutes that the western countries immigration policies favoured former Nazis because they were generally thought to be anti-communists. He said that brandishing the SS tattoo on his arm to immigration officials was proof enough of his anticommunist status. He was one of many who were brought to western countries by open arms policies after the war. The hypocrisy was evident to European Jews who were barred from entering the US and Canada etc while fleeing Nazi occupied countries during the war.

Nazism can be summed up succintly when one asks what it was against.

It was against three things. It was:

1. Anti-democratic.

2. Anti-communist.

3. Anti-Semitic.

For the scope of this post, we can drop anti-Semitism because it is not relevant.

Thus, when it came to a high ranking nazi who had valuable intelligence, knowledge and skills, the question was which Superpower to go to for future employment: the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R?

The decision would depend not only on what the intelliegence, knowledge and skills were and which country wanted them, but also whether the nazi in question was more anti-democratic or anti-communist.

For example, if the nazi had knowledge and skills about jet propulsion, rocket weaponry or missile weaponry technology and was more anti-democratic than anti-communist (Hitlerite nazism and Stalinist communism were equally authoritarian), then he would work for the U.S.S.R., Stalin was interested in jet, rocket and missile technology and gladly accepted nazis with such knowledge and skills.

If the nazi fought or was an intelligence officer on the Eastern Front or had knowledge and skills about rocket or missile weaponry technology and was more anti-communist than anti-democratic (Hitler scoffed at democracy as a weak and ineffective form of government. He feared and loathed communism and saw it as a threat.), Uncle Sam wanted him and the nazi in question would have no problem working for this employer.

Cueball wrote:

My point has been, and remains, that Japanese mode of imperial conquest followed this second patern, not the first.

So what?

Again, I'm absolutely baffled why we're getting into such a hairsplitting philosophical bullshit argument about the difference between nazi German occupation of the East (Europe) and fascist Japan occupation of the East (Asia).

The Rape of Nanking is exactly like the 1941-42 activities of the Einsatzguppen, though there may not have been the communication with head office in Tokyo and the local field commanders like their was in the German example.

The activities of Unit 731 were exactly the same as the unethical scientific experiments by the SS on human subjects.

WTF does it have to do with the thread; titled "Lest We Forget, August 6, 1945"?

If you want to talk about Mein Kampf, Operation Barbarossa, Lebensraum, Wannsee, "The Jewish Question" and the Holocaust, etc., then why don't you resurrect the May 8 VE Day (or whatever it was called) thread, or if it's closed open up a new one?

If you want to talk about the "politics" that influences military strategy, then why don't you talk about the "politics" that was behind the use of the atomic bombs?

It still begs the question in my mind, whenever we talk about the "politics" and morality of the atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and units against other cultures and ethnic groups in Asia, you always change the subject (in a smokescreen fashion) effectively saying, "never mind about that, let's talk about nazi Germany and the Holocaust."

This inescapably leaves the impression in my mind that you're saying the Japanese fascists weren't such bad guys, really - not any different from the Europeans and how they ran their African and Asian colonies, which wasn't so bad.

I want you to think as big as you can: Universally speaking, (from a moral perspective) what is the difference between a Japanese person being incinerated by an atomic bomb versus a Jewish person being incinerated in an oven?

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Both vehicles of death and cremation were the product of modern science and purely logical thought divorced of all human emotion and moral reasoning. Both acts (and all war crimes/crimes against humanity) were/are the product of perverse rationalizations or what you would call "politics".

You want to talk about the obvious? I find the politics behind military strategy or of victimizing civilians or of victimizing civilians on a racial/racist basis or of victimizing civilians on a racial/racist basis in a political way or vicitmizing civilians on a racial/racist basis in a political, systematic (assembly line factory) genocide/ethnic cleansing/Holocaust way or whatever the hell the profound reality is that you're trying to enlighten us about, is neither terribly deep nor interesting.

But I guess that's because as a soldier, I've experienced first hand what being indoctrinated to see the "other" (ie., the "enemy") as something less than human to be able to kill them in cold blood and to believe that doing so is for the betterment of the rest of humanity. This again is the "politics" behind war/state sanctioned mass murder and atrocities.

Why do you always talk of the Holocaust in a vacuum? The victims of the Holocaust say, "Never again." Yet sadly, a number of holocausts have taken place since 1945, like the "re-education" camps of Maoist China where I've heard 60 million died, like the holocaust that took place under the Pol Pot regime, like the 1994 Rwandan genocide, to name but a few.

What is your strange fetish over the Holocaust of World War II? I say this because I never see you connecting it to anything else, as I did above. Or is this so "obvious" to you that you don't bother to talk about this or make these connections because you assume it's either obvious to everyone else or that everyone else can read your mind?

Cueball wrote:

You're just doing join the dots stuff here, based on some vague understanding that you have about the facts. The Wansea conference actually happened in early 1942, not late 1942, just as the occupation of Soviet Russia was being solidified. Your reading of what the means seems to be pretty much conjectural and flawed even more so because you don't know when it happened.

Bullshit. Just because I was off a couple of months on when the Wannsee Conference took place, it doesn't fatally flaw the rest of my argument.

"The Wansea conference actually happened in early 1942,..., just as the occupation of Soviet Russia was being solidified."

Whoa there Tex, you're going a little too fast. In the spring of 1942, the Wermacht had just begun their next offensive in Russia. Rostov and Karkov, the Crimea, Sevastopol, the Don steppe had yet to be captured, the Azerbaijan S.S.R. had yet to be invaded and its oil fields and those of (it was hoped) Baku, captured. Stalingrad was still to be attacked and captured (it was hoped).

Cueball wrote:

The object of the Wansea conference was to further systematize the method of slaughter being applied in Eastern Europe.

Which is precisely what I said.

Cueball wrote:

It was also, apparently something of a response to the severe strain that holding large populations of people in unproductive captivity was having on the logistics and supply system supporting the war in Russia.

What the hell are you talking about? "... the severe strain [of] large populations of people ... was having on the logistics and supply system supporting the war in Russia." ... were the hundreds of thousands of surrendered Russian soldiers. Why the fuck would the Wermacht have slowed their advance by instead of defeating soldiers in the field, turned their efforts to capturing Russian civilian urban dwellers and rural peasants? What military value would there have been to that? Soldiers see things militarily, not politically, like the SS, Waffen SS and Einsatzgruppen.

Cueball wrote:

I guess the reason you later suggested (in post number 10 of this thread: "From 1942 to 1944, when the SS and the Einsatzgruppen were rounding up the Jews in Russia..." ) that the Einsatzgruppen began operating in 1942, is in order to fulfill the fiction you are creating, but you are wrong here again, because indeed, the Einstatzgruppen began operating almost as soon as the invasion began, in 1941. There was nothing "ad hoc" about it. The purpose at this point is clear, the methods were later made more efficient.

Quote:

In May 1941 Reinhard Heydrich passed on verbally the order to massacre Soviet Jews to the Border Police School of Pretzsch when the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen were being trained for Operation Barbarossa[14]. In the spring of 1941, Heydrich and the First Quartermaster of the German Army, General Eduard Wagner succcessfully completed negotiations for co-operation between the Einsatzgruppen and the German Army to allow the implementation of the "special tasks"[15]. Following the Heydrich-Wagner agreement, on April 28, 1941 Fieldmarshal Walther von Brauchitsch ordered when Operation Barbarossa began that all German Army commanders were to identify and register all Jews in the occupied areas in the Soviet Union at once and to co-operate fully with the Einsatzgruppen"[16]. For Operation Barbarossa, four Einsatzgruppen were created, each numbering between 500-990 men to comprise a total force of 3, 000[17]. The men of the four Einsatzgruppen came from the Gestapo, the Kripo, the constabulary, and the Waffen SS[18]. Each Einsatzgruppen in its area of operations were under the operational control of the Higher SS-Police Chiefs[19].

Tell me, how much actual cooperation was there between officers of the Wermacht and the SS, Waffen SS, Einsatzguppen, police units assigned to this task etc? My guess is, the Wermacht officers would have seen this as a pain in the ass and cooperated with it as little as possible because it interfered with their prosecution of the war. "You guys do your thing, but stay the fuck away from us doing our job, which is to win the war."

This does show that it was ad hoc. Here you have Wermacht officers prosecuting the war. Hitler day after day spending 12 - 18 (or whatever) hours pouring over maps of Russia and following troop movements with avid interest, giving Himmler free reign to run his own SS Jewish liquidation empire/campaign, and showing no personal (Hitler's) interest in it, just believing that Himmler will get the job done. With the end result that the Wermacht and SS often worked in cross purposes to each other.

Fyi, Feldmarschall Walter von Brauchitsch was a puppet figurehead. Hitler had usurped his job when it came to the prosecution of the war. Von Kluge and von Mannstein wielded more authority than Brauchitsch over prosecuting the war.

Cueball wrote:

Some things just go without saying, one should hope. Basically you are repeating the obvious, over and over again, and ranting at people for not applauding your revelation of the obvious.

I don't give a fuck about people applauding me or not. This isn't an ego pissing contest between me and you, least not from my perspective.

"Basically you are repeating the obvious, over and over again,..."

That's a bit of 'the kettle calling the pot black', isn't it?

Cueball wrote:

You have missed the point entirely, yes the idea behind Lebensraum was to gain access to the vast resources of Russia but the method was not by winning influence, or gaining the co-operation of the local people, as you have suggested --

I never suggeted that. That would exactly be my understanding of Lebensraum - "... to gain access to the vast resources of Russia ...

Frmrsldr wrote:

For example, if the nazi had knowledge and skills about jet propulsion, rocket weaponry or missile weaponry technology and was more anti-democratic than anti-communist (Hitlerite nazism and Stalinist communism were equally authoritarian), then he would work for the U.S.S.R., Stalin was interested in jet, rocket and missile technology and gladly accepted nazis with such knowledge and skills.

I'm not sure who developed the first bomb for the Soviets or developed rocket capabilities for them, but I think the west got all excited when they knew about Sputnik and the Sovs putting things in orbit around the moon. The Sovs were a rival threat and therefore had to be contained in their paranoid minds.

Some of the Nazis scientists were specialists in human anatomy and torture as were some Japanese scientists brought to the west after the war. A number of Nazi physicians and psychologists were identified as criminals during the Nuremberg trials. And some of them would participate in mind control experiments based in the US and said to have been larger in scope than the Manhatten project. Various US Army and intelligence agencies are experts in the black art of torture and mind control today as a result. A number of scientists in the US and West Germany had a habit of falling out of 10 story windows and by just plain bad luck over the course of a number of years. They were torturing people around the world long before Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were made public knowledge.

Also, the documentary that frmrsldr mentioned is availabe on google video. Just look it up. It is not pleasant.

It is probably because China aided the Pakistani Project-706 throughout its long genesis and helped it acquire nuclear knowledge to act as a counter to India. Pakistan's primary allies are China and the US, who have both had long, rocky diplomatic histories with both the USSR and India. At the time, Pakistani nuclear capabilities were rather helpful. It should be pointed out that neither Pakistan nor Indian (Israel too) are signatories to the NPT and were never bound to obey anything there. This allowed their atomic rivalry to really develop.

North Korea's nuclear program is decidedly more enigmatic. Mostly domestic, one would imagine, with certain technological elements probably coming from the AQ Khan network. But who can really say?

But this is all a digression from the horrid nature of nuclear war and all of the parties that have been mentioned (and all those who have armed themselves to the teeth with The Bomb) have decided that genocide is in the interest of their national defence. Depressing, no?

No, it is worse than that. The weapons are often written into long term strategic plans. Sometimes they are developed for tactical uses. The simple fact is that no major confrontations between two nuclear capable states (barring India and Pakistan - both most likely lacking tactical nuclear weapons) have occurred. Nuclear torpedos, nuclear demolition designs and a variety of other munitions have been developed by most nuclear weapon states. And the states that have those weapons have definitive plans to use them in a variety of contingency situations. Many people mistake this for the strategic variety. Strategic game theory (not really in the vogue of planning anymore, by the way) and the whole MAD idea apply to the strategic level. A total war or tit-for-tat of the nuclear powers. And those plans (like SIOP), of course, have their back up plans. Case in point, Continuity of Government and all of the whacky survivability facilities that exist around the world.

Then of course you have those doomsday ideas like 'PERIMETR' in Russia. Your classic dead hand. An automated counter-value strike.

Counter-value, that's all that the citizens of any country are, by the way. The leaders of the nuclear powers have the machinery behind them at all times to turn the most remote citizens into a 'counter-value' target. This is taken into policy, into planning. It is as natural in government, at this point, as spending cuts and budget reports. After you build 'The Bomb' you have to find its many applications. Boys will be boys, and the boys who are writing reports on the required blast altitude over specific metro areas have toys that make other boys envious. Generally, these counter-value plans envision the deliberate targetting of a specific area or region. Remember that genocide I mentioned? Here we are. Right in our faces are droves of top-secret contingency plans that are at once a functional military plan - a counter-force system. That is, the tactical usage of the weapons. Launch a low yield weapon at an advancing tank column. The other side, of course, is the counter-value. Where a specific urban area is targetted. The required blast altitude is measured and the bomb goes off then. This maximizes the destructive potential. A very good overview of this is to actually read a bit of McNamara's work regarding fire bombing raids by American forces over Japan. You get the most basic ideas of why you deploy a nuclear weapon. Its effects are, to put it mostly simply, supremely more effective. Hence why a city is targetted in kilotonnage. The bigger bomb is not necessarily the most effective, so care has to be taken in to how these valuable little beans are used. Most warheads are in the 100kt+ range, from what I have read. Despite being 10x larger than Hiroshima, its radius of effect does not extend too greatly - and that is what is most important. You can drop a big, impractical weapon of the 15-50Mt range, but it is silly. You can accomplish far more with a MIRV equipped delivery system. MIRV means multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. You can strap a bunch of war heads on the missile and boom! You have a bunch of cities to be taken out in one strike, maybe some industrial facilities, or several military installations, or any permutation therein. But you can never escape the reality of counter-value targetting.

Nuclear weapon usage is generally planned for extreme situations in a conventional conflict. There is little thought of glassing a major city, instead the nuclear weapons would be deployed to do something like destroy a carrier group, hit a hardened facility, or to make sure that a specific target is taken out. Of course, the issue with this is that these 'counter-force' actions will generally exacerbate the conflict and raise the possibility of countervalue targets being hit with the weapons.

The planning of a regular conflict can be taken up in even detached, yet realistic, terms. The planning of nuclear strategy is one that takes place is a nightmarish world of numbers and misguided intellectualism. Any nuclear war plan might as well read as the grinding process of a genocidal plot brought into a high-value, high-tech world.

Papal Bull wrote:

It is probably because China aided the Pakistani Project-706 throughout its long genesis and helped it acquire nuclear knowledge to act as a counter to India.

[size=11]Whistleblower and US patriot Sibel Edmonds ID's faces but specifies no names as per US state secrets privileges law preventing her from actually naming names

http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-names-names-in-pi...

Selling US nuclear weapons secrets to the highest bidders is treason. These people should be punished not protected by the law. It's high time for glasnost to be made policy in America and for the sake of democracy and world peace.[/size]

Cueball wrote:

Error number three. The logistics strain on the supply train caused by the deportation of masses of people on the relatively backward rail system of Poland is what I am talking about... In other words, every shipment of human cargo going to the camps, was a train not supplying the Wehrmacht... Also, large camps of deported people, who were no longer producing their own keep, but dependent on the already stretched resources of the German economy caused a strain on supply. Again, this is all part of the historical record.

 

Alright. Show me some documents that establish "the logistics strain on the supply train..." in 1941, prior to the Wannsee Conference, because I think you're full of shit on that one.

There were not just logical military reasons for the invasion of Russia. There were also emotional ego reasons why regular Wermacht officers were champing at the bit: To say "I did it! Where Napoleon Bonaparte failed, we succeeded! We conquered the largest and most powerful country in the world!"

Regular officers and men of the Wermacht would have seen the soldiers, police, Einsatzgruppen, etc., as gutless cowards. Staying behind the lines, rounding up and shooting unarmed civilians.

Officers of the Wermacht were of the landowning class and were professionals. They looked upon people like the Bohemian Corporal, Himmler and members of the Einsatzguppen and police, etc., involved in the genocide as uncouth cretins. The Waffen SS didn't stick with this job description for long. As things went badly for nazi Germany, Hitler needed them as "troubleshooters", literally. Every time there was a breach in the line, they had to solve it by obliterating the problem. Regular officers and men of the Wermacht would have viewed them as kill crazy psychopaths and kept their distance.

Cueball wrote:

My point has been, and remains, that Japanese mode of imperial conquest followed this second patern, not the first.

 

So, for the edification of others, now that you have completely derailed my point to the extent where you are not even trying to understand it, I will take it to the top one more time:

The upshot of my argument, is twofold:

1) The case is put forward by the Allied powers that the Japanese 'surprise' attack upon European colonial possessions constituted and egregious and amoral act, justifying their reassertion of their dominance in Asia. Indeed, in the first case, there is no clear moral case for the USA, France, Britain and the Netherlands to claim the possessions Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines; Indochina; India, Singapore and Hong Kong; and Indonesia. In the final analysis we can see the brutal repression of independence movements throughout Asia that were spawned in the wake of the Japanese surrender (in particular the attempted suppression of the Indonesians and the Vietnamese) as a continuation of the previous colonial policy, backed by the United States the primary mover on the Allied side during the Pacific war.

There is, in a word, no real moral difference between any of these forces in play. Therefore, any appeal to the morality of the Allied war effort that justifies the firebombing of Tokyo or the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, on moral ground because they were "attacked" is completely void. There imperial possession, which they held illegally were attacked.

2) That the German attack upon its European enemies was an entirely different kind of event, in that it was an attack on the homelands of the French, the British, the Dutch, the Poles, the Czechs, the Russians, and in such the Allies were completely morally justified in defending themselves from this attack on the basis of "self-defense", and in particular the criminal nature of the attack upon the people of Eastern Europe aimed at acquiring the vast resources there was compounded by the fact that the object of the German attack was to be achieved by wholesale extermination of the people of Eastern Europe.

In other words, the moral case for the war with Japan is very doubtful, while the moral rightness of the Allied defense in Europe is clear, despite any war crimes that were committed in successfully defending themselves.

The many "war crimes" that were committed by the Allies remain "war crimes" and are clearly a-moral, and can be condemned in their own right, but this does not colour the moral superiority of their cause in relationship to the German cause. There is no similar moral case that can be made in terms of the Allied conduct of the war in the Pacific.

Yes, every country that is attacked has a right to defend itself.

However, just because nazi Germany bombed Rotterdam, London (and other British cities) and Minsk, Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol, Rostov, Karkov, Stalingrad (and other Russian cities), etc., for the Allies to bomb Medina, Anzio, Monte Casino, Rome, Caen, Amsterdam, Antwerp and to firebomb Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities, etc., it DID NOT make such actions on the part of the Allies morally excusable, acceptable or praiseworthy.

Universal morality and justice looks like this:

X (where X is an action) is wrong at all times and in all and any circumstances.

Y is a variable that represents a (any) country, society or culture.

Thus the argument looks like this:

If X is wrong and if Y does X, then Y has committed a wrong.

Let's start putting in some values for X and Y.

(Bombing cities and civilians) is wrong. (Nazi Germany) bombed cities and civilians. Therefore, what nazi Germany did was wrong.

(Bombing cities and civilians) is wrong. (The U.S.A.) bombed cities and civilians. Therefore, what the U.S.A. did was wrong.

This argument stands because whatever country, society or culture one substitutes for Y, if they commit X, where X is an act that unquestionably and unjustifiably takes the lives and causes unjustifiable pain, grief, harm and suffering of others, THEN Y IS GUILTY OF HAVING COMMITTED A WRONGFUL AND MORALLY PERNICIOUS ACT AND SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE SO, NO MATTER WHO Y IS. This argument is logically, morally and in terms of universal justice, consistent. It does not contradict itself. In contrast, moral relativism does. Relativism is logically, morally and in terms of universal justice, contradictory. It cancels itself out, is morally repugnant and therefore, cannot stand.

Concerning facsist Japan. Just because certain European countries and the U.S.A. had Asian colonies and mistreated their subjugated peoples, it DOES NOT mean that fascist Japan's acquiring new Asian colonies (regardless of whether they were former Allied colonies or not) and mistreating their (fascist Japan's) subjugated peoples, it DOES NOT make it any more morally excusable, acceptable, justifiable or praiseworthy for fascist Japan to do this as it was for the European countries and the U.S.A. (ie., the Allies) to do it.

Just as nazi Germany (nazi propaganda argued that the nazis were liberating all of Europe from either the threat of, or the oppression by communism. The nazis hailed themselves as the co-defenders of Finland and the liberators of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, the Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan from Russian and communist slavery and oppression) was no liberator of European peoples, fascist Japan likewise was no liberator of Asian peoples. Fascist Japan treated its subjugated Asian peoples just as badly (especially Chinese) as nazi Germany treated its subjugated Slavic peoples. Fascist Japan's occupation and rule of its newly conquered Asian peoples and cultures was neither beneficent nor magnanimous. The Japanese fascists were by no stretch of the imagination, neither liberators, nor were they "nice guys."

IF YOU WERE TO INFORM YOURSELF ABOUT THE RAPE OF NANKING AND UNIT 731, AS MUCH AS YOU ARE INFORMED ABOUT THE NAZIS AND THE HOLOCAUST, YOU WOULD LEARN AND UNDERSTAND THIS.

The way the Axis (for Italy, see fascist Italy's treatment of its subjugated peoples in Tripolitania (Libya), Abyssina (Ethiopia) and the Slavic peoples in its captured territories in Yugoslavia during W.W. II) and the Allied colonialists treated their subjugated people was based on the same thing: RACISM and they all treated the peoples and cultures they governed, exploited and abused equally reprehensibly.

Another logical contradiction in your argument is that part of the concept of a country having the right to defend itself when attacked is the additional notion of countries defending other countries - waging a war of aggression in the name of collective defense.

Thus, Britain was justified to wage a war of aggression against Germany not only to "defend" itself but to also defend France (in 1940) and other countries, later in the war.

The U.S.A. entered the war because Hitler declared war on the U.S.A. The U.S.A. was "defending" Britain, France, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and a short while later, Russia by committing itself to a war of aggression.

Let me repeat what I said above: A country has the right to defend itself when attacked. Germany waged a war of aggression against Poland by attacking Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared a war of aggression against Germany, even though at this time they had not been attacked by Germany.

In the same way, the U.S.A. entered a war of aggression against Germany even though Germany had not militarily attacked the U.S.A. So Germany declared war against the U.S.A.? Fine, let Germany attack or invade the U.S.A. Judging by Germany's failure to pull off an invasion of Britain, it's a pretty safe bet that an attempt to launch a serious attack or invasion of the U.S.A. was doomed to failure.

To wage a war of aggression against Germany in the name of defending other countries and as a form of retributive justice for the atrocities Germany committed is a logical and moral contradiction, it is insupportable and morally repugnant.

Even if one were to accept the notion of waging aggressive war in collective defense and as retributive justice, the argument that Japan's invasion of Asian colonies of the Allies did not justify waging an aggressive war in collectice defense and as retributive justice (as it has been established that Japan had waged a war of aggression and had committed atrocities in Asia) is contradictory, insupportable and is as racist as the actions of nazi Germany and fascist Japan (and indeed the treatment of subjugated peoples by all colonial powers). How can waging a war of aggression in the name of collective defense and retributive justice be justified against nazi Germany for the atrocities nazi Germany perpetrated on others on the one hand, and not be justified for the collective defense of the Allies' colonies ("protectorates", "possessions") and the retributive justice that also needed to be meted out to fascist Japan for its atrocities perpetrated on others, on the other hand?

Yes, well I think things went fairly well for Paulus and Schmidt until the sixth was encircled at the infernal kessel. Paulus pleaded with Hitler for more fuel, supplies, and to beef up the vulnerable northern flank. All of Paulus' requests were turned down. Paulus' orders were to stand firm, an order from the Fuhrer which historians say should have ultimately been refused by Paulus. A General should always be true to the men under his command and in whom they have entrusted with their lives not the madman ordering them to commit suicide. Rommel was more a leader than Paulus and refused to follow orders in the end. He saved German lives as a result.

I don't the specifics of the last ditch plan that was never executed. But essentially it was to take everything the Germans had left and air drop it behind the lines. It was thought that Zhukov et al. positioned most of what the Red Army had left in the tank at or near the front lines. The paratroopers and what was left of the elite combat groups may have caught the Russians in disarray and allowed them to take the oil fields and a few cities before the Russians could counter. But they desperately needed gasoline and diesel to fuel the mechanized units. Poor planning and logistics, and yes, bad leadership let them down in the end. Hitler blamed the German people for losing the war. Megalomaniacs tend to blame ordinary people and not themselves when things go badly for them.

Frmrsldr wrote:

Cueball wrote:

My point has been, and remains, that Japanese mode of imperial conquest followed this second patern, not the first.

 

So, for the edification of others, now that you have completely derailed my point to the extent where you are not even trying to understand it, I will take it to the top one more time:

The upshot of my argument, is twofold:

1) The case is put forward by the Allied powers that the Japanese 'surprise' attack upon European colonial possessions constituted and egregious and amoral act, justifying their reassertion of their dominance in Asia. Indeed, in the first case, there is no clear moral case for the USA, France, Britain and the Netherlands to claim the possessions Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines; Indochina; India, Singapore and Hong Kong; and Indonesia. In the final analysis we can see the brutal repression of independence movements throughout Asia that were spawned in the wake of the Japanese surrender (in particular the attempted suppression of the Indonesians and the Vietnamese) as a continuation of the previous colonial policy, backed by the United States the primary mover on the Allied side during the Pacific war.

There is, in a word, no real moral difference between any of these forces in play. Therefore, any appeal to the morality of the Allied war effort that justifies the firebombing of Tokyo or the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, on moral ground because they were "attacked" is completely void. There imperial possession, which they held illegally were attacked.

2) That the German attack upon its European enemies was an entirely different kind of event, in that it was an attack on the homelands of the French, the British, the Dutch, the Poles, the Czechs, the Russians, and in such the Allies were completely morally justified in defending themselves from this attack on the basis of "self-defense", and in particular the criminal nature of the attack upon the people of Eastern Europe aimed at acquiring the vast resources there was compounded by the fact that the object of the German attack was to be achieved by wholesale extermination of the people of Eastern Europe.

In other words, the moral case for the war with Japan is very doubtful, while the moral rightness of the Allied defense in Europe is clear, despite any war crimes that were committed in successfully defending themselves.

The many "war crimes" that were committed by the Allies remain "war crimes" and are clearly a-moral, and can be condemned in their own right, but this does not colour the moral superiority of their cause in relationship to the German cause. There is no similar moral case that can be made in terms of the Allied conduct of the war in the Pacific.

Yes, every country that is attacked has a right to defend itself.

However, just because nazi Germany bombed Rotterdam, London (and other British cities) and Minsk, Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol, Rostov, Karkov, Stalingrad (and other Russian cities), etc., for the Allies to bomb Medina, Anzio, Monte Casino, Rome, Caen, Amsterdam, Antwerp and to firebomb Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities, etc., it DID NOT make such actions on the part of the Allies morally excusable, acceptable or praiseworthy.

Is that so? Cool, because I never said any such thing. In fact, I said: "The many 'war crimes' that were committed by the Allies remain "war crimes" and are clearly a-moral, and can be condemned in their own right...." I guess that means the lecture on morality that follows the above quote is moot.

Here is my lecture on morality, maybe you would find it pertinent to something: it is "intellectually dishonest" to attack people for things that they did not say. I wouldn't go as far as to say that creating straw men and putting words in peoples mouths, or suggesting that not saying what it is that you want them to say means that they believe the opposite is amoral, it is however fucking rude.

Further reading of your missive also shows that you missed the point entirely. The point is that whatever one might say about the Rape of Nanking or the "Three Alls Policy", the fact is that the US war against Japan had absolutely nothing to do with liberating anyone, or self-defense, as can be seen by the post war agenda pursued by the Allies in Asia, after they had reasserted European hegemony by defeating the Japanese attempt to replace European hegemony with Japanese hegemony, I don't know if the slaughter of over 4 million Vietnamese by the French and Americans, or the brutal attempt to suppress Indonesian independence by the Dutch after WWII, or the British led counter-insurgency Burma "rate" in your books with the Nanking massacre, which you seem desperate to inform me of, but perhaps you even you can at least appreciate something of the hypocrisy of the Allied position here.

I have no idea why you are are so insistent in highlighting Japanese atrocity in pretty much the same manner as developed in European propaganda that is used to justify the Allied side during Pacific war, as if all that really matters is what pertains to "World War II", even though we can clearly see that there is a continuum of atrocity in the name of various imperial causes that does not begin or even end with the ceassation of hostilities between the imperial powers.

In any case, feel free to continue with your fantasy lecture with persons unknown, who don't post here, and are not saying the things you would like them to say, for your benefit, if only so that you can righteously denounce their support for the bombing of Dresden and their ignorance of the Nanjing massacre, as divined by their failure to denounce in detail every war crime committed by anyone during WWII.

Perhaps you can help me here by drawing up a loyalty oath that includes a list of every unjust batch killing of over One Hundered people that took place during WWII, so that I can sign off on a condemnation of each and everyone of them?

6079_Smith_W wrote:

@ Cueball

Not to get back into the "who's baddest" tennis game, but your third paragraph brings us back to the very first point I made to you way back when.

Well I was actually talking about the relationship between ideology, political objective, and how the object is attained, with an accent on deconstructing the notion that "war" has always taken the general shape that it did in WW2, in particular the theoretical premise asserted by the Nazis, a view that also included the notion that all players are playing by the same rules. Point being that it is a false idea that war has always been conducted under the same premise, and that civilians have always been "the" primary target of armies. Indeed, I am asserting that Der Totale Krieg, is a wholly new view of war, where war is conceived of as a total war between competing peoples (mobilized as nations) in a dog eat dog conflict, where there will only be one victor, based in socio-biological ideas of survival of the fittest.

In these terms, targeting civilian populations not only becomes a means to and end, but the end in itself. To say that is the way it is, and that is the way it has always been, is simply to retrofit Nazi ideology to history, and use it as the basis of analysis -- might there not be something wrong in doing that?

But these nuances or discussion thereof, are impossible really on this web site, since no one seems to be able to talk about this kind of thing without limiting conversation to positioning themselves correctly on scale of most righteous, to most amoral, or who was worst and best. Frankly, I disagree, it is not enough simply to declaim. Understanding the relationships between ideology, political objective, and the means of war, is essential to understanding war and how it works, if one intends to limit or end warfare, since one can then understand war not merely from a moral framework, but understand how it works, and the mechanisms that put it into motion.

The idea that I was in anyway trying to divine "who was the baddest" is something imposed on me by others, who seem to think threads about war and warfare are places were one distributes flyers for ones position, for or against war, and asigns blame.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

@ Cueball

Well again, the question of whose ideology and motive is worse is kind of a different version of the same thing, and I suspected that was what you were driving at. I do see your point, even if I don't agree with all your analysis.

Ok, please present any evidence you have in the historical record that the Japanese deliberately had the extermination of any peoples as an immediate war aim. Nope. Not really, indeed what you have is evidence that the Japanese committed major atrocities. The mere fact of an atrocity, or even a series of atrocities is not enough to establish that the aim of these atrocities was the extermination of any peoples. On the the other hand there is plenty of evidence that this was not the case with Germans. Indeed they even had conferences that determined, the legal, adminstrative, and practical means through which such exterminations would be executed as a coherent plan, managed and authorized by the highest political powers in the state -- then there is the documented evidence of these aims being carried out.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Total war is not a new thing though. The Albigensian Crusade, and indeed most of the religious wars of Europe were waged to completely erase the enemy, at some times using all resources at hand. The French Revolution turned into total war when the Republicans felt they were surrounded by monarchist forces and began a genocidal campaign against their own people in the Vendee. Heinrich der Loewe, who ruled parts of northern Germany in the 12th Century killed so many of his men fighting wars that he ran out, and had to import new ones from Poland to replace them.

No. It is entirely a new thing. It is not merely the mobilization of an entire people to a military project, but that mobilization premise on modernist concepts of "people", of "nation", and modernist "social darwinist" philosophy. In fact, the idea that "total war" has been an ever-present fact throughout history, is part of the case that is used to justify its scientific basis in a "social Darwinist" framework.

The idea that all peoples (acting as Nations) are locked in a death struggle against extinction that can only be prevented by total supremacy in war, and that this is the way it is, and the way it always will be is an essential concept to the "total war" doctrine, which is proved, so its adherents say, by historical precedent.

Why do you say "scapegoating of Jews" as opposed to Nazi "slaughtering of Jews, Gypsies, various Slavs"?

And where did I say that any crime committed by the Japanese was "less of a crime"? I said,  and I will repeat if for the umpteenth time that the Japanese mode of occupation was dictated by different political objects than the German, ones that were very similar to those of the European powers also seeking political and economic hegemony in Asia, and so, in that light, there is no real case to be made that the Allied war against Japan had any moral foundation that made it superior to that of the Japanese. By the same token, the German political object was much more overtly and intentionally aimed at committing atrocities, not just for the sake of winning the war, or subjugating people, but for the sake of wiping them out, in total.

Where is your evidence that Stalin wanted to wipe out the Ukrainians? To my mind, he, Kagonovich and Kruscheov definitely saw them and the Ukraine as an essential part of the functioning of the Russian economy, and so believed it was necessary to bring them under the strict domination of the collective farm system, and in the process caused mass starvation. At the same time, they acted to deport any all persons who resisted to Siberia. It was, a political act, not an act motivated by racism, even though it may have been racist -- the Communists did not set out to erradicate the Ukrainian people, because they were Ukrainian.

Cueball wrote:

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Cueball wrote:

Why do you say "scapegoating of Jews" as opposed to Nazi "slaughtering of Jews, Gypsies, various Slavs"?

Well, the scapegoating of the Jews was not just an expansion of Hitler's obsession; it was how they sold it to the German people.

 

Sold what?

You seem to know your history. Are we talking about the issue or are you trying to bait me into something?

The Nazis used lies about the Jews specifically and about German racial purity generally to create a climate of fear and hatred, which allow them to bring in restrictive laws, mobilize the people in a campaign of hate, and pave the way to war. The myth that the Jews, Bolsheviks and the rich sabotaged Germany in the First World War was the first wedge they used, long before they ever achieved power.

I am really just trying to figure out what you mean. Because I stray away from this idea that the anti-semitism thing was mere manipulation for the sake of acquiring power.

As for the rest, I happen to think there is a difference between Manslaughter; for example, killing someone by causing mass starvation through the disruption of the local economy, in the commission of a crime such as invading a country; Criminal Negligence, for example killing someone by instituting a bad economic policy resulting in death by starvation; and Murder, for example killing someone by invading their country and intentionally causing mass starvation, rounding people up and killing them en masse, for the purposes of taking their possessions.

Maybe these definitions may not precisely match what I mean, and under which law, but surely we can see that there are even clear grades of "homicide", elevated to murder, and we agree that they penalties are discharged differently depending on what the judged immorality of each.