Hiroshima & Nagasaki
I've been watching a lot of WWII documentaries recently. Some truly horrific stuff went on during the Holocaust. Things that defy belief and that I think defy comprehension to some extent.
One thing I have been watching in particular is the trials of Nazi war criminals. Nuremberg, obviously being the main one, but there were many others. For doctors, concentration camp guards, etc. A lot of people were hanged for these atrocities, not just the top billing Nazis in the main Nuremberg trial.
Quite a few of the trials were for commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, which were the Nazi death squads that came in after the army and murdered civilians. In one in particular, the man on trial said some horrific things, like "yes, we killed children, in fact, if a baby or toddler was young enough, we would have the mother hold it to her breast so we could shoot it through the head and her through the heart and save a bullet". This was said in open court.
Obviously pretty depraved stuff. But at his sentencing, or at some point during his trial, he said something that has really resonated with me. He had a pretty defiant attitude, he knew he was going to hang, and he basically said "what we did was no worse than the button pressers who did Hiroshima & Nagasaki. We just did it up close".
That has really resonated with me. I don't really know how to reconcile myself with that. Victor's justice I guess?
(yes, Victor, that was a sly pun).
8 Replies
in fact, if a baby or toddler was young enough, we would have the mother hold it to her breast so we could shoot it through the head and her through the heart and save a bullet"
I've watched quite a few documentaries lately on U.S. history. The cold war, vietnam, American Revolution, etc. We have absolutely not been the good guys very often. The cold war in particular. There was not a single reason for us to go down that path. We've just become the bully of the world.
I know it was a pun, but your comment re victors justice is nonetheless apt.
General Curtis LeMay stated he probably would have gone on trial as a war criminal, had Japan won the war, due to his firebombing of Tokyo, which killed at least as many or possibly more civilians than Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Robert McNamara said the same thing in the documentary The Fog of War.
Nazi war Criminal Erich Priepke, who went on trial for the Ardeatine Massacre also stated in interviews that what he did was no different than what US troops did in Vietnam or Russians did in Chechnya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeatine_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Prie...
Priebke briefly giving his thoughts on the Ardeatine massacre to Sam Donaldson here, albeit not with the Vietnam/Chechnya remark
Obviously pretty depraved stuff. But at his sentencing, or at some point during his trial, he said something that has really resonated with me. He had a pretty defiant attitude, he knew he was going to hang, and he basically said "what we did was no worse than the button pressers who did Hiroshima & Nagasaki. We just did it up close".That has really resonated with me. I don't
You dont see any problems with this attempt at moral equivalency?
Of course the logical extension of such moralizing is that everyone is equally bad, and there is no such thing as right and wrong, so we might as well just kill all our enemies and take the spoils.
Of course most progressives who criticize the US/Israel/Western World dont actually believe their nonsense. The whole point is to play games as a tactic to destroy society.
Allied bombing of Axis cities was lawful since those cities were arsenals, fortresses or 'defended places' (that is, not declared open) under the Hague Convention at the time. The postwar changes to the Geneva Conventions are immaterial.
The Germans killed as many Soviet civilians by bombing as the Allies killed German civilians, about a third of a million, plus the Germans killed about 64,000 British civilians along with many Poles, Dutch and Belgians, giving the Germans the worst record in the European war, but Nazi defendants at Nuremberg were not charged in relation to unrestricted air warfare because it wasn't illegal. No Allied actions remotely equate to the actual crimes of the Axis countries.
The use of atomic bombs on Japan, after the Japanese denounced the Potsdam Declaration, ended the war at a stroke and saved more Japanese than Allied lives. Otherwise the war would have gone on deep into 1946 with an all-arms Allied assault on the Japanese home islands preceded by an intensified conventional bombing campaign. It hardly bears thinking about.
Allied bombing of Axis cities was lawful since those cities were arsenals, fortresses or 'defended places' (that is, not declared open) under the Hague Convention at the time. The postwar changes to the Geneva Conventions are immaterial.The Germans killed as many Soviet civilians by bombing as the Allies killed German civilians, about a third of a million, plus the Germans kill
And of course this isn't even acknowledging Japanese behavior, including torture and massacre of unarmed civilian populations and POWs across all of Asia, was worse than anything the Japanese people were subject to by any sane moral framework.
Of course between demographic replacement by tribal people who view Western Civilization itself as the enemy, and progressive Westerners who want to destroy Western civilization for ideological reasons, there is little doubt within a couple generations the history books will be rewritten and the Allies, and especially the Jewish people, will be declared the villains of the 20th century.
