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DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!
I think we can all agree that terror bombing is a top-shelf tactic that really breaks the enemy. Just look how quick the Brits folded after the London Blitz. And the V1. And the V2.

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rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

You are literally apologizing for, and handwaving away the single largest mass rape event in recorded human history. Explain how you come to the conclusion that the rape of 2 million women, including children, near and past the end of the war justifiably prevented German aggression.

The civilians of the soviet union were the #1 biggest casualties during the war, complaining about rapes by red soldiers after their entire people had been targeted for extermination, is some real bullshit. Had the USSR done what the germans did to them, they would have depopulated germany by about 1/6th. Keep that in mind.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

I don't think anyone aside from a bunch of dumbass white Americans thinks that speech is uniquely harmless (or at least not harmful enough that it should be treated as a crime in certain cases).

It seems sort of transparently obvious to me that there's no inherent difference between the harm caused by something a person purposefully says and someone physically harming someone else (and even our laws realize that certain types of speech should be prosecuted). If anything, certain speech causes more harm to its targets than merely punching someone. I think the "it's super important we protect all speech!" view is largely the result of the people who have that view being privileged enough to have never been the target of hate speech themselves.

Spangly A posted:

you are human loving garbage


This is from the last page, but hakimashou's philosophy is basically that the weak deserve to be killed by the strong (or at the very least it's okay for them to be) simply by virtue of the strong being stronger (and if they didn't want to, maybe they shouldn't have been as weak). When this came up in the Israel/Palestine thread his argument was basically that if the Palestinians aren't capable of defeating Israel then it's dumb to complain about anything Israel does. It's basically a selective is/ought fallacy where people like that will assume that the way things are is the way things should be (assuming it's something they agree with).

Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Feb 12, 2017

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
I mean it's not even a matter of speech for goebbels, but authority. Are people in authority responsible for the actions they ask others to do? Of course they are.

stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

rudatron posted:


The civilians of the soviet union were the #1 biggest casualties during the war, complaining about rapes by red soldiers after their entire people had been targeted for extermination, is some real bullshit. Had the USSR done what the germans did to them, they would have depopulated germany by about 1/6th. Keep that in mind.

Yeah, Nazis committed genocide, so red soldiers raping German women is justifiable!

I don't know if anybody explained this to you, but two wrongs don't make a right, and rape is never justifiable, especially war rape. Good loving god.

DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!
OK rudatron you had me going for a while there but I think that last one was a little over the top.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
Dude, war is hell, you cannot run a 'clean' war where everything goes according to plan, because at the center of all conflict is the human element, and the battlefield is a fundamentally inhumane environment.

Soviet high command had, as their first and only priority, winning the war. Given context, that's totally understandable. If they had reports of rapes, and did nothing, it's probably because they were in a life and death struggle for survival, where anything less than full commitment had a cost in terms of human lives.

Remember what these people have been through. Unless you went through that yourself, unless you can say that you can suffer what they have, and still remain 'morally pure', you have no right to judge them.

Yaws
Oct 23, 2013

deep web creep posted:

100% of all nazis deserve death, sorry friend

stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

rudatron posted:

Dude, war is hell, you cannot run a 'clean' war where everything goes according to plan, because at the center of all conflict is the human element, and the battlefield is a fundamentally inhumane environment.

Soviet high command had, as their first and only priority, winning the war. Given context, that's totally understandable. If they had reports of rapes, and did nothing, it's probably because they were in a life and death struggle for survival, where anything less than full commitment had a cost in terms of human lives.

Remember what these people have been through. Unless you went through that yourself, unless you can say that you can suffer what they have, and still remain 'morally pure', you have no right to judge them.

Winning

quote:

The rapes had begun as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944. In many towns and villages every female, aged from 10 to 80, was raped. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was then a young officer, described the horror in his narrative poem Prussian Nights: "The little daughter's on the mattress,/Dead. How many have been on it/A platoon, a company perhaps?"
But Solzhenitsyn was rare: most of his comrades regarded rape as legitimate. As the offensive struck deep into Germany, the orders of Marshal Zhukov, their commander, stated: "Woe to the land of the murderers. We will get a terrible revenge for everything."

the

quote:

The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. "Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."

The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union. On March 29 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin's associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. "On the night of 24 February," General Tsygankov recorded in the first of many examples, "a group of 35 provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women's dormitory in the village of Grutenberg and raped them."

war?

quote:

It is a shocking yet little-known chapter of Polish history. In 1945, 25 Benedictine nuns were raped repeatedly by Soviet soldiers before finding salvation through a French Red Cross doctor who delivered their babies in secret in their Polish convent.

Seventy years on, the events have inspired a French-Polish film that has been sold in more than 30 countries. The Innocents is about to be released in UK cinemas after its shortlisting as the official French entry for the Oscars.

Film-maker Anne Fontaine was inspired to direct it after hearing of the atrocities and the bravery of the Red Cross doctor, Madeleine Pauliac, who wrote at the time: “There were 25 of them, 15 were raped and killed by the Russians, the 10 survivors were raped, some 42 times, some 35 or 50 times each … None of this would be anything if five of them were not pregnant. They would come to ask my advice and to speak of abortion in veiled terms.”

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Ytlaya posted:

I don't think anyone aside from a bunch of dumbass white Americans thinks that speech is uniquely harmless (or at least not harmful enough that it should be treated as a crime in certain cases).

It seems sort of transparently obvious to me that there's no inherent difference between the harm caused by something a person purposefully says and someone physically harming someone else (and even our laws realize that certain types of speech should be prosecuted). If anything, certain speech causes more harm to its targets than merely punching someone. I think the "it's super important we protect all speech!" view is largely the result of the people who have that view being privileged enough to have never been the target of hate speech themselves.



This is from the last page, but hakimashou's philosophy is basically that the weak deserve to be killed by the strong (or at the very least it's okay for them to be) simply by virtue of the strong being stronger (and if they didn't want to, maybe they shouldn't have been as weak). When this came up in the Israel/Palestine thread his argument was basically that if the Palestinians aren't capable of defeating Israel then it's dumb to complain about anything Israel does. It's basically a selective is/ought fallacy where people like that will assume that the way things are is the way things should be (assuming it's something they agree with).

The US has radical ideas about freedom of speech, same with guns.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

Yeah, we know what the strategy was. Practically every WWII historian agrees it was a lovely strategy that didn't work at all. The entire strategic bombing plan was a mishmash of theory cooked up in the 1920's that was a waste of resources, men and civilian lives by every possible measure. I specifically asked you to explain how you thought Dresden was a successful campaign because it's probably the most glaring example of this. Despite killing 25,000 civilians and razing the entire city center, it ended up becoming a huge propaganda coup for Germany. Goebbels (back on topic!) spun it into a rallying cry that, if anything, extended the war.

Here's a book on the subject, which you should really, really read before you start talking in definitive terms about your grand opinions about the war. That and probably the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and Speer's memoir. Or gently caress, watch a documentary or something.

There's certainly a lot of valid criticism of its utility in retrospect.

But it wasn't wrong for the allies to try, it wasn't morally wrong for them to do because they did it in good faith.

Its like the use of deadly force to stop violent crimes that are in progress. Say that someone is shooting up a school or a shopping mall or something, any force against that person is justified to stop him. It's completely different from shooting someone who is in custody, or who has surrendered.

The German and Japanese peoples had spent years prosecuting their war of horror on the rest of the human race. Making them stop was the only thing that mattered until they stopped.

hakimashou fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Feb 12, 2017

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hakimashou posted:

But it wasn't wrong for the allies to try, it wasn't morally wrong for them to do because they did it in good faith.

No, they literally did not. By 1940 they knew for a fact that it was a completely failed strategy. The Butt report made it a matter of public record. It was extremely thorough, and extremely embarrassing. Churchill doubled down instead, as he tended to do when challenged. They knew that they were targeting only civilians. Bomber Command officers openly worried about being tried for war crimes if they didn't win. The bombers had no hope of hitting anything as specific as a factory, and the industrial regions were all well outside the city centers anyway. As far as anyone can tell, it was a campaign waged entirely for the benefit of the British imagination, the egoes of Churchill and Harris, and at incredible material cost to Britain's war effort. Not to mention the lives of tens of thousands of Allied pilots and millions of German civilians.

The British nighttime terror bombing campaign was a completely failed effort by any conceivable measure. A waste of material, energy and human lives. It was an idiotic relic of a strategy mired in politics and the very worst aspects of British military tradition. It was, and remains, indefensible.

Please read the book I linked, and Bomber Command by Max Hastings while you're at it. Your narrative of the war reflects the kind of black and white, heroes and villains, ultra-simplified story that you get in high school, and it's frankly wrong.

edit: Incidentally, that "dehousing" garbage was invented entirely by Lord Cherwell, who was Churchill's science advisor and piece of human garbage who knowingly condemned 4 million people to die of starvation in britain's southeast asian colonies when he diverted their grain shipments to the already well supplied western front. When Churchill got a telegram from Delhi about the famine, his response was to ask why Ghandi hadn't died yet.

Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Feb 12, 2017

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.
The Butt Report didn’t demonstrate that bombing cities was a failed strategy. That’s basically the opposite of what actually happened.

The pre‐report strategy was precision bombing.

Then the Butt Report came out and revealed that, far from putting bombs into pickle barrels from ten thousand feet, bombers can actually only reliably hit targets to the size of a city.

So your options are bomb city‐sized targets (i.e. cities) or allow the Nazi war machine to operate unmolested on the continent.

It can be argued that it’s still immoral or ineffective to bomb cities, but that’s not the thesis of the Butt Report.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
I never said it said anything different. Britain wasn't explicitly bombing cities until after the Butt report, they were still targeting factories and military installations.

You're missing a major element. Harris and Churchill's plan from 1936 onward was to use Bomber Command to win the war entirely from the air. The whole purpose of the bombing strategy was to avoid committing ground troops and ending up entrenched for years like last time. Nearly a third of Britain's entire war effort was devoted to the bombing campaign. The Butt report stated explicitly and with evidence that the entire strategy was useless.

Platystemon posted:

So your options are bomb city‐sized targets (i.e. cities) or allow the Nazi war machine to operate unmolested on the continent.

That's the entire point. Those are not your only options. You could also take the immense amount of resources it takes to churn out bombers and ordinance and use it for literally anything else that's provably more effective. You could have dismantled the Luftwaffe years earlier if you committed those factories, engineers and pilots to fighters instead. Maybe you could have created more armored divisions. Maybe with those divisions you could have defended France. One thing's for certain, they would have ended up buying a shitload less stuff from America, and they definitely would have staved off the financial collapse of the Empire for at least a few years.

Bombing just plain didn't loving work. The bombs were so inaccurate as to be ineffective against any legitimate war targets. the British knew it, and they did it anyway, and the cost to the world was immense. Churchill had the good sense to regret it after Dresden, but Harris never did.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

rudatron posted:

Soviet high command had, as their first and only priority, winning the war. Given context, that's totally understandable. If they had reports of rapes, and did nothing, it's probably because they were in a life and death struggle for survival, where anything less than full commitment had a cost in terms of human lives.

Millions of rapes, miles behind the lines, mostly in 1945. You have zero loving clue what you're talking about.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I never said it said anything different. Britain wasn't explicitly bombing cities until after the Butt report, they were still targeting factories and military installations.

You're missing a major element. Harris and Churchill's plan from 1936 onward was to use Bomber Command to win the war entirely from the air. The whole purpose of the bombing strategy was to avoid committing ground troops and ending up entrenched for years like last time. Nearly a third of Britain's entire war effort was devoted to the bombing campaign. The Butt report stated explicitly and with evidence that the entire strategy was useless.


That's the entire point. Those are not your only options. You could also take the immense amount of resources it takes to churn out bombers and ordinance and use it for literally anything else that's provably more effective. You could have dismantled the Luftwaffe years earlier if you committed those factories, engineers and pilots to fighters instead. Maybe you could have created more armored divisions. Maybe with those divisions you could have defended France. One thing's for certain, they would have ended up buying a shitload less stuff from America, and they definitely would have staved off the financial collapse of the Empire for at least a few years.

Bombing just plain didn't loving work. The bombs were so inaccurate as to be ineffective against any legitimate war targets. the British knew it, and they did it anyway, and the cost to the world was immense. Churchill had the good sense to regret it after Dresden, but Harris never did.

To be fair, the advocates of bombing as the primary strategy also advocated dropping poison gas on cities, but i'm not sure that would've changed much.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Panzeh posted:

To be fair, the advocates of bombing as the primary strategy also advocated dropping poison gas on cities, but i'm not sure that would've changed much.

I mean, Churchill was a murderous, racist motherfucker who loving loved chemical weapons. I think we can all agree on that? At least by the mid 30's, Parliament wouldn't hear it. He certainly tried like hell to get them to use it against the Indian uprising.

"The objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than [the] high explosive shell, and compels an enemy to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war."

"Why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze? It is really too silly."

Spangly A
May 14, 2009

God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

. I think we can all agree on that?

I think you'll find he's the Greatest Briton and proud ugly baby face of the new fiver.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Spangly A posted:

I think you'll find he's the Greatest Briton and proud ugly baby face of the new fiver.

“I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon
yeah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brasillach

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.



It's a good thing to know that there is precedent for sentencing fascists to death for intellectual crimes.
We'll have legal standing when the Grand Soir comes.

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

That's the entire point. Those are not your only options. You could also take the immense amount of resources it takes to churn out bombers and ordinance and use it for literally anything else that's provably more effective. You could have dismantled the Luftwaffe years earlier if you committed those factories, engineers and pilots to fighters instead.

How are you going to dismantle the Luftwaffe with fighters if they are unwilling to fly into your trap?

You can’t loiter over their airbases all day long—you fighters don’t even have the range to go out and back, nevermind the flak they’d catch.



Accuracy problems aside, at least bombers are physically capable of reaching Nazi airbases and equipped to take out planes while they’re on the ground.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

Maybe you could have created more armored divisions.

So you can do what? Retake the Channel Islands? Embarrass Rommel even more thoroughly in North Africa?

The Butt Report comes out in August, 1941. Sir Arthur “Tanker” Fishopolis dismantles Bomber Command immediately and focuses on building tanks.

D‐day isn’t till June, 1944.

If anything, D‐day would be pushed back with this strategy, but even if you manage to hasten it, your tanks are going to be collecting dust for a long time.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Are you arguing that there was literally no more efficient way for the British to spend their lives and resources than bombing civilian targets behind enemy lines? That, in full view of hindsight, it was the correct and justified strategy?

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

Are you arguing that there was literally no more efficient way for the British to spend their lives and resources than bombing civilian targets behind enemy lines? That, in full view of hindsight, it was the correct and justified strategy?

The alternatives you’ve presented, tanks and fighters, aren’t more efficient.

But if the only goal is to maximise the efficiency of British lives and resources, I supposed sitting back and letting the Soviets do all the fighting would indeed work.

DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

Are you arguing that there was literally no more efficient way for the British to spend their lives and resources than bombing civilian targets behind enemy lines? That, in full view of hindsight, it was the correct and justified strategy?

OK now you're the one being a dumbass. Assuming your fighter plan has merit (lol) and you shoot down every Luftwaffe plane that comes up to challenge you, what are you going to do when they just stop that and instead use flak guns to murder your poo poo, which are way cheaper and faster to manufacture and train on than fighters and fighter pilots are? Strategic bombing did put a crimp on German manufacturing and nobody seriously debates that. Just look at their own reports from the era, Christ.

The question raised was whether intentionally targeting civilians instead of just causing collateral damage was a morally acceptable or pragmatically effective strategy. The answer to that question is no on both counts. Now you're trying to stretch that assessment into saying that thousands of civilians don't have to die when you hit enemy infrastructure with WW2 technology, or if they do have to die then somehow that means the strategy ceases to be effective. These are not the same things. Stop it.

forkboy84
Jun 13, 2012

Corgis love bread. And Puro


Spangly A posted:

I think you'll find he's the Greatest Briton and proud ugly baby face of the new fiver.

I'm glad he and his grotesque face isn't on any Scottish fivers.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

forkboy84 posted:

I'm glad he and his grotesque face isn't on any Scottish fivers.

Churchill's face is deformed like that of a modern-day bulldog. The most Britishest of faces.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

DeusExMachinima posted:

The question raised was whether intentionally targeting civilians instead of just causing collateral damage was a morally acceptable or pragmatically effective strategy. The answer to that question is no on both counts. Now you're trying to stretch that assessment into saying that thousands of civilians don't have to die when you hit enemy infrastructure with WW2 technology, or if they do have to die then somehow that means the strategy ceases to be effective. These are not the same things. Stop it.

I didn't say any of that at all. I'm saying that the bomber strategy should have been scrapped as soon as they knew it was ineffective. I shouldn't have given specific examples, because it's entirely beside the point whether those examples would have worked or not. The failure in this case was a failure to change strategy given overwhelming evidence that it didn't work. Instead of trying to figure out something that would be effective, they morphed it into an equally ineffective but now obviously immoral and illegal campaign against civilian targets. Which, incidentally, still didn't achieve its stated goal of breaking enemy morale.

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I didn't say any of that at all. I'm saying that the bomber strategy should have been scrapped as soon as they knew it was ineffective. I shouldn't have given specific examples, because it's entirely beside the point whether those examples would have worked or not. The failure in this case was a failure to change strategy given overwhelming evidence that it didn't work. Instead of trying to figure out something that would be effective, they morphed it into an equally ineffective but now obviously immoral and illegal campaign against civilian targets. Which, incidentally, still didn't achieve its stated goal of breaking enemy morale.

"My specific examples were entirely wrong but I'm still right despite having no proof or convincing arguments!"

Rodatose
Jul 8, 2008

corn, corn, corn
Why does every topic in d&d related to wwii always circle back to whether or not the us bombing the japanesse was justified

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

The bombing campaign did have an impact on German manufacturing, just not near as great as its proponents imagined or exaggeratedly reported. And the efforts later in the war to target oil production in Romania and synthetic fuel production were quite successful if I recall correctly. Though throughout the cost to bomber crews and planes was staggering, and area bombing and destroying morale became euphemisms for bombing what were largely residential areas. Immoral or not, and much of what happened in the war was immoral, you'd be a fool to disregard the bombing campaign as not having had any impact at all.

Perhaps the most important impact it did have was to divert a very large proportion of the Luftwaffe towards defending Germany, as well as makign Germany expand considerable industrial and human effort towards air defence, the diversion of the Luftwaffe westwards was doubtless of great value to the Soviet war effort, especially their airforce which suffered staggering casualty rates at the hands of the Luftwaffe in the first few years of war. There's also the factor that bombing Germany was for a large portion of the war the only way Britain could strike at Germany, which possibly was of some importance in sustaining morale (though I would still argue the diversion of the Luftwaffe as the one important achievement of the bombing campaign).

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.
Do it again bomber harris

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose

Rodatose posted:

Why does every topic in d&d related to wwii always circle back to whether or not the us bombing the japanesse was justified

D&D hates context and moral ambiguity, both of which are things World War Two features heavily. Still it isn't as bad as the guy who claimed the United States could've beaten Japan by dropping food packages on their cities instead of bombs and that "unrestricted submarine warfare" wasn't technically a blockade.

Also for all the people bitching about the strategic bombing campaign, remember that it was the only major way for the West to strike directly at Germany for years. Even if it was as ineffective as people ITT are (wrongly) claiming, after June 1941 it was a political necessity to continue the raids because the Soviets.

Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Feb 13, 2017

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Also for all the people bitching about the strategic bombing campaign, remember that it was the only major way for the West to strike directly at Germany for years. Even if it was as ineffective as people ITT are (wrongly) claiming, after June 1941 it was a political necessity to continue the raids because the Soviets.

It’s not just politics; it’s sound military strategy.

If it eases the pressure on your brave Russian allies even a little bit, and it’s the only military action you are capable of taking at the time, you should probably do it.

Platystemon fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Feb 13, 2017

Crowsbeak
Oct 9, 2012

by Azathoth
Lipstick Apathy
He should have had a lobotomy.

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.
It's almost more ethical to Kill someone than give them a lobotomy.

Nude Bog Lurker
Jan 2, 2007
Fun Shoe

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I didn't say any of that at all. I'm saying that the bomber strategy should have been scrapped as soon as they knew it was ineffective. I shouldn't have given specific examples, because it's entirely beside the point whether those examples would have worked or not. The failure in this case was a failure to change strategy given overwhelming evidence that it didn't work. Instead of trying to figure out something that would be effective, they morphed it into an equally ineffective but now obviously immoral and illegal campaign against civilian targets. Which, incidentally, still didn't achieve its stated goal of breaking enemy morale.

Why do you think literally every major participant in the Second World War bombed the hell out of enemy cities every chance they got if it was so obviously ineffective? Why did every major participant deploy enormous effort countering enemy bombing campaigns if they were obviously ineffective?

Spoiler: there wasn't overwhelming contemporary evidence it didn't work and only Anglophobe neo-Nazis like you think there was (only not for your beloved Luftwaffe and Goering-kun~~~)

Brainiac Five
Mar 28, 2016

by FactsAreUseless

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Also for all the people bitching about the strategic bombing campaign, remember that it was the only major way for the West to strike directly at Germany for years. Even if it was as ineffective as people ITT are (wrongly) claiming, after June 1941 it was a political necessity to continue the raids because the Soviets.

Interesting how people at the time and immediately after concluded strategic bombing was useless for its intended purpose, but as the Cold War came into being strategic bombing became an extremely relevant and deadly weapon against Germany. It's almost as though the historical record shifted in order to downplay the role of the USSR, now our enemy, in fighting the Nazis. Interesting how this defense neglects to note how bombing shifted from a somewhat effective campaign against shipping and rail networks in the Ruhr to attempting to create firestorms, almost as though it became a deliberate campaign of mass-murdering civilians. Interesting how the bombing raids were not perceived as such by the USSR itself, since pressure to open up an actual second front continued right up until Overlord landed in Normandy. Interesting how both Harris and Spaatz resisted the use of their bombers in the preparations for Overlord on the Douhetist grounds that they could win the war by themselves.

These are interesting, but not really relevant, since the objections are on moral grounds, and war crimes are not crimes because they are militarily ineffective, or for any reason having to do with their efficacy. That would be asinine. You could defend the decision on the grounds that they had a choice of committing war crimes or doing nothing, but then all those interesting facts would become relevant and we would have to face the fact that they did not simply innocently walk into incinerating people from the air inevitably and with their eyes shut. And unlike American or Canadian soldiers spontaneously murdering surrendered SS members, these would be war crimes on a systematic level, developed and enacted via strategic and/or operational policy. You would also have to face the facts that they didn't just have a choice to do nothing or massacre civilians- for the purposes of tying up air defenses, as has been outlined as a second line of defense for burning people alive, propaganda leaflets, empty bomb bays, or even just randomly loading different bombers with payloads would be effective as well. That this seems absurd seems to suggest that the basic argument of tying up air defenses is itself absurd.

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

Why do you think literally every major participant in the Second World War bombed the hell out of enemy cities every chance they got if it was so obviously ineffective? Why did every major participant deploy enormous effort countering enemy bombing campaigns if they were obviously ineffective?

Spoiler: there wasn't overwhelming contemporary evidence it didn't work and only Anglophobe neo-Nazis like you think there was (only not for your beloved Luftwaffe and Goering-kun~~~)

So how hard does your dick get at the thought of someone screaming as they're slowly burned to death by thermite? Or of delayed-burst bombs, designed to kill firefighters and EMTs?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

Spoiler: there wasn't overwhelming contemporary evidence it didn't work and only Anglophobe neo-Nazis like you think there was (only not for your beloved Luftwaffe and Goering-kun~~~)

The british murdered hundreds of thousands of non-combatant civilians by burning them alive and got very little in return, strategically speaking. Also, the nazis were the loving nazis and deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth ten times over. Both of these things can be true. Try not to hurt yourself thinking too hard, take it in small doses.

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Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Brainiac Five posted:

Interesting how people at the time and immediately after concluded strategic bombing was useless for its intended purpose, but as the Cold War came into being strategic bombing became an extremely relevant and deadly weapon against Germany. It's almost as though the historical record shifted in order to downplay the role of the USSR, now our enemy, in fighting the Nazis. Interesting how this defense neglects to note how bombing shifted from a somewhat effective campaign against shipping and rail networks in the Ruhr to attempting to create firestorms, almost as though it became a deliberate campaign of mass-murdering civilians. Interesting how the bombing raids were not perceived as such by the USSR itself, since pressure to open up an actual second front continued right up until Overlord landed in Normandy. Interesting how both Harris and Spaatz resisted the use of their bombers in the preparations for Overlord on the Douhetist grounds that they could win the war by themselves.

These are interesting, but not really relevant, since the objections are on moral grounds, and war crimes are not crimes because they are militarily ineffective, or for any reason having to do with their efficacy. That would be asinine. You could defend the decision on the grounds that they had a choice of committing war crimes or doing nothing, but then all those interesting facts would become relevant and we would have to face the fact that they did not simply innocently walk into incinerating people from the air inevitably and with their eyes shut. And unlike American or Canadian soldiers spontaneously murdering surrendered SS members, these would be war crimes on a systematic level, developed and enacted via strategic and/or operational policy. You would also have to face the facts that they didn't just have a choice to do nothing or massacre civilians- for the purposes of tying up air defenses, as has been outlined as a second line of defense for burning people alive, propaganda leaflets, empty bomb bays, or even just randomly loading different bombers with payloads would be effective as well. That this seems absurd seems to suggest that the basic argument of tying up air defenses is itself absurd.

In order for a defensive measure to be necessary there has to be a credible threat to defend against. Heavy bombers with empty bomb bays and dropping propaganda leaflets are NOT a threat and would have been both a laughing stock, a source of nazi propaganda, and terrible for Allied morale (both civilians reading about it and air crews flying to Germany just to be shot at without offensive weapons).

Tying up air defenses was never the stated goal of the strategic combing campaign. It just so happens that it did because, hey, the Germans did view the bombings of cities as enough of a threat that they had to attempt to defend themselves from it. Bomber Harris and others exaggerated the impact their campaign had on ending the war, but don't discard it as useless, because it simply was not. Terrible, yes, but that was kind of the point, evil as it may sound.

As for the record. The Soviets weren't unappreciative of the bombing campaign, Stalin himself was pleased with photographs and reports of destroyed German cities. It also sated a wish among all the Allies that Germany deserved to be punished and feel the effects of the war she had unleashed. Now, a bombing campaign wasn't the same as opening up a new front and tying up and destroying German armies and liberating occupied countries. Something the Western Allies endeavoured to do from 1942 onwards, it just so happens that they weren't really ready for this seriously until 1944 (Africa and Italy were essentially sideshows).

Harris didn't want to to provide bombers to Overlord because he was a believer in the doctrine that strategic air power alone was enough to decide a war (which wasn't really true until the development of nuclear weapons). It probably wouldn't have mattered that much though, because precision bombing of targets was largely impossible and in a ground support role heavy bombers are pretty ill-suited. In the instances the Allies did use heavy bombers to support ground operations they mostly just created very difficult terrain for the attackers and destroyed mostly unimportant towns.

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