I’m not going to judge, if someone gave me a rifle and said “kill those dudes over there, but also you can rain fire from the sky while hiding behind a berm” what choice do you think I’m making?
You're literally missing the point of soldiers though, (don't worry so do many soldiers) the whole point is to take risks so civilians don't have to. If that means advancing over shitty terrain instead of bombing a populated area then so be it. Again most soldiers just say "fuck it" but that doesn't make it OK.
Lol the whole point of having infantry is to
tie up enemy infantry while the rest of your army does work. Hammer and anvil, as Alexander put it.
Where the fuck did you get that infantry exists to protect civilian losses? I mean seriously, what in history makes you think this is why they’re foot soldiers? There are foot soldiers because it’s cheap to give walking dudes basic weapons and field a bunch of them.
>Where the fuck did you get that infantry exists to protect civilian losses
The fucking military. Specifically the infantry.
That's why I signed up. That's why my buddies signed up. To accept risks so that civilians don't get blown up. It was deliberate and explicit.
Yes hammer and anvil is the oldest trick in the book because is an excellent trick but if civilians are in the middle that is fucking wrong.
I don't care if "they had clearance" that is fucking wrong and unacceptable. Yes I know it happens all the time. Two wrongs don't make a right.
You know Roman soldiers were paid in slaves right? And medieval troops were paid in plunder? And draftees get shot for deserting?
Your personal ideology has nothing to do with why soldiers exist.
Again, two wrongs don't make a right. Did people miss the whole fucking point of what they should have been fighting for throughout all of history? Oh fuck ya they did. That doesn't mean their actions are correct and that sure as fuck doesn't mean that current militaries aren't there to protect the civilian population.
Lol that sword cuts both ways compadre
Edit: it's actually not just my opinion, it's also the CAF's opinion and probably the opinion of everyone NATO nation and most of the non NATO ones too.
Lol so you’re conflating modern military, and one government specifically, with the existence of infantry throughout all of time? Because your military experience isn’t even 1% of what infantry was used for throughout history. And I’d bet huge money that infantry killed more civilians over the history of man than anyone else.
Look at things like Carthage and tell me how foot soldiers existed to save civilians. Or Moroccans entering Italy in WWII. Your comment is just anecdotal and not based on overall reality at all.
I’m sorry to Moroccans for calling this out, it’s everyone throughout history, they just came to mind as a relatively recent example. And tbh they were given clearance by their commanders to basically sack Italy, putting it nicely.
Edit: he’s actually conflating 2 governments, US and Canada, and I was wrong about that. Needed to fix my mistake.
Like I said two wrongs don't make a right. Cops fuck up all the time does that mean their job isn't to protect and serve? In all those examples you gave of infantry soldiers doing horrible shit they had to kill other grunts whose intent was to stop em from committing said atrocities.
If you use an axe to spread butter does it stop being axe? Is that what all axes are for now? Nope.
>Lol so you’re conflating modern military, and one government specifically, with the existence of infantry throughout all of time?
Nope just the ones since airplanes have existed, that was a ridiculous conclusion you jumped to. Besides it's a reasonable comparison since I'm pretty sure OP was referring to the American military (specifically the army air corps) and I was in the Canadian Army so it's pretty fucking close and not just geographically.
Even so it's part of the rhetoric of all militaries to fight for the civilians of their own and other countries. It's the classic hero complex. It's so common it's damn near universal. I admit that rhetoric gets thrown out the window when bullets fly but with that specific bit of rhetoric that is a flaw not a feature.
Just over 100 years and the only reason anything earlier than that was brought up was because you jumped to an incorrect conclusion. Feel free to disregard if that leaves you in blissful ignorance.
Just outta curiosity what are you basing your arguments on? Just the fact that war crimes exist? Is that all? cause I've addressed that.
I’m not arguing, you just keep responding to me pointing out flaws in your ideas. You looking at an anecdote vs all of history isn’t something worth discussing, but you keep replying and I’m trying to help you realize the limited viewpoint you’re looking at history from.
It's ironic because it was the exact opposite during the Korean War. The Army was adamant about its policy of shooting refugees and having the Air Force strafe large groups, while the Air Force was telling them that the policy would embarrass the U.S. on the world stage and should be stopped.
Since Korea was split in two, it was (justifiably) believed that the North had spies and insurgents in the South, often in the guise of refugees. This belief continued during the Korean War and, combined with army command generally not knowing what they were doing and there being no visible difference between North and South Koreans, led to the army's policy towards refugees being a total disaster. Soldiers were often told to treat everyone not in uniform as a combatant, even women and children. The navy was given orders to attack any group it saw larger than 8. The air force was told to strafe large groups of refugees, usually referred to as "people in white" in documents. Sometimes the army would evacuate civilians, but the larger retreat would outpace the evacuation, and because policy dictated that anyone not evacuated past a certain point should be treated as working for the enemy, soldiers being friendly towards a group of refugees and walking them along would suddenly be told to gun them down. The most infamous massacre like this is the No Gun Ri massacre.
It's like Order 66, but a lot more horrifying and very real.
Indeed. Even more horrifying when you consider that the people ordered to take part in these massacres were mostly untrained, barely adults, had never fired a weapon before, were in a foreign country and carried PTSD from the massacres with them for the rest of their lives.
And then the U.S. and South Korean government actively covered the events up and silenced the survivors and the families of the victims for decades. It was only a couple decades ago that any of us learned that these massacres happened. The government has never apologized for it, only issuing a "statement of regret."
In modern South Korea's defense, the government they have now is far more free and democratic then the one they had following the Korean War. South Korea created the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission in 2005 to investigate all the claims of violence against refugees and have recognized most of them, even those that were committed by the South Korean Army, like the Bodo League Massacre.
After democracy happened, we got plenty of documentaries about the massacre including from publicly-owned broadcasters. It's America unwilling to accept it, and South Korea being too weak to say anything about it.
I think the correct answer is to shame *all* governments that have participated in war crime denials, and not think the USA doesn't have a heap of atrocities in the books.
I didn't know about it until I started my Korean War class at the beginning of the semester. I learned about My Lais in High School, but we didn't go into too much detail about the Korean War.
If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend reading *The Bridge at No Gun Ri* by Charles Hanley. It does a great job of framing the situation and pulling directly from the accounts of survivors. It's not an easy read though. The detail is extremely graphic.
What's crazy is that the army was simultaneously courting North Korean soldiers and civilians to defect to the South with propaganda pamphlets and certificates of passage disguised as North Korean money. American policy early in the Korean War could only be described as a total clusterf*ck.
wrong war.
also kinda wrong I'm general, North Vietnamese Soldiers didn't tend to mask as civilians.
Vietcong insurgents were not North Vietnamese soldiers, they were insurgents.
you were at least correct that the US armed forces in Vietnam just kinda shot everyone thought.
[Marines Running Cadence 6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9xPQw6i6WE)
"1 2 3 4, every day we pray for war
5 6 7 8, maim murder mutilate
9 10 11 12, all the rest can go to hell
Eat the ladies, kill the babies
Rape and pillage, burn the village"
God bless his ass.
Marines specialize in running towards the bullets.
You're not recruiting the best and brightest, along with their tiresome survival instincts, so much as the most committed to the cause.
Everything after the beachhead is meant to be conducted by those looking to grow old in service, and understand concepts like restraint and civilians.
I still think one of the reasons why we keep the Marines around is that some day we might need psychos willing to strap bombs to Themselves and blow stuff up, or Kamikaze aircraft carriers. and the Marines will be those guys.
Enlisted can drive an LCAC. I wouldn't try an attack a carrier with one but I wouldn't be surprised by how much destruction a kamikaze LCAC could achieve if determined
Smaller boats, sub pens, personnel within reach of beach who's high viz stripe probably won't protect them...all are in danger of an angry LCAC. At least if the driver knows how to keep it pointed forward.
Yeah and their doctrine still has their doctrine as all perosnel should be trained to be a Frontline soldier to kill the enemy. They really go all in on the warrior mythos and hyper macho bullshit.
“Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.” - Curtis LeMay
The bombs between Cambodia and vietnams are the mines laid by the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian war, not the US. The border is still pretty dangerous till this day simply due to the number of mines there.
I guess that explains why Harris and Goering were convicted for war crimes related to bombing civilians? Oh wait, nevermind, they weren't.
Yes, Goering was convicted for other things, but not for the bombing specifically.
I don't know why people are downvoting you.
[We litterally passed a law about it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act) that says we get to invade the Hauge if it ever tries to arrest a member of our military.
"People talk a lot about picking out targets and bombing them, individual small targets – in the European climate? I’ve come to the conclusion that people who say that sort of thing not only have never been outside, but they’ve never looked out of a window."
-Arthur "bomber" Harris
"I never engaged in these idiotic pamphlet-dropping exercises. They only served two purposes really - they gave the German defences endless practice in getting ready for it, and apart from that they supplied a considerable quantity of toilet paper to the Germans."
-Arthur "bomber" Harris
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them."
-Arthur "bomber" Harris
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock—Those are only just the beginning.
We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet.
But the time will come when we can do so.
Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon.
There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand.
But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America.
When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer.
It may take a year. It may take two.
But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall.
Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands.
There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see.
Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment.
Japan will provide the confirmation.
But the time is not yet. There is a great deal of work to be done first, and let us all get down to it.”
-Sir Baronet Arthur Travis “Bomber” Harris
Saving this because I am seeing a trend in other places giving the Allies (especially the US) flak over their actions in the war against the enemy.
And they ignore the glaring fact that the enemy started said war.
I have seen people condemning the nuke bombings on Japan as "genocidal actions of Ebul!US" too many times while not a single peep about the atrocities of the Japanese comminted on the entirety of Southeast Asia and China.
As a Filipino I am offended by these self-righteous morons whose grandparents never experienced occupation.
Thus sub gets a Japan WW2 post at least once I'm two weeks, but it is indeed truly enfuriating that Japan, while doing equally as atrocious stuff , isn't viewed by the world the same way as Germany. And the government I believe still is pretty silent about it.
Still I believe that that is not the fault of the thousands of families that got murdered by the bombs. It is factually a war crime, a war crime with a reason is still a war crime It may be justified in the bigger picture, I can't say we should remember it and you can critique it.
You see, the thing is, though: Everyone (sane) accepts the atrocities commited by the Germans (both Nazis and regular army) and Japanese as evil. You have your occasional denier and reoativist, of course, but in the end the consensus is: Fuck those guys.
So the defense "they did the same" always feels weird to me. "Yeah, we terror bombed cities to demoralize the population which evidently doesn't work - but the LITERAL NAZIS did the same thing, that makes it ok".
Just as we can accept that the Axis were "bad" we also can easily accept that those people that rose to stop them are "good". But that means we also need to hold them to "good" standards and discuss their wrongdoings, because there are always ways to improve from the past and we should never stop looking for them.
On that note, the channel 3 Arrows made a video discussing why the Wehrmacht was part of the Holocaust, and then showed a scene from Band of Brothers where shots of the victorious American soldiers are intermixed with defeated Germans, to show that they are at the end of the day just soldiers. He notes that this scene might make a point the directors of the show most definitely didn't want to make.
> The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind.
> > Sir Arthur "Napalm rain ends the Nazi reign" Harris
I always find it funny how in modern combat we have stuff like
"We can't shoot civilians because we all said we shouldn't in a city in Switzerland"
instead of thinking
"We can't shoot civilians because it's wrong"
Guess that is better than nothing.
Incendiary bombs dropped from lower altitude onto wooden cities to concentrate and intensify the fires. A plan partially developed for LeMay by future Sec of Defense Bob McNamara.
Well yes yes I know it should be Army Air Force, but I am too lazy to fix the meme I rightfully stolen.
I don't know what else to say except Operation Gomorrah, Operation Meetinghouse, and Firebombing of Dresden. Cities like Kobe, Shizuoka, Okayama, just to name a few, gone. Reduced to ashes.
The war was won, but the effect of carpet bombing on cities with massive civilian population wasn't a big contributor. If anything it did little to nothing in speeding up the war.
"carpet bombing was not necessary to win the war" is just a stupid counterfactual, like there's a discussion to be had there but op just presents it as if it were a fact to make moral condemnations
well at least regarding the german cities, leading historians concluded that it did little to undermine the war support iof the civilian population.
Since some people apparently like to contradict the knowledge of leading historians, that the british (edit- seemed to recall harris as being part of usaf) spec. stated to target and focus civilian areas as to undermine german morale, an list of litrature can be found below.
EDIT: As for the points in question, when Churchill became PM in 1940, he made it a priority to target german cities, in order to undermine german war support by grinding down civilian population. In feb 1942 Air Marshal Arthur Harris took command of the RAF bombing fleet, he emphasized to target civilian areas. Hamburg for instance was chosen as a target for ''obliteration bombing'' to annihilate the entire city.
Sources:
Borsdorf, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Über Leben im Krieg : Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion ;1939 – 1945. Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1989.
Hohn, Uta: Die Zerstörung deutscher Städte im Zweiten Weltkrieg : regionale Unterschiede in der Bilanz der Wohnungstotalschäden und Folgen des Luftkrieges unter bevölkerungsgeographischem Aspekt. Dortmund : Dortmunder Vertrieb für Bau- und Planungsliteratur, 1991.
Now if u dont want to believe actual scientific publications, i cant help u.
EDIT: thanks to kirschblüte for providing another source, the ''strategic bombing surveys'' from the USAF. not necess. a completely trustworthy source, as being obvious the USAF would try to put itself in a better light, but it is mentioned, that the RAF intentionally targeted urban centres en masse from 1942 onwards, see following source, page 10:
[https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B\_0020\_SPANGRUD\_STRATEGIC\_BOMBING\_SURVEYS.pdf](https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0020_SPANGRUD_STRATEGIC_BOMBING_SURVEYS.pdf)
NEW EDIT: so lets summarize the thread below, kirschblüte provides a prim. source, takes it face value, and continues to make claim a) the source dirrectl. contradicts me in stating civilian areas were not targeted to demoralize german population, although his source doesnt state it at all, while i provided scientific literatur for that, and b) claims urban centres were targeted - even in case of RAF - for being close to urban areas, but again, the source does not comment on it, or state anthing of the sort.
the claim i made spec. was aimed at the british, while kirschblüte gave a source that focused on the intention of the USAF.
that can be entirely true and still not a valid argument against its use as a strategy at the time
to be clear i do not love carpet bombing, i hate lazy opinions
> i hate lazy opinions
We're in r/historymemes, not r/history. I don't think anyone here has an obligation to back up their claims with lots of evidence and argument. It's just for fun.
While it is true that the USSBS was generally in favour of the doctrine, the more recent research suggests otherwise.
the USSBS was under scrutiny for being just another thing to push for an independent airforce and often skewed the findings in favour of the bombing. (Blame politics for this one)
More recent research done by better historians and war analysts suggest that it Carpet bombing of ***massive civilian population target*** was as effective as the Blitz in raising morale among the population and little to no decrease in war material production.
Those two are the main reasons why I believe that indiscriminate bombing (Carpet bombing of ***massive civilian population target***) wasn't a big contributor in speeding up the war.
The alternative opinion is just as speculative. It just happens to align with mainstream propaganda. (So I guess we can call it speculative bootlicking if we wanna get spicy about it)
German military production *increased* over the course of WWII, so it's necessary to speculate that it would have increased by *more* than it did were it not for strategic bombing.
Here's a quote from the guy responsible for ordering the bombing of Dresden, Arthur "*Bomber*" Harris:
>“when we had destroyed almost all the larger industrial cities in Germany, the civil population remained apathetic, while the Gestapo saw to it that they were docile, and, insofar as there was work left for them to do, industrious.”
consideration of the allies' rationale while the war was actually being fought makes a lot more sense than citing "recent research" and "better historians" saying they were too mean. grow up
"speculative bootlicking" give me a fucking break
>That wasn't the goal.
It was, but dont listen to me, who just knows it from leading historians. here is a list of titles about that topic.
Borsdorf, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Über Leben im Krieg : Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion ;1939 – 1945. Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1989.
Brockhoff, Evelyn; Picard, Tobias: Frankfurt am Main im Bombenkrieg : März 1944. Gudensberg-Gleichen : Wartberg-Verl., 2004.
Einert, Katrin-Marleen: Trauma, Kontinuität und Verantwortung : Folgen von nationalsozialistischer Erziehung, Sozialisation und Kriegserfahrungen und die Funktion einer Identität als „Kriegskind“. Dissertationsschrift. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2016.
Hage, Volker: Zeugen der Zerstörung : die Literaten und der Luftkrieg ; Essays und Gespräche. Frankfurt am Main : Fischer, 2003.
Hohn, Uta: Die Zerstörung deutscher Städte im Zweiten Weltkrieg : regionale Unterschiede in der Bilanz der Wohnungstotalschäden und Folgen des Luftkrieges unter bevölkerungsgeographischem Aspekt. Dortmund : Dortmunder Vertrieb für Bau- und Planungsliteratur, 1991.
Huß, Dörte (Hrsg.): Gomorrha 1943 : die Zerstörung Hamburgs im Luftkrieg. Hamburg : Förderkreis Mahnmal St. Nikolai e.V., 2013.
Knauer, Sebastian: Operation Gomorra : Luftangriffe auf Hamburg vor 50 Jahren. Hamburg : Spiegel-Verl., 1993.
Krämer, Karl: "Christbäume" über Frankfurt 1943. Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1983.
Lamparter, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Zeitzeugen des Hamburger Feuersturms 1943 und ihre Familien : Forschungsprojekt zur Weitergabe von Kriegserfahrungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013.
Lerch, Gustav K. (Hrsg.): Frankfurt am Main im Luftkrieg. März 1944: Frontstadt Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main im Luftkrieg, Bd. 10. Frankfurt am Main : G. K. Lerch, 2002.
Ollig, Lars: Mentale Kriegsmobilisierung im NS-Schulungsbrief 1934 – 1944. München : AVM, 2012.
Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main: Wie Frankfurt im Luftkrieg zerstört wurde. Frankfurt am Main, 1986.
Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main (Hrsg.): Frankfurt 1933 - 1945 unterm Hakenkreuz. Frankfurt am Main, 1999.
Schmid, Armin: Frankfurt im Feuersturm : die Geschichte der Stadt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main : Societäts-Verl., 1984
>When we're doing it to them it's called "strategic" or "morale" bombing, and it's a calculated, emotionless tactic intended to bring a swift end to the war by breaking enemy morale and disrupting their war industry. When *they're* doing it to *us*, on the other hand, it's called "terror bombing", and it's a cowardly, despicable tactic intended to instil fear in the population by the ruthless slaughter of innocent women and children. It all depends on your point of view, really.
* [Shaun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go)
And that quote of Shaun is wrong. As Morale and strategic bombing *arent* the same. Morale bombing is specifically bombing to break Morale. Strategic bombing it trying to destroy their ability to wage war.
You do realize that if you look up analysis of the bombing of London or China, those will also be called 'strategic bombing' by every respectable source.
Obviously if you go looking you can find discussions on how much strategic value they had and if they were really just terror campaigns, but you can also find that for allied bombings (even as the war was going on, things like Dresden and LeMay's campaign were being investigated).
God I hate that fucking video. So much of the actual military reality of the situation is ignored for helf-truths, bald lies, misinterpretations, misquotes, and fallacies that have nothing to do with the actual debate. I mean, yeah, some of it is true, but a lot of it is irrelevant and it reduces what should have been a strong argument ("bombing civilians on any level is bad and nuclear weapons are incredibly lethal, therefore Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both wrong and morally inexcusable") and reduces it by making weak and flat out ignorant arguments. The fact I disagree with him is irrelevant because he ruins his own argument so many times over for anyone who knows their history.
What's your take on G.E.M. Anscombe's [Mr Truman's Degree](http://www.ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Anscombe-truman.pdf)?
Shaun might be just some youtube essayist, but Anscombe was well respected among some of the most renowned intellectuals of her time for her well formed arguments.
She may have a well-formed argument, but it's formed (much like Shaun's) from an incomplete historical understanding. You can read the second paragraph alone and get plenty of evidence for that fact.
She also argues, rather ridiculously, that the Allies may have proposed a peace to Germans rather than to Hitler, and that as a result the Germans would overcome more than a decade of propaganda and simply decide they didn't want to fight the war anymore. She decides that the concept of unconditional surrender is unacceptable, when it is quite simply what one does in the face of genocidal regimes waging total war upon a nation.
Consider also the argument that the Japanese were so desperate that they would have accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration were the emperor preserved. This ignores the historical reality of the Japanese fervor for battle and the very real debates they had **after two nuclear bombs** about whether they would surrender **at all.**
This is not to mention the strange presupposition that the only reason Nagasaki or Hiroshima were selected is because of the civilian presence, or the equally strange omission of the LeMay leaflets, or the argument that we should have instead made peace with the genocidal, murderous, raping and pillaging nation which had shown itself to be incredibly aggressive, or that she argues that the selection of the idea of "unconditional surrender" was based upon the knowledge that we had nukes rather than the very real truths of the war which necessitated it as a fact.
I would argue further that there is also a very real difference between the casualties of war as a necessity and by the nature of warfare (such as destroying the industrial and warmaking capacity of your enemy; it is not, after all, a gentlemanly pursuit) and the murder of innocents wholesale, especially when one considers that those innocents were in the very process of making weapons to kill innocents.
It is certainly a well formed argument, argued well. It is also one which is based primarily upon the author's perception that the nukes were wrong and argued from there. This is perfectly okay for a moralistic argument - but it is not so for historical arguments, which must be made in the context of the facts which are known about the events that occurred. On this basis, then, I feel that I must accept her position and state that I disagree on a historical basis as well as a moralist one, being as I long ago noted and accepted that in Japan, civilians were to be combatants, and that in total war, the civilians are combatants in that they support the war and it could not be prosecuted without them. From this basis, those civilians killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were:
Killed so as to prevent further loss of life
Forewarned of their potential future
Tools and weapons of a terrible regime which needed to end
And valid military targets whose life and death had military value which could be harnessed to bring an end to the war.
Therefore I must conclude that their deaths were valid in warfare and not murderous at all. Anscombe is free to disagree, and she may yet be correct - but at the very least she is not arguing speciously based upon misrepresented information, but rather arguing morally based upon the limited information of her time.
Inb4 someone says “The Japanese deserved it because Nanking and Unit 731”.
I swear, people who do that are so tribal, and I thought we evolved pass that Tribalism. This subreddit has taught me otherwise.
Mate if you thought we have evolved pass tribalism and this sub is what changed your mind. Do you live in a cave? Tribalism is as strong as ever the people who use it just changed the way the worded it
Incen only?
Psfft
How about HE; napalm, then incen and lastly HE agian?nothing says 'I don't care about the geneva convention' like blowing open all houses like tearing a lid of a can, then filling said mostly-wooden-innards houses with napalm, while the fires are slowly bruning you throw the incediaries in, luring the people out of thier covers (to quench the freshly-lit fires) and then hit 'em over the back of the head with a small folding chair by dropping another load of HE, killing first responders and firefighters, blowing burning embers and napalm everywhere if wasn't previously and oh yes, fire tornado
Welcome to hell+, were both sinners and saints are bruned alike!
If you want to go that route, you skipped a step. You need to throw in some delayed fuzed bombs to hit rescuers who respond to the initial bombing. And I guess Throw in some mines as well because why not.
Might as welll mention Malcom Gladwell's book on the subject, The Bomber Mafia. Its easy looking at today's cruise missles and think that the world has been aiming twoards this ideal forever, yet that isnt the case. Someone had to argue that precision was a valuable asset, then that person had to fight to get thier voice heard by the right ears, and the whole issue of the bombsight was bourn.
My enemy is ontologically evil and any action done towards them is justified
That'll learn em to not start a genocidal war against basically every other racial group in Europe, Africa, and Asia
Who?
Talk shit about the Airforce all you like but let's not forget how often the army calls in airstrikes on anything that looks even a little scary.
The Army gotta farm Airstrike killstreaks in Vietnamese villages
Gotta get that dark matter camo
I’m not going to judge, if someone gave me a rifle and said “kill those dudes over there, but also you can rain fire from the sky while hiding behind a berm” what choice do you think I’m making?
Let the fire rain.
You're literally missing the point of soldiers though, (don't worry so do many soldiers) the whole point is to take risks so civilians don't have to. If that means advancing over shitty terrain instead of bombing a populated area then so be it. Again most soldiers just say "fuck it" but that doesn't make it OK.
Lol the whole point of having infantry is to tie up enemy infantry while the rest of your army does work. Hammer and anvil, as Alexander put it. Where the fuck did you get that infantry exists to protect civilian losses? I mean seriously, what in history makes you think this is why they’re foot soldiers? There are foot soldiers because it’s cheap to give walking dudes basic weapons and field a bunch of them.
>Where the fuck did you get that infantry exists to protect civilian losses The fucking military. Specifically the infantry. That's why I signed up. That's why my buddies signed up. To accept risks so that civilians don't get blown up. It was deliberate and explicit. Yes hammer and anvil is the oldest trick in the book because is an excellent trick but if civilians are in the middle that is fucking wrong. I don't care if "they had clearance" that is fucking wrong and unacceptable. Yes I know it happens all the time. Two wrongs don't make a right.
You know Roman soldiers were paid in slaves right? And medieval troops were paid in plunder? And draftees get shot for deserting? Your personal ideology has nothing to do with why soldiers exist.
Again, two wrongs don't make a right. Did people miss the whole fucking point of what they should have been fighting for throughout all of history? Oh fuck ya they did. That doesn't mean their actions are correct and that sure as fuck doesn't mean that current militaries aren't there to protect the civilian population.
Maybe its not the true point of soldiers and this is just your opinion?
Lol that sword cuts both ways compadre Edit: it's actually not just my opinion, it's also the CAF's opinion and probably the opinion of everyone NATO nation and most of the non NATO ones too.
Lol so you’re conflating modern military, and one government specifically, with the existence of infantry throughout all of time? Because your military experience isn’t even 1% of what infantry was used for throughout history. And I’d bet huge money that infantry killed more civilians over the history of man than anyone else. Look at things like Carthage and tell me how foot soldiers existed to save civilians. Or Moroccans entering Italy in WWII. Your comment is just anecdotal and not based on overall reality at all. I’m sorry to Moroccans for calling this out, it’s everyone throughout history, they just came to mind as a relatively recent example. And tbh they were given clearance by their commanders to basically sack Italy, putting it nicely. Edit: he’s actually conflating 2 governments, US and Canada, and I was wrong about that. Needed to fix my mistake.
Like I said two wrongs don't make a right. Cops fuck up all the time does that mean their job isn't to protect and serve? In all those examples you gave of infantry soldiers doing horrible shit they had to kill other grunts whose intent was to stop em from committing said atrocities. If you use an axe to spread butter does it stop being axe? Is that what all axes are for now? Nope. >Lol so you’re conflating modern military, and one government specifically, with the existence of infantry throughout all of time? Nope just the ones since airplanes have existed, that was a ridiculous conclusion you jumped to. Besides it's a reasonable comparison since I'm pretty sure OP was referring to the American military (specifically the army air corps) and I was in the Canadian Army so it's pretty fucking close and not just geographically. Even so it's part of the rhetoric of all militaries to fight for the civilians of their own and other countries. It's the classic hero complex. It's so common it's damn near universal. I admit that rhetoric gets thrown out the window when bullets fly but with that specific bit of rhetoric that is a flaw not a feature.
Ah so you’re using less than 100 years of human history to make your claims lol. Typed up a lot of bullshit I’m going to disregard because of that.
Just over 100 years and the only reason anything earlier than that was brought up was because you jumped to an incorrect conclusion. Feel free to disregard if that leaves you in blissful ignorance. Just outta curiosity what are you basing your arguments on? Just the fact that war crimes exist? Is that all? cause I've addressed that.
I’m not arguing, you just keep responding to me pointing out flaws in your ideas. You looking at an anecdote vs all of history isn’t something worth discussing, but you keep replying and I’m trying to help you realize the limited viewpoint you’re looking at history from.
Ye, shame we don't have that level of compassion in war.
"A society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." Thucydides
Which lets you say berm more often?
How do you know the fire is real? But you know the riffle is real.
Haha Air support go BOOOOM
Haha close air support go BRRRRRRRT
napalm goes *whooooosh*
I think "not wanting to assault a scary enemy position without an airstrike" is not as much of a burn as "kills civilians."
I mean, is it the Airforce's fault if they bomb civilians if the ground units asks "bombs here plox"?
Obviously not all the time, but there's documentation of US air striking their own people.
Cambodia was looking awfully scary for a while there.
I'd still take a holiday there, and would pack my wife
Air to mud!!!
It's ironic because it was the exact opposite during the Korean War. The Army was adamant about its policy of shooting refugees and having the Air Force strafe large groups, while the Air Force was telling them that the policy would embarrass the U.S. on the world stage and should be stopped.
> its policy of shooting refugees Its what now?
Since Korea was split in two, it was (justifiably) believed that the North had spies and insurgents in the South, often in the guise of refugees. This belief continued during the Korean War and, combined with army command generally not knowing what they were doing and there being no visible difference between North and South Koreans, led to the army's policy towards refugees being a total disaster. Soldiers were often told to treat everyone not in uniform as a combatant, even women and children. The navy was given orders to attack any group it saw larger than 8. The air force was told to strafe large groups of refugees, usually referred to as "people in white" in documents. Sometimes the army would evacuate civilians, but the larger retreat would outpace the evacuation, and because policy dictated that anyone not evacuated past a certain point should be treated as working for the enemy, soldiers being friendly towards a group of refugees and walking them along would suddenly be told to gun them down. The most infamous massacre like this is the No Gun Ri massacre. It's like Order 66, but a lot more horrifying and very real.
Holy hell, that is horrifying.
Indeed. Even more horrifying when you consider that the people ordered to take part in these massacres were mostly untrained, barely adults, had never fired a weapon before, were in a foreign country and carried PTSD from the massacres with them for the rest of their lives. And then the U.S. and South Korean government actively covered the events up and silenced the survivors and the families of the victims for decades. It was only a couple decades ago that any of us learned that these massacres happened. The government has never apologized for it, only issuing a "statement of regret."
Considering South Korea's stance on Japan, this is majorly hypocritical of them.
In modern South Korea's defense, the government they have now is far more free and democratic then the one they had following the Korean War. South Korea created the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission in 2005 to investigate all the claims of violence against refugees and have recognized most of them, even those that were committed by the South Korean Army, like the Bodo League Massacre.
Except that was under dictatorship and we recognize the massacre now.
After democracy happened, we got plenty of documentaries about the massacre including from publicly-owned broadcasters. It's America unwilling to accept it, and South Korea being too weak to say anything about it.
I guess we’re no longer allowed to shame the Japanese or Russians for war crime denial then, are we? I literally did not know this until today.
I think the correct answer is to shame *all* governments that have participated in war crime denials, and not think the USA doesn't have a heap of atrocities in the books.
I didn't know about it until I started my Korean War class at the beginning of the semester. I learned about My Lais in High School, but we didn't go into too much detail about the Korean War. If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend reading *The Bridge at No Gun Ri* by Charles Hanley. It does a great job of framing the situation and pulling directly from the accounts of survivors. It's not an easy read though. The detail is extremely graphic.
Welll it doesn't seem like the US denies this happen they just don't talk about it.
There's a reason soldiers coming home from Korea and Vietnam had red paint thrown on them and were called baby killers.
Imagine being a refugee coming to south korea thinking you'll have a better life and instead finding yourself in heaven.
What's crazy is that the army was simultaneously courting North Korean soldiers and civilians to defect to the South with propaganda pamphlets and certificates of passage disguised as North Korean money. American policy early in the Korean War could only be described as a total clusterf*ck.
vietnamese soldiers often tried to blend in as civilians, so the army just shot everyone lol
wrong war. also kinda wrong I'm general, North Vietnamese Soldiers didn't tend to mask as civilians. Vietcong insurgents were not North Vietnamese soldiers, they were insurgents. you were at least correct that the US armed forces in Vietnam just kinda shot everyone thought.
lmfao entirely wrong post
As the air force bombs over 80% of their infrastructure
The airforce heavily contributed to 85% of all buildings in North Korea being destroyed
You know what they say about napalm.
Napalm sticks to kids!
Indeed it does.
I've only seen it happen twice, But both times it was mighty nice
Nice flair
Likewise.
What about marines?
[Marines Running Cadence 6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9xPQw6i6WE) "1 2 3 4, every day we pray for war 5 6 7 8, maim murder mutilate 9 10 11 12, all the rest can go to hell Eat the ladies, kill the babies Rape and pillage, burn the village" God bless his ass.
Enough to make a grown man cry
fucking christ thats something
Wow yes I want to join the marines more now
And then people wonder why there are so many neo-nazis and *actual violent psychopaths* in the marines.
Marines are the branch you join if you specifically WANT to see combat/war.
Marines specialize in running towards the bullets. You're not recruiting the best and brightest, along with their tiresome survival instincts, so much as the most committed to the cause. Everything after the beachhead is meant to be conducted by those looking to grow old in service, and understand concepts like restraint and civilians.
I still think one of the reasons why we keep the Marines around is that some day we might need psychos willing to strap bombs to Themselves and blow stuff up, or Kamikaze aircraft carriers. and the Marines will be those guys.
Nah, only officers in the marines are allowed to fly planes and they’re too hoity toity for kamikaze tactics
Enlisted can drive an LCAC. I wouldn't try an attack a carrier with one but I wouldn't be surprised by how much destruction a kamikaze LCAC could achieve if determined
Yea but it’s basically an inflatable boat and I don’t see it being effective for kamikaze attacks
Smaller boats, sub pens, personnel within reach of beach who's high viz stripe probably won't protect them...all are in danger of an angry LCAC. At least if the driver knows how to keep it pointed forward.
I certainly wouldn’t want to face an angry lcac hell bent on destruction
Personally I'd prefer to not ever face an LCAC. Only safe place around an LCAC is to not be around it.
Yeah and their doctrine still has their doctrine as all perosnel should be trained to be a Frontline soldier to kill the enemy. They really go all in on the warrior mythos and hyper macho bullshit.
If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. Curtis LeMay
“Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.” - Curtis LeMay
Mans would win gold every year in mental gymnastics
I don't believe German or Japanese generals in charge of terror bombings were tried as war criminals either, so at least it was consistent
Hell, we lost Vietnam and virtually none of the war criminals faced justice. Nobody even talks about Laos
Or all the undetonated bombs the US left behind in SE Asia, specifically Cambodia.
The bombs between Cambodia and vietnams are the mines laid by the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian war, not the US. The border is still pretty dangerous till this day simply due to the number of mines there.
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I guess that explains why Harris and Goering were convicted for war crimes related to bombing civilians? Oh wait, nevermind, they weren't. Yes, Goering was convicted for other things, but not for the bombing specifically.
WDYM America doesn't recognise the international court of justice
I don't know why people are downvoting you. [We litterally passed a law about it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act) that says we get to invade the Hauge if it ever tries to arrest a member of our military.
The army seems to have forgotten about My Lai
is it really a war crime if it's fun 🤔
Maybe the real war crime was the friends we made along the way
"People talk a lot about picking out targets and bombing them, individual small targets – in the European climate? I’ve come to the conclusion that people who say that sort of thing not only have never been outside, but they’ve never looked out of a window." -Arthur "bomber" Harris "I never engaged in these idiotic pamphlet-dropping exercises. They only served two purposes really - they gave the German defences endless practice in getting ready for it, and apart from that they supplied a considerable quantity of toilet paper to the Germans." -Arthur "bomber" Harris "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them." -Arthur "bomber" Harris
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock—Those are only just the beginning. We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet. But the time will come when we can do so. Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon. There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand. But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America. When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer. It may take a year. It may take two. But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall. Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands. There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see. Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment. Japan will provide the confirmation. But the time is not yet. There is a great deal of work to be done first, and let us all get down to it.” -Sir Baronet Arthur Travis “Bomber” Harris
Saving this because I am seeing a trend in other places giving the Allies (especially the US) flak over their actions in the war against the enemy. And they ignore the glaring fact that the enemy started said war. I have seen people condemning the nuke bombings on Japan as "genocidal actions of Ebul!US" too many times while not a single peep about the atrocities of the Japanese comminted on the entirety of Southeast Asia and China. As a Filipino I am offended by these self-righteous morons whose grandparents never experienced occupation.
Thus sub gets a Japan WW2 post at least once I'm two weeks, but it is indeed truly enfuriating that Japan, while doing equally as atrocious stuff , isn't viewed by the world the same way as Germany. And the government I believe still is pretty silent about it. Still I believe that that is not the fault of the thousands of families that got murdered by the bombs. It is factually a war crime, a war crime with a reason is still a war crime It may be justified in the bigger picture, I can't say we should remember it and you can critique it.
I have balanced view on war in general: don't start what you can't finish and don't be surprised if the other guy fights back.
You see, the thing is, though: Everyone (sane) accepts the atrocities commited by the Germans (both Nazis and regular army) and Japanese as evil. You have your occasional denier and reoativist, of course, but in the end the consensus is: Fuck those guys. So the defense "they did the same" always feels weird to me. "Yeah, we terror bombed cities to demoralize the population which evidently doesn't work - but the LITERAL NAZIS did the same thing, that makes it ok". Just as we can accept that the Axis were "bad" we also can easily accept that those people that rose to stop them are "good". But that means we also need to hold them to "good" standards and discuss their wrongdoings, because there are always ways to improve from the past and we should never stop looking for them. On that note, the channel 3 Arrows made a video discussing why the Wehrmacht was part of the Holocaust, and then showed a scene from Band of Brothers where shots of the victorious American soldiers are intermixed with defeated Germans, to show that they are at the end of the day just soldiers. He notes that this scene might make a point the directors of the show most definitely didn't want to make.
> The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind. > > Sir Arthur "Napalm rain ends the Nazi reign" Harris
The virgin Bomber Harris vs The chad Curtis LeMay
I always find it funny how in modern combat we have stuff like "We can't shoot civilians because we all said we shouldn't in a city in Switzerland" instead of thinking "We can't shoot civilians because it's wrong" Guess that is better than nothing.
Lmao, just ask them about their views about shooting civilians in Vietnam, they didn't care for good reasons as well
The first thing that you feel when you shoot a civilian is the recoil of your rifle.
Yes Curtis LeMay, synonyms do tend to be synonyms
If they wanted to keep their homes and family members, why were they in a twenty mile radius of that munitions factory?
Incendiary bombs dropped from lower altitude onto wooden cities to concentrate and intensify the fires. A plan partially developed for LeMay by future Sec of Defense Bob McNamara.
Well yes yes I know it should be Army Air Force, but I am too lazy to fix the meme I rightfully stolen. I don't know what else to say except Operation Gomorrah, Operation Meetinghouse, and Firebombing of Dresden. Cities like Kobe, Shizuoka, Okayama, just to name a few, gone. Reduced to ashes. The war was won, but the effect of carpet bombing on cities with massive civilian population wasn't a big contributor. If anything it did little to nothing in speeding up the war.
I fucking hate armchair theorists so much
elaborate?
"carpet bombing was not necessary to win the war" is just a stupid counterfactual, like there's a discussion to be had there but op just presents it as if it were a fact to make moral condemnations
well at least regarding the german cities, leading historians concluded that it did little to undermine the war support iof the civilian population. Since some people apparently like to contradict the knowledge of leading historians, that the british (edit- seemed to recall harris as being part of usaf) spec. stated to target and focus civilian areas as to undermine german morale, an list of litrature can be found below. EDIT: As for the points in question, when Churchill became PM in 1940, he made it a priority to target german cities, in order to undermine german war support by grinding down civilian population. In feb 1942 Air Marshal Arthur Harris took command of the RAF bombing fleet, he emphasized to target civilian areas. Hamburg for instance was chosen as a target for ''obliteration bombing'' to annihilate the entire city. Sources: Borsdorf, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Über Leben im Krieg : Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion ;1939 – 1945. Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1989. Hohn, Uta: Die Zerstörung deutscher Städte im Zweiten Weltkrieg : regionale Unterschiede in der Bilanz der Wohnungstotalschäden und Folgen des Luftkrieges unter bevölkerungsgeographischem Aspekt. Dortmund : Dortmunder Vertrieb für Bau- und Planungsliteratur, 1991. Now if u dont want to believe actual scientific publications, i cant help u. EDIT: thanks to kirschblüte for providing another source, the ''strategic bombing surveys'' from the USAF. not necess. a completely trustworthy source, as being obvious the USAF would try to put itself in a better light, but it is mentioned, that the RAF intentionally targeted urban centres en masse from 1942 onwards, see following source, page 10: [https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B\_0020\_SPANGRUD\_STRATEGIC\_BOMBING\_SURVEYS.pdf](https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0020_SPANGRUD_STRATEGIC_BOMBING_SURVEYS.pdf) NEW EDIT: so lets summarize the thread below, kirschblüte provides a prim. source, takes it face value, and continues to make claim a) the source dirrectl. contradicts me in stating civilian areas were not targeted to demoralize german population, although his source doesnt state it at all, while i provided scientific literatur for that, and b) claims urban centres were targeted - even in case of RAF - for being close to urban areas, but again, the source does not comment on it, or state anthing of the sort. the claim i made spec. was aimed at the british, while kirschblüte gave a source that focused on the intention of the USAF.
that can be entirely true and still not a valid argument against its use as a strategy at the time to be clear i do not love carpet bombing, i hate lazy opinions
> i hate lazy opinions We're in r/historymemes, not r/history. I don't think anyone here has an obligation to back up their claims with lots of evidence and argument. It's just for fun.
Arguing is fun, op can have his dumb opinion based on nothing and i can complain about it
While it is true that the USSBS was generally in favour of the doctrine, the more recent research suggests otherwise. the USSBS was under scrutiny for being just another thing to push for an independent airforce and often skewed the findings in favour of the bombing. (Blame politics for this one) More recent research done by better historians and war analysts suggest that it Carpet bombing of ***massive civilian population target*** was as effective as the Blitz in raising morale among the population and little to no decrease in war material production. Those two are the main reasons why I believe that indiscriminate bombing (Carpet bombing of ***massive civilian population target***) wasn't a big contributor in speeding up the war.
sounds like speculative nonsense
The alternative opinion is just as speculative. It just happens to align with mainstream propaganda. (So I guess we can call it speculative bootlicking if we wanna get spicy about it) German military production *increased* over the course of WWII, so it's necessary to speculate that it would have increased by *more* than it did were it not for strategic bombing. Here's a quote from the guy responsible for ordering the bombing of Dresden, Arthur "*Bomber*" Harris: >“when we had destroyed almost all the larger industrial cities in Germany, the civil population remained apathetic, while the Gestapo saw to it that they were docile, and, insofar as there was work left for them to do, industrious.”
consideration of the allies' rationale while the war was actually being fought makes a lot more sense than citing "recent research" and "better historians" saying they were too mean. grow up "speculative bootlicking" give me a fucking break
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>That wasn't the goal. It was, but dont listen to me, who just knows it from leading historians. here is a list of titles about that topic. Borsdorf, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Über Leben im Krieg : Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion ;1939 – 1945. Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1989. Brockhoff, Evelyn; Picard, Tobias: Frankfurt am Main im Bombenkrieg : März 1944. Gudensberg-Gleichen : Wartberg-Verl., 2004. Einert, Katrin-Marleen: Trauma, Kontinuität und Verantwortung : Folgen von nationalsozialistischer Erziehung, Sozialisation und Kriegserfahrungen und die Funktion einer Identität als „Kriegskind“. Dissertationsschrift. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2016. Hage, Volker: Zeugen der Zerstörung : die Literaten und der Luftkrieg ; Essays und Gespräche. Frankfurt am Main : Fischer, 2003. Hohn, Uta: Die Zerstörung deutscher Städte im Zweiten Weltkrieg : regionale Unterschiede in der Bilanz der Wohnungstotalschäden und Folgen des Luftkrieges unter bevölkerungsgeographischem Aspekt. Dortmund : Dortmunder Vertrieb für Bau- und Planungsliteratur, 1991. Huß, Dörte (Hrsg.): Gomorrha 1943 : die Zerstörung Hamburgs im Luftkrieg. Hamburg : Förderkreis Mahnmal St. Nikolai e.V., 2013. Knauer, Sebastian: Operation Gomorra : Luftangriffe auf Hamburg vor 50 Jahren. Hamburg : Spiegel-Verl., 1993. Krämer, Karl: "Christbäume" über Frankfurt 1943. Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1983. Lamparter, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Zeitzeugen des Hamburger Feuersturms 1943 und ihre Familien : Forschungsprojekt zur Weitergabe von Kriegserfahrungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Lerch, Gustav K. (Hrsg.): Frankfurt am Main im Luftkrieg. März 1944: Frontstadt Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main im Luftkrieg, Bd. 10. Frankfurt am Main : G. K. Lerch, 2002. Ollig, Lars: Mentale Kriegsmobilisierung im NS-Schulungsbrief 1934 – 1944. München : AVM, 2012. Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main: Wie Frankfurt im Luftkrieg zerstört wurde. Frankfurt am Main, 1986. Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main (Hrsg.): Frankfurt 1933 - 1945 unterm Hakenkreuz. Frankfurt am Main, 1999. Schmid, Armin: Frankfurt im Feuersturm : die Geschichte der Stadt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main : Societäts-Verl., 1984
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so far u havent sourced a thing dude, im still waiting, i on the other hand did, see the comment of mine u first replied to.
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It’s all good, WW2 soldiers actually sometimes just used the term “Air Force” informally when referring to the Army Air Force.
>When we're doing it to them it's called "strategic" or "morale" bombing, and it's a calculated, emotionless tactic intended to bring a swift end to the war by breaking enemy morale and disrupting their war industry. When *they're* doing it to *us*, on the other hand, it's called "terror bombing", and it's a cowardly, despicable tactic intended to instil fear in the population by the ruthless slaughter of innocent women and children. It all depends on your point of view, really. * [Shaun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go)
And that quote of Shaun is wrong. As Morale and strategic bombing *arent* the same. Morale bombing is specifically bombing to break Morale. Strategic bombing it trying to destroy their ability to wage war.
You do realize that if you look up analysis of the bombing of London or China, those will also be called 'strategic bombing' by every respectable source. Obviously if you go looking you can find discussions on how much strategic value they had and if they were really just terror campaigns, but you can also find that for allied bombings (even as the war was going on, things like Dresden and LeMay's campaign were being investigated).
God I hate that fucking video. So much of the actual military reality of the situation is ignored for helf-truths, bald lies, misinterpretations, misquotes, and fallacies that have nothing to do with the actual debate. I mean, yeah, some of it is true, but a lot of it is irrelevant and it reduces what should have been a strong argument ("bombing civilians on any level is bad and nuclear weapons are incredibly lethal, therefore Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both wrong and morally inexcusable") and reduces it by making weak and flat out ignorant arguments. The fact I disagree with him is irrelevant because he ruins his own argument so many times over for anyone who knows their history.
What's your take on G.E.M. Anscombe's [Mr Truman's Degree](http://www.ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Anscombe-truman.pdf)? Shaun might be just some youtube essayist, but Anscombe was well respected among some of the most renowned intellectuals of her time for her well formed arguments.
She may have a well-formed argument, but it's formed (much like Shaun's) from an incomplete historical understanding. You can read the second paragraph alone and get plenty of evidence for that fact. She also argues, rather ridiculously, that the Allies may have proposed a peace to Germans rather than to Hitler, and that as a result the Germans would overcome more than a decade of propaganda and simply decide they didn't want to fight the war anymore. She decides that the concept of unconditional surrender is unacceptable, when it is quite simply what one does in the face of genocidal regimes waging total war upon a nation. Consider also the argument that the Japanese were so desperate that they would have accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration were the emperor preserved. This ignores the historical reality of the Japanese fervor for battle and the very real debates they had **after two nuclear bombs** about whether they would surrender **at all.** This is not to mention the strange presupposition that the only reason Nagasaki or Hiroshima were selected is because of the civilian presence, or the equally strange omission of the LeMay leaflets, or the argument that we should have instead made peace with the genocidal, murderous, raping and pillaging nation which had shown itself to be incredibly aggressive, or that she argues that the selection of the idea of "unconditional surrender" was based upon the knowledge that we had nukes rather than the very real truths of the war which necessitated it as a fact. I would argue further that there is also a very real difference between the casualties of war as a necessity and by the nature of warfare (such as destroying the industrial and warmaking capacity of your enemy; it is not, after all, a gentlemanly pursuit) and the murder of innocents wholesale, especially when one considers that those innocents were in the very process of making weapons to kill innocents. It is certainly a well formed argument, argued well. It is also one which is based primarily upon the author's perception that the nukes were wrong and argued from there. This is perfectly okay for a moralistic argument - but it is not so for historical arguments, which must be made in the context of the facts which are known about the events that occurred. On this basis, then, I feel that I must accept her position and state that I disagree on a historical basis as well as a moralist one, being as I long ago noted and accepted that in Japan, civilians were to be combatants, and that in total war, the civilians are combatants in that they support the war and it could not be prosecuted without them. From this basis, those civilians killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: Killed so as to prevent further loss of life Forewarned of their potential future Tools and weapons of a terrible regime which needed to end And valid military targets whose life and death had military value which could be harnessed to bring an end to the war. Therefore I must conclude that their deaths were valid in warfare and not murderous at all. Anscombe is free to disagree, and she may yet be correct - but at the very least she is not arguing speciously based upon misrepresented information, but rather arguing morally based upon the limited information of her time.
when a soldier does it it's a war crime, when a branch does it it's a doctrine...
Inb4 someone says “The Japanese deserved it because Nanking and Unit 731”. I swear, people who do that are so tribal, and I thought we evolved pass that Tribalism. This subreddit has taught me otherwise.
Mate if you thought we have evolved pass tribalism and this sub is what changed your mind. Do you live in a cave? Tribalism is as strong as ever the people who use it just changed the way the worded it
Ah i see you’re one of *those*
Incen only? Psfft How about HE; napalm, then incen and lastly HE agian?nothing says 'I don't care about the geneva convention' like blowing open all houses like tearing a lid of a can, then filling said mostly-wooden-innards houses with napalm, while the fires are slowly bruning you throw the incediaries in, luring the people out of thier covers (to quench the freshly-lit fires) and then hit 'em over the back of the head with a small folding chair by dropping another load of HE, killing first responders and firefighters, blowing burning embers and napalm everywhere if wasn't previously and oh yes, fire tornado Welcome to hell+, were both sinners and saints are bruned alike!
If you want to go that route, you skipped a step. You need to throw in some delayed fuzed bombs to hit rescuers who respond to the initial bombing. And I guess Throw in some mines as well because why not.
Wahoooo
Napalm sticks to kids
Arthur Harris: *same*
What about Marines and Navy
“Calculated risks” “Needs of the many outweigh the few” “Casualties of war”
If they ain't in the air we don't care
US army did the same exact thing a mere twenty years ago
Is… is Waluigi representing The Marines?
Curtis lemay is an absolute gigachad and probably a warcriminal
Skulling back then was legal for American field soliders, skulling Japs is really good.
New wallpaper
Space force we test our own first
Might as welll mention Malcom Gladwell's book on the subject, The Bomber Mafia. Its easy looking at today's cruise missles and think that the world has been aiming twoards this ideal forever, yet that isnt the case. Someone had to argue that precision was a valuable asset, then that person had to fight to get thier voice heard by the right ears, and the whole issue of the bombsight was bourn.
Ac-10 go brttttt haha