The Almighty Turtle
Posts: 64
Joined: 11/15/2006
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Ok than. Sorry I took so long. I was out of town for a bit without internet connection.
To KG Erwin, I must say that I do not need an introduction to demonization. It has been a standard tactic in all matter of things, from war to politics. I have had to wade through miles of US posters calling Americans to arms against the "Yellow Menace", and demanding that "every last murdering Jap be killed," amongst other things. However, it is of note that the term "propaganda" has frequently been used to mean a biased, factually-challenged piece that only mentions one side of the story. This can be correct in many,many occasions. However, it is not necessarily started on falsehood, some of the best propaganda being based on fact.
This is obvious when the Soviets used propaganda describing real massacres the Germans committed in Russia, and Germans doing vice-versa, and Western Allied forces making a big stink out of Lidice. However, if you note, much of the propaganda that the nations in the war spread, you notice that much of it is vague, and frequently stereotypical (see things like the anti-Japanese posters for the US and German propaganda against Russia). Thus, when one attempts to discern fact from fiction in propaganda this long ago, one has to look for specific locations and events. These are relatively hard to do, but, if the propaganda is relatively factual, one can usually draw it to a real or believed atrocity.
This is where several propaganda machines fell apart: the Germans in the war, while finding no dire shortage of Soviet atrocities, literally conjured up ones by the Western Allies in many cases, or, if the event actually happened, like one piece showing Americans (including the Black Savages and Caucasian race-traitors so-loved by the Reich's propaganda ministry) killing several Axis POWs at Gela Airfield in Sicily, they conveniently "forgot" to mention that the responsible were tried and convicted, a problem that did not plague their comrades drawing Soviets.
In this, the Western Allies did not have to frequently "invent" (though some doubtless did) atrocities or omit such information. Indeed, while being stereotypical to (very) frequently racist, the info at the heart is amazingly accurate. Does that mean every WA propaganda piece is true? Obviously not, but is shows that one did not have to dig hard to find dirt on the Axis, and that most of the lying came from sugar-coating losses, and covering for Soviet atrocities on average.
So, yes, propaganda of all ranges of truths did indeed frequently affect the will of the nation producing it to fight, as shown by how many Japanese were motivated by both Bushido, but also by false atrocities by such "scholar" as the Tokyo Rose. Indeed, in every army, there were probably a good deal of stiffs who did not want to be there, and were only motivated by thinking that their side was the most honorable and righteous one, and preformed honorably.
However, history also shows that, like my parents said "most stereotypes have some truth in them" and (Indian driver-jokes that I never liked aside), the track record of the Axis showed that the stereotypes, while being doubtless blanket statements, were not without truth, and substantial amounts of it at that.
To Whitmire, If you think that is "Hollywood propaganda", than you have OBVIOUSLY not seen much if "modern" Hollywood movies .
However, if you are referring to the olden-day movies, than yes, that would be a pretty accurate description of them.
However, if you think I thought that the WAs were "saints", than you need to stop speed-reading. I said that COMPARED TO THEIR ALLIES AND ENEMIES the WA were saints. Now, I am certain that the WAs were not completely good, obviously. Everybody knows about the wartime breaches of the constitution and of the internments. These were not pretty times. And I would be far from it to claim that they were. However, when you say that the moral highground is " just a matter of taking it and holding on to it with the victors' rights." I must say that being victorious does indeed help the reports, obviously. And yes, you are indeed correct that, had the Axis won, we would be seeing Dresden, the bombing campaign, and the internments being emphasized while people would think that "Auschwitz" was the location of Napoleon's great victory over the Austrian and Russian forces (provided of course the Reich did not rewrite it to portray the heroic Austrians facing off against the racially degenerate Russians allied with the decadence of the "enlightened" French, and managing to eek out a decisive win.)
However, to think that that is literally all that there is to it is rubbish of the highest degree. The fact remains that, while the Western Allies and the Germans alike paraded groups they considered untrustworthy into tightly-watched compounds, when the Japanese-Americans went into the shower rooms, it was either WATER that came out, or nothing at all due to cr@ppy plumbing, not lethal gas used to kill hundreds in one fell swoop.
As for the area-bombing campaign, it is easy in this era of missiles accurate enough to hit Mahmoud Van Sharia in his right nostril when he is picking it, while at the same time having no concept of an era where there was not a single bomb that was nearly that accurate in execution. The reason for the bombing campaigns were to both weaken German morale (which it DID, contrary to the politically correct but-the-mighty-Red-Army-had-already-defeated-them mantra) but also to knock out key installations that would hamper the Reich and the Empire.
A fact that many overlook while mentioning how Dresden was a blooming arts center was that it was NOT selected because the General Staff thought that a million shattered stained-glass sets would cause Germany to surrender. It was targeted for elimination because it was a key location for supplies, war materials, and supply/communication lines to the fronts (all facts that the late Kurt Vonnegut failed to mentioned).
The bombing campaign, through terrifying and brutal, also helped cripple the Reich's coordination and manufacturing, while giving Germany a taste of what their belligerent policies (which FAR predated the 3rd Reich, see Otto Von Pikehat) that there was a downside to aggression.
And to head off any "now you have justified the Blitz" rants, I will have tot answer to the negative. Had the Luftwaffe continued to target the aeronautics industry and then the Royal Navy, than yes, they could very well be considered to have ended the war without undue collateral damage from the bombing (of course, what would have come after is inexcusable and brutal, but that is from Hitler's policies for Germany.)
The Blitz, historically, was a relatively stupid affair. The Reich had the correct idea of blasting the RAF to pieces and then going after the Navy second for invasion. However, after that initial good planning and some Allied ploys to cover up how badly they were hit, the German command began a long waltz into looloo land, with no cohesive strategy to break British will, and meandering between different targets, failing to do sufficient damage to any of them, while also targeting intentionally several locations with no strategic value, such as minor towns and villages that did not serve strategic or tactical purposes.
This contrasts with the systematic and deliberate destruction of German and Japanese locations with the intent and the means to reduce their ability to wage war.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many seem to not notice what the alternatives were. Let me enlighten you:
Operation Downfall: over 500,000 dead Allies and most of the population of Japan estimated in casualties due to Japanese beliefs and defensibility.
A long embargo: a choice that would have introduced famine to the home islands and killed far more than the bombs over years before a surrender can be considered realistic, given the Japanese mindset and that of their Junta.
A useless Peace: a small, largely useless "surrender" that would NOT have removed the old Imperialists, and would have given Japan the ability to muster a new war machine relatively rapidly, due to the amount of territory they would have been allowed to keep.
Any sound good?
I did not think so.
And also, remember that, after Nagasaki, the Imperial Junta tried to prevent the Emperor from surrendering, and send armed troops into his house to find and destroy the surrender ordinance, but were thwarted by a firebombing that cut the power to much of Tokyo.
And this could go on to other factors, such as the Kwantung army going down with a series of rapes and slaughters in China, to preventing Soviet influence, and others, but my fingers are a bit sore right now, so I will not go into those yet.
The fact remains that, contrary to knocking the WAs off into "the sludge with the rest of 'em", it was a decision that, while costly, managed to cut short a war that would have been prolonged and made even more bloody by a fanatical foe that had armed the disabled, children, and others to fight using bamboo sticks or by strapping their bodies up with bombs. I fail to see how any alternative to the bomb could be anywhere near "morally superior", given the costs and death it would have inflicted.
Yes, I have seen the pictures of the results of the bombings and others, as well as the anonymous corpses of what were once men, women, and children, burned to ashes by firebombs or scarred forever by the A-bombs. The result is horrific, and something I would probably not have survived, or been able to comprehend. Yet, however cruel it was, it served a purpose to help grind a halt to the Axis armies in the field, while slowly starving the army of materials and the populace of the will to fight. Brutal? Yes. However, it did help shorten the war and the Axis ability to fight.
So, when it comes to determining moral highground, the story comes to one small question:
Were the Western Allies as bad as the Germans, the Soviets, and the Japanese?
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Reopening the "moral highground" debate - 
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