Anyone seen this? My wife found it and thought of me (and you lot).
http://youtu.be/lzgi2DZWm2c
I was in tears.
Yet another reason . . .
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@TG:
… However, at the same time, SBRs shortened the war by months - if not years (just look a Polesti for an example) - more lives were saved in the end (I believe so, though the point is debatable). …And let us not forget this was the era of total war. Humanities, rights, justification, all of these change in total war.
The first one is debatable to a point. The second one… is something i can not agree to. It sure was not at all a total war for the US, though it probably was for most of the other major powers in the war. And justifying breaches of human right by declaring the opponent did it first is something that is not suited at all for democracies.
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It sure was not at all a total war for the US, though it probably was for most of the other major powers in the war.
Just because its cities weren’t bombed? :-? What US citizens gave was a total war effort, both on the battlefield and on the homefront. Of course, I could take this as a “sarcastic effect” - just as you said with my usage of the word “unfortunate.” :-?
And justifying breaches of human right by declaring the opponent did it first is something that is not suited at all for democracies.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the war, and FDR violated similar “human rights” (the fundamental 1st Amendment Included) during his war. Were they wrong for what they did? I say that in wars, the rules in peacetime are more easily bent and some are even broken. Even a blind man can see this.
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@TG:
It sure was not at all a total war for the US, though it probably was for most of the other major powers in the war.
Just because its cities weren’t bombed? :-? What US citizens gave was a total war effort, both on the battlefield and on the homefront.
Yup, “just” because you were fortunate enough to have no fighting on your soil and “just” not everything was rationed, and your gov’t “just” didn’t publsih on how you could use acorns for nutrition…
And justifying breaches of human right by declaring the opponent did it first is something that is not suited at all for democracies.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the war, and FDR violated similar “human rights” (the fundamental 1st Amendment Included) during his war. Were they wrong for what they did? I say that in wars, the rules in peacetime are more easily bent and some are even broken. Even a blind man can see this.
That has nothing to do with my point. Just because crimes happen, and even a blind man can see that, doesn’t make them right.
So, yes, i say they were wrong. -
Yup, “just” because you were fortunate enough to have no fighting on your soil and “just” not everything was rationed, and your gov’t “just” didn’t publsih on how you could use acorns for nutrition…
The British Isles were never invaded. Your second statement is flawed. And the third point is hardly sufficent.
That has nothing to do with my point. Just because crimes happen, and even a blind man can see that, doesn’t make them right.
So, yes, i say they were wrong.Then it would be pointless to try and convince you otherwise then.
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geez you two there is a special place I set up to argue this in…
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@TG:
Yup, “just” because you were fortunate enough to have no fighting on your soil and “just” not everything was rationed, and your gov’t “just” didn’t publsih on how you could use acorns for nutrition…
The British Isles were never invaded. Your second statement is flawed. And the third point is hardly sufficent.
True, the third one was for illustration purposes.
Please explain why the second one is flawed.
Please interprete the first one just a very tiny bit more freely. Maybe replace the “fighting on” by “frequent fighting on and over”…I would not have thought that you could be worse than me in picking on words (and not going for the IMHO obvious meaning), yet still accuse me of rethorics…
Then it would be pointless to try and convince you otherwise then.
I had this feeling towards you as well for some time in this thread.
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Please interprete the first one just a very tiny bit more freely. Maybe replace the “fighting on” by “frequent fighting on and over”…
What’s the difference between that and bombing as I mention earlier?
As for the second, it is impossible to say “everything was rationed” for whatever country. And also, since what important articles weren’t rationed in the US? -
There is no real difference between the bombing you mentioned and my line.
Second, not every food was rationed in the US. I could not find how the rationing developed over the years in the US, if you know more there, would you mind to share that with me? … But of course, it comes down to what you consider “important”. And of course, the rationing was only one example fo the “total war” that you spoke of. How long was the weekly work time in the US in the “total war” era? It was 70h in Germany, with all “unnecessary” companies being closed, gas and electrical power heavily restricted, no cultural or sports events…
and i guess that the situation in the UK (esp. during the Battle in the Atlantic) or SU was only slightly different from the german, in comparison to the situation in the US. -
SUD-
Thanks-You stole my thunder! excellent post!
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I’d agree that given the effort and sacrifice of the allies on this side of the atlantic, we very much were in total war. Universal conscription, the losses of hundreds of thousands of lives, and the ful out deployment of national resources certainly made this a total war.
There is a consideration with regards to F_alk’s ballyhooing w.r.t. preservation of “human rights”/pre-geneva convention violations.
I think that when a sovereign nation has war declared against it, every effort made to defend itself is justifyable.
Certainly Germans may complain that the allies “overstepped the line”, however given the circumstances (cumination of terror bombings of allied cities and positions, sinkings of millions and millions of tons of food and supplies in effort to starve the nation of Great Britain with the subsequent deaths of thousands of sailors, the need to protect the world from evil aggression), i think that it can be expected that allied commanders might be a little too enthusiastic in fulfilling their missions.
The allies were forced into a position of needing to end the war. F_alk, you have done a poor job of convincing me that the means were inappropriate given the circumstances.
The reason why you and TG might be unable to “convince each other” is that Germany has always been the aggressor, yet has brought the devastation of war to its soil. The allies had been the invaded, the aggreived, and prevailled on foreign soil. F_alk can not understand our position being from the aggressor/devestated nation, and we will not know his, being the defending/victorious nations. -
I think F_alk is expounding on the “Winners-write-history-books” side of things :wink:
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falk, you said that the germans had a 70h work week? boo frickin hoo. they were the aggressors. they also took on way more than they could handle, fighting US,UK, France, Russia, Canada, etc. , not to mention being under a fascist dictator as opposed to the democracy in the US, who also was not directly affected by the war in Europe (the term being used loosely of course) i should expect the conditions in Germany to be more severe
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I stand corrected concerning my (former) position towards the total war.
@CC:
The allies were forced into a position of needing to end the war.
Please explain the “forced to need” in that sentence.
GG, you are probably right. … biting my tongue … anyway, i guess none of the USies has ever thought what the next superpower… or history … might judge over and write about them.
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@F_alk:
I stand corrected concerning my (former) position towards the total war.
@CC:
The allies were forced into a position of needing to end the war.
Please explain the “forced to need” in that sentence.
GG, you are probably right. … biting my tongue … anyway, i guess none of the USies has ever thought what the next superpower… or history … might judge over and write about them.
well, despite the sincerest hopes of Neville Chamberlain and his ilk, Hitler was not going to sit back and take it easy. There was no stopping the consequences of the hubris of the Germans. It was not going to end unless the allies put in the effort of a “Total War”, doing everything believed necessary. The Germans were not going to simply surrender because we asked them too. Not even when we were obviously winning. We needed to end the war with authority.
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@cystic:
well, despite the sincerest hopes of Neville Chamberlain and his ilk, Hitler was not going to sit back and take it easy. There was no stopping the consequences of the hubris of the Germans. It was not going to end unless the allies put in the effort of a “Total War”, doing everything believed necessary. The Germans were not going to simply surrender because we asked them too. Not even when we were obviously winning. We needed to end the war with authority.
It is true, the war would have been started by Germany, reagardless of what the western allies would have done.
For “not going to surrender”… Well, the Allies had proclaimed officially that they would not stop before the unconditional surrender of Germany. And they did so before Germany declared their “total war”.
The “need to win with authority” more was a remnant of the end of the first WW IMO, to make it impossible that a third WW could be started in another generations time by Germany. -
The problem with you two is that you do not seperate the people and the goverment… several times you have mentioned GERMANY instead of the appropiate NAZIS!!! The german people were oppressed as much as the British were in the Blitz… and we excuse the innocent German people lost because of allied bombing as “Retaliation”… sounds more like “revenge”… most Germans didn’t like Hitler but what could they say, they were too tired from working for 12 hours to resist… War crimes, oh shomolly! both sides were evil from the American at Manzanar, to the British in unseen oppression in there rather unseen empire, to Hitler’s brutal tactics preformed on innocent person’s, to Stalin who just never considered another person a “human”… Regardless of there death counts they did something wrong that has never been forgotten by the descendants of their terror, which we show partiality too… can’t we ever see that a human in misery regardless of whether the shovel he is digging with is manufactured in Germany or Britain has a pain that he is bearing?
GG
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thanks GG, a good closing comment
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i tend to get distracted easily when i feel like being attacked/offended. I will stay quiet in this thread. -
@F_alk:
thanks GG, a good closing comment
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i tend to get distracted easily when i feel like being attacked/offended. I will stay quiet in this thread.so back to the original thread.
What was the US thinking? Did they not expect this “outcome”? Did they not expect to come hat in hand to the rest of the world to help finish cleaning up their mess?
They claim to have successfully have won the war in Iraq. All they have done was deposed a despot in exchange for a militaristic anarchy. Instead of a brutal dictator who killed and humiliated people in a targetted manner, Iraq has a brutal military who does the same in an arbitrary manner. Rather than Iraq not having WMD, it still has WMD. Instead of Iraq not being able to sell the oil it has, America gets to sell the oil that Iraq has and using it to clean up their destruction of much of the country. They told the world that they were doing this to deal with terrorism in a country that produced relatively few terrorists (compared to American allies especially), and have created a whole new generation/group of terrorists (although many would consider these people still defending a fallen homeland).- there. That should generate some topic-oriented controversy 8)
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All countries that strike first in a war come up with their reasons to go to war, whether they are blatant about them or not, but it all comes down to resources, and resources are power. We did not strike first in the war in Afghanistan - this was the main headquarters of the Al Quaeda network at the time and we were justified in striking back because of 9/11. I have good friends that served in Iraq over these past 9 months and they have said that the situation there is better than it was before. I back the US soldiers 100%, but I believe there were hidden motives. The Bush administration used 9/11 and the supposed threat of WMD as excuses to invade. Anyone opposed to the invasion was branded as not being patriotic and against the US soldiers. This is ridiculous - I have nothing but the utmost respect for the US military but I don’t agree with the government when they put our troops in harms way for no good reason. Since the invasion, they have found no WMD and the Bush administration admitted in recent weeks that they have found no evidence of Iraq having ties to the Al Quaeda network. Even if the situation for the Iraqi people is better (which I believe it is), what government, be it US, France, Russia, China, Germany or any other really cares about the fate of the regular people in Iraq? France, Russia, China and Germany did not want the US to go in there because I believe these countries had favorable contracts with Saddam for oil and were also selling Iraq weapons. By the time the US pulls out, we will have the favorable contracts with Iraq for oil and we will be outfitting their military and police force, which means fat contracts for the companies that supported the Bush campaign. Why didn’t we invade North Korea? First and foremost, they are backed by the PRC, which we really don’t want to get into a war with, because it would probably escalate to WWIII. Iraq had no powerful country backing it and it’s miltary was weak. North Korea really does have nuclear, chemical & biological weapons which it probably would have used on the US, South Korea, Japan and any other neighboring countries during the conflict and we would have limited means to stop this. North Korea also has a huge troop advantage on the 38th parallel border and I read a news report that said that North Korea’s artillery would kill 700,000 people in the Seoul, South Korea area in the first few hours of a conflict. Iraq, if it had WMD at all, did not have them in a position to readily fire, their artillery was not very accurate and their military was poorly trained & outfitted. Finally, North Korea has no oil or any other natural resource of value (this coupled with their “Military First” policy is the reason why their economy has been so bad in recent years). Iraq has an abundance of oil. The costs of invading North Korea would not be worth it vs. the costs of invading Iraq. It is awful to look at it like this when you are talking about people’s lives, but this is how governments & generals think. I believe that a strong miliary is necessary to protect our rights and the rights of other countries and that getting involved in conflicts to stop them is a good thing - The Gulf War & Kosovo are good examples. We learned our lesson in WWI, WWII & The Korean War that waiting to get involved until things get out of hand makes things much, much worse. However, I’m not sure the Bush administration had the best of intentions with the Iraq situation and I’m not so sure that Iraq was as big a threat to the US that they were made out to be.
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I have been told about the motives for the Australians to join the “willing”:
wheat exports !Iraq under SH was a great importer of australian grains (i think about 1/3 of wheat exports went to the Iraq), so… when it came clear that the US would go in, the Aussie gov’t made a deal with the US it seems, that they would keep their exports and would not be replaced by US produced grain.
But that is just a sidenote…
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