daqs wrote...
You say that as though the morally and ethically wrong things that the winning sides did were integral to their success.
Rounding up Japanese-ancestry civilians and placing them in concentration camps did not improve America's security against an invasion of the West Coast. Fire-bombing German and Japanese cities was, if anything, counterproductive to the war effort and completely backfired in the primary objective of terrifying the citizenry of those countries into surrender. Dismembering and mutiliating Japanese KIAs - a widespread practice in the Pacific War - was simply barbaric and served no useful purpose at all.
When the Stalinists conducted massacres by policy, as they did at Katyn and in the Kharkiv camps, they did nothing to improve the Soviet state's security against aggression. The Katyn massacre in particular was an explicit attempt to further Stalinist imperialism in Eastern Europe by eliminating officers in the Polish military. Soviet treatment of prisoners of war (which was nothing short of barbaric) which, again, did not further the war effort against the Hitlerites. (Hell, the USSR wasn't even fighting Germany at the time.) When such massacres were not conducted by explicit policy (but, one might say, implicit policy), such as the mass murders and rape that occurred in the parts of Eastern Europe across the Oder that once belonged to Germany, they were simply gratuitous horrors. Nobody gained anything when, say, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed.
The very victors you cite in the Second World War explicitly denied the notion of the ends justifying the means at the Nürnberg war-crimes trials. And while those were certainly a form of victor's justice as they were initially conceived (no Soviet, British, or American soldiers were indicted for obvious reasons, let alone any of the French maquis or the Titoists of Yugoslavia) the tribunal itself came to decisions that it claimed apply universally.
-Yep. I do. And they did. The "Bomber harris" firebombardments of Dresden and other industrial hubs were hampered by the fact that at the time you didnt have laser guided weapons of precition. You required tonnes of ordenance to take out a single target where as today a single bomb might do it. Also the population in these areas were essential in the warindustry as they were manning the factories. No workers, and no factories = No wareffort. The primary objective wasnt terror. It was hampering the wareffort. Terror was a secondary or perhaps even thirtiary goal. Robbing **** germany of factories and infrastructure was the primary and secondary objectives. The civillians... got in the way. Tough cookies.
The nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were done for several reasons. Mostly to save lives. The war in the pacific had shown the americans that the japs would fight vehemently for every single scrap of land to the point of fanaticism. The deathtoll for a marine corps landing in mainland Japan would have been staggering. Secondary purpose of nuking was to show the Russians that the US now had nuclear capability and to pressure them at the bargaining tables, trying to ensure a US hegemony. Thridly both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had infrastructure and factories that was considered crucial in the japanese wareffort.
The objective of the massacres you mention had nothing to do with protecting the USSR from outside or even inside agression. It was simple calculus from Stalin. He wantted to eliminate any and all opposition to his regime and to his puppet governments in the east. Stalin was merely continuing the progoms he had allready conducted at home. Modus operandi. Business as usual.
The victors did deny many a thing. However fortunately history isnt a static size. We know considerably more about the actions of the allies before during and just after the war, than the victors at the time wanted us to know.
You said it yourself. No allied soldier was convicted of warcrimes. And thats a bit odd. Because I dont know any conflict where there have been no violations by one side only. Fortunately we know today that even allied soldiers did partake in practicies that would have been seriously questionable if not downright criminal. Fortunately because knowing your history does rather give you a chance of not repeating it. The firebombings of dresden would have been an all out warcrime today. The Nukes would have been questionable, at the very best. The interrigation, exploitation and sometimes (often in some cases) outright torture of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and SS prisoners, especially on the eastern front would be warcrimes today. The use of civillians as shields. The use of political kommisars who drove soldiers into attacks at gunpoints, often making frontal assults on dug in positions... Actions that at the time was acceptable but with current eyes would be downright criminal negligence and abuse of rank and position.
The postwar prosperity even depended on people from the very highest echelons of **** governance. Werner von Braun was crucial in giving the US a headstart in the space race, from which you and I derived many benefits. One "Spymaster of europe" was an ex **** (Reinhard Gehlen) who had a considerable HUMINT network in the east bloc and thusly was an essential part of the cold war.
There are no saints in warfare. Not in peace either.
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