🚀 go-pugleaf

In ba.general Hugo S. Cunningham <checkwebsite@cyberussr.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:36:57 +0000 (UTC), Merlin Dorfman
> <dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:

>>In ba.general Hugo S. Cunningham <checkwebsite@cyberussr.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 10 Dec 2006 01:40:40 +0000 (UTC), Merlin Dorfman
>>> <dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:

...

>>     You are right that the USAAF tried to limit itself to military
>>targets in Germany (albeit with limited success) while the RAF 
>>deliberately set out to "de-house" workers, keep them from sleeping
>>at night, etc.  In total war, it is difficult to separate the workers
>>from the fighters.

> I don't quite see the point of your last sentence.  Bomber Harris had
> little interest in separating them.

     Well that IS the point...de-housing workers impedes the war
effort when industrial production is as essential to the effort as
soldiers are.

...

>>     I'm of two minds about this kind of thing.  How about 
>>unrestricted submarine warfare?  We gave the Germans hell about it

> in WW I.  In 1940-41, there were some US complaints, but as you note
> below they largely stopped when ...

>>... right after Pearl Harbor we started doing it ourselves
> [against Japan]
>>.  Is that
>>a war crime?

> Admiral Doenitz was able to produce a letter to that effect from US
> Admiral Nimitz at the Nuremberg trial.  The ten year prison sentence
> he drew (while most of his co-defendants were hanged) was for other
> reasons.
 
     ...Such as that torpedoing merchant ships carrying war
supplies is categorically different from massacring civilians.
 
>>  It was very successful--Japan ran out of oil and just
>>about everything else due to lack of shipping.

> Being burned alive (or badly injured by burns) is substantially more
> gruesome than a siege by submarine blockade.

     It's not clear to me that burning is more cruel than
starvation.  Burning to death is at least over quickly.

>>     And there's a question of how low a tactical level the 
>>commander in chief can be blamed for.  Front-line atrocities?  I'm
>>not at all sure about that.  Even strategy questions.  If you want
>>to call Harris and LeMay war criminals we can have a discussion.

> Churchill and FDR knew what Harris and LeMay were doing.  Any guilt we
> might have felt about bombing German civilians vanished, however, as
> Nazi death camps were liberated at the end of the war.  The Germans
> deserved Bomber Harris, and ten times more...

     I can only agree with that if it can be shown that strategic
bombing shortened the war.  And I don't believe it's true, much less
that it can be proven.  Really the only important result of the
strategic bombing was the elimination of the Luftwaffe fighter force
so there was no German air power to oppose the Normandy invasion.

> The carpet bombing could be justified even by today's much more strict
> modern standards as reprisal to deter the Nazis from deporting and
> murdering Jews.  

     But that was never even stated or suggested as a justification.
Don't get me started on the Allies not doing anything to stop or slow
the Holocaust (although a very good case can be made that the
Holocaust was essentially over before the Allies were in any position
to do anything militarily; they could have done much more with
diplomacy and propaganda than they did, and also note that they did
nothing to stop the genocide of Hungarian Jews in 1944, when they
could easily have done something militarily).

> But the USAAF and RAF pilots would not have been
> eager to fly on that basis, since they might well have expected worse
> treatment if shot down and captured.  As it was, the Germans treated
> Allied flyers as PoWs (with some exceptions in the final months of the
> war) because German pilots had been doing the same thing over London
> in 1940-41.
>    The Allied command perhaps would have shunned the "reprisal"
> justification for bombing because they did not want to give it up even
> if the Nazis were willing to halt the massacre of the Jews.

     ...plus the idea of trying to stop the Holocaust never made it
anywhere near the top of the Allied priorities.

>     They did make a threat of poison-gas reprisals over German cities
> if the Germans started using poison gas on the Russian front (where,
> as it turned out, Russian preparations were practically useless).  The
> Germans refrained, whether because they took the Western threat
> seriously, or because Hitler, gassed in 1918, had a personal dislike
> for it.
>    The cruel standards that seemed justifiable against Nazi Germany
> were transferred with less justification to Japan. 

     I don't agree.  The Japanese were at least as cruel towards
civilians in occupied countries as the Germans were.  So if that
cruelty justifies mass bombing of civilians, it was justified
against Japan as well.
     In reality the only justifications were (1) it was the only
thing we could do at the time and (2) we convinced ourselves or
allowed ourselves to be convinced that it was a contribution to 
winning the war.

>>How about the RAF Air Chief Marshal (can't come up with his name
>>right now) or Arnold or Leahy?  What decisions should FDR and
>>Churchill have been involved in, or reversed on humanitarian
>>grounds?  There are only 24 hours in a day and there were a lot of
>>things that absolutely required their attention.

> Don't get me wrong.  I am an admirer of FDR,  ranking him "great" with
> Lincoln and Washington.

> My point was that, in prosecuting a vast and necessary war, he did
> worse things than G.W. Bush is accused of.

     I still disagree; there is not the excuse for w that what he
is doing could be claimed to make any positive contribution towards
winning the war (whatever "winning" means).

>>> Reciprocal atrocities on the front lines with Japanese troops.  (The
>>> USA treated its PoWs better than Japan did, but until surrendering
>>> soldiers were accepted as PoWs, anything could happen in a savage race
>>> war.)  Both sides pressured soldiers  immediately after capture for
>>> intelligence info, though US forces would generally let up before
>>> going too far.
>>
>>> Giving massive aid to Stalin without requiring restraint of his
>>> human-rights violations.
>>
>>     As Churchill said, "If Hitler marched into Hell, I would hasten
>>to make an alliance with the Devil."  He and FDR knew which was the
>>greatest evil.  Stalin would have rejected any conditions on aid--
>>then what?  Allow Hitler to conquer Russia?  Or Stalin would have
>>agreed and ignored the agreements, as he did with Yalta etc.; should
>>we then have stopped the aid?  War is hell, even for civilian 
>>leaders.

> I agree with you.  I brought the point up, however, because it has
> come up over and over again since 1945 -- should the US ever support
> allies with less than pure human rights records?

     I don't know anybody, including the US, who has a pure human
rights record.  Sometimes you do have to choose the lesser of two
evils, while of course working to reduce or eliminate the evil
(including at home).

>>> Executing 8 suspected Nazi saboteurs after a farcical, mostly secret
>>> "trial."  Bush talks about it, but he hasn't done it.
>>
>>> Failure to appoint lawyers for all detainees
>>
>>     There is a bit of historicism here.  Neither the Geneva 
>>Conventions nor anything else called for that kind of treatment of
>>spies, which is what they were: enemies behind the lines and out 
>>of uniform.  If the Germans had been in uniform they would have
>>been treated as POWs.  Out of uniform they were spies and lucky
>>not to be just shot out of hand.

> That tends to be true of Bush's "unlawful combatants" as well, but his
> NGO critics don't buy it.

     What, the "unlawful combatants" are spies?  I think that can hardly
be supported.  And many of them were in whatever passes for a uniform
in that war.  The hypocrisy is that we claim we treat them in 
accordance with the Geneva Convention even though we claim they are not
entitled to it.  They probably are entitled, but we don't treat them
that way.