I congratulate Spartacus’ effort in doing War Against Humanity. I think it is a very important series and it is really hard to click like on the videos but I do it since we must never forget.
I have been even more aware of the Stopersteine (stumbling stones) where I live (Berlin). The other day I found one around the corner of where I live that shows the ruthless efficiency of the holocaust.
Ida was taken on 26.10.1942 to Riga and killed a mere three days later. Other stones around my house don’t have the death date, being deported in 1945 probably the collapse of discipline as the end of the war drove them into overdrive.
I am not German, but living here I can see how important it was the effort to look back at their wrong doings. I also fear newer generations may not set this.
This leads to my question, will the series cover the abuses of the allies? I have two examples.
- In Fog of War the documentary about Robert McNamara, he mentions that general Curtis LeMay would have said about the US bombing campaign against Japan: “We better win this war, lest we be tried for crimes against humanity”.
- The other is an anecdotal one. One of my uncles was a member of the Belgium resistance. He said that at the end of the war they had captured upwards of 100 german soldiers as they retreated. They held them in a “camp” (barbed wire in a clearing in a forest), with a couple of guards. When the Americans arrived they tried to turn the prisoners over to them. The officer would have said they did not have time to take care of them and that the group should execute the prisoners. Their group refused, and the officer would have said that if they escaped the Americans would come after the resistants . They cut a deal with the prisoners, were any of them to escape all others would be killed. None tried to escape.
I know the scales are very different, but it’s important to remember that all sides conducted abuses. War makes monsters of all of us.