The Battle of Berlin

I guess the only difference is that the Germans were the invaders and the Soviets did whatever they could to get them out and then topple the regime.

 

How many Russian commanders were tried for war crimes?

Later

 

Let's see... Bomber Harris? Curtis LeMay? Carl Spaatz?

This thread is becoming bitter.

 

And don't forget the Waffen S.S.

Apart from the infamous atrocities of the Normandy massacre by the ‘Hitler Jugend’, the Le Parades massacre by the SA 'Totenkopf', the Wormhoudt atrocity by the 'SA Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler'', of British, Canadian and American P.O.W's, there is a huge list of other atrocities on record on the western front.


Below is just a few samples of a list of repeated atrocities by virtually all major Waffen S.S. units, and this is just on the western front, the war in the east was much worse, Allen Clarke in his book 'Barbarossa' said that in their spare time Waffen SS units routinely used school children as target practise and poured petrol over Red army wounded in hospitals and burned them alive...........

ORATOR-SER-GLANE
(Central France, June 10, 1944)

In the town of St. Junien the 'Dar Führer Regiment' of the 2nd SA Panzer Division, 'Das Reich', was regrouping. Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at Oradour, in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. The 120 man SS unit surrounded the village, ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market square for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and shrapnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. The church was then set on fire.


SANT' ANNA MASSACRE
(August 12, 1944)

On August 12, the 6the Panzergrenadieren 'Reichsführer-SS' Division reached the outskirts of SAINT' Anna, their orders to shoot on sight all partisans found in the area. Believing that the inhabitants of the Sant'Anna were all partisans, or partisan sympathizers, the SA herded the entire village together into the village square, where all of them, men, women and children, were shot. In all, 560 people were massacred, including 110 children. The houses in the village were then burned to the ground. Many of the corpses were doused with petrol and then set alight before the SS unit departed.


THE MARZABOTTO MASSACRE
[September 29th, 1944]

The Marzabotto massacre was a massacre that took place in the small Italian town of Marzabotto. Between September 29 and October 5, 1944, soldiers of SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsf?SS, led by Sturmbannf? Walter Reader, killed 955 people in the territory of Marzabotto, Monzuno and Grizzana, in the largest civilian massacre perpetrated by Nazis in Western Europe.

Among the victims, 45 were less than 2 years old, 110 less than 10 years old, 95 less than 16 years old, 142 were more than 60 years old, 316 were females, 5 were priests.


And the list goes on and on.

It wasn't just the odd isolated shooting of prisoners now and then , it was systematic repeated war crimes on a gigantic scale.

There was the holocaust by extermination in the death camps, and another holocaust by extermination in the attack on Russia.


Za, do you think those three commited war crimes?

 

None but imagnie if the Russians had lost and the Nazis won, how many then. That statement is irrelevant due to the fact that the victorious powers never try their own for war crimes. They find justification for their actions. I'm not suggesting that the Allies are a bunch of war criminals, far from it. But Tojo was right when he said that the Victors have the right to write the history and there is no way the Russians would have offered any of their officers up. That would mean admitting that the Communist regime was bad!

Fact is that the Nazis opened a pandora's box when they unleashed Barbarossa upon the world. They invaded and so whatever happened after that was a consequence of the events of 1941. Neither side can adopt the moral high ground. Their hands were too stained with blood.

 

The idea is that we should not be here to blame but study and realize what took place. In order to do that we must stay neutral.

Unfortunately it seems we cannot stop these things from happening even in the modern world....

 

Even wars post WW2 still have questionable aspects even the most recent one’s in the Middle East. We all have good and evil within us and many factors have to be taken in to account, no war is without faults.

 

Well, Anzac, this was briefly touched upon in the Hiroshima thread.

What is the difference between the facts above and dropping a bomb on the house? Is the difference that in one case you can look into the eyes of the victims, and in the other you are removed 20,000 ft away from them?

Is Guernica or Rotterdam or Coventry bad and Hamburg or Essen or Berlin good?

This has been discussed over and over again, here and in other places. Let's rather follow the advice implicit in the two posts above.

 

I'll humbly disagree that my post was "irrelevent". I've been trying to point out something all along and that is that the war on the eastern front was "evil vs. evil", Hitler vs. Stalin. In my "all American" view, neither side can be credited with fighting anywhere near an "honorable" war. It didn't matter who the "spoils" went to. We ended up with a Cold War against an evil regime instead of a Hot War against an equally evil one.

Later

 

Jpatterson, now I must humbly disagree with you.
The war on the Easter Front was not "evil vs. evil" But good vs. evil!!!


Eastern front was not fought by Stalin but by the Soviet people who were once again invaded by a foreign country except this time it was worse then ever before. Keep in mind that the Soviets were the ones that did everything and anything they could to get the invader out. The same invader that had turned there lives upside down and had taken everything from them this is why I would disagree with the "EVIL vs EVIL" analogy.

Jpatterson I understand what you mean though, when you compare. However you cant just compare Hitler vs Stalin.

 

Also if im not mistaken war crimes were also commited in the U.S. civil war, when the south invaded the north and the union did whatever they could to get the south out. Decapitation were not uncommon and neither was the killing of civilians by the union when it was is the south.
And all this was done to your own people.

The reason I make this analogy is because resister or an insurgent that has been invaded can do everything and anything to get the invader out, and not be considered a criminal or a terrorist but a freedom fighter.......

WOW! I wonder where we can we relate this to today???? lol

 

Gentlemen the thread is in danger of holes by nick picking over issues.

 

Oh come on Richard we're all friends here

 

The reason I make this analogy is because resister or an insurgent that has been invaded can do everything and anything to get the invader out, and not be considered a criminal or a terrorist but a freedom fighter.......

I am sure the rape of German women by the Russians helped alot.

 

While I'm not sure about decapitations in the American Civil War I do know that conditions for and treatment of POW's in both the North and the South were extreme.

As for the German and Soviet people, they were just pawns.

Later

 

Russian cannibalism