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Brainiac Five posted:But your argument is just axiomatically assuming raping, torturing, and murdering civilians at random served no military purpose. Which is just a neat sidestep around morality. If it could be shown that Red Army brutality reduced the likelihood of partisan activity more than it increased it, you would be unable to respond. twodot posted:I don't even understand what unconditional surrender is supposed to mean in a realpolitik sense. You can always un-surrender, the victor needs to offer conditions (even if they are implicit) to stop the loser from reneging, since they have no motivation to stay faithful to the surrender otherwise.
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Oct 28, 2016 21:28
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Surrender implies telling your dudes to lay down their arms, at which point your enemy can move in and make "un-surrender" pretty difficult.
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Oct 28, 2016 21:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Except by finding an alternative solution to partisan activity that doesn't include rape, torture, and murder. Like actually carrying out a war of liberation in German held territories, rather than waging a war with a secondary objective of expanding Russian domination into the heart of Europe. Evidence that the mass brutality of Red Army troops was part of "expanding Russian domination into the heart of Europe" (not that this is an accurate depiction of why the USSR took the actions it did in Eastern and Central Europe) rather than something which happened because most Red Army officers were indifferent to brutality against Germans and "collaborators", or actively supported it as revenge, is, well, sparse as hell. It also conflicts with Stalin and the NKVD realizing the brutality was having a very negative effect, to say the least, and attempting to rein it in somewhat. Anyways you dumbfuck the point is that "military expediency" is a poo poo approach to looking at these kinds of things.
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Oct 28, 2016 21:39
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Main Paineframe posted:"The dismantlement of Hitler's government and the convening of war crimes trials" sounds like a surrender condition, which could easily have been part of a negotiated surrender. Having the Nazi government or Hitler personally take responsibility for the surrender? That's a surrender condition too. A lot can be accomplished with surrender conditions. Historically, a lot has - unconditional surrender demands are the exception, not the rule. Do you think the Allies should have occupied Germany at the end of the war? Do you think it was bad that both the FDR and the DDR (for all its other flaws) explicitly disavowed not only Nazism but the German-supremacist beliefs that underpinned it?
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Oct 28, 2016 21:48
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twodot posted:I strongly suspect the Axis winning the war would have resulted in more civilian deaths than what actually happened. It's a good thing that the Allies didn't kill more civilians than the Axis did, then! Do you actually know anything about WWII? Anything at all?
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Oct 28, 2016 21:50
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VikingSkull posted:It's a good thing that the Allies didn't kill more civilians than the Axis did, then!
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Oct 28, 2016 21:55
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Do you think the Allies should have occupied Germany at the end of the war? Do you think it was bad that both the FDR and the DDR (for all its other flaws) explicitly disavowed not only Nazism but the German-supremacist beliefs that underpinned it? I don't see where Nazism is implied there. You seem to be an inquisitor under Torquemada, demanding conversos confess to secretly practicing Islam or Judaism, unwilling to concede they might be telling the truth when they deny it.
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Oct 28, 2016 21:55
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twodot posted:If you believe this, then you should think that winning the war was the action that resulted in less civilian deaths, then why did you say me thinking that we should choose actions that minimize civilians deaths is tantamount to saying we should have lost the war? Well, you said that in response to my post saying "the US tried to minimize civilians casualties and it was eroding our capability to prosecute the war". Do you actually have an idea as to what the Allies could have done to minimize civilian casualties?
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Oct 28, 2016 21:56
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VikingSkull posted:Well, you said that in response to my post saying "the US tried to minimize civilians casualties and it was eroding our capability to prosecute the war". I've already put forward "not firebomb Dresden", but since you've asked again I'll add "not firebomb Tokyo". It really should not be in dispute that the Allies could have killed less civilians than they did.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:01
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twodot posted:How can minimizing civilians casualties erode our capability to prosecute war if successfully prosecuting the war minimizes casualties? Yeah I get it I'm a terrible barbarian, but I need something a bit more in depth than "not firebomb two cities". I've made multiple posts in this thread calling the firebombings warcrimes. e- The number of Holocaust survivors dwarfs the number of German civilians who were killed in Allied bombing raids. So if the Allies never bombed Germany at all, you wouldn't have exactly "saved" more civilians, now would you? Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Oct 28, 2016 |
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Oct 28, 2016 22:04
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twodot posted:I think you'll discover that dudes are relatively good at reacquiring arms, even if you actually want through the exercise of putting all of your arms in a pile. Brainiac Five posted:Evidence that the mass brutality of Red Army troops was part of "expanding Russian domination into the heart of Europe" (not that this is an accurate depiction of why the USSR took the actions it did in Eastern and Central Europe) rather than something which happened because most Red Army officers were indifferent to brutality against Germans and "collaborators", or actively supported it as revenge, is, well, sparse as hell. It also conflicts with Stalin and the NKVD realizing the brutality was having a very negative effect, to say the least, and attempting to rein it in somewhat. Brainiac Five posted:Anyways you dumbfuck the point is that "military expediency" is a poo poo approach to looking at these kinds of things.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:18
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There would have been no German partisan activity against the USSR if they had announced they were liberating Germany from Germans? What is wrong with you?
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Oct 28, 2016 22:27
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Brainiac Five posted:I don't see where Nazism is implied there. You seem to be an inquisitor under Torquemada, demanding conversos confess to secretly practicing Islam or Judaism, unwilling to concede they might be telling the truth when they deny it. You seem to have a poorly managed mental illness. It would be interesting to know how Main Paineframe's imagined post-war settlement (in Germany or Japan) would differ from what unconditional surrender enabled.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:51
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:You seem to have a poorly managed mental illness. It would be interesting to know how Main Paineframe's imagined post-war settlement (in Germany or Japan) would differ from what unconditional surrender enabled. It would also be interesting if people such as you were to say what they meant directly instead of engaging in pointless attempts at obfuscation. It would be grand indeed if such wickedness were refrained from.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:55
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Do you think the Allies should have occupied Germany at the end of the war? Do you think it was bad that both the FDR and the DDR (for all its other flaws) explicitly disavowed not only Nazism but the German-supremacist beliefs that underpinned it? In general? No, although there were certainly some aspects of the Allied occupation that deserved criticism. But it's not like either of those things required unconditional surrender to accomplish. And rather than looking just at what did happen, it's illustrative to look at what almost happened when considering the wisdom of the unconditional surrender demand. If not for the Cold War and the need for a strong West Germany as an ally against the Soviets, Germany would have been heavily deindustrialized, it's factories dismantled and destroyed, the Ruhr and other industrial areas annexed to its neighbors, its trade restricted, it's economy torn back down to Great Depression levels, and essentially reduced to subsistence agriculture and selling off its natural resources for food imports. Things like that are why it's worth challenging the reasonableness of "unconditional surrender" - when the Germans and Japanese agreed to our demands for what was essentially a blank check, it could have turned out a lot worse for them, and it almost did.
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Oct 28, 2016 23:26
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I've already explained the reasoning for unconditional surrender - getting an unconditional surrender from the military authorities establishes, in the minds of every single person, civilian or otherwise, that the defeat of the opposing nation was absolute & irreversible. There is no possibility of another 'stab in the back' myth. Anything less could have given the impression, that the allies were 'forced' to the negotiating table, and/or that the military wasn't defeated. To demand unconditional surrender, and then treat then like most other defeated nations, means that that treatment is a matter of mercy, not respect/fear. That's a big & important difference.
rudatron fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 05:22
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RIP Brainiac Five, committed one too many forums crimes and was forced into an unconditional surrender
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Oct 29, 2016 06:06
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Brainiac Five posted:There would have been no German partisan activity against the USSR if they had announced they were liberating Germany from Germans? What is wrong with you? VikingSkull posted:RIP Brainiac Five, committed one too many forums crimes and was forced into an unconditional surrender
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Oct 29, 2016 06:48
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This obsession with unconditional surrender makes no sense. If your bare minimum preliminary conditions for surrender are already the worst case scenario for the defeated party, then there's no difference between a negotiated peace and an unconditional surrender. Maybe the Allies should have said, yo, we won't kill the Emperor, chill out, but that's about it.
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Oct 29, 2016 11:13
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Imo the nazis should've been engaged by the western allies only via honour duels between allied and nazi leaders, bc I am an antiwar activist Oh uh, but, the soviets were fighting the good fight. Ugh yes yes ugh rape those fash. AND BTW THEY HAD SWELL AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT CAPABILITY vintagepurple fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 11:20
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Fojar38 posted:ITT we unironically argue that the Axis should have won the war I think at the very least, regardless of who wins the war both sides should have to answer for the war crimes they commit after the fact, or at least recognize the injustice faced by their victims. If our leaders and historians came forth and said "yeah we knowingly committed war crimes in order to win. We coldly calculated the options and chose what we thought was best at the time. But that still included war crimes and thus is not just, so we're not going to gloat about it like overgrown schoolyard bullies." Instead people become hyper defensive and blame the victims. Or worse yet, we concoct absurd claims about how we were actually acting in the interest of the victims (lol). There's a total lack of introspection on the part of the winners. You don't have to lose the war, but if you have commit war crimes to do it, you should be prepared to lose face.
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Oct 29, 2016 12:55
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ANIME AKBAR posted:I think at the very least, regardless of who wins the war both sides should have to answer for the war crimes they commit after the fact, or at least recognize the injustice faced by their victims. If our leaders and historians came forth and said "yeah we knowingly committed war crimes in order to win. We coldly calculated the options and chose what we thought was best at the time. But that still included war crimes and thus is not just, so we're not going to gloat about it like overgrown schoolyard bullies." #1. No one in this thread has excused Allied war crimes #2. No one in this thread who says the war crimes were inexcusable under any circumstance has outlined a prosecution of the war that doesn't include war crimes and still ends up in an Allied victory. I'm all ears, I've spent a quarter century studying WWII and I've yet to find one. I'm eager to hear what anyone else can come up with.
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Oct 29, 2016 14:21
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Why? If you didn't choose to be in the situation where you have to take the least-worst option, you have no reason to feel ashamed/guilty/lose-face/whatever. No one should celebrate it, it is what it is, a lot of people just getting killed. No one who died 'deserved' it, not least of which because it didn't kill the military leadership. But it had to happen, because the way the world was. It's depressing, but not shameful. The reason people get hyper-defensive is because they think it's being used as an opportunity to wax lyrical about barbaric Americans, or worse, justify apologetics for the fascist regimes. "But we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again!" You know how you prevent conflict and in general promote good governance? Structure the state such that it is accountable to and acts in the interests of the people. Morality tales don't constrain state actions, only incentives on actors do. If you want to prevent atrocities, what you need is a systematized, rule-based solution that prevents recreating that environment. rudatron fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 14:45
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Someone please propose a strategy that ends with minimal civilan casualties by the western allies You're allowed to even excuse the soviets raping and conquering everyone ever, a few years of extra holocausting, a few thousand japanese-soldier-raping-an-enslaved-prostitute incidents per month But propose a strategy the allies could have used that you agree with Bonus points if yoy acknowledge the existence of the RAF instead of blaming the USAAF for every war crime ever
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Oct 29, 2016 14:52
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vintagepurple posted:Someone please propose a strategy that ends with minimal civilan casualties by the western allies 2. Precision bomb the German/Japanese leadership until someone comes to power that will accept an unconditional surrender.
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Oct 29, 2016 15:46
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rudatron posted:Why? If you didn't choose to be in the situation where you have to take the least-worst option, you have no reason to feel ashamed/guilty/lose-face/whatever. No one should celebrate it, it is what it is, a lot of people just getting killed. No one who died 'deserved' it, not least of which because it didn't kill the military leadership. But it had to happen, because the way the world was. It's depressing, but not shameful. The Allies didn't choose to be in that situation, the Axis forced them into it. Also, no one is celebrating it, not the people in this thread and certainly not the Allied commanders who are referenced in this thread as having recognized that what they were forced to do was awful. quote:The reason people get hyper-defensive is because they think it's being used as an opportunity to wax lyrical about barbaric Americans, or worse, justify apologetics for the fascist regimes. Conversely, the other side is getting hyper-defensive about people suggesting that perhaps there was some use in the application of the atomic bombs in that unique time in history, when the only other choices that were presented were warcrimes of an exponential scale worse. 200,000 dying of the bomb and radiation is a travesty and should never, ever happen again, but compared to 5,000,000 or 10,000,000 dead of starvation, or 5,000,000 dead through invasion and the tactical application of chemical weapons in Japan, I mean to me it's a no-brainer. Maybe that makes me a savage, I dunno. quote:"But we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again!" You know how you prevent conflict and in general promote good governance? Structure the state such that it is accountable to and acts in the interests of the people. Morality tales don't constrain state actions, only incentives on actors do. If you want to prevent atrocities, what you need is a systematized, rule-based solution that prevents recreating that environment. I agree, but this proposed situation was off the table once Hitler and the Japanese junta rose to power. This is exactly what the Allies did after the war for both Japan and West Germany, and now both nations are among the most economically powerful and stable nations on Earth. So I agree 100% on the message you are saying here. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 15:59
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A Buttery Pastry posted:1. Invent cruise missiles and surveillance satellites instead of nuclear weapons. "Can't we just drone this guy?" - FDR
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Oct 29, 2016 17:33
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Fojar38 posted:"Can't we just drone this guy?" - FDR A Kennedy tried this, with dubious results.
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Oct 29, 2016 17:38
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A Buttery Pastry posted:1. Invent cruise missiles and surveillance satellites instead of nuclear weapons. OSS should've made sure that Hitler swallowed a GPS tracker instead of cyanide. To everyone who's against nuking Japanese cities: how do you feel about Allied strategic bombing campaigns in terms of collateral damage? Millions of civilians were killed by that and some probable war crimes such as Dresden happened as a part of that campaign. But even without Dresden you've got bomber formations spread out over miles of airspace to maximize their chances of hitting their target (no smart bombs back then) so let's get real here, 99 out of 100 bombs dropped didn't hit their intended target which were often placed in cities. And even when they did hit their target, oftentimes fires from the bombs would spread and turn into a massive conflagration such as in Tokyo near the end of the war that killed 100,000 people in one night, no evil radiation required. So allied strategic bombing at all, in or out?
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Oct 29, 2016 17:46
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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DeusExMachinima posted:OSS should've made sure that Hitler swallowed a GPS tracker instead of cyanide. Also, DnD armchair leftists, consider the literal tens of thousands intentionally murdered by Axis regimes each day their drafted soldiers were forced into the field, and the rapes, revenge killings, and civilian-refugee-columns-strafed-by-soviet-fighters resulting from additional day at war? What should the imperialist regimes of the west have done?
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Oct 29, 2016 19:05
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steinrokkan posted:This obsession with unconditional surrender makes no sense. If your bare minimum preliminary conditions for surrender are already the worst case scenario for the defeated party, then there's no difference between a negotiated peace and an unconditional surrender. As most of the Axis nations demonstrated, the "worst case scenario" for a defeated party could be quite a bit worse than anything the Allies were intent on enforcing - and, as the shift from Morganthau to Marshall showed, the Allies were ultimately willing to subject the Axis countries to much nicer treatment than they had initially envisioned. vintagepurple posted:Someone please propose a strategy that ends with minimal civilan casualties by the western allies 1) Show any willingness at all to negotiate a peace, otherwise continue as usual 2) By the time it is completely obvious that the Eastern Front is a disaster, a military coup of some sort removes Hitler, sues for peace, and agrees to conditions including announcement of surrender, dismantlement of the government, official denouncement of Nazi crimes, war crimes trials, de-Nazification, giving up everything Germany conquered during the war, reparations, etc etc. If they refuse, or if Hitler manages to stay in power, continue steamrolling but continue to indicate that peace is possible in conditions that don't involve Soviet troops raping their way through Berlin 3) Crush Japan's Pacific Fleet, take air superiority over the Home Islands, etc 4) Open peace negotiations with the Japanese, with conditions including announcement of surrender, handing over their overseas Empire to the West, dismantlement of the military government, war crimes trials, reparations, etc etc. If they refuse, bomb some poo poo. Repeat until they accept Basically, do most of what we actually did, except without the whole "refusing any sort of surrender negotiations at all because our political opponents made a big fuss about us cutting a sweetheart deal with Vichy commanders in North Africa to end the battles there more quickly" thing.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:12
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Main Paineframe posted:2) By the time it is completely obvious that the Eastern Front is a disaster, a military coup of some sort removes Hitler Wow, what a convenience!
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Oct 29, 2016 20:13
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Main Paineframe posted:As most of the Axis nations demonstrated, the "worst case scenario" for a defeated party could be quite a bit worse than anything the Allies were intent on enforcing - and, as the shift from Morganthau to Marshall showed, the Allies were ultimately willing to subject the Axis countries to much nicer treatment than they had initially envisioned. All plans involved the arrest, trial and presumably death of political leaders, as well as an occupation, demilitarization, widespread purges of ideologically unreliable people. That's the worst case scenario for the ruling elites, worse even than allowing their countries to be incinerated. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 20:17
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Fojar38 posted:Wow, what a convenience! "Unconditional surrender" was actually a huge boon to Hitler's regime, since it destroyed any realistic hope that a successor government might be able to end the war early if Hitler and his trusted supporters all just so happened to suffer mysterious fatal accidents at the same time. By putting Germany in a no-win situation and tying the fate and fortunes of the country to the fate of the Nazi government, we gave the Nazis a massive propaganda boost and made internal rebellion a very unattractive deal. As far as I can tell, only two major WWII figures liked the "unconditional surrender" demand - Roosevelt, who proposed it, and Goebbels, who made it a centerpiece of pro-Nazi propaganda.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:21
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Main Paineframe posted:As most of the Axis nations demonstrated, the "worst case scenario" for a defeated party could be quite a bit worse than anything the Allies were intent on enforcing - and, as the shift from Morganthau to Marshall showed, the Allies were ultimately willing to subject the Axis countries to much nicer treatment than they had initially envisioned. Ah, so you'd rely on the ol' clean Wehrmacht myth and just let the Nazis (+ Nazis in all but name) sort things out for themselves.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:23
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"hey guys we want to be nice to your population so if you could just hand yourselves over to be executed for war crimes that'd be swell"
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Oct 29, 2016 20:28
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Fojar38 posted:Wow, what a convenience! The Germans and Japanese didn't even actually want to fight. The Allies could have ended the war way earlier without any civilian casualties had they just removed their troops and planes from everywhere. The Axis powers probably would have surrendered then. Makes you think, huh
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Oct 29, 2016 20:32
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Andorra posted:The Germans and Japanese didn't even actually want to fight. The Allies could have ended the war way earlier without any civilian casualties had they just removed their troops and planes from everywhere. The Axis powers probably would have surrendered then. Makes you think, huh As a literal white supremacist, I am appalled by our willingness to nuke the Japanese. If only we'd implemented Operation Starvation we a) could've ensured the IJA kept stacking up Chinese bodies for years at a rate far surpassing the Holocaust and b) could've killed millions of Japanese civilians through starvation and exposure to the elements as winter set in. What a missed opportunity.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:37
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Main Paineframe posted:1) Show any willingness at all to negotiate a peace, otherwise continue as usual Watch in slack-jawed amazement as new German regime proceeds to breach peace treaty almost as soon as it is signed. Wonder if there was possibly a precedent that could have warned you this would happen. Quietly push 'Weimar Germany and the Treaty of Versailles' under the counch, and start preparing for round 3.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:36
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1968, radioactive ruins of New York: "I think we were too tough on the Kraut back in 45, you can't really blame them for taking revenge."
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