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The world is a better place now then had the Axis won WW2. The Allies did some henious poo poo both by today's and their own standards but it still pales in comparison to the stuff most of the Axis engaged in. You can argue and I can accept that the Allies were not "good guys" but they were the lesser evil in the conflict.
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Nov 5, 2013 02:29
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SpRahl posted:The world is a better place now then had the Axis won WW2. The Allies did some henious poo poo both by today's and their own standards but it still pales in comparison to the stuff most of the Axis engaged in. You can argue and I can accept that the Allies were not "good guys" but they were the lesser evil in the conflict. So what nations would you consider "not evil" in history, out of curiosity?
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Nov 5, 2013 02:39
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Biafra maybe, I guess.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:07
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Berke Negri posted:Most of the Axis and Allies governments didnt exist back in 1853 you know. I get the point youre making, and yes industrialization and imperialism was building up to some conflagration but it is a bit silly to reduce it all to everything was equal in WW2 because of Napoleon and Metternich. Well I didn't reduce it all to everything is equal in WW2, so thankfully that's not a problem. I'm pretty sure I said something like "If you just jump in at the end and say Roosevelt was better then Hitler, then sure that's true but it ignores a lot of history." It might be debatable how much breakdowns in the balance of power like the 1853 Crimean War contributes to (say) Britain's culpability in the militarism that followed and the history of continued Western interventions in the Balkans and Russia, but it's undeniable that the Allies were doing hosed up poo poo to the Germans after the armistice, like continuing the naval blockade after Germany had given up which killed an estimated additional 100,000 Germans and gave the Germans yet another reason to hate the capitalist powers. Fojar38 posted:Isn't this like blaming the Peace of Westphalia for establishing the international state system that would result in WWI breaking out 250 years later? No. VVVVV The blockade of Germany was continued for 8 months after the Armistice because rampant starvation of German civilians was a useful bargaining tactic to encourage the Germans to sign the Treaty of Versailles. It was a horrifically cruel and dishonorable way to strongarm an already defeated enemy. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 03:13
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So World War II war crimes obviously get a lot of attention, what about World War I? Was there any particularly nasty poo poo done by either side? The worst thing I can think of is the use of gas.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:17
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig This guy existed. That's pretty much a lot of nasty poo poo right there.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:20
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Farecoal posted:So World War II war crimes obviously get a lot of attention, what about World War I? Was there any particularly nasty poo poo done by either side? The worst thing I can think of is the use of gas. The germans went 30 Years War on Belgium after they crushed the conventional army but ran into trouble from belgium guerillas called Francs-tireurs.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:23
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Farecoal posted:So World War II war crimes obviously get a lot of attention, what about World War I? Was there any particularly nasty poo poo done by either side? The worst thing I can think of is the use of gas. I don't know about crimes against humanity but it was pretty dickish to give Japan the Shandong Province in China after Germany gave it up instead of giving it to China because reasons.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:23
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Well the chemical and biological weapons were quite a biggie, WW1 did lead to the Geneva Protocol banning their use after all. Apart from that though, there was plenty of genocide to go around too. Turkey still doesn't acknowledge that the Armenian genocide ever happened by the way, all those people marched off into the desert of their own accord apparently. Warcabbit posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UZLpvzEyWE tooterfish fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 03:30
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tooterfish posted:Well the chemical and biological weapons were quite a biggie, WW1 did lead to the Geneva Protocol banning their use after all. Chemical weapons were banned prior to WWI.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:36
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Fojar38 posted:So what nations would you consider "not evil" in history, out of curiosity? I dunno why you are addressing that to me, I was just basically saying if I accept the Allies were not good then they were at least the lesser evil.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:37
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tooterfish posted:Well the chemical and biological weapons were quite a biggie, WW1 did lead to the Geneva Protocol banning their use after all. The Russian Civil War after WWI was filled with atrocities by both the Reds and the Whites. The White leader General Anton Denikin was rounding up and murdering so many Jews that the US & Britain started pressuring him to cut it out because it was causing such an image problem among their populace and making it hard to continue justifying intervention.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:38
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Yes, but this time they really meant it! (from the same article).
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Nov 5, 2013 03:44
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computer parts posted:I don't know about crimes against humanity but it was pretty dickish to give Japan the Shandong Province in China after Germany gave it up instead of giving it to China because reasons. It's actually worse than dickish. When Britain guaranteed territorial integrity to China in return for China breaking off relations with Germany, the British had already secretly promised Shandong to Japan and supported Japan's claim at Versailles for that reason. The Problem of China by Bertrand Russell is an interesting piece that gives some good insight into the politics of the time. He's a little too Orientalist perhaps, but it's interesting nonetheless. He also saw the US-Japanese war coming and has some fascinating things to say about relations between the two powers. Bertrand Russell posted:I begin with America, as the leading spirit in the Conference and the dominant Power in the world. American public opinion is in favour of peace, and at the same time profoundly persuaded that America is wise and virtuous while all other Powers are foolish and wicked. The pessimistic half of this opinion I do not desire to dispute, but the optimistic half is more open to question. Apart from peace, American public opinion believes in commerce and industry, Protestant morality, athletics, hygiene, and hypocrisy, which may be taken as the main ingredients of American and English Kultur.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:12
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Interesting, thank you. How was the gift of the Statue of Liberty received given that context? The Statue of Liberty was interestingly pretty much a 100% French thing initially. Following their re-establishment of Republican government there was a move to try and renew libertarian, egalitarian values in France and a French sculptor, Bartholdi, felt that the way to do this was to hark back to France's historical connection with the country most famous for those values. The Americans sort of agreed and the funding was to be split with France making and paying for the statue while the US would pay for the plinth. This pretty much immediately responded to Americans objecting to their money being spent on something, either because they didn't want their money spent period or, for many, because it was seen as something for just New York (why should my Texan tax dollars go towards giving some East Coaster a fancy statue?!) As a result it nearly didn't happen as government wasn't able to pay for the statue's plinth. There was also a vocal opposition to having pretty much anything built or designed by non-Americans who didn't want some dumb European statue. At this point Joseph Pulitzer stepped in to support it in an ingenious way. He guaranteed to print the name of anyone that made a donation to the construction of the plinth, even just a penny and the result was a poo poo load of people from all over the country sent in a penny to see their name in print. Enough pennies in fact to pay for the construction and so allowed the erecting of the statue. Interestingly it fairly quickly went from a New York landmark to a national one.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:29
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etalian posted:The germans went 30 Years War on Belgium after they crushed the conventional army but ran into trouble from belgium guerillas called Francs-tireurs. They didn't really run into trouble as much as use any excuse the Belgians gave them to burn down a town. Battice was burned out a week after the war started with the most famous example of Leuven at the end of august 1914. I can't find it to quote right now but a neutral observer was recorded to sarcastically comment that the Belgians must have had a guerrilla warfare training program for the sons of burgomasters based on many the Germans claimed were caught firing on them. I did find a good quote from the Guns of August from von kluck about posters commanding civilians to turn in arms, describing them as actually being "incitements to the civil population to fire on the [Germans]."
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Nov 5, 2013 04:53
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The Germans in WWI massively failed on the international propaganda front simply because they didn't even really stop to think that other countries might not share Prussian attitudes to governing, not just in conquered nations but in your own country. Really a huge part of the fault lies in Germany's leadership 1) Backing themselves strategically into a corner where pissing off pretty much any other European nation meant war with France and Russia and 2) In the actual run up not understanding that other countries might see things differently from themselves. Germans didn't want to do horrible things in Belgium, they just wanted to march their army through it. Of course the fact this utterly violated Belgian sovereignty and de facto made them a German client state didn't really register. Likewise German forces, by and large, practised the sort of strict legal governance they expected which involved collective punishment and straightforward practical laws that took no account of how those laws may be received. The Germans took hostages (and executed them if there were acts of resistance), would punish nearby towns for acts of sabotage regardless of actual guilt and generally acted like massive assholes. Of course this was hugely inflated by foreign (especially British) press but I don't know that at the time it really registered to German commanders that the lies and deceptions gained traction because they were legitimately doing horrible things. They never took to the kind of atrocity for atrocity's sake that characterised WWII but in WWI the Germans goverened nations the way you might try to keep order in a wargame where there's no option for winning over the populace.
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Nov 5, 2013 05:06
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Oh, god, yes. What they did in Belgium was... boggling. Collective punishment of entire villages, and so on.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:04
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ReV VAdAUL posted:When did American opinion turn so decisively against France? Was there any lasting gratitude to France for the massive support it gave during the revolution, if so when did that gratitude fade away? De Gaulle was was a pompous jerk during WW2, but what really strained the relationships was when France withdrew from NATO in 1966 when De Gaulle was the President of France. That France was a champion of the EU didn't sit well in either Washington or London.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:33
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Here's some things the USA could have done better in WW2, extremely broad strokes: 1. Let more refugees in 2. Actually try to live up to the Atlantic Charter, instead of pissing all over it 3. Murder fewer civilians
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Nov 5, 2013 09:40
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Warcabbit posted:Oh, god, yes. What they did in Belgium was... boggling. Collective punishment of entire villages, and so on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostages_Trial
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Nov 5, 2013 09:50
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cheerfullydrab posted:Here's some things the USA could have done better in WW2, extremely broad strokes: You forgot not putting Japanese-Americans in camps and not stealing all their goods and businesses.
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Nov 5, 2013 09:53
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SpitztheGreat posted:The thinking was, and still is, that the bomb was necessary to scare the Japanese into submission. The entire nation was hell bent on destruction by that point, surrender was just something that the everyone from the military to the civilians just could not accept. In preparation of an invasion the Japanese were prepared to throw the weight of their civilian population at the Allied forces. It would have been a disaster, a dirty, protracted, gorilla war, in the streets of Japan. I'm not sure how much I believe this but some argued that even with all the civilians that died from the two bombs, lives were probably saved in the grand scheme of things. Without the bombs it's possible that the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered without a great deal more of resistance. The reality was however, that after the Japanese navy had been destroyed, their manufacturing base in Manchuria swept away by the Soviets, and their northern flank entirely undefended due to their anticipation of a US-invasion from the south. They were just done. Their hail-mary shot at seeking a deal that would cement some of their gains with the USSR was gone. With Germany out of the picture, the USSR was free to shift an ungodly amount of resources directed at Japan as well. Nukes were really just the sprinkles on the icing on the cake. There was no real reason to invade either. They lacked oil, they lacked steel, they lacked wood, hell they lacked food. Operation STARVATION was a part of that strategy. A blockade with bombing whatever was left would have worked just fine. If anything it was more about the timing, and the fact that shitloads of money had been dumped into a project. The USSR probably would have ended up taking Hokkaido as it suffered from the same strategic problems that Manchuria did. Large area, low troop levels, lack of experience against a superior enemy. The fear of that, more than anything else prompted the surrender. And even if they hadn't, they were pretty hosed no matter how you look at it. No massive invasion needed.
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Nov 5, 2013 15:56
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While we're tangentintally on the topic of US Troops behaving badly in foreign lands during world war 2, how about the Battle of Brisbane? US servicemen stationed in Australia had it pretty good. They were paid much better than Australians, had access to much more food and luxury items that Australians had seen rationed, and were a hit with the local ladies. As wikipedia notes, "in mid-1942, a reporter walking along Queen Street counted 152 local women in company with 112 uniformed Americans, while only 31 women accompanied 60 Australian soldiers." There was also the issue of Australians treating African-Americans much better than Americans themselves treated them, leading to a full blown riot where white and black American troops fought each other after white troops were angry about blacks having equal access to nightlife. This came to a head one summer night in Brisbane, when a drunk American soldier was accosted by an American MP, causing a scene. Some Australians attacked the MP, causing an even greater scene. Thousands of American and Australian soldiers, along with Australian citizens, poured onto the streets and started an all out brawl. Surprisingly, only one man died, but hundreds of people were struck with fists, bottles, rifle butts, and anything else they could get their hands on. The Americans had to pull their troops out of Brisbane. This wasn't an isolated incident, either. Riots between Americans and Australians erupted in nearly every major city where American troops were present. Its a wonder why Australia, not France, became the Allies Americans hate the most.
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Nov 5, 2013 16:22
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Emanuel Collective posted:Its a wonder why Australia, not France, became the Allies Americans hate the most. Probably because way more American kids died to liberate France than died in an awesome brawl down-under?
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Nov 5, 2013 16:54
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Miltank posted:Probably because way more American kids died to liberate France than died in an awesome brawl down-under? Also Australia never left NATO (of course, it was never in it but still).
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Nov 5, 2013 16:58
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Australia was one of the few countries to go "all the way with LBJ" and fight in the Vietnam War. Since WW2 our defence policy has been explicitly based around cozying up to America; in recent years this has included invading Iraq and being a member of ECHELON. We work very hard at being huge loving suck-ups.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:05
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Australia was one of the few countries to go "all the way with LBJ" and fight in the Vietnam War. Since WW2 our defence policy has been explicitly based around cozying up to America; in recent years this has included invading Iraq and being a member of ECHELON. I'm sort of curious why Australia gets involved in US military adventures given how wars tend to be really expensive and things like Iraq have no direct strategic significance to Australia.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:07
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etalian posted:I'm sort of curious why Australia gets involved in US military adventures given how wars tend to be really expensive and things like Iraq have no direct strategic significance to Australia. It's broadly the same reason that Britain does; our defence strategy is predicated on the US bailing us out if anything actually happens (see WW2). In return we buy stupid poo poo like F35s and old Abrams, and go along for the ride when the US needs to pretend that an invasion is multilateral. The latter is partly a quirk of history; had the conservatives (or Liberals, as we call them) not been in power during the 60s or 00s we probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq or Vietnam.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:22
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My favorite was always the Pig War. quote:The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, ordered British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes to land marines on San Juan Island and engage the American soldiers under the command of Brigadier-General Harney. Baynes refused, deciding that "two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig" was foolish.
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Nov 5, 2013 22:36
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:My favorite was always the Pig War. My favorite 'war' (or conflict I guess) takes place in the DMZ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_murder_incident quote:The axe murder incident was the killing of two United States Army officers by North Korean soldiers on August 18, 1976, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The U.S. officers had been part of a work party cutting down a tree in the JSA.
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Nov 5, 2013 22:42
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Just caught up with this thread. I wanted to ask a question about Carter/Reagan, stagflation and the oil shocks of the 70s. I seem to remember somewhere that the ultimate resolution was a grand bargain with the Saudis that led to Saudi re-investment of oil sales back into the US economy. "The Prize" maybe? I can't remember.
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Nov 6, 2013 00:45
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Emanuel Collective posted:US servicemen stationed in Australia had it pretty good. They were paid much better than Australians, had access to much more food and luxury items that Australians had seen rationed, and were a hit with the local ladies. As wikipedia notes, "in mid-1942, a reporter walking along Queen Street counted 152 local women in company with 112 uniformed Americans, while only 31 women accompanied 60 Australian soldiers." There was also the issue of Australians treating African-Americans much better than Americans themselves treated them, leading to a full blown riot where white and black American troops fought each other after white troops were angry about blacks having equal access to nightlife. Good grief. I'm always amazed when Americans or American soldiers go all bloo-bloo over other countries' not liking the occupying military presence. Every time I see one of these stories I always think to myself "we would have riots if foreign soldiers acted like that on US soil". On that topic, there's a lot of animosity toward American soldiers in South Korea, and there's some interesting context behind that. It was a common thing for American soldiers to date and have children with Korean women during the country's dictatorship days. This on its own wasn't necessarily bad- more problematic was when the soldiers didn't marry their girlfriends and ended up going home without them. It wasn't always necessarily their fault- the American military was extremely racist at this time, and used excessive paperwork and time delays to make it as difficult as possible for soldiers to get marriage permits, in the hopes that the soldiers would either give up and leave without their Korean family or the deployment cycle would finish before the paperwork did. What's really interesting is that my source for this is an American military website set up by soldiers and families of soldiers trying to contact these Korean relatives. The overall tone is very much "we did a terrible thing we are so sorry please don't hate us". It's a fascinating contrast to Americans with no relation or interest in this history being all defensive and superior about all those mean racist Koreans not immediately having a party every time they see a Korean woman in Korea with her boyfriend who doesn't speak a word of her native language. Although in all fairness the main event that led to hostility against the American military presence was the 1980 military coup which led to Chun Doo-Hwan coming to power. South Korea had up until that time had almost always been an American-backed military dictatorship- but the pro-democracy movement had grown a lot since Park Chung-Hee's reign, and when he was assassinated it was naturally assumed that South Korea could become a functioning democracy, since supposedly this was what America was all about and the previous situation had just been created by circumstance. Then the military coup happened, and an even more outrageously authoritarian dictator came to power. Depending on who you ask the Americans either did nothing either way or emboldened Choo Doo-Hwan by assuring him they wouldn't intervene even when he started gunning down innocents. This killed the up-until then almost universally positive impression of Americans, and I can't say it was poorly deserved. I'd guess most Americans probably think South Korea has been a functioning democracy ever since the end of World War II because this isn't something taught in schools. Chun Doo-Hwan actually visited Yale and gave a fully believed line of bullshit to students there that made it sound like he was just a good guy trying to make the best of bad circumstances, and no one called him out on it. This was a man who was at one point sentenced to death for crimes against his own people. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 01:32
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Ron Jeremy posted:Just caught up with this thread. I wanted to ask a question about Carter/Reagan, stagflation and the oil shocks of the 70s. I seem to remember somewhere that the ultimate resolution was a grand bargain with the Saudis that led to Saudi re-investment of oil sales back into the US economy. "The Prize" maybe? I can't remember. It's more a matter of the whole Yom Kippur conflict eventually got resolved through diplomacy and also how the US actually got serious about domestic solutions such as conservation/alternative energy/more exploration of local energy resources.
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Nov 6, 2013 01:36
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Is it just me, or are the Seminoles woefully unappreciated? The Seminole are a vibrant, diverse band of people that in the early 19th century included escaped slaves -- Black Seminoles who paid small tributes of fealty to native Seminoles -- and generally resisted most outside incursion. For years there was this effectively stateless area of northern Florida that flourished and thrived despite the colonial and slave-owning institutions surrounding them. The gruesome destruction of the "Negro Fort" was one of the largest single-incident death counts of the Indian Wars, yet it remains largely forgotten. I'd be interested in reading any recommendations posters might have about the Seminole or related groups.
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Nov 6, 2013 14:10
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Emanuel Collective posted:While we're tangentintally on the topic of US Troops behaving badly in foreign lands during world war 2, how about the Battle of Brisbane? Such incidents were not limited to Australia! There were also incidents in England for much the same reasons: Americans being generally bigger/more fit than Brits, higher pay for GIs making them more attractive to British women, the British looking down on American officers and enlisted men associating freely, and finally racial tensions between the way African-Americans were treated.
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Nov 6, 2013 14:30
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Regarding Japan's participation in WW2, anyone who cites "the Bushido Code" as a contributing factor to anything before, during, or after has no idea what they are talking about. One, the so-called bushido code that samurai were supposed to follow was made up entirely after the fact to romanticize what was essentially a Neo-Confucianist military dictatorship composed of uneasily balanced regional feudal factions that ran the local bureaucracy. Two, the military leadership in Japan in the 1920s and 30s were philosophically fascists heavily influenced by European fascist writers, and the fictional bushido code was used for propaganda purposes much like pre-Christian Germanic culture was used by the Nazis. Three, the style of government practiced by the military dictatorship while it was in control of the Japanese government bore no resemblance to the feudalistic structures practiced during the Edo period that were the basis of the lord-vassal relationship that was the core component of the class identity of the samurai. None of them were advocating for the reinstatement of a shogunate, but rather a fascist/state socialist dictatorship with the emperor as head of state. Moreover, the samurai were a small political elite during the shogunate, and the vast majority of Japan's population were farmers or factory workers descended from farmers and artisans who wouldn't get the time of day from the samurai families, making them not terribly eager to follow some code those assholes cooked up that would require them to die to prolong a clearly unwinnable war. By 1945, civilian morale was already well and truly in the toilet, and only the far-gone true believers in the IJA wanted to keep it going. The only people who really bought into the bushido bullshit were lunatics. After the war you see a few hard-right fanatics like Mishima, but they're a tiny, albeit feared, minority. Since the adoption of the new constitution, the Japanese government runs on realpolitik and CYA, with a liberal dose of nepotism.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:37
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gradenko_2000 posted:Such incidents were not limited to Australia! There were also incidents in England for much the same reasons: Americans being generally bigger/more fit than Brits, higher pay for GIs making them more attractive to British women, the British looking down on American officers and enlisted men associating freely, and finally racial tensions between the way African-Americans were treated. The other factor is the US didn't have to deal with as lean of wartime economy, which meant the American soldiers had piles of hard to get luxury goods like cigarettes and nylon stockings. Sort of another reason why they stirred things up along with getting much higher monthly pay. Also the overall culture is was different with the US soldiers being much more brash about asking girls out while England was still more traditional about such things and saw such directness as being pretty uncouth. etalian fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 17:03
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Protocol 5 posted:By 1945, civilian morale was already well and truly in the toilet, and only the far-gone true believers in the IJA wanted to keep it going. It's worth noting that strategic bombing never really produced the "people will be so horrified at the casualties that they will revolt against the government just to end the war" effect predicted by pre-war strategists like Giulio Douhet not only because it was an entirely untested technology/strategy, but also because Douhet was not a psychologist. At the same time, it's not true either that the mass devastation wrought by strategic bombing hardened the will of Axis civilians to resist. Civilian morale was broken, but broken in the sense that when your house is flattened by an Allied bomber, your only focus is going to be salvaging whatever you can from the wreckage and feeding your (surviving) family. Factory absenteeism might rise, but then the assembly line might provide some kind of solace from having to face your hungry kids all day. You're certainly not going to rebel when the military/secret police is around even if you had the time and strength for it, especially when they're the only ones with the guns.
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Nov 6, 2013 17:28
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Some Guy TT posted:Good grief. I'm always amazed when Americans or American soldiers go all bloo-bloo over other countries' not liking the occupying military presence. Every time I see one of these stories I always think to myself "we would have riots if foreign soldiers acted like that on US soil". It is easy understand why the Australians (or wherever we occupy) got upset. But it's also easy to understand why the service people get upset in return. Take the Australia thing. On the American side, one has to remember that a lot of the time one went to Australia before and then again after fighting on the islands in the Pacific. Those were very different experiences. Local enmity becomes harder to handle, when you have malaria, are injured, a bunch of close friends have died, and you have lost 30-40 lbs. Much of the anger at Australians from GIs is from the second time they went to Australia. And just because they are angry at the Australians doesn't mean they also don't love Australia. My grandfather actually got engaged to an Australian ranchers daughter, while recovering from malaria/injuries incurred on Guadalcanal. Then he got sent back to the states and they called it off. She actually traveled to the US after the war to try to start the relationship back up, but he'd already been picked up on the side of the road by my grandmother at that point. And the longshoreman strikes in Australia during the war didn't help either. Marines just back from "starvation island" tend to get very upset about logistics for soldiers getting disrupted. I guess what I'm saying is that some of the defensiveness is carry over. People interpret new events that they are not involved in through the lens of old events that they either personally participated in, or that they received through stories and narratives of relatives, friends, or via media. Consider the stories of American soldiers across multiple generations and suddenly the reaction becomes understandable. Obviously sometimes this produces inappropriate reactions (like the reactions to the S. Koreans getting upset that you reference). Other times it informs decisions in ways that turn out to be good.
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Nov 6, 2013 18:36
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