Private Panic wrote:
Clearly the definition exempts Churchill from genocide but the accusation falls squarely on the shoulders of the Nazis.
I disagree with that.
If you look at pre-war crimes committed in Europe, both the Nazis and the Western democracies had relatively clean records. (The Western democracies’ brutality in their colonies is a subject for a different thread.) The Soviets had a very, very ugly prewar record, with millions of murders to show for their actions.
If you look at crimes committed during the war, all the major crimes committed by the Nazis had a “yes, but” associated with them. Did the Nazis kill millions of Jews? Yes, but they couldn’t feed everyone within their own borders. Did the Nazis starve millions of Slavs? Yes, but they couldn’t feed everyone within their own borders. To ignore the “yes, but” part of that equation is to stray from the straight and narrow path of truth.
On the other hand, Churchill and other Allied leaders chose to use food as a weapon, knowing that millions of innocent civilians would die as a result of their decision. I regard that as the greatest single crime committed during the war, and the one for which there is the least justification.
The main military benefit of the Allied food blockade was that it furthered the Allied propaganda effort. By making it physically impossible for the Germans to feed the people in the lands they conquered, the food blockade created the illusion that the Germans were even worse than the Soviets. Had food been allowed through the Allied blockade, the Germans could have fed the people of Eastern Europe and the western Soviet Union. Had those people been fed, many Soviet citizens might well have fought for the Germans and against Stalin’s evil regime. The second most important military benefit of the Allied food blockade was that it prevented Germany from feeding the Soviet POWs working in German weapons factories. Millions of Soviet POWs died of starvation, despite Hitler’s direct order that they be fed.
In that same posting, however, I did flag that our parameters for war crimes have changed since 1945 . . .
In the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies were more than happy to subject the Nazis’ decisions to a very high level of critical scrutiny. I see no reason whatever that the Allies’ own decisions should be exempted from the standards they used on the Nazis.
Also that in an existential war (which it was for the UK and Russia) difficult decisions are made . . .
WWII was not an existential war for Britain. Britain had the option of obtaining peace whenever it wanted to, with no loss of British territory. They chose to disregard German offers of peace, and continue fighting instead.
WWII was an existential war for the Soviet Union–or at least for the Soviet government and the Soviet system. It was also an existential war for Germany. I am willing to apply your “difficult decisions are made in existential conflicts” logic to both Germany and the Soviet Union. For example: during the war, Stalin transferred a large portion of the Soviet farm labor force to the military or to factories making weapons. This caused severe hunger in the Soviet Union, with a significant number of people dying as a result. I have not accused the Soviets of committing a war crime for doing that; just as I didn’t accuse the Germans of committing a war crime due to having transferred some farm animals to military use.
While “existential war” logic can justify stuff like that, it does not justify the British using a food blockade to starve millions of Poles. Especially considering that the Poles were the ones whom Britain supposedly went to war to protect.
The Germans were the aggressors.
The Soviets had become the aggressors long before Hitler even took power. If Hitler was aggressive in his efforts to build a Greater Germany, it was because he knew that only a strong Germany could withstand Soviet aggression. And he knew from past experience that the Western democracies would do precisely nothing to stop or slow Soviet expansionism.
This first became clear in the Polish-Soviet War, which occurred in 1919 - 1921. The Soviet Union had wished to annex Poland. Then, at least according to a highly reliable Soviet source (and Soviet defector to Britain), the Soviet Union intended to keep pushing west into Germany. Germany had been disarmed in the aftermath of WWI, and was already on the brink of a communist revolution. After conquering Poland, the Soviets intended to meet up with the German communists.
Did the Western democracies declare war on the Soviet Union for having invaded Poland? Did they launch an “existential war” against the Soviets? No! They didn’t even send soldiers to help Poland. A pro-Soviet British government sent weapons to the Soviets, but not to Poland. The French sent the Polish some military advisors, but otherwise did nothing to help Poland. Nor did the United States do anything useful. As the Soviets pushed westward, the western democracies advised Poland to obtain the best surrender terms it could. Instead of which, the Polish, alone and unaided, won an unexpected victory near Warsaw. That victory turned the tide of the entire war, and (temporarily) saved both Poland and Germany from the terror of Soviet occupation.
You’d think that in light of Soviet expansionism, and in light of Western democratic refusal to do anything at all to stop it, that Germany would have been allowed a decent military. A strong Germany could have been a counterweight to the Soviet threat. Instead, the Western democracies insisted that Germany limit itself to only a token military. Their Versailles Treaty also kept Germany crippled economically. Their post WWI policies created a power vacuum in the heart of Europe–a vacuum Stalin was only too eager to fill.
It was in this environment that Hitler came to power. Hitler immediately renounced the Versailles Treaty, and began building up Germany militarily and industrially. The Allied response to that was to embrace a pro-Soviet strategy of encirclement. France and the Soviet Union signed a defensive alliance in 1935. Czechoslovakia also signed a defensive alliance with the Soviets that same year. The Western democracies were no more interested in preventing the Soviet conquest of Poland, Eastern Europe, or Germany in the '30s than they had been in the '20s.
In 1939, French politicians told a pack of lies to the naive Polish. Polish government officials believed the lies, and embraced an anti-German foreign policy. While Hitler was not privy to the secret conferences in which the French and British lied to the Poles, his reading of the diplomatic tea leaves convinced him that Britain and France were determined to go to war. Hitler knew that time was not on Germany’s side. If war was inevitable, it was better from the German perspective for it to occur in 1939 than some later year.
The Germans and the Western democracies were not the only nations preparing for war. Stalin was also gearing up for an invasion of Europe. From Hitler’s perspective, it made sense to deal with the Western democratic threat first, before the Soviets could mount their invasion of Europe. Neither Hitler nor anyone in the German military had any appetite for a two front war.
To label the Germans “aggressors” is accurate, but perhaps overly simplistic. It’s far from obvious what non-aggressive foreign policy Germany could possibly have pursued which would have protected it from Soviet invasion. I know a lot about this war, and I have no idea what I could have done in Hitler’s place, to have protected Germany. Had the Germans stayed within their own borders, minding their own business, the Red Army would have overrun first Eastern Europe, and then Germany itself. The Western democracies would have done every bit as much to stop that invasion as they did to stop the Soviets’ invasion of Poland in 1920. Which is to say, they would have done nothing at all.
If you doubt the truth of that last statement, consider the Western democratic response to the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, and its invasion of Finland in 1940. Also consider the Western democratic response to the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 1940, as well as to the Soviet annexation of part of Romania in that same year.
