On another thread we have a number of people discussing the Japanese Prime Minister's apology/non-apology for forcing comfort women into prostitution with the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII. What I'd like to discuss is war guilt and the moral basis for warfare.

What strikes me is how there is a constant clamor for the Japanese and Germans to accept their war guilt while there is rarely any similar clamor for an acceptance by the Allied countries to admit their guilt in crimes against humanity. Now, I take it for granted that the Allies were less cruel and committed fewer acts that could be considered "criminal" than the Axis countries. (If you want to argue otherwise, please start another thread.) What I would like to point out, however, is that the reason why the Allied countries managed to take the moral high ground in World War II isn't simply because the people in those countries are morally better people. It has to do with geography and history and this history reveals that the Allies simply managed to get their atrocities out of the way before they were described as war crimes.

Why did the Allies defeat the Axis forces in WWII? You can't argue that this was due to superior Allied tactics or weaponry as many Axis planes, tanks, etc. were admittedly superior to Allied equipment and the Axis inflicted far more casualties on the Allied forces overall than vice versa. What defeated the Axis was the enormous production by the Allied powers, especially the United States. While the US fought Britain twice in its first fifty years of existence, the cultural connections between the two nations have led to the two having cordial relations ever since the mid-19th century. So what led to the Anglo-Americans coming to dominate most of the world and being able to defeat Germany? Germany cruised over all the continental armies except for the Russians. So what held up Germany from conquering Britain? Simply put, the English channel. That barrier has allowed Britain to only rarely be the subject of foreign invasion and yet is small enough that trade easily crosses so England has the best of both worlds. It received all the cultural benefits of Europe without having to be subject to all the destructive wars on the continent.

And so England became a major power while the mainland countries were periodically devastated by warfare. These wars also influenced the character of these nations. Countries in Europe, especially in the middle of the continent where natural barriers to foreign invasion were nil (eg// Germany) developed xenophobic attitudes and regarded foreigners with far more suspicion than the English did.

The American colonists inherited the English character and conquered themselves a country. Don't for a moment think that this was done without bloodshed. The all but complete destruction of the Native Americans within the area that became the United States was done with considerable bloodshed and atrocities were commonplace, on both sides. But the Native Americans could argue they were defending their homelands. The Europeans who moved to the US had no such justification. They didn't think they were committing evil but from the Native American perspective it definitely was. We still hold Germany in moral bondage for its association with the Holocaust yet why don't we similarly hold the Americans to moral condemnation for slaughtering countless Indians? Yes, the Holocaust was more organized a genocide than the one perpetrated against the Native Americans, but how does that defend the slaugher of Indians and justify the continued condemnation of Germany?

By the time of the World Wars the Anglo-Americans (and the French and Dutch) had already conquered their colonies and were on top of the world. Germany was united relatively late, something that can definitely be attributed at least in part to the fact that as a Central European country it was subject to a lot more destructive warfare than the rest of Western Europe. Germans were understandably jealous of the colonies of their neighbors but by the time they got their act together there weren't many "free" areas for the taking and what was left wasn't that desirable from a colonial perspective. Plus, the mentality of the world was changing. Overt, aggressive warfare was no longer seen as honorable or decent, no doubt in part to the fact that the Western Europeans had already conquered their empires and if the political situation changed it could only affect them in a negative way. And so, when WWI came, Germany was easily seen by most of the world as the aggressor and bearing the guilt for the war. And the fact that the Allies won the war made Germany's moral position as the defeated, guilty power all the more inescapable.

And it was in the first half of the 20th century that the perceptions of war changed. No longer was warfare considered a glorious action, but something to be abhored and feared. Nations changed from having Ministers of War to having Ministers of Defence. But Germany hadn't extinguished the old attitudes to warfare and this, plus their understandable desire for revenge for their defeat in WWI and recovery of lost territory started WWII. Germany and Japan lost because they were not only outnumbered, they had no way of bombing American factories. The US has no enemies in the western hemisphere that could threaten them while Germany was surrounded by enemies who could and did bomb Germany's factories and cities. Anglo-American superiority in numbers and production, and the protection of its armed forces and armaments from foreign attack, won the war.

And how did the Anglo-Americans come to enjoy such an unassailable position? Through the genocide of the Native Americans and other indigenous groups that originally occupied the lands of Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and all the other colonies and former colonies of the British Empire. So don't act so smug and self-righteous. Our ability to be friendly to our enemies, and feed and clothe them, is the result of our having all but completely wiped out native peoples so we could exploit their countries and defeat our own enemies back in the Old Country.

I should point out, as I'm sure that a number of people will be tempted upon first reading my opening post, to respond with emotional laden attacks upon me for defending the Axis. I am not defending the Axis for their atrocities. What I am trying to do is to dispell the myths that have arisen around WWII. The myth of WWII is that we of the Anglo-Saxon world won the war because we were the good guys. The world doesn't work that way. We call ourselves the good guys because, #1, we're not going to call ourselves the evil side, and #2, we won. Now, the Anglo-Americans certainly treated Axis prisoners much better than the Axis treated Allied prisoners. No doubt about that. My post was about why this was the case and why even in that we shouldn't consider ourselves to have always been the good guys from the beginning of time. The Allies won the war and didn't have to commit as many atrocities as the Axis because they had already committed a terrible genocide and ethnic cleansing that allowed them to exploit the resources of the countries of these peoples to their own benefit.

It is also easy to say let's all be friends and not discriminate when you haven't had to fight for your very existence on a regular basis. The Anglo-American attitude that most of us have inherited (and that the rest of the world is now going to adopt whether they like it or not) is the result of England's relative immunity to being overrun by enemy forces due to the English Channel. It is not a surprise that the most xenophobic (redneck) attitudes in the US are found in frontier areas while the least xenophobic attitudes are found in the Northeast, where the culture has been quite settled for centuries already.

So now that you've got my position, let the ad hominems begin!

Britain and England are NOT the same country, and never have been. The population is British, not English.

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Sorry to have offended you, mate. Yes, I recognize that the terms England and Britain are not 100% equivalent terms. However, in common usage English is used to refer to the blokes from Britain given that the English make up nearly 90% of the British population. Given that the culture of the Anglo-Americans (the subject of my post) is derived almost entirely from the English (as opposed to the Scottish or Welsh) I think I can be forgiven for using the two terms interchangeably. But, in order to not offend your Scottish ears any further I will endeavour to be more specific in the future.

You seem to have reached far down into the toolbox yourself. You keep answeing your own questions. As a Norwegian it is easy to explain the status of Britain and America.

Britain has been a rollercoaster.

Firstly we have been visiting them a lot earlier that Lindisfarne. Then of course it is the period of raiding and settling in Britain and Ireland. One of my Forefathers Walking Rolf, or Rollo (shocked to say he is known as Cornelius de Swedetsia in Italy!!) as he became in Normandy was a forefather to William the Conquerer. Well keeping the story short we stayed a while.

The bad impression was in the Napoleonic wars when the Royal Navy starved much of Norway. (A popular historic tid bit for our nazis during the war) Then they threw us as war booty to Sweden.

After our independence from Sweden in 1905 Britain became a more and more important trade partner.

In WW2 Britain aided us or was it us aiding them?? ("Worth a million men" W.S. Churchill on the Norwegian Merchant marine.)

The Relationship with the US is just a sunshile story. An early trade was established in the new world. (slaves, tobacco etc.) As the Norwegian population grew, poverty and famine struck. In addition the Kings (Swedish mind you) taxes were horrible. The hope lay in the New World. You were granted enough land not only to survive but prosper. So off we went to the promised land.

The people who went over never forgot where the came from. (this is true today. My cousin went over to the Dakotas and received a kings welcome)
So our bonds with the Us are strong. Both during and after the War the bonds were strengthened.

As for critisim of Britain and the US. Read the papers!!! What happened earlier in history such as the British imperialism and shaping of the US. We were all part of it. The imperialism and especially the New world attracted millions of people all over europe.

You put it so easily when you say it is easly to say we should all get along and not discriminate when you don't have to fight for existance on a regular basis. Ahem! Most european countries have done that since the beginning of time. It started to get difficult in the Roman era, then eased off some when the Huns came. After Charlemagne was put to his final rest and europe was again divided it was easy pickings. (or at least that is what my ancestors say)
Then the common christianity gave us focus to go out of europe and kill people there. Backfire because the pagans almost overran us. The a nice period of almost continnual warfare in Central europe, and the usual French English/Britain affairs. (remember there was wars before the Union) Now I'm not going to say that the Germans did not go to war. Far from it the initiated a great deal of wars themselves. The Preussian society was built around the ability to wage war.

I just don't accept the English channel as an excuse. Both the Spanish and the French tried, but failed. Beeing an overpopulated Island nation is a disadvantage. You have to control the sea just to survive. That is something to keep you awake at night.

As for the moral high ground, you mentioned it yourself. The Germans and Japanese did actions that was not acceptable in the 20th century.

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Jaeger, can't say I know what you were trying to get at in the first part of your post. However, you also said:

Yes, Britain and Norway were in league in WWII, after Germany pre-emptively attacked Norway to prevent the British from using it against Germany. Interestingly, the British were already on their way to Norway when the Germans struck. Seems to me that the British were friends with the Norwegians only because the Germans beat them to the punch (literally) and hit Norway first.

Yes, most European countries sent excess population to the Americas. The hope that lay in the New World was fueled by the massacres and genocide through disease of the original occupants of the continent.

Um, that was my very point; that it is easy to have our current sentiment regarding warfare when we have not had to fight for our very lives on a regular basis. The reason why this view emerged from western Europe rather than eastern Europe is rather obvious to me; invasions of central Europe have traditionally come from the east and the social system had settled down in western Europe long before this happened in the east.

Yep, the Germans were very militaristic. Unfortunately for them, they unified themselves too late and by the time they really emerged on the world scene aggressive militarism was out of fashion and their western nations were only threatened by this new upstart, already having carved up the world into their own empires and none too happy to make room for the newcomer.

Being an overpopulated island nation may be a disadvantage but when exactly did Britain become overpopulated? It was an imperial power long before that. An island nation is naturally going to focus more on maritime activities than its continental neighbors, in peacetime as well as wartime. It stands to reason that they will normally have a better navy as well. Britain focused on its navy and hasn't been invaded in almost a thousand years. (Came close once or twice, but they survived quite well.) An island nation is naturally less at risk to the periodic social and political upheavals on the continent, especially in times when the economy was primarily agricultural and as Britain is not especially susceptible to droughts and famines, hasn't really suffered for not having easy road access to the rest of Europe. And the Channel isn't that large that trade couldn't continue. Britain's island status hasn't hurt it at all. On the contrary, it has definitely helped the nation, especially militarily, as only a nation with a large navy could threaten it. The British man in the country or in the city knew peace, and his descendants did for generation after generation after generation.

In Germany, on the other hand, its lands were being overrun by its neighbors from all sides for generation after generation. Just look at the Thirty Years War to see how devastating those wars could be and just why a great military leader was valued so much. Why Prussia, without any natural, defensible, borders whatsoever, engendered such a militaristic society while our own war-hating culture emerged from Britain isn't at all surprising to me.

And yet a lot of those things were entirely acceptable when committed by western Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries. We prefer to gloss over the unacceptable (by today's standards) actions of our own ancestors and prefer to point an accusing finger at similar actions by somewhat later Germans and Japanese as this makes us look like the good guys.

But never forget that the reason why the Allies were able to be the good guys in the last war is because they acted terribly to native Americans, murdering them and otherwise killing them off with disease and starvation so we could steal their land. Land that, in time, we could exploit to defeat the traditional enemies back in the Old Country. The Allies couldn't have beaten the atrocity-committing Germans and Japanese in WWII if they hadn't earlier committed atrocities to conquer their colonies (and former colonies in the form of the US) that were the unassailable source of the materiel that defeated the Axis.

My point is that if you insist on Germans still bearing a war guilt for attempting and failing at genocide and ethnic cleansing then we on the Allied side should bear a similar guilt for succeeding at genocide and ethnic cleansing. No one's hands are clean and free of blood - the blood on our hands is simply older and more faded, and we're too busy pointing our fingers at the bloody hands of Germany and Japan to see the stains on our own fingers.

I feel the need to comment on the "genocide" of Native Americans. Yes, Native Americans were treated poorly. Many were indiscriminately killed. However, most were not. This does not qualify the term genocide. If it were a genocide, Native Americans would be but a memory.

Later

IMHO each act has to be appraised separately, and not be added or substracted to a kind of "invoice" on the name of given country, because you can't judge people by their father's acts.

There are many things to say about the Native Americans, and on a wider scope the overall exploitation of the 3rd world by occidental powers, but it should tarnish in no way the US and their allies glorious fight against facism during WWII.

Both have their own place in history.

Each country has is wrongs and crimes in history, the longer the history, the more many of them.

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I am grateful to my past countrymen for having routed the Indians. I never get tired of laughing over the European mindset that this was a crime. You really kill me.

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By that logic the Holocaust wasn't genocide either, since the Germans didn't come close to killing all the Jews in Europe. What happened to the Native Americans was a prolonged case of both ethnic cleansing and genocide and in fact the vast majority of Native Americans did die out.

Care to elaborate?

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"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

Compared to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, yeah, the US and the Allies look really good. But do you really want us to just be the lesser of two evils? Let's look at the US at that time; rampant racism and segregation in the south, meddling in the politics of practically all of its Latin American neighbors, and fresh off its trumped up war against Spain that gave it control over Puerto Rico and the Phillipines and the truly shameful annexation of Hawaii. And all of this was made possible by the genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by earlier generations.

Luckily, your past countrymen (presumably from the Confederacy, given your little flag) were defeated. Otherwise, your kind would still be legally oppressing not just Indians but blacks and all other minorities. Your past countrymen didn't rout a group of Indians that attacked them back in Europe. On the contrary, your past countrymen crossed the ocean, invaded other people's territory, and even after the Indians helped out the white men, your countrymen kept invading and killing and cowardly massacring innocent women and children. Funny, the actions of your past countrymen don't seem that different to what the Germans did in WWII. If what your past countrymen did wasn't a crime, then I guess the Germans can't be held to have committed any crimes either. Interesting ethics you've got.

Before Whites arrived in North America the population was composed of stone-age savages who had not even grasped the concept of the wheel. These people practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice and ritual torture. When Whites arrived they (Indians) were the first to begin raping, pillaging and abducting settlers. Historical revisionists both in this country and abroad would like for people to believe the re-written history behind the native peoples of North America: That they were peaceful, loving and tolerant of outsiders. However, the fact is that they were brutal to the extreme and killed and tortured without mercy. If the movie Dances With Wolves had been historically accurate then the whole movie would have lasted only about three minutes - just long enough for Sleeps With the Dogs and Mud in His Hair to ride into Fort Cedric, scalp ole John Dunbar and be back at camp before lunch. This heathen race of people believed that (in many tribes) the passage into manhood was only accomplished by killing another man in combat/war. It is with the utmost thanks that every American should pay homage to his/her forefathers in making the doctrine of Manifest Destiny in America a solid success. Sadly, Western Revisionist movies like Dances With Wolves have been surreptiously used to ingrain the new lie into the minds of youth. Notwithstanding many other ungrounded, uneducated people in this country the main force behind this revisionist doctrine is basically threefold: (1) It is one of the tools of the "I hate my country" liberals who want to turn America into something else, (2) Many youngsters, hippies and other assorted nutjobs sitting around the campfire drinking beer and smoking pot remain aloof of the facts by fantasizing about how "cool" it would be to be an Indian or be like an Indian, and (3) The foreigner who, with his own express knowledge, however removed from the truth, jumps on the same wagon as the liberal who has some sort of anti-American agenda in mind.

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Before Whites arrived in North America the population was composed of stone-age savages who had not even grasped the concept of the wheel. These people practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice and ritual torture. When Whites arrived they (Indians) were the first to begin raping, pillaging and abducting settlers. Historical revisionists both in this country and abroad would like for people to believe the re-written history behind the native peoples of North America: That they were peaceful, loving and tolerant of outsiders. However, the fact is that they were brutal to the extreme and killed and tortured without mercy. If the movie Dances With Wolves had been historically accurate then the whole movie would have lasted only about three minutes - just long enough for Sleeps With the Dogs and Mud in His Hair to ride into Fort Cedric, scalp ole John Dunbar and be back at camp before lunch. This heathen race of people believed (in many tribes) that the passage into manhood was only accomplished by killing another man in combat/war. It is with the utmost thanks that every American should pay homage to his/her forefathers in making the doctrine of Manifest Destiny in America a solid success. Sadly, Western Revisionist movies like Dances With Wolves have been surreptiously used to ingrain the new lie into the minds of youth. Notwithstanding many other ungrounded, uneducated people in this country the main force behind this revisionist doctrine is basically threefold: (1) It is one of the tools of the "I hate my country" liberals who want to turn America into something else, (2) Many youngsters, hippies and other assorted nutjobs sitting around the campfire drinking beer and smoking pot remain aloof of the facts by fantasizing about how "cool" it would be to be an Indian or be like an Indian, and (3) The foreigner who, with his own express knowledge, however removed from the truth, jumps on the same wagon as the liberal who has some sort of anti-American agenda in mind.

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Why you silly boy! My past countrymen were defeated? Hell you say? To correct your ignorance this flag, the official flag of the state of Mississippi, still proudly flies at my home as well as the state capital in Jackson!

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I've had a Cherokee friend for over 30 years. He can tell you more than I can. According to him over 4 million Indians (every Tribe) inhabited America proper before Europeans got here. Upon completion of the "Indian Wars", 250,000 were left.
This happened with the Aztecs, Aborigginies(sp), others I'm sure.
I'll go with Chocapic this time because dead is dead, and one is not more dead than another, and people (average people) do not make or even know about the decisions of their governments/leaders and should not permanently pay for the sins of previous generations.
We can learn from the past, but we can't change it.
Of course natural barriers (rivers, mountains, deserts, swamps, oceans) make the best fences, and fences make good neighbors.
Many countries were formed with borders on natural barriers, those without have been "Hot" spots for centuries. An insite into human nature there. Unless people are "locked out" they'll figure out a way to, why they have a reason to/right to, come in.

Do you lock your house, vehicle?

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