Tuesday, February 10, 2015
A Disturbing (and Extremely Difficult to Explain Away) Fact About WW2
This was one of the very few conflicts in which the justification for it (to stop the spread of fascism, we are led to believe) was established ex post facto, and the fact of the matter here is that THEY HAD NO CHOICE; the fact that the stated reason beforehand (the liberation of Poland) wasn't just not obtained but crashed and burned spectacularly. And, yes, being that the victors get to write the history books anyway (the first time that I learned about Dresden was when I read "Slaughterhouse Five"), boy did they ever decide to go for it; turning Hitler into the Devil incarnate (with FDR and Churchill gods, of course), making the Germans seem like a bunch of collectivist barbarians, totally ignoring the plethora of allied atrocities (the targeting of civilians, the torture of Nuremberg defendants, the ethnic cleansing and murder of Germans from Eastern Europe, the Rhine Meadows Death camps, the wholesale raping of German girls by Mongolian irregulars, the fact that WE had concentration camps, etc.) and the fact that Hitler actually filed for peace on numerous occasions (including when he was winning), etc.. I mean, I know that we want to feel good about ourselves (and why pray tell would a Democratic President who supposedly loves the little fellow needlessly involve us in war?) and all but, damn, a little self-reflection, please.
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3 comments:
Black washing the Allies in an attempt to Whitewash the Nazis and their atrocities, most notably the genocide against the Jewish people, strikes me as odd.
Certainly there were poor judgements made by allied forces and there were atrocities committed by members of the U.S. and allied forces. Acheiving an accurate historical picture so the same mistakes are not repeated is a noble and admirable pursuit.
As long as the activity doesn't cause one to lose site of the big picture or engage in self immolation, in the historical sense.
Just my two cents worth.
Official Auschwitz camp records (which the Commies tried to bury) showed that 60,000 Jews perished there (58,000 from typhus). This is less than the number that we killed in 2 days of firebombing Tokyo (80,000 perished with that). Hopefully the big picture is big enough to accommodate that, too.
War is hell. If my memory serves we were non combatants, until Pearl Harbor.
Imperial Japan awoke the sleeping giant with a direct act of unprovoked agression. The giant did what it had to do. Then it rebuilt Japan (as well as Germany) via the Marshal Plan.
Historians and armchair philosophers will still be debating this when we are pushing up daisies.
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