I'm not going to get into a long harangue here. Like most of us interested in WWII, I've had to grapple with the 'morality' question ; no sane person can be totally 'happy' with the idea of Dresden or Hiroshima. The lesson that I draw from this is that wars should not be allowed to happen in the first place.

But as for 'moral equivalency' or suchlike - I shall always remember standing alone in the execution building in Plotzensee Prison, Berlin and looking up at the meathooks on which enemies of the Nazi regime were strangled to death, while being filmed. It really did give me the feeling that these were the 'bad guys' who had to be defeated.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

I'm splitting hairs here, so apologies.
French troops landed in England in the 13th century during one of the Baronial rebellions.
The English coastal town of Winchelsea was regularly raided by the French during the Hundred Years War. Other coastal towns were raided by the Spanish during the 16th century.
French troops built a fort on Inchkeith island in Scotland's Firth of Forth in the 16th century, in an attempt to besiege Edinburgh.
French troops occupied Eilean Donan castle in the Highlands in 1715 in support of the Jacobites, until chased out by the Navy.
French troops landed at Fishguard in Wales(?) in 1798, but were defeated.
Britain might not have been successfully conquered since 1066, but it wasn't through lack of trying. The Royal Navy was the significant factor in preventing this after 1700-ish, but air power relegated this strength to the history books by 1940.
At one point in 1940, the RAF was under orders to drench invasion beaches with Mustard Gas if the Germans landed; several of the airfields where the stuff was stored can still be visited. Would this have been regarded as a 'war crime' if it had happened? Could the real reason why Hitler never ordered the use of gas be due to having knowledge of this plan, rather than his own memories from the Great War?

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Regards,

Gordon
http://www.freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Not much mention of the USSR effort in defeating Germany...

"What defeated the Axis was the enormous production by the Allied powers, especially the United States"

What of Soviet production capability?

"You can't argue that this was due to superior Allied tactics or weaponry as many Axis planes, tanks, etc."

Er... Well yes you can. I would say that by the wars end the US and British/Commonwealth armies were as tactically aware as their German counterparts and had perfected combined arms warfare.

I would also argue that technological superiority means little if the design is too complex to build/maintain and has no fuel to drive/fly it.

"So what held up Germany from conquering Britain? Simply put, the English channel."

So not the Royal Navy or the RAF then? Not too mention the complete lack of German research into amphibious warfare.



As for the Native American thing... Whats that got to do with WW2?

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"The Americans will always do the right thing ... After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

Winston Churchill

Here is a good one for you, the US was not willing to bomb civilian targets in Euope and yet was positively enthusaistic in hammering Japanese cities, that always seemed odd to me.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Er, which ones were white?

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Bah!

Who pursued bombing civilian targets in Europe?

The RAF maybe?

Exactly my point Za, interesting isn't it?

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Actually I believe that the RAF bombed a German city by accident due to getting a little lost since the bombing mission was at night time, Hitler on the other hand was soooo furious he ordered immediate retaliation. In fact this might be the very same reason why the RAF survived, due to Hitler's decision to bomb cities instead of planes and airports....

Please correct me if im wrong.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

No one had many qualms about bombing civilian targets. The U.S. felt that precison daytime bombing was less likely to waste bombs on civilian targets, while the British felt that the bomber crews would be safer at night. Both were wrong in the end. The Germans developed techniques to blind the U.S. bombers and night fighters to attack the British.

A major concern, dispute, whatever was over the bombing of Dresden. There was almost no military significance to the total destruction of Dresden. It was a target of revenge undertaken by the British Bombing Command leadership, at least according to many intellectuals.

On the other hand, a lot of the Japanese production was spread out among little family shops. It can be argued that it was a more legitimate target, but I am sure that there was racism and revenge mixed into the decision. No matter what the reason, there was little that could be done to not hit civilians in any decision to attack support operations. Any bombing operation is terrifying in its destruction. With Tokyo, the very nature of the city made fire bombing the most effective way to impact the outcome, but much more horrific in the efect on people.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Racism as in dislike for Germans?

Why would you anticipate that?

While I was referring to the Japanese, to a lesser degree, it could also be said for the Germans. We tend to reduce the humanity of our enemies in order to make killing them easier to endure.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Why would one or many have racial opinions toward the Germans, particularly during that time? Which definition of racism are you refering to? Is it the same as Geobbels racism toward the Jews?

Exactly, Seadog, just look at the Japanese (can't say J**s in this forum or Otto will jump at you ) in the caricatures and cartoons of the time. Not flattering!



This is one of the pretty ones!

http://z.about.com/d/history1900s/1/0/e/Q/wwiip117.jpg

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/hoosier/imag...jap_poster.jpg

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Bah!

Exactly, it was far easier to dehumanise an enemy who looks physically different. Not sure what point you were trying to get at White Flight, thoug it's pretty obvious I wasn't anticipating anything, for one thing you can't anticipate something in the past.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

This thread is quite active with anticipated driving attitudes of the past. Regarding RAF racial tendencies toward the Germans, are you saying the focus was/may have been physical differences in appearances?

I'll try again, you can't anticipate something in the past, the word means to predict a future event. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anticipated

No one suggested there were any particular racial tendencies on the part of the RAF, in fact when it came to bombing civilians there appeared to be something of an equal opportunities ethos, not discriminating based on race, age, gender etc. The USAF however wouldn't bomb white Europeans but was happy to bomb the Japanese, this combined with the racial propaganda spread by the US seems at the very least a little odd.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

The Luftwaffe; Rotterdam 1940.

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Regards,

Gordon
http://www.freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

it should be noted that the first bombing of a German town during WW2 in which civilians were killed was on the 10 May 1940. When a number of Luftwaffe aircraft bombed the German town of Freiburg by mistake, killing 57 people. In overcast weather the crews thought they were over the French town of Dijon. The fragments of the bombs found later, confirmed the bombs as German, but German propaganda claimed the raid to be a terror attack by the French Air Force, justifying subsequent bombing of French towns.

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!

Point taken. Therorize would have been more appropriate. I’m about out of time for the week, heavy work load/going out of town. The long and short of, it seems to me too much focus is put on racism, but I'll have to review this thread later.

I don't think that the U.S. set out with the idea of bombing civilian targets at all, especially because of anything remotely racist. I believe any notion of this is just nonsense. Why would the U.S. Command have put such valuable resources at risk for such an endeavor? Moreover, the decision to switch from primarily daylight precision bombing to incendiary attacks has been justified as such: Japanese industry was less concentrated as it was in Germany (we've already covered that), precision attacks were difficult due to constant cloud cover, and the long range of Japan from airstrips in the Marianas made day time high altitude bombing only slightly effective.

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