Mr. Happy
For the Greater Good
I agree with this.
Well the whole point is to have them abolish their state and have the surviving state, preferably mine, swoop in and take over.
Controversial Historical Opinions You Have
- Thread starter EricD
- Start date
- Discussion
I agree with this.
Well the whole point is to have them abolish their state and have the surviving state, preferably mine, swoop in and take over.
- Location
- UK
I'm probably controversial for thinking that the October Revolution was a good thing, the greatest emancipatory moment Russia has ever known, but then I'm probably less controversial for thinking it had failed quite clearly by the early 1920's.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
The failure was structural in the revolution and its strongest actors. They were quite determined to make it the failure we condemn. Of course, it could have gone a different way if the balance of power within it was different, but it would be another October Revolution entirely.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
Eh, what the US bought Alaska in 1867 and the Russian civil war was in 1918 and even excluding that one of the reasons the Russians sold it to america was the colony wasn't profitable before as over hunting put a hurt on the Russian fur trade there and its quite likely they would flat out abandoned the colony if they hadn't sold it.
Beyond that even at the height of Russian colonization the Russian population there was never more than at most around 700.
Beyond that even at the height of Russian colonization the Russian population there was never more than at most around 700.
- Location
- U.K
Margaret Thatcher was the best Prime Minister of the UK since Clement Attlee
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
Well, for once we're having some real high levels of controversialness
'Bomber' Harris and Curtis Lemay should have hanged in a gallows after the war. So should have Albert Speer, Heinz Guderian, Eric von Manstein, Gerd von Rundstedt and Hirohito.
Maybe that last one is a bit a harsh. I'd settle for letting him abdicate and commit seppuku.
Maybe that last one is a bit a harsh. I'd settle for letting him abdicate and commit seppuku.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I understand the Nazis, but why these two? If their work helped end the war sooner, I say good on them.
Claudette Savagely
Ball of flies
- Location
- (and made of) Parts Unknown
One word, two syllables: Dresden.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
Might because the firebombing of Japanese cities were deliberately targeting civilians rather than industrial targets in cities and we literally don't know how many hundreds of thousands were killed via the firebombings some because because both the Japanese and United States governments downplayed the number of people killed and majorly because many of the actual records were destroyed in the firebombings.
Last edited:
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Do it again bomber Harris.
But seriously, the war being over sooner is worth it.
I'll accept that, I don't know as much about the Pacific front.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Should is such a nice word. Countries don't tend to hang members of their own military. Morally, sure, they should have gone to prison, but it was never going to happen.
I don't think anyone should be hanged for anything, but war criminals and nazis push me the closest to changing my views on that, honestly.
- Location
- U.K
Dresden was a legitimate target.
Bomber Command and the strategic bombing campaign was completely justified.
Last edited:
Harris prioritized terror bombing over campaigns that were actually proven to damage German war fighting capacity.
Lemay's bombing campaigns in the Japan may have been more effective, simply because Japanese industry was more dispersed/ less machine based. But the human cost was immense, worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But more, it would set a message and allow them to serve as an example that while they took extreme actions in a extreme time, it still goes against the values of the western democracies.
Also, Lemay was a racist warmonger, who, if he had his way, would have caused a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
We shot some kid for being scared and running way from a frontline infantry unit. Why not execute some guys for mass murder?
- Location
- U.K
Nobody forced the Imperial Japanese leadership to start the war or to continue the war against all sense even when it was clear that they had lost.
If they refused to come to the table then it was entirely right for the Allies to keep attacking until they were forced to accept the obvious.
I totally blame the Japanese leadership, hence why I included Hirohito among the 'should have been executed list'. If anything, even more of them should have been executed and their name enshrined in a permanent hall of shame in Tokyo.
But I'm talking about mass murder of non-combatants.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We shouldn't have done that either. I don't support the death penalty.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Basically, the biggest flaw in the way war crimes were handled after World War Two is that we ended up establishing the norm that only the losers will be punished, and generally punished by the winners, if and only if the winners find doing so politically convenient.
If we had instead chosen to establish the norm "human rights literally always matter and people on our own side can be punished for them," it would help.
The big practical problem with doing this is that people like Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay were part of a larger command structure. By the time you punish everyone who greenlighted their actions you don't have much of a government left. That's fine if you're doing war crimes tribunals on a defeated enemy because you were going to be taking apart their government anyway- but that's a different case.
If we had instead chosen to establish the norm "human rights literally always matter and people on our own side can be punished for them," it would help.
The big practical problem with doing this is that people like Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay were part of a larger command structure. By the time you punish everyone who greenlighted their actions you don't have much of a government left. That's fine if you're doing war crimes tribunals on a defeated enemy because you were going to be taking apart their government anyway- but that's a different case.
- Location
- U.K
Every day that Imperial Japan fought on more people died pointlessly. Every Japanese city that wasn't bombed in the strategic bombing campaigns was an industrial center allowed to aid the Japanese war effort unopposed.
The strategic bombing campaign shortened the war, drastically weakened Japan's capacity to make war and ultimately saved the lives of people that Imperial Japan would otherwise have killed.
- Location
- Russia
I choose to consider the entirety of World War II a clusterfuck of epic proportions where the entire world went mad, no matter the side, and move on.
I really, really hate that this 'Hard Man Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)' narrative just hasn't died.
Look: Remember how ineffective the Blitz was in destroying London? British stiff upper lip and all that? That's exactly how effective strategic bombing was on destroying the Germans. Strategic bombing was effective despite the fact that it was focused on slaughtering civilians, not because of it.
Harris had a hard on for slaughtering civilians even to the point that it harmed the overall war effort. He overruled his command staff and fought politically for a war strategy he knew was discredited, just so he could kill people instead of harming Germany's war machine. He constantly, at every opportunity, refused to make strategic bombing more effective since it would make it less likely to slaughter civilians. Simple technological advances that would've allowed the RAF to do far more damage (with less harm as a side effect) had to be put on the planes over his voracious objections. Targets that would've done harm to the enemy were ignored simply for the chance to slaughter more civilians and strike cities that didn't need to be destroyed and wouldn't have helped the war effort. He was so invested in the need to slaughter civilians that anything else was immaterial; damage to Germany's war machine was immaterial, helping the war effort was immaterial, only slaughter innocent men, women and children mattered.
From the very first dawn of strategic bombing, it was designed to slaughter civilians first and help the war second.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Do you have a source for all this? Cause that's a lot of stuff I hadn't heard. I'd heard the opposite, that Harris fought to decrease those deaths, Churchill had a desire to kill civilians, and that it did make the war shorter.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Harris didn't slaughter civilians because he had a hard-on for it. He slaughtered civilians because he genuinely thought that was the mechanism which would bring down the German war effort. He was wrong, but targeting can be a bitch of a business to get right even with excellent intelligence. The Americans took two years to get it right themselves, although they had the opposite problem compared to the British: they tended to switch targets too fast. Of course by the time they did get it right, the German war industry was already starting to collapse from defeats in the land war and overmobilization.
In the specific case of Dresden, it's wrong to say that it shortened the war but Dresden was really more a product of decisions made years earlier. One finds a strange kind of technological determinism often overtook the WAllied strategic bombing campaign in the last year of the war in both theaters: the resources had already been invested to build massive strategic bombers and there were still targets to be hit, so the air forces hit them. Dresden just happened to be unlucky enough to be on the target list at a time when conditions were just right for a firestorm. Later Nazis propaganda then radically overblew the death toll to motivate their troops and this was picked up by a few historians after the war.
Last edited:
Rule 2 Violation: Let's not be Racist about Natives.
American Indians had their chance and they blew it. The best they could have had is if they had banded together but instead they were various unintegrated tribals. American Indians were not much further ahead than the stone age when Europeans came along. It has repeatedly shown the more technologicallaly advanced culture always wins.