Hello, My main problems with the debate are that it seems people often forget what japan has been doing in asia or act as if the US strategic bombins and the atomic bombs somehow make imperial japan better when it doesn’t (no, the US or the allies doing something doesn’t make the axis better and wehraboo/tojoboo shouldn’t treat them as gotcha against the allies[it feels like they do sometimes]). I’m also not sure ofthe values of post war studies sincethey were with hindsight.The alternative is another issue since it doesn’t seems the other would have been good either.
What are your issues with the debate by curiosity?
(Since my previous email didn’t worked anymore, I had to recreate a new account using another)
And a lack of understanding for the realities of how war works (I think the video here does delve into that). I’d say, “War isn’t some Care Bears special.”
It not so much about morals or anything such. Issue is more that both the UK and the USA were both perfectly aware already during the war of the illegal nature (under the rules of war as they existed at the time) of targeting civilians - i.e. from Hague 1907 IV: “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.” This included the case of indiscriminately attacking by aerial bombings (by necessity due to the technology of the time, sure, but that does not grant a free pass) even though the more strict rules against it didn’t go through.
You could draw similar parallels from the unrestricted submarine warfare which the UK saw as a crime (as it threatened the UK) but which the USA saw as a standard practice (as it the USA used it to attack Japan). The both cases were ignored in the post war handling of the matters as they would have been too inconvenient to handle.
What makes it even worse is that the goal of the some of the bomber commanders was to kill civilians (by their own ‘mission’ statements). No matter how you try to justify that it is quite hard to turn that around. Is there any difference if some one is deliberately aiming to kill civilians by bombing them or is deliberately aiming to kill civilians by shooting them with a machine gun? In both cases the intent is the very same.
Out of context, because all targets of all arial bombardments in WW2 were not undefended from becomming taken over by the attacker.
Article 27: " In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.
It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand." would cover the situation better.
In 1907 “attack and bombardment” was done by groundforces which could instead occupy the undefended.
It explicitly states that ‘by whatever means’. So on that you are mistaken. Many undefended targets were deliberately targeted by many combatants in the conflict. I’m not saying any of the parties would have a moral high ground on this. Just that trying to defend it on any side doesn’t quite work.
Trying to defend the intent of deliberately killing civilians is however the real issue. Because you would need to be a moral relativist do so - and that is a very slippery slope. Where do you draw the line - and why?
In many ways I view the USAAF approach in the Europe to be better than what many others had. At least the USAAF usually made an effort of trying to hit military or industrial targets instead of just aiming to kill civilians. To be clear - this is not a slight on the bomber crews, but the leaders.
‘which are undefended’ is a key phrase. Which targets weren’t defended from arial bombardment. RAF Fighter Command was created as such a defence force and more 88mm guns were deployed in Air Defence of the Reich than were with the field armies. Your argument for the illegality of bomber operations falls at that hurdle.
As to the point of targeting civilians, the question is ‘Who is guilty, just the bomb thrower or both the maker and the thrower?’. In a terrorist bombing would we say the bomb maker is a civilian? Why in a war would the weapons makers not be legitimate targets? We can consider war as a criminal conspiracy and treat those who facilitate the crime as conspirators.
I’d say the moral part is another issue of the debate, it’ll often depend on how people view it (tho a big issue with the moral part is when people use said bombing to try to make the axis better or more ok).
‘which are undefended’ is a key phrase. Which targets weren’t defended from arial bombardment. RAF Fighter Command was created as such a defence force and more 88mm guns were deployed in Air Defence of the Reich than were with the field armies. Your argument for the illegality of bomber operations falls at that hurdle.
Air force operating in the area is not exactly the same thing. Nor does having AA in Reich in general mean that every town, village, dwelling, or building would have been defended.
As to the point of targeting civilians, the question is…
No. The question still is does it matter how some one aims to kill civilians if the intent is to deliberately kill civilians regardless. Given that the stated intent of certain bomber commands was to kill civilians how does it make them any better than any one else who slaughtered civilians? Either some one is intentionally aiming to kill civilians, or not.
“Air force operating in the area is not exactly the same thing. Nor does having AA in Reich in general mean that every town, village, dwelling, or building would have been defended.”
The law was written essentially before air forces existed; it would be highly improbable if it was exactly the same. Is it sufficiently similar to meet a legal definition of defended? It could be strongly argued. It could also be argued that everything East of the start of the Kammhuber line was a defended target. How many towns without AA defences were identified as targets. Villages and single dwellings were not targeted for strategic bombing. They may have been hit by accident, but that is not intentional targeting.
“No. The question still is does it matter how some one aims to kill civilians if the intent is to deliberately kill civilians regardless. Given that the stated intent of certain bomber commands was to kill civilians how does it make them any better than any one else who slaughtered civilians? Either some one is intentionally aiming to kill civilians, or not.”
In January 1943, Hitler declared Total War; essentially making Germany an outlaw nation. You can’t commit crimes against an outlaw, by definition.
The question remains around the bombmaker scenario - is it justified to target non-combatants who are supporting the enemy war fighting capability? Is it better to have enemy combatants well armed and sacrifice your own people or do you target armaments workers to deny supplies to the enemy.?
It’s not an easy call to make, personally I think Harris crossed the line into war crimes; but, with the exception of Dresden, I am not sure a leader purely focussed on degrading the enemy war fighting ability would have reduced the casualties.
In January 1943, Hitler declared Total War; essentially making Germany an outlaw nation. You can’t commit crimes against an outlaw, by definition.
That is not how war crimes or crimes against humanity work
The question remains around the bombmaker scenario - is it justified to target non-combatants who are supporting the enemy war fighting capability? Is it better to have enemy combatants well armed and sacrifice your own people or do you target armaments workers to deny supplies to the enemy.?
The problem here is that you can use that exact same moral relativism to justify whole lot of other things - far, far worse things. If it is fine to kill civilians on such a flimsy basis then surely the German purges in the East were all just fine too (i.e. not crimes)? And that is not even the worst of the things you could very easily use that justification for. That is what I referred to with the slippery slope.
It is down to question if some orders deliberate attacks on civilians. If the intent is there it is difficult to see why one means would be any better than any other.
The British and US Aair campain targeted the “war fighting capability of Germany”, the intend was not genocide or ethnic cleansing. That there have been and are racists who cheered and still cheer any (nearly) burning or drownig German woman does not matter. The post war soviet propaganda that tried to made the US the same as the Nazis is part of todays debate of the bombing campain. Be aware of their intent
Law is a human creation and works any way we decide.
How war crimes and crimes against humanity work wasn’t defined until August 1945 to enable the Nurnberg and Tokyo trials.
If any allied commanders had been tried the ‘outlaw’ argument could have been used in defence as it has significant historical precedents.
Morality doesn’t exist outside of human constructs and is dependent on the values you feed into the moral analysis.
You suggest that the reducing the enemies war fighting ability argument could be used to justify the Nazi ethic cleansing in the East, and I would add the West. This argument fails because their actions were not intended to affect the war fighting capacity of the enemy. So it is not a logically sound comparison.
The Nazi actions were based on their values of racial purity and they felt morally justified because of those same values.
Every value if applied dogmatically can lead to the moral justification of inhumanity.
There is only the slippery slope; the art of morality is to know when to say ‘this far and no further’.
Refraining from strategic bombing of civil targets might have given the Nazis sufficient war fighting ability to defeat the Red Army and prevent the convoys reaching the UK. Thus creating a victorious third Reich. Would that have been the correct moral action?
The British and US Aair campain targeted the “war fighting capability of Germany”, the intend was not genocide or ethnic cleansing. That there have been and are racists who cheered and still cheer any (nearly) burning or drownig German woman does not matter. The post war soviet propaganda that tried to made the US the same as the Nazis is part of todays debate of the bombing campain. Be aware of their intent
As long as the intent was, as was stated, the killing of civilians I just can not see that past. You can try justify by those arguments but in the end of the day it was still deliberately targeting civilians. So again, if the intent was to kill civilians does it matter to you how it happens. Is it different to deliberately kill civilians by bombs compared to deliberately killing civilians up close?
And the Soviets actually practiced (or tried to practice) the very same means, they were just very, very bad at it, so regardless of how the Soviet post war propaganda tries to cast some nonsense about that the fact is that the Soviets also practiced the same targeting of civilians in their strategic bombings. See for example the bombing of Helsinki (1944)
Morality doesn’t exist outside of human constructs and is dependent on the values you feed into the moral analysis.
That is so and I place my bar on the deliberately targeting civilians level. Some seem not to.
You suggest that the reducing the enemies war fighting ability argument could be used to justify the Nazi ethic cleansing in the East, and I would add the West. This argument fails because their actions were not intended to affect the war fighting capacity of the enemy. So it is not a logically sound comparison.
Wrong. As there was example of seeing say terrorist bomb maker as a legal target in similar way you could see any one able or willing to help partisans in the east as a legal target. Which means that purges the Nazis carried out can be justified with the exact same argument. The Holocaust is a different case of course - but it wasn’t only thing being done.
There is only the slippery slope; the art of morality is to know when to say ‘this far and no further’.
That might be so. But stepping over the limit of deliberately targeting civilians is one step too far me at least.
Refraining from strategic bombing of civil targets might have given the Nazis sufficient war fighting ability to defeat the Red Army and prevent the convoys reaching the UK. Thus creating a victorious third Reich. Would that have been the correct moral action?
That is a very questionable argument. And to note, I was not against bombings in general, only the deliberately targeting civilians part. Like I said the USAAF approach in Europe with often at least the intent of hitting factories (or similar military or industrial targets) instead of civilians (i.e. cities or towns in general) is for me a huge difference. So to be clear I do understand it meant collateral casualties and loss of civilian lives as well, but the intent is very different.
Furthermore, the strategic bombings of civilians rarely had the effect some seem to have hoped for. Refraining from targeting civilians and instead at least trying to target military or industrial targets might even have worked better. EDIT: as a case in point the effectiveness of the Operation Starvation vs. firebombing of Japanese cities.
I don’t think people forget what IJA/N has done, certainly not those for the bombing. I think the big problem is it’s mostly affecting a lot of those who didn’t have a much to do with the IJA. Even that sentence brings up judgement calls, is the wife, mother, father of a soldier committing a crime guilty also. I haven’t heard any comments to the effect the crimes of the IJA should all be forgiven. I think the real issue is where do you put the slider of guilty/not guilty on the bombing victims and are the number of innocents OK (maybe necessary) to win the war.
Use the hint: One of the 2 started after 1946 :-). Jugglers are inherently dangerous because of objects that avoid getting cauhgt Maybe there should be a WAH episode on this?
Maybe there should be a WAH episode on this?