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A) Do everything that you can to avoid war in the first place
B) If despite A, you wind up in a war anyway, do everything that you can in the way of cruelty to end the war in your favor as rapidly as possible.
You are not going to be able to tip toe around the cruelty issue, you are not going to win with the minimum of inconvenience to the opposition.
While doing "B" is a necessity in war there does come a point where immoral/cruel actions are no longer justified within the context of necessity. At that point to carry out further action is to simply seek blood for blood in order to satiate a need for revenge. In terms of this thread, I personally think Dresden rose to such a case. There was nothing to be gained from it. Carrying out the attack was about terror and revenge. Even Churchill who was the greatest advocate of "terror bombing" on the Allied side stepped back and thought the bombing of Dresden was wrong and halted further attacks.
In the grand scheme of what you and Escort Rider are describing I think you are both right. There is nothing to be gained from determining which act was the cruelest and most barbaric. However, Escort Riders idea of context and comparison rings true and is something we all do.
This is why I can see the bombing of Dresden as immoral within the context of the war at the time, but also understand why it was done and the greater context of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. It also lets me certain actions that involved the intentional bombing of civilians in a different light and wholly justified as they were designed to win the war. So to can German actions be justified in some contexts and not in others.
While the slaughter of one innocent is not any less tragic than the slaughter of 1,000, there is a scale of sorts that determines which act is the most indictable in the court of morality based on context and intent.
While the slaughter of one innocent is not any less tragic than the slaughter of 1,000, there is a scale of sorts that determines which act is the most indictable in the court of morality based on context and intent.
Actually what determines which acts will be indictable is which side won. Had the Axis prevailed in the war, then any war crimes trials which followed would have had defendants with names like Truman, Churchill, Bomber Harris, Curtis LeMay and perhaps Admirals King and Nimitz. (those last two are in there on the grounds of conspiring to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto.)
Actually what determines which acts will be indictable is which side won. Had the Axis prevailed in the war, then any war crimes trials which followed would have had defendants with names like Truman, Churchill, Bomber Harris, Curtis LeMay and perhaps Admirals King and Nimitz. (those last two are in there on the grounds of conspiring to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto.)
Very true.
I was referring more to a symbolic "court of morality" in terms of how we judge the event looking back upon it moreso than how it was judged/determind at the time. To expand on the example, one innocent killed simply for the joy of killing may be seen as a greater moral crime than the death of 1,000 innocents in the course of say, capturing a heavily defended city during a war.
Like I said it is all about context and intent, at least for me. This is why something like the bombing of Dresden was morally wrong in my view, while the bombing deaths of countless other civilians earlier in the war was not. There was a measure of intent to target the civilians in Dresden and a lack of any real purpose towards the goal of winning the war. This is why I can also see deaths inflicted by the Nazi's in the course of fighting the war, say at Leningrad, were not morally wrong compared to the absolutely reprehensible systemic slaughter of people in the Holocaust.
That's right England had a right to be an empire but Germany didn't stupid me. Invasion of a land that was rightfully theirs in the first place and it was invaded because Poland was killing Germans living in the Danzig corridor. Germany tried more than once to try and get England to accept a peace there was no reason for England and France to stick their nose where it didn't belong Hitler didn't declare war on those 2 it was the other way around. Like I told the other poster we know full well who was behind the agitation for France and England to go to war.
Pray tell, who was "behind the agitation" ? Hmmm, let me guess. Deutschland uber Alles.
This is why I can also see deaths inflicted by the Nazi's in the course of fighting the war, say at Leningrad, were not morally wrong compared to the absolutely reprehensible systemic slaughter of people in the Holocaust.
It would make more logical sense to move the Holocaust out of the classification of war crimes and view it instead as the crime of genocide, independent of its relationship to the war. The Third Reich's crimes against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other "undesirables" began before the war got underway in 1939.
I suspect that it was decided to view those actions as war crimes because there was no international court in which to try those who participated in the genocide. There was however, an allied war crimes court.
Oh yes, the British and French had no desire to start World War Two. They needed to protect the German invasion of half of Poland while their Russian allies took the other half and invaded Finland shortly there-after. Those damn aggressive Fins always picking on Russia.
Oh yes, the British and the French could NOT, and MUST NOT, have territorial aggression by Germany. That would conflict with the British and the French plans which allowed those two countries to collectively carve up all of Africa and Asia.
The Soviet Union was NOT, repeat, NOT allied with France or Britain in 1939. Those lovely Germans took what they could of what was left over in Africa, and I'm certain they wanted more, but a real Navy was required, which Germany did not have until at least the very end of the 19th century.
Both Britain, and especially France, wanted no reoccurence of another world war, thus , the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1938.
"Nazi Germany" did not have an ethic. It was a political construct designed to advance the fortunes of the homeland.
The Jews and the Native Americans were both seen, in their respective time, rather equally, as expendable people who stood in the way of national progress toward an espoused ideal.
Hitler treated the Jews with a great deal more civility, respect and dignity, than Leopold, King of one the allies, treated the population of the Congo, in the same half-century.
"Civillity, respect, and dignity"; is THAT what they got at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald, in the Warsaw Ghetto, from the Einsatzgruppen in Russia, etc.? Shot into a mass grave, or up in smoke; how respectful & dignified!
"Nazi Germany" did not have an ethic. It was a political construct designed to advance the fortunes of the homeland.
The Jews and the Native Americans were both seen, in their respective time, rather equally, as expendable people who stood in the way of national progress toward an espoused ideal.
Hitler treated the Jews with a great deal more civility, respect and dignity, than Leopold, King of one the allies, treated the population of the Congo, in the same half-century.
Twaddle. Aside from the use of purported use of infected blankets by British commanders, there is nothing in the annals of the America's sorry treatment of indigenous people that compares with gassing millions of Jews.
To infer otherwise is a truly ugly bit of mendacity.
Talk about an epic fail post.........I'm not sure which is more absurd, your casualty figure, or the quote regarding the poor, abused, innocent Germans!
Actually the Germans were innocent since Germany did not start WW2.
"Civillity, respect, and dignity"; is THAT what they got at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald, in the Warsaw Ghetto, from the Einsatzgruppen in Russia, etc.? Shot into a mass grave, or up in smoke; how respectful & dignified!
Revisionists are starting to punch some serious holes in the holocaust story. And no, most revisionists are not flying saucer believers but many are educated PHds
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