🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 06:32:26 +0000 (UTC), Merlin Dorfman
<dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:

>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.

Bomber Harris was the only one blatant enough to carry the reasoning
that far.  LeMay claimed, with some validity, that Japanese industry
drew on subcontractors working out of sweatshops in residential areas.
>
>...
>
>>>     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.

My impression is that Doenitz's 10-year sentence was not for his
submarine warfare, but rather for being an enthusiastic Nazi.  It was
not pure chance that Hitler appointed him his heir.
 
>>>  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.

Being "blown to bits" is over quickly, but lingering for days with
3rd-degree burns is not.
At the time of the surrender, Japan still had about 6 months of food,
though they were on short rations.  The real "starvation" was of
Japanese industry, cut off from fuel, metals, and other raw materials.

>>>     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.

No serious scholar argues that Harris's carpet-bombing shortened the
war.  There was more to be said, however, for the USAAF's targeted
bombing in the final months of the war -- knocking out fuel supplies,
delaying the deployment of V-1s until it was too late,  and destroying
Germany's rail network.

>  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.

Strategic bombing helped somewhat by reducing fuel supplies,
especially for the new and unmatched jet fighters.  Of decisive
importance for air superiority in 1944 was deployment of the "Mustang"
fighter, given a long enough range with new Rolls Royce engines to
challenge and defeat German fighters over the German homeland.  If the
invasion had been delayed another year (and the Soviets had not
defeated Germany in the east), German jets would have reclaimed air
superiority over the continent.

>> 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.

True.

>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;

Yes.  If they had tried to bomb the gas chambers, given the gross
inaccuracy of Allied bombing, we would now be reading revisionist
tracts blaming nearly all Jewish deaths on the Allies.

> they could have done much more with
>diplomacy and propaganda than they did,

Agreed.  They could have leafletted occupied countries as early as
1942 not to cooperate with arrests and deportations.  They could have
added Germany to the leafletting later, especially after decisive Axis
defeats in July 1943.

> and also note that they did
>nothing to stop the genocide of Hungarian Jews in 1944, when they
>could easily have done something militarily).

Even then, Hungary was under firm German control.  Publicity and
explicit threats of postwar retribution might have worked; immediate
threats of terror-bombing reprisals against German civilians might
have worked, except that Harris was already doing that anyways. 

[...]

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

True.

>>     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.

They were comparably cruel to captives, but lacked the same malice
toward run-of-the-mill civilians.  The Rape of Nanjing was somewhat
unusual.  They are blamed for 10,000,000 deaths in China, but most of
the losses were due to war, the dislocations of war, and incompetent
administration (something like Bush in Iraq).  They did not view
Chinese as an inferior race to be exterminated; instead they wished to
coopt them.

>     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).

List his crimes as you understand them, so that I can compare them to
FDR's record.

[...]

>>>> 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. 

Al-Qa'ida operatives posing as non-combatant civilians in foreign (eg
Western) countries qualify as spies.

In Afghanistan, I understand that we gave Taliban fighters PoW
treatment as "levee en masse" in their own country.  

>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.

The ones in "whatever passes for a uniform" are not the ones we claim
are not entitled to PoW status.

>  They probably are entitled, but we don't treat them
>that way.

Al Qa'ida operatives posing as non-combatant civilians in foreign
countries?

--Hugo S. Cunningham