Should I remove it from the Out of the Trenches category then?
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I dont want to seem like I’m being rude to a person who does not speak English as their primary language, but this is an almost rhetorical question. To me this reads like:
“Why do people believe something stupid? Here’s why I think its not stupid, here’s all I already know about the topic. Why are they so stupid?”
Not really something I would answer, at least not the way its phrased here.
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I’m going to reply with this good link and I was sure to get answer like this https://www.forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=240359
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English isn’t my first langage,that’s for sure (I’m french,I’m still learning ,my understanding is good but some time my writing is bad and english teahing isn’t that great in france [I learn more from ww2 and the great war channel video than in class]) and my knowledge regarding wether dresden is a war crime or not come from this one https://www.forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=240359
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Your writings are getting FAR too long for me to read on my phone, and remember in full, but here are the points on which we seem to disagree:
- I saythat someone else doing something worse, does not justify you doing something bad.
- I say that killing innocents is never ethical. If you kill one innocent, you kill the whole world for that person. One you accept killing innocents, thats a slippery slope…
2.b) I agree that in some cases, the greater good can outweigh this. If the loss of innocents is very limited, and the greater good is of a great magnitude, AND all other options have been explored. - Killing a POW is always a war crime. Sure, string them up, but do so after a trial.
- I say the pressure the western allies put on germany towards the end of the war was not motivated by the desire to save civilians, but by the wish to set the post-war power balance. Germany had already fallen to the Soviet Union. The time of the fall of Berlin or the closing of the Kz camps was almost exclusively decided by the Soviet advances.
You immediately jump to Mengele when I mention experiments on kz prisoners. Hes a poor example, as he was barely a qualified researcher at all, and got his job through political connections. There were however real scientists that conducted actual research, to find cures that potentially could save millions around the world every year. And even these research works were deemed unethical, the researchers convicted, and their work destroyed, because the experimented on humans. THATS how much value the trials put on civilians from that side. Its not ok to sacrifice hundreds to save millions. I am in agreement with this, and do not understand why it should apply differently to the military.
PS: And, as a norwegian, I feel I should point out that the police DID arrive at the dock opposite from Utøya, and sat there for half an hour doing nothing, listening to kids being shot across the water, and waited for special forces to arrive. (While their regulations specify they have to act, regardless of risk to themselves, to save lives).
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Well Dachau is a big one, liberated by the 101st Airborne. As well as Westerbork, Vught and many others. Ausch
“not motivated by the desire to save civilians”,
Have you just taken a position to equate the Allies to the Nazis and thus decided to see all the Allies as totally cynical subhumans? Believe it or not after seeing the deathcamps the Allied were motivated to stop the killing and the giant loss numbers early.
See operation Manna and Chowhound. I know this is a WIKI link and not academic but most other sources are in Dutch. Dropping bread in German starved West Netherlands:
If you read Ed Shames and my grandfather the Allies had big food and Red Cross convoyes following them and immediately started feeding the POWs and civilians wereever they could. Even better they had special foodsupplies and specialist to feed the starving people as these couldn’t handle normal foods anymore. Yes there were a few Allied soldiers who plundered but most civilians were ecstatic. Those are all from prime sources. In the United States food was rationed heavily to accommodate for this, these foodstuffs weren’t conjured up…
Maybe you have a picture in your head that the Allies are as bad as the Nazi’s and that is right for freedom of speech but it has nothing to do with history or the experiences at the time. Is it so hard to see the Allies as normal people who wanted to build a better World after losing so many friends. And HEY we have 75 years of peace here, so they did something right I think!
(Expecting an answer that all is pure self-interest of the indifferent Allies and that it had nothing to do with helping starving children, maybe you are the indifferent cynic?).
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how are german civilian innocent though? For me being complicit of the worst regime of history don’t make you innocent and Dresden was pretty “nazified” too
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I really don’t like where this thread is going. It almost feels like we’re trying to pretend that the Allies were some pure-blooded angels and all Germans were evil Nazi scum that needed to be wiped from the face of the world.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN ADMITING THE ALLIES DID BAD THINGS PEOPLE!!!
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We agree that the Allies did commit genuine war crimes. The issue comes when either some people push it too far or the action in question was and is controversial.
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Good grief, where to start?
So, because the party that was voted in in the thirties went sour and seized absolute power? the whole population? Even those who voted against? Even the children not old enough to vote?
This is the most hair-raising comment Ive read in a while… making every single individual in a country personally responsible for the actions of the government… of a dictator even…
“ Good grief, where to start?
So, because the party that was voted in in the thirties went sour and seized absolute power? the whole population? Even those who voted against? Even the children not old enough to vote?
This is the most hair-raising comment Ive read in a while… making every single individual in a country personally responsible for the actions of the government… of a dictator even…”
Who triggered you and thus are you replying to?
If it is Jean.Marc.Sandra hè clearly wrote about civilians who were complicit. So obviously not about the the whole population.
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Good point, However the title of the post is the gleichschaltung of Nazi’s (as in National Socialists) and the Allies. Not Germans. Obviously there is a difference. There were MANY Germans that were not National Socialists and there were National Socialists in other country e.g. Mussert in the Netherlands etc etc.
Of course the Allies also had people who commited war crimes (and some of those were prosecuted). I haven’t come accross anyone describing the Allies as pure-blooded Angels on this forum. They did some great things for the population as well and that is simply history.
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Hi Jean.Marc,
Excellent point, the question here is it a “crime” to take out civilians who are clearly complicit in the holocaust and volunteered to be part of the genocide instead of taken the option of doing other duties.
A good example which is not controversial but a historical fact that Nazi apologists and many Germans who can’t handle history do not want to here is the story of SS Reserve Police Battaillon 101 which is a unit which was tasked with policing (Poland was seen als “Germany”" by the National Socialists). This unit was largely formed from career Police officers who were by all means civilians.
They had furloughs, vacation and enjoyed a good life (except for the involvement . The people who did not want to be involved in the shooitings and murders did get duties like car maintenance or other guard duty.
It make sense to make it volunteers as the refusers would break down and having them do it at gunpointt (as some war criminals claimed post war) is ineffective. Obviously they were looking for volunteers hoping for a promotion etc. Those were in ample supply 
There are 2 books referencing this source material.
Christopher Browning: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battaillon 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. (Old schoolbook of my university).
And GoldHagen: Hitler’s willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The latter book has many more sources of horrific truths.
Obviously there are many other examples of horrendous behaviour, like my grandparents who witnessed teachers who let the schoolchildren throw empty cans at starving Soviet prisoners while the Western arbeitseinsatz people sometimes shared their very meagre rations with them.
He wrote about those complicit of the regime being guilty (not innocent), which can include anything from the leadership to state employed train drivers, depending on how you read “complicit”… but then he throws in “Dresden was nazified”…
So how, with the context of this topic being “was firebombing Dresden a nice thing to do”, how am I to read that differently than “killing every living soul in Dresden was ok, because they were nazis”?
As a previous user has said:
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Seriously guys there are better hills to die on than whether a bombing of a city was justified
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“was firebombing Dresden a nice thing to do" Nobody wrote this in this topic, so it is your fake quote., “killing every living soul in Dresden was ok, because they were nazis”?" Nobody wrote that either but as you phrase it as a question answer is no (I did mention Klempener and other Jews earlier which were saved by the bombings as the trains to the death camps stopped running).
If you just joined this forum to viciously insult people by making up fake “quotes” which no one ever wrote. Or are you just lying and viciously mischaracterizing the views of people who are not fully aligned with your one-sided “outrage”.
Also notice that I said earlier that it was at least nice that Klempener and many other Jews were saved when I asked you whether he should have lived you stayed quiet (suddenly you couldn’t read it on your phone, so? Doesn’t fit your narrative so no outrage, is that because it happened to be Jews or not?
Also see above you equated the actions of the Allies with the planned holocaust, that was your first post. That in my view is another form of holocaust mitigation/denial.
A direct quote from your first post, here we go. Things seem to have gotten worse along the way: This is something that was ACTUALLY written by you:
“That the nazi leaders did stuff just as bad does not justify it. It just means the allied leaders had as little regard for civilians as the nazi leaders had.”
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uh sorry buddy but a war crime isn’t what you feel is a war crime, before it wasn’t considered one https://www.forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=240359 and it’s verry to equate nazi and ally because it actually downplay nazi war crime (and you can still acknowledge that ally commited war crime,but please don’t go for strategic bombing,it’s not a good example)
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no,sure the ally commited war but they wren’t as bad as the nazi and it wasn’t who started don’t the war,it was the nazi
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Here is some news from Germany 2020 which can’t be more different from Germany 1945 after the denazification process and 75 years of peace. 
Way to go! 
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