Hiroshima visit, a missed op.

Thousands of balloons carrying bombs were sent into the jet stream with the intention of bombing the Continental United States by Japan.

I’m glad that IL finally found links to support his assertion that Japan bombed civilian targets in Honolulu. Of course, there is no guarantee that the newspaper/NBC accounts of the bombings were accurate. (There seemed to be considerable confusion around that time, with for example some claiming that Japanese planes had glided to Pearl Harbor to avoid detection.) But even though I’m less than 100% sold on the accuracy of this claim, I now know this isn’t something IL just made up on his own.

As for Japan’s willingness to surrender: Herbert Hoover addressed this in his book Freedom Betrayed (pp. 560 - 561).

In April 1945, the Emperor substituted a group of civilian anti-militarists for the militant ministry. Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, who had a long record of friendliness toward the United States, was made Prime Minister. Suzuki’s new cabinet included Shigenori Togo (not to be confused with General Tojo) as Foreign Minister who was also an anti-militarist and had opposed Japan’s joining the war in 1941. . . .

Before the ultimatum issued at the Potsdam Conference on July 26th, there had been six months of peace feelers by the Japanese, and nearly two weeks before, the positive proposal of Japan to Russia of which Truman, Byrnes and Stimson had full information from intercepted telegrams.

The importance of this is to show (a) that at least Secretary Byrnes was informed of these proposals before he reached Potsdam and (b) that it might be surmised that Marshall Stalin was not interested in ending the Allied war with Japan until he had collected the great Chinese provinces given him under the secret Yalta Far Eastern Agreement of the previous February.

All of these peace feelers had one stipulation in common, the preservation of the Japanese Imperial House. Secretary Stimson had long favored this condition to the Japanese.

As for Japan’s willingness to surrender: Herbert Hoover addressed this in his book Freedom Betrayed (pp. 560 - 561).

Please pray to “chicken in every pot” Hoover, whom it seems the expert in that quack library of books you got.

Suppose that the Nazi government found that the Jews living within German-held territory opposed the Nazi war effort, and were doing everything they possibly could to thwart it. Would you feel the Nazi government had a legal right to exterminate this Jewish population every bit as vigorously as the Allies were working to exterminate the German people?

War between nations and quelling insurgencies are not really analogous, thus the question isn’t correct.

Let just say, I don’t believe in “universal human rights.” I know that’s not popular these days. But I really don’t see any basis for their existence other than aspiration, i.e. they are “good” so they must be.  People at best have only natural rights, which are secured and augmented by government. If you live in the state of nature and someone kills you, well too bad. If you live in society governed by law then you are protected by the criminal law. If one segment of society, say the Jews, start blowing up your railroads or whatever, then they would be prosecuted as criminals. I guess your criminal law could be as harsh as you want. I suppose that’s a matter of taste. But that really isn’t relative to two nations at war.

If you don’t feel that such an act would have been legal, then please explain why the Allies were allowed to target and exterminate civilians, and why the Axis wasn’t allowed to do so.

Ok, I think this is where the confusion lies. War and law can only exist in the absence of the other. One negates the other. The reason is axiomatic and self-evident. If someone attempts to dominate you by force, no law, by itself, is going to help you, especially if the attacker doesn’t care.  Once war is unleashed winning is all that matters. Sure, I guess you can try to stipulate that you won’t do X destructive thing if your enemy doesn’t etc. But that is also unenforceable.  There was no real reason why Germany couldn’t have used poison gas in WWII. The Germans just thought better of it, and I guess took the chance others wouldn’t do it, which paid off in the end.  But there is no reason they couldn’t have.

As for bombing, I am not condemning anyone for it, Axis or Allies.

As for the atomic bombing of Japan: the Japanese government had agreed to a conditional surrender months before the bomb was dropped. The bomb was not necessary for the U.S. to win the war–we’d done that already. The only reason the bomb was “necessary” was because “unconditional surrender” made better propaganda than the phrase “we let them surrender with some dignity.”

Yes, I am aware of that history. I had to write an essay on it in High School about if the A-bombs were justified in light of Japanese peace feelers.  Again, who cares?!  If I am in a total war situation with a deadly opponent, and they start saying TO OTHER PEOPLE, “maybe I’ll surrender if blah blah blah” – why should I do anything but continue to blow them away? The allied terms were set. The Japanese did not accept them. EVEN AFTER TAKING 1 A BOMB.  It took 2.

In the postwar era, a Japanese court correctly found that the atomic bombings had been illegal, because conditions 2) and 3) had not been met.

Who cares.

Treaties are NOT laws, no matter how hard you pound the table. The only real penalty for breaking a treaty is war. So you’re back to bombing civilians in the name of stopping the bombing of civilians.

I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. The Allies bomb the hell out the Axis, then turn around AFTER the war and start saying oh, that was bad, but then adopt as THE cornerstone of national defense policy to totally annihilate their enemies with nuclear bombs, building thousands…

It just goes to show you that all this hysteria about “BOMBING CIVILIANS” is just frankly silly.  Yes, it is mean, and it shouldn’t happen in a nice world.  But when the going gets tough, the bombs got to fall. Sorry.

Have a nice day  : :-D

@Karl7:

Suppose that the Nazi government found that the Jews living within German-held territory opposed the Nazi war effort, and were doing everything they possibly could to thwart it. Would you feel the Nazi government had a legal right to exterminate this Jewish population every bit as vigorously as the Allies were working to exterminate the German people?

War between nations and quelling insurgencies are not really analogous, thus the question isn’t correct.

Let just say, I don’t believe in “universal human rights.” I know that’s not popular these days. But I really don’t see any basis for their existence other than aspiration, i.e. they are “good” so they must be.  People at best have only natural rights, which are secured and augmented by government. If you live in the state of nature and someone kills you, well too bad. If you live in society governed by law then you are protected by the criminal law. If one segment of society, say the Jews, start blowing up your railroads or whatever, then they would be prosecuted as criminals. I guess your criminal law could be as harsh as you want. I suppose that’s a matter of taste. But that really isn’t relative to two nations at war.

Ok, I think this is where the confusion lies. War and law can only exist in the absence of the other. One negates the other. The reason is axiomatic and self-evident. If someone attempts to dominate you by force, no law, by itself, is going to help you, especially if the attacker doesn’t care.  Once war is unleashed winning is all that matters. Sure, I guess you can try to stipulate that you won’t do X destructive thing if your enemy doesn’t etc. But that is also unenforceable.  There was no real reason why Germany couldn’t have used poison gas in WWII. The Germans just thought better of it, and I guess took the chance others wouldn’t do it, which paid off in the end.  But there is no reason they couldn’t have.

As for bombing, I am not condemning anyone for it, Axis or Allies.

Yes, I am aware of that history. I had to write an essay on it in High School about if the A-bombs were justified in light of Japanese peace feelers.  Again, who cares?!  If I am in a total war situation with a deadly opponent, and they start saying TO OTHER PEOPLE, “maybe I’ll surrender if blah blah blah” – why should I do anything but continue to blow them away? The allied terms were set. The Japanese did not accept them. EVEN AFTER TAKING 1 A BOMB.  It took 2.

Who cares.

Treaties are NOT laws, no matter how hard you pound the table. The only real penalty for breaking a treaty is war. So you’re back to bombing civilians in the name of stopping the bombing of civilians.

I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. The Allies bomb the hell out the Axis, then turn around AFTER the war and start saying oh, that was bad, but then adopt as THE cornerstone of national defense policy to totally annihilate their enemies with nuclear bombs, building thousands…

It just goes to show you that all this hysteria about “BOMBING CIVILIANS” is just frankly silly.  Yes, it is mean, and it shouldn’t happen in a nice world.  But when the going gets tough, the bombs got to fall. Sorry.

Have a nice day  : :-D

If I understand your logic correctly, law and war are mutually exclusive. Shortly after Hitler came to power, three large Jewish organizations declared war on the Nazi regime. Granted, those organizations didn’t necessarily speak for all Jews. But in this particular instance, it’s reasonable to suppose that the anti-Nazi sentiments expressed by those organizations were shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews.

Germany went to war in 1939, against enemies stronger than itself. With the exception of Stalin in late '41, none of the Big Three Allied powers showed the slightest interest in negotiating peace with Germany, or accepting anything other than unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender would mean mass murder in postwar west Germany (Morgenthau Plan), and mass murder in eastern Germany (Soviet occupation).

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany. You’ve argued that all law goes out the window if your nation is in a state of war. Such a state of war clearly existed between the Nazi government on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other.

The laws of war do not exist to protect governments. Governments do not derive benefit from the existence of such laws, and will often ignore them if they think they can get away with doing so. The laws of war exist to provide some protection to the people–to make the conflict less brutal and bloody than it otherwise would have been. During WWII, there was an arrangement among all parties not to use chemical weapons against each other, for example. It was understood that if any one participant violated that arrangement, its enemies would quickly follow suit. That arrangement was harmful to Germany, because its chemical weapons research was easily ten years ahead of the Allies’. Maybe more.

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations. It was in their interest to ignore the laws of war in those areas, except to the extent they cared about minimizing civilian casualties. Nothing about Allied actions remotely suggests that minimizing civilian harm had ever been a relevant consideration. Not that Axis governments were angels in that regard–they certainly weren’t! But of the two, Allied brutality toward enemy civilian populations exceeded that of the Axis. That Allied brutality demonstrates the hollowness of the main Allied propaganda theme: the claim that Allied leaders were horrified by Axis atrocities. Such claims ring hollow once it’s realized that Allied leaders committed worse atrocities than did the Axis.

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany.

More bullcrap as usual. Hitler had Jews killed before WW2 as well as many others. Did Hoover say otherwise?  Jewish community was just trying to save its own from getting murdered for no reason out of hate. It was not war Kurt it was one of extermination and survival for Jews. I guess Hoover didn’t write about this?

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations.

The problem with all this is that the Axis governments were much better-positioned than the Allies to impose systematic practices of wholescale extermination and crimes against humanity and to employ Einsatzgruppen against civilian populations. The deliberate “hunger plan” was one such plan to rid Europe of tens of millions during the war.

The Allies on the other hand did what any other nation in a position since Napoleonic times…an economic blockade to lessen the ability of these nations to sustain so much suffering against the human race. The Union did it with their anaconda plan, UK did it in ww2 with a naval blockade of the Baltic, and UK and USA sunk lots of axis transports.

If I understand your logic correctly, law and war are mutually exclusive. Shortly after Hitler came to power, three large Jewish organizations declared war on the Nazi regime. Granted, those organizations didn’t necessarily speak for all Jews. But in this particular instance, it’s reasonable to suppose that the anti-Nazi sentiments expressed by those organizations were shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews.

Germany went to war in 1939, against enemies stronger than itself. With the exception of Stalin in late '41, none of the Big Three Allied powers showed the slightest interest in negotiating peace with Germany, or accepting anything other than unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender would mean mass murder in postwar west Germany (Morgenthau Plan), and mass murder in eastern Germany (Soviet occupation).

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany. You’ve argued that all law goes out the window if your nation is in a state of war. Such a state of war clearly existed between the Nazi government on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other.

The laws of war do not exist to protect governments. Governments do not derive benefit from the existence of such laws, and will often ignore them if they think they can get away with doing so. The laws of war exist to provide some protection to the people–to make the conflict less brutal and bloody than it otherwise would have been. During WWII, there was an arrangement among all parties not to use chemical weapons against each other, for example. It was understood that if any one participant violated that arrangement, its enemies would quickly follow suit. That arrangement was harmful to Germany, because its chemical weapons research was easily ten years ahead of the Allies’. Maybe more.

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations. It was in their interest to ignore the laws of war in those areas, except to the extent they cared about minimizing civilian casualties. Nothing about Allied actions remotely suggests that minimizing civilian harm had ever been a relevant consideration. Not that Axis governments were angels in that regard–they certainly weren’t! But of the two, Allied brutality toward enemy civilian populations exceeded that of the Axis. That Allied brutality demonstrates the hollowness of the main Allied propaganda theme: the claim that Allied leaders were horrified by Axis atrocities. Such claims ring hollow once it’s realized that Allied leaders committed worse atrocities than did the Axis.

Kurt, I respect your thoughts on this. You’ve definitely put a lot into it. Our disagreement is not one of tit for tat. The Allies decimated German cities. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen it. I was in Germany for a wedding and during that time I went to Darmstadt. There I saw some memorials to the allied bombing raids. I was simultaneously repulsed but proud. USA blew in and killed! But then a city was leveled. Not great for USA or Germany, but sadly necessary.

My point is only that when the fighting starts, the gloves come off and the winners don’t care how bloody it gets. That’s all. Indeed, when the casualties start coming in, few if any will care if the violence is “respecting international norms.”  Vengeance is the watch word–meeting out all necessary violence the goal.

You say that the Allies were wrong in the war effort because they leveled greater firepower than was necessary? That’s an after the fact justification. Germany and Japan were deadly strong.  No nation in that situation should be held account for “overestimation” of the amount of violence it needs to dispense to win.

The idea of “proportionality” has got to be one of the dumbest military ideas in history. In the middle of the fight how do you even know?  Winning is all that matters, and if you overshoot, well, so what–as long as you win!

Respect to you Karl7.

You should revisit Germany and come down south!
It is Incredible what germans have rebuilt after WWII.
Nuernberg was plain after the Allied Bombing campaigns.

You could have looked down from the 10th Freeway to the fifth or seventh street
in L.A. without beeing hindred by any buildings.

Kurt knows that if Germany or Japan had the Atomic Bomb, they would have refused to use it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

@Wolfshanze:

Kurt knows that if Germany or Japan had the Atomic Bomb, they would have refused to use it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

Ha, well… if Germany had been able to get an A-bomb (unlikely I know) before D-day, NOT using it but threatening to use it might have been the optimal strategy.

Would the US/UK have continued the war under the threat of losing London?

Of course, even w/an A-bomb and the US/UK off their back, could the Germans have withstood the Russians?  Production of any German bomb would have likely been slow, so use as a tactical weapon on the eastern front would have been speculative in its effectiveness.

I remember David Glantz saying the damage done on the eastern from was basically equivalent to a theater nuclear war… minus the radiation…

@Karl7:

Kurt, I respect your thoughts on this. You’ve definitely put a lot into it. Our disagreement is not one of tit for tat. The Allies decimated German cities. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen it. I was in Germany for a wedding and during that time I went to Darmstadt. There I saw some memorials to the allied bombing raids. I was simultaneously repulsed but proud. USA blew in and killed! But then a city was leveled. Not great for USA or Germany, but sadly necessary.

My point is only that when the fighting starts, the gloves come off and the winners don’t care how bloody it gets. That’s all. Indeed, when the casualties start coming in, few if any will care if the violence is “respecting international norms.”  Vengeance is the watch word–meeting out all necessary violence the goal.

You say that the Allies were wrong in the war effort because they leveled greater firepower than was necessary? That’s an after the fact justification. Germany and Japan were deadly strong.  No nation in that situation should be held account for “overestimation” of the amount of violence it needs to dispense to win.

The idea of “proportionality” has got to be one of the dumbest military ideas in history. In the middle of the fight how do you even know?  Winning is all that matters, and if you overshoot, well, so what–as long as you win!

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

You wrote about how it was justified for the Allied gloves to “come off” once war started. The problem with that is that the Allied had never actually been wearing gloves. Their prewar actions–especially by the Soviet government–demonstrated a brutality rarely equaled in human history.

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths. Did that food blockade have military value? Absolutely! Stalin’s regime was so horrible that, had Hitler been able to actually feed the people within his own borders, many or most Soviets would have gone over to the Nazi side. From the Allied perspective, it was absolutely necessary to convince the Soviet people that the National Socialist government was waging a war of extermination against them–that it was deliberately starving all Slavs to death. Only then would Hitler seem even worse than Stalin. But that propaganda campaign was only going to work if Germany physically couldn’t feed everyone within its borders. Stalin understood this as well, which is why he ordered the removal or destruction of all food supplies and farming equipment as part of his scorched earth policy.

During the early postwar period, the American government instituted the Morgenthau Plan (a.k.a. JCS 1067). In 1947 Herbert Hoover wrote, “There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a ‘pastoral state’. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.” It is estimated that a minimum of 6 million Germans starved to death during the three years that the Morgenthau Plan had been in place.

Nor was the Morgenthau Plan the only Western plutocratic crime against humanity during the early postwar period. There was also Operation Keelhaul, which most likely resulted in millions of death among refugees from the Soviet Union. And there was the treatment of German POWs during the postwar period, which also resulted in large numbers of illegal deaths.

Allied plutocrats condemned the Nazi government using morally universalist language. But the Allied plutocrats were not moral universalists. They themselves had no objection at all to murdering millions, or even tens of millions, of innocent people. They committed these murders not just during a time of world war, but for at least the first three years of the postwar period.

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

The NAZI government engineered the Hunger Program in the early 1940s. That famine killed 50 million innocent people, including 8 million children. The Hitlers administration’s response to that program was to whitewash it. Just as Hitlers administration whitewashed a number of subversive Nazi activities directed against the world.

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

Kurt is referring to the NAZI HUNGER PLAN, which used the faux appearance of a “economic blockage” to excuse genocide and wars of exterminations against many people.Kurt knows this but because he likes them, defends them to the point of looking ridiculous.

@aequitas:

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

The failure of the Hunger Plan did not lessen the death toll caused by the Allied plutocrats’ food blockade. the failure of the Hunger Plan meant that the German government did not obtain nearly as much food from the captured Soviet countryside as it had planned. (That food instead went to captured Soviet cities.) Because the German government didn’t obtain the expected quantity of food, it was impossible to carry out Hitler’s order to feed the Soviet POWs. Those POWs had been conscripted to work in German weapons factories, and were an essential part of the German war effort. Hitler’s order to feed them was based on military necessity, not racial ideology. The fact that millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity was the result of the Allied food blockade, and a result of the failure of the Hunger Plan.

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

@Imperious:

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.
:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

There are a few needles of truth in your post, mixed in with whopping haystacks of error. You are correct to assert that Britain imposed food blockades in both world wars. The British food blockade was instrumental in the Entente’s victory, having resulted in 400,000 - 750,000 civilian deaths in Germany and Austria. Even more importantly (from the Entente perspective) the food blockade lowered the Centrals’ morale, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Kaiser’s government. Hitler had learned from the Kaiser’s mistake, and was determined to do whatever it took to prevent starvation among the German people, even if that meant starving Slavs.

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization. The Ukraine, for example, produced a much smaller food surplus in WWII than it had in WWI. Overall, the western Soviet Union ran at a food deficit. The same could also be said about Germany, and every major nation Germany captured. Even France ran at a food deficit, due in part to the fact that the British blockade cut Europe off from external fertilizer imports. Poland also ran at a food deficit.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would. Churchill knew full well this was the case when he opted to impose a food blockade on Germany. The resulting food shortages are described in Adam Tooze’s book Wages of Destruction. Tooze was awarded the Wolfson History prize. The book has been praised by The Times (London), The Wall Street Journal, and History Today, and is rated 4.5 stars on Amazon. For those unwilling to buy this magnificent history book, there is always the Wikipedia article.

As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe’s 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation and diseases such as influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus and cholera were a threat. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee began gathering funds to send aid. Former president Herbert Hoover, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during World War I, wrote:[33]

The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history. . . .

In January [1941] Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . . Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories – less than half the amount necessary to sustain life – and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

There are a few needles of truth in your post

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization.

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . .

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

@Imperious:

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

You have embraced a number of outright fabrications in this thread, including the claim that I’d cited neo-Nazi sources, the claim that I’d denied the Holocaust, and now the claim that there was no Allied food blockade during WWII. (Even though I’ve provided rock solid sources to prove there was such a blockade.) Your attempt to lighten the nastiness and deceptiveness of your posts by making jokes about Goering’s corpulence has fallen flat.

But in acting this way you are actually providing a service. Not a service you intended to provide. But a genuine service nonetheless.

Will you succeed in leading many astray? Absolutely. The tenor of your posts exactly corresponds with the highly propagandistic approach to WWII always taken in Western schools and the Western MSM. That gives you an enormous head start in discussions such as this. Most of those reading this want to believe you, and don’t want to believe me. For someone in that position, believing your posts represents the easy choice.

Anyone with the strength, courage, and intellectual integrity necessary to make the right choice is a person well worth knowing. I’m sure there are also plenty of people worth knowing whom you and others like you have misled. But that isn’t the point. The point is that if one could gather a group of people who reject every word you and others like you have ever written, you’d have a very good group of people! Smart, not easily deceived, intellectually honest, strong, altruistic.

In a world where true statements were also popular, the above-described group would get plenty of bandwagon followers. Such followers are unnecessary, and represent subtraction by addition. Getting rid of such bandwagon followers is much easier with your help, and the help of others like you, than would have been the case without.