Not content with merely turning a blind eye to Soviet mass murder, the Western democracies chose to indulge in mass murder of their own. That mass murder began in 1939, with their food blockade of Germany.
…
Germany responded to famine conditions by feeding Germans first, Slavs second, Jews not at all. Exactly how you’d expect a Nazi government to respond to famine. As a result of this (predictable) response, millions of Poles starved to death. Granted, tens of millions of non-Poles were also starved or otherwise killed, including 6 million Jews.
Unless I am being dense, KurtGodel is blaming the Allies for the Final Solution.
KG treads a risky path in which he highlights failings by the allies, often all too true, particularly in relation to the Russians, but the UK & US were also far from blameless.
He makes this unpalatable because he does not incorporate the context of terrible Nazi crimes, making his posts open to accusations of one sidedness.
The quote by wheatbeer is a good example. His final sentence could be taken to blame the allies for the holocaust. The flavour of his overall post will invite that interpretation. But if you read the words carefully it is not what he actually says, as he allows for “otherwise killed”. Even so, the focus on the Allies blockade with barely a mention of the holocaust is unpalatable.
In an exchange I had with KG on this WWII History board a few months ago I did raise with him this lack of balance and so the danger of his being labelled a pro-Nazi, as in fact IL has done. I tried to raise these issues constructively and would like to think that resulted in KG’s subsequent acceptance that Hitler was “brutal” and also in part that G’s position in central Europe made it a greater threat to the democracies than Russia.
I mention this as a plea that we conduct civil and constructive debates on these boards. That etiquette is part of my enjoyment of A&A.org.
Sorry for trying my “keep it civil” message again. :-)
You can’t build up something by coming up with examples that attempt to soil the side that had far less national guilt about their crimes. It’s a basic failure to argue this way. The catastrophic behavior of the Nazi’s was many-fold worse than anything imaginable that anyone can compare to the western allies and to a lesser extent the Soviets. Germany tops the list for depravity during WW2.
As IF you can even begin to formulate arguments that the western allies are to blame for any atrocities Germany committed in the war.
Ridiculous and you need to speak up and confront such nonsense at every turn it rears its ugly head.
@Imperious:
You can’t build up something by coming up with examples that attempt to soil the side that had far less national guilt about their crimes. It’s a basic failure to argue this way.
I don’t follow this. If I rob a store and don’t feel guilt because the manager is embezzling from his/her company, it’s a basic failure to argue to me that my action was wrong?
@Imperious:
The catastrophic behavior of the Nazis was many-fold worse than anything imaginable that anyone can compare to the western allies and to a lesser extent the Soviets. Germany tops the list for depravity during WW2.
I’m glad you’ve formed an opinion on the topic. The idea of this discussion is however, is to understand that the Western Allies and Soviet Russia were also on the list for depravity; organize it how you want based on the evidence found.
@Imperious:
As IF you can even begin to formulate arguments that the western allies are to blame for any atrocities Germany committed in the war.
You can’t. You can, however, point out that (at least) two things were going on simultaneously in Germany:
1. The Nazi regime deliberately persecuted/murdered homosexuals, disabled persons, Slavs, Jews, etc.
2. The Allies imposed a food blockade that left citizens under German control in famine conditions, many of which starved.
The victims of (1) are solely the Nazis’ fault. The victims of (2) are the Allies’ fault. German government had some control of the who were the victims of (2) and caused overlap between the two areas when possible (why feed people who you want to eliminate anyway), but the fact that there were unintentional starvation victims (such as citizens of Eastern Europe captured from Russia or Russian POWs meant to be working in German industry) is the Western Allies’ fault.
This does nothing to excuse the Germans’ disgusting atrocities against certain of its citizens, but it shows that the Western Allies displayed no problem causing the deaths of civilians that they didn’t like (they just happened to be civilians of a different country rather than their own)
–----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Private:
Contrary to some earlier responses, and in accord with others, I don’t think the cause was differences between competing ideologies so much as similarities between murderous totalitarian regimes. Perhaps thinking of the political spectrum as a circle rather than a straight line illustrates this - instead of Fascism and Communism at two distant extremes, they are both on the opposite side of the circle to democratic governance. Their determination to highlight their differences perhaps instead highlights their similarities?
I tend to agree with this interpretation, perhaps making a plane with quadrants to show separations, something like:
Nazism (Stalin’s) Communism
|
| ^
| |
–-------±--------- | more totalitarian
| |
| |
|
Democracy (Socialism/ideal Communism?)
---------->
more government
control of society
Like the 2x2 matrix ColonelCarter.
ColonelCarter,
No one forced the Nazi Germany to start a war and no one forced Nazi Germany to continue waging their war by stealing food from occupied territories to feed Germans. The Nazis decided that it was better to starve conquered peoples than to surrender.
Take the lifeboat analogy KG used.
- Mass murder with extenuating circumstances. Imagine that ten people are on a lifeboat, but there is only enough food and water for seven of them to make it back to safety. A decision to kill three people on the lifeboat would represent a miniature example of something in this category.
Lets extend this metaphor.
Lifeboat-A can only keep its full crew alive by trading with other ships. Lifeboat-A decides to seize control of another nearby boat (lifeboat-B) by force, despite warnings from other boats. In response, an alliance of other lifeboats institutes a blockade, preventing any boats from trading with lifeboat-A unless the crew of lifeboat-A withdraws from lifeboat-B. Lifeboat-A refuses to relinquish control of lifeboat-B and decides to use lifeboat-B’s food supply to keep the crew of lifeboat-A alive, which results in the crew of lifeboat-B starving to death.
In my mind, lifeboat-A is culpable for any deaths amongst the crew of lifeboat-B.
ColonelCarter,
No one forced the Nazi Germany to start a war and no one forced Nazi Germany to continue waging their war by stealing food from occupied territories to feed Germans. The Nazis decided that it was better to starve conquered peoples than to surrender.
Incorrect, Hitler did!
Hitler used the circumstances in his belief of interest.
@wheatbeer:
Take the lifeboat analogy KG used.
- Mass murder with extenuating circumstances. Imagine that ten people are on a lifeboat, but there is only enough food and water for seven of them to make it back to safety. A decision to kill three people on the lifeboat would represent a miniature example of something in this category.
Lets extend this metaphor.
Lifeboat-A can only keep its full crew alive by trading with other ships. Lifeboat-A decides to seize control of another nearby boat (lifeboat-B) by force, despite warnings from other boats. In response, an alliance of other lifeboats institutes a blockade, preventing any boats from trading with lifeboat-A unless the crew of lifeboat-A withdraws from lifeboat-B. Lifeboat-A refuses to relinquish control of lifeboat-B and decides to use lifeboat-B’s food supply to keep the crew of lifeboat-A alive, which results in the crew of lifeboat-B starving to death.
In my mind, lifeboat-A is culpable for any deaths amongst the crew of lifeboat-B.
Wheatbeer, with all due respect!
BUT everybody is culpable of the deaths amongst the Crew of lifeboat -B.
How can you say that he who does not physicaly kill is less guilty then he who kills??
How can anybody even think such an assumption??
You are all wrong.
To ease the conflict would have been to deal with the Problem the right way.
England, France and even Russia could have Intervent when Nazi Germany invaded all the countrys but they didn’t.
After all it is everybodys fault that WW II started and went on.
Nazi Germany did the Holocaust and the Allies didn’t stop it.
They missed to take out the Nazi ideology, erase it from the earth.
Now as of today we still have hundreds, thousand of People who still believe it is a good Thing and hundreds of Locations where they still meet and planing things.
Back to the Topic, I don’t see a diffrence.
Facisim and Communisim is worse at the same time so is Democracy lead by the wrong People.
People who are willing to live under These governments should meet up on an Island and start their Party over there.
And the most worst thing is, that we are close to 1939 in 2015 and nobody is even realizing it, nobody cares, as long as it is not in front of him.
Hey Wheat…
Unless I am mistaken, UK/France declared war on Germany.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/britain-and-france-declare-war-on-germany
No one FORCED them to do it…
Take the lifeboat analogy KG used.
- Mass murder with extenuating circumstances. Imagine that ten people are on a lifeboat, but there is only enough food and water for seven of them to make it back to safety. A decision to kill three people on the lifeboat would represent a miniature example of something in this category.
Lets extend this metaphor.
Lifeboat-A can only keep its full crew alive by trading with other ships. Lifeboat-A decides to seize control of another nearby boat (lifeboat-B) by force, despite warnings from other boats. In response, an alliance of other lifeboats institutes a blockade, preventing any boats from trading with lifeboat-A unless the crew of lifeboat-A withdraws from lifeboat-B. Lifeboat-A refuses to relinquish control of lifeboat-B and decides to use lifeboat-B’s food supply to keep the crew of lifeboat-A alive, which results in the crew of lifeboat-B starving to death.
In my mind, lifeboat-A is culpable for any deaths amongst the crew of lifeboat-B.
I suppose this is where we differ.
Following lifeboat-A’s act of aggression against lifeboat-B, the other lifeboats have at least 2 options:
1. Blockade trading with lifeboat-A. If they don’t surrender, a number of people in the collective group of lifeboats A&B will die.
2. Attempt to free lifeboat-B by taking lifeboat-A by force. If they don’t surrender, some people from the outside lifeboats could get hurt/die.
In the case of (1), the outside group knows that some people under their lifeboat-A’s control will die (unless they surrender which wasn’t really an option in Germany’s case because of Russia). Considering that the outside group is trying to defend the occupants of lifeboat-B, it seems questionable that their course of action is one that could result in the deaths of the people they promise to protect.
In my opinion, option (2) would have been the more moral course of action, as it guarantees that the aggressors are the victims of their punishment. Just like how you imprison a criminal for their crimes, not their family.
Unless I am mistaken, UK/France declared war on Germany.
I was referring to Germany declaring war on Poland.
Considering that the outside group is trying to defend the occupants of lifeboat-B, it seems questionable that their course of action is one that could result in the deaths of the people they promise to protect.
Attempting to free lifeboat-B directly might not be practical depending on the logistics of the situation. Lifeboat-A might be too strong for such a plan to have hope of success in the short term. But if they do nothing, then lifeboat-A will continue to gain strength and become a bigger threat.
Quote from: Imperious Leader on June 01, 2015, 05:51:48 pm
You can’t build up something by coming up with examples that attempt to soil the side that had far less national guilt about their crimes. It’s a basic failure to argue this way.
I don’t follow this. If I rob a store and don’t feel guilt because the manager is embezzling from his/her company, it’s a basic failure to argue to me that my action was wrong?
Quote from: Imperious Leader on June 01, 2015, 05:51:48 pm
The catastrophic behavior of the Nazis was many-fold worse than anything imaginable that anyone can compare to the western allies and to a lesser extent the Soviets. Germany tops the list for depravity during WW2.
I’m glad you’ve formed an opinion on the topic. The idea of this discussion is however, is to understand that the Western Allies and Soviet Russia were also on the list for depravity; organize it how you want based on the evidence found.
Quote from: Imperious Leader on June 01, 2015, 05:51:48 pm
As IF you can even begin to formulate arguments that the western allies are to blame for any atrocities Germany committed in the war.
You can’t. You can, however, point out that (at least) two things were going on simultaneously in Germany:
1. The Nazi regime deliberately persecuted/murdered homosexuals, disabled persons, Slavs, Jews, etc.
2. The Allies imposed a food blockade that left citizens under German control in famine conditions, many of which starved.The victims of (1) are solely the Nazis’ fault. The victims of (2) are the Allies’ fault. German government had some control of the who were the victims of (2) and caused overlap between the two areas when possible (why feed people who you want to eliminate anyway), but the fact that there were unintentional starvation victims (such as citizens of Eastern Europe captured from Russia or Russian POWs meant to be working in German industry) is the Western Allies’ fault.
You missed the point, Godel ranks both as IF they are relatively the same. IN reality, this blockade when the war started was one of many basic measures any civilized people would do if they had the opportunity against the aggressor nation. WW2 was Hitlers revenge war. You can’t possibly even begin to compare systematic and whole scale murder of innocent people, with belligerents against Germany imposing some economic blockade. I guess you ignore Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and how it nearly starved England? How soon they forget.
I guess nothing is Germany’s fault…
This does nothing to excuse the Germans’ disgusting atrocities against certain of its citizens, but it shows that the Western Allies displayed no problem causing the deaths of civilians that they didn’t like (they just happened to be civilians of a different country rather than their own)
OMG. Yea they just killed their own citizens, not citizens from conquered countries? What? This reasoning by you sounds like something Godel would write.
No greater example exists of war between good and evil like WW2.
@Imperious:
Quote from: Imperious Leader on June 01, 2015, 05:51:48 pm
As IF you can even begin to formulate arguments that the western allies are to blame for any atrocities Germany committed in the war.You can’t. You can, however, point out that (at least) two things were going on simultaneously in Germany:
1. The Nazi regime deliberately persecuted/murdered homosexuals, disabled persons, Slavs, Jews, etc.
2. The Allies imposed a food blockade that left citizens under German control in famine conditions, many of which starved.The victims of (1) are solely the Nazis’ fault. The victims of (2) are the Allies’ fault. German government had some control of the who were the victims of (2) and caused overlap between the two areas when possible (why feed people who you want to eliminate anyway), but the fact that there were unintentional starvation victims (such as citizens of Eastern Europe captured from Russia or Russian POWs meant to be working in German industry) is the Western Allies’ fault.
You missed the point, Godel ranks both as IF they are relatively the same. IN reality, this blockade when the war started was one of many basic measures any civilized people would do if they had the opportunity against the aggressor nation. WW2 was Hitlers revenge war. You can’t possibly even begin to compare systematic and whole scale murder of innocent people, with belligerents against Germany imposing some economic blockade. I guess you ignore Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and how it nearly starved England? How soon they forget.
I didn’t miss the point, I made my own. That being, everyone is free (including you and KG) to rate the belligerent countries’ crimes as they would, but they should acknowledge that all belligerents did commit crimes against the various civilians of the time.
By your argument, Germany’s USW is a basic measure of a civilized people. Remember, Britain and France were aggressors against Germany; Hitler didn’t want war with them. I think it lies on equal footing of civilian murder as the Allied food blockade.
@Imperious:
This does nothing to excuse the Germans’ disgusting atrocities against certain of its citizens, but it shows that the Western Allies displayed no problem causing the deaths of civilians that they didn’t like (they just happened to be civilians of a different country rather than their own)
OMG. Yea they just killed their own citizens, not citizens from conquered countries? What?
Thank you for pointing out that this needs clarification. I meant atrocities against people they controlled, as well as the Allies’ indifference to the fates of the people they originally promised to protect.
@Imperious:
No greater example exists of war between good and evil like WW2.
Eh, the War of the Ring is much more clear cut in my opinion.
I didn’t miss the point, I made my own. That being, everyone is free (including you and KG) to rate the belligerent countries’ crimes as they would, but they should acknowledge that all belligerents did commit crimes against the various civilians of the time.
By your argument, Germany’s USW is a basic measure of a civilized people. Remember, Britain and France were aggressors against Germany; Hitler didn’t want war with them. I think it lies on equal footing of civilian murder as the Allied food blockade.
The first point does not mean both sides are somehow equal to guilt. Exterminating people for no reason is not the same as during wartime blockading the enemy ports so he can’t conduct international trade. It’s like saying the US blockade against North Korea/ Iran is the same as murdering people on meat hooks. Who reasons like this?
Second, that is not what i said. Exterminating people is not a basic necessity during war, US did no such thing. USW and economic blockade ARE acceptable outcomes during war. ANY argument that attempts to justify mass extermination of people during war is just an excuse. Freaking Nazi’s spent more resources killing people and should have been used to fight in Russia. It took space that could have moved materiel to the eastern front and saved German lives, but was wasted transporting people to their deaths. Your arguments hold air.
@Imperious:
I didn’t miss the point, I made my own. That being, everyone is free (including you and KG) to rate the belligerent countries’ crimes as they would, but they should acknowledge that all belligerents did commit crimes against the various civilians of the time.
By your argument, Germany’s USW is a basic measure of a civilized people. Remember, Britain and France were aggressors against Germany; Hitler didn’t want war with them. I think it lies on equal footing of civilian murder as the Allied food blockade.
The first point does not mean both sides are somehow equal to guilt. Exterminating people for no reason is not the same as during wartime blockading the enemy ports so he can’t conduct international trade. It’s like saying the US blockade against North Korea/ Iran is the same as murdering people on meat hooks. Who reasons like this?
Who reasons like this? Nobody, that’s who.
I’m super confused where you’re drawing these conclusions from. I said nothing that they are equal guilt, just that I think they both have guilt.
It’s like one person robs a store and another murders a person. I’m saying don’t skip apprehending the thief just because the other guy committed murder, not that they should get the same sentence!
@Imperious:
Second, that is not what i said1. Exterminating people is not a basic necessity during war, US did no such thing. USW and economic blockade ARE acceptable outcomes during war2. ANY argument that attempts to justify mass extermination of people during war is just an excuse. Freaking Nazis spent more resources killing people and should have been used to fight in Russia. It took space that could have moved materiel to the eastern front and saved German lives, but was wasted transporting people to their deaths. Your arguments hold air.
1. Pronoun game. Please elaborate (quote preferably) what I said you said that you didn’t.
2. You did just say again that you think USW is an acceptable outcome (== a basic measure of civilized people at war). Mass murder is not, but I never said it was (or that you said it was). I’m not trying the impossible task of justifying mass extermination. I’m saying the Allies weren’t as spectacularly clean as they are sometimes depicted, just because they had the very just goal of wiping out Hitler’s evil. The arguments you pretend I make hold air.
It is clear that the Nazis committed terrible crimes against various European peoples. Also that they started the war by invading Poland. The fact that Germany hoped the UK & France would not fulfil their treaty obligations to Poland does not make the UK or France aggressors. Germany is the aggressor.
It is also clear that terrible crimes were committed by the Soviets. We do not need to deny this or argue whether the Nazis or Soviets were worse in order to retain the clarity that the Nazis were the immediate threat to the western democracies because of their geographical location and that they were the aggressors.
Nor do we need to deny that the UK and US were responsible for actions that many today label as war crimes - bombing of civilians, food blockades, etc. Although we should remember that total war for survival leads to difficult moral choices (did the atom bomb save more than it killed?) and that morality has moved on since 1945 in the comfort of the peace and security gained. Despite such actions, the Nazis remain the aggressors. The Nazis remain the greatest threat to the democracies. The Nazis committed utterly atrocious crimes.
We do not have to see things in black and white - allies only good / axis only bad - in order to retain clarity that WWII was a just war (if there can be such a thing) in which the allies (or two of them) did their best in the most challenging circumstances. But they did make mistakes. Accepting those mistakes allows us to focus more clearly on the blight on humanity we call the Nazis.
Instead we seem to be arguing about whether the allies were perfect.
Imperious Leader wrote:
Germany tops the list for depravity during WW2.
The above statement is false. However, people in Western nations have spent a lifetime immersed in anti-Nazi propaganda. We are taught the names of the victims of German atrocities. Told to read their diaries in school. Shown pictures of human skeletons in Nazi concentration camps.
Meanwhile, the victims of Soviet or Western democratic atrocities are mentioned only as statistics, or else not mentioned at all. In no case is there any effort to humanize the victims of Allied atrocities. This creates the false impression that the Nazis were somehow “more evil” than the communists. That impression is disproved by the fact that millions of Soviet citizens fled west into German territory to escape the horror of the Red Army.
The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied parts of Europe numbered millions of people. . . . At the end of World War II there were more than five million refugees from the Soviet Union in Western Europe.
In his book Lost Victories, general von Manstein correctly pointed out that the millions of Soviet citizens who fled westward to escape the Red Army were strong evidence that, whatever the sins of the Nazi government may have been, the Soviet Union was worse.
As IF you can even begin to formulate arguments that the western allies are to blame for any atrocities Germany committed in the war.
We’ve been over this ground before, and you are seemingly ignoring the points previously raised. The consequences of the Western democratic food blockade were so severe that in 1940, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover said that “If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history.”
You compared the Allied food blockade to the Germans’ attempt to use sub warfare to cut Britain off from food imports. However, that is a false comparison. After the fall of Poland, Hitler offered peace to Britain and France. After the fall of France, Hitler offered peace to Britain. In both cases, the offers amounted to, “Let’s stop shooting at each other and leave current borders intact.” Efforts to cut off Britain from its food imports appear to have been part of a larger, carrot-and-stick effort to reach a negotiated end to the war.
There are two possible motives for building a nuclear bomb:
1. As a deterrent, or to gain negotiating leverage. The intention under this scenario is for nuclear weapons to remain unused.
2. To use the nuclear weapon to kill people.
The same logic which applies to nuclear weapons also applies to food blockades. Germany’s attempted blockade of Britain’s food supply seems to have been actuated by the first motive. The Germans wanted the British to agree to negotiated peace; and creating a food shortage would have helped achieve that. Had Britain’s food situation become bad enough, its leaders would have been forced to the negotiating table. Or, the hungry British people would have voted those leaders out of office and replaced them with others more open to negotiated peace.
On the other hand, the Allied food blockade was never part of any larger strategy to achieve any sort of negotiated peace. Neither Britain nor the United States ever offered Germany any peace terms other than unconditional surrender. After Operation Barbarossa, that unconditional surrender was to be to all the Allies, including the Soviet Union. Given that the Allies had no interest in offering any peace terms Germany could accept, their only possible motive for imposing a food blockade was to use famine as a weapon with which to kill people.
Hitler had several options about how to respond to the famine conditions the Allies created. He could have chosen to starve Germans and other Aryans, while feeding Slavs and Jews. He also had the option of starving Slavs and Jews in order to feed Germans. A third option would have been to distribute the starvation evenly. Allied leaders had to decide which of these three options Hitler was most likely to select.
In 1936, “The large numbers of Jews entering Palestine [from Germany] led to the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine.” In 1939, Britain closed Palestine to additional Jewish immigration. (Except for a token 10,000 Jewish immigrants per year.) After the passage of the White Paper of 1939, Hitler no longer had the option of continuing to export Germany’s Jewish population. The Allied food blockade forced Germany to reduce its population through starvation or emigration. The White Paper of 1939 took the emigration option off the table. Population reduction would occur, and it would occur through either starvation or other forms of killing.
I read literally thousands of pages of mainstream history books (written from the Allied perspective) before I came across any mention of the Allied food blockade or the resultant famine conditions in Germany. Data such as that was deliberately swept under the rug in order to present a simplistic, deliberately deceptive “good versus evil” dichotomy. In the past, I’d thought that the Allies had had an abstract interest in telling the truth. I’ve since learned that such is not the case. Reading an Allied account of Nazi Germany is like listening to Rush Limbaugh describe Democrats, or like listening to Al Franken describe conservatives. At their worst, Allied descriptions of Nazi Germany are far more one-sided and deceptive than anything Limbaugh or Franken would say.
The fact that a number of half truths and lies have been told about the Nazis does not make them perfect, or anywhere close to perfect. My intention in this discussion is to strip away the lies and half truths the Allies have told, and to see the Nazis, the communists, and the Western democracies in as unbiased a light as possible. That unbiased light reveals serious flaws in all three sides. But it does not reveal moral equivalence. The Soviet Union was by far the most brutal and evil participant in WWII.
Who reasons like this? Nobody, that’s who.
I’m super confused where you’re drawing these conclusions from. I said nothing that they are equal guilt, just that I think they both have guilt.
It’s like one person robs a store and another murders a person. I’m saying don’t skip apprehending the thief just because the other guy committed murder, not that they should get the same sentence!
This is Godels reasonings, He says Soviets, and Allies effectively all “Bad” for the purpose of pulling them down to a level equal to Germany, so making Germany “not look so bad”. WE are talking about Godel.
1. Pronoun game. Please elaborate (quote preferably) what I said you said that you didn’t.
2. You did just say again that you think USW is an acceptable outcome (== a basic measure of civilized people at war). Mass murder is not, but I never said it was (or that you said it was). I’m not trying the impossible task of justifying mass extermination. I’m saying the Allies weren’t as spectacularly clean as they are sometimes depicted, just because they had the very just goal of wiping out Hitler’s evil. The arguments you pretend I make hold air.
Again these are Godel’s points. The Allies for him are on an equal footing in terms of guilt with Germany….to him. That thinking is evil. In reality-compared to the Nazi’s, the Allies fought the war as well as could be expected. Also, pointing out grammar mistakes is another fallacy of argument.
The so called food blockade as a general blockade of anything reaching Germany, that didn’t come from the Baltic. You can call it an economic blockade. In time of war you think any belligerent that had the capability to blockade wouldn’t?. In war that is a basic strategy. You don’t want the enemy to receive any benefit from trading to neutral factions. In the Pacific, we sunk a whole lot of Japanese transports that were “feeding” the Japanese was economy, Germany nearly starved UK with USW. so your being ridiculous with this reasoning.
Neither Britain nor the United States ever offered Germany any peace terms other than unconditional surrender.
Diplomacy is a two way street. Did Germany ever offer to return to their 1938 Munich Agreement borders?
Imperious leader wrote,
The Allies for him are on an equal footing in terms of guilt with Germany….to him.
That is not my point at all.
During the prewar years, Germany was responsible for several hundred direct killings, and several thousand indirect killings. Also during the prewar years, Stalin was responsible for tens of millions of mass murders. Recall that neither nation was subjected to a food blockade during this time, and that the Soviet Union was a food exporter for every year of the period in question.
There is no moral equivalence between German and Soviet behavior during the prewar period. For every victim of German prewar murder, there were 1,000 victims of Soviet prewar murder.
That thinking is evil.
Bear in mind that all of us have been immersed in Allied propaganda ever since we were little. On the surface, it’s tempting to believe the Allied leaders’ claims that they were interested in preventing murder, brutality, and so forth. Standing up for innocent people. However, those surface claims are belied by the fact that they took no interest whatever in stopping Soviet mass murder. In the early postwar period, the governments of Britain and the United States aided and abetted Soviet mass murder.
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Soviets. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”
The bodies in question were of the aforementioned refugees–Soviet citizens–who had fled westward to escape the horror of the advancing Red Army. These refugees had escaped into Western democratic custody, and were later handed over to the Soviets.
Erich Hartmann was the highest scoring ace in history. Like the refugees, he had also managed to surrender to a Western democracy (the United States). Like millions of other German servicemen, he was handed over to the Soviet Union. He describes the aftermath of the Soviet victory in the following words:
The Russians then separated the women and girls from the men, and the most horrible things happened. . . . We saw this; the Americans saw this, and we could do nothing to stop it. Men who fought like lions cried like babies at the sight of complete strangers being raped repeatedly. A couple of girls managed to run to a truck and the Americans pulled them in, but the Russians, most were drunk pointed their guns at the allies and fired a few shots. Then the truck drivers decided to drive away quickly. Some women were shot after the rapes. Others were not so lucky. I remember a twelve year old girl . . . being raped by several soldiers. She died from these acts soon afterward. Then more Russians came, and it began all over again and lasted through the night. During the night, entire families committed suicide with men killing their wives and daughters, then themselves.
While a Soviet general put a stop to that particular batch of atrocities, others in the Soviet hierarchy–including Stalin himself–were far more open to the idea of allowing rape and murder. As the war in Europe drew to a close, the invading Red Army temporarily lost its discipline as a fighting force. It became a band of drunken thugs, focused rather on raping, looting, vandalizing, and murdering than on fighting. Hartmann goes on to describe the experience of captured German servicemen sent to the Soviet Union in the postwar period.
Finally we arrived near Kirov and disembarked in a swamp. This was our home for a while. Of the 1,500 POWs who were dropped at this place about 200 lived through the first winter. This I know from some who survived. They were not fed, just worked to death.
Hartmann was spared a long stay at the Kirov gulag due to his celebrity status. No lower level Soviet official wanted to take the responsibility of killing the highest scoring ace in history. Instead, the Soviets attempted to recruit him–turn him into a spy for communist East Germany against democratic West Germany. In order to get Hartmann to agree to this, they tortured him, and threatened to find and kill his wife. Nevertheless, Hartmann refused to “fold to the Soviet will.” He was eventually returned to West Germany in the mid 1950s, as a result of a trade agreement between West Germany and the U.S.S.R.
