shade00 has never really had a rational discussion yet. He hurls insults and calls for people to be rational all the while twisting a knife in his opponants back. Very little of what he says is worthwhile. In fact he usually targets the weak in his attacks while ignoring people that could stand up to him.

See isn't revisionism fun?

ericjohnson0: You willing to take a bullet for people you don't know? You willing to get your legs blown off so some long haired, drug infested, dredlock and birkenstock wearing liberal arts major can call you a war criminal? I'm not, but they do... every day.

STFU and GBTW, mmmmmkay?

Congratulations, you're a self-parody now.

the bombing raids against german civilian populations were primarily initiated by the british. the fact is that the allies were used to commit revenge for the british, if anyone needs the blame for massacring civilians it's them.

You know, the only whatifying I like to do about WWII is to think about what if we had developed the atomic bomb earlier in the war, so we could have dropped it on Germany. It would have likely have stopped the war much earlier (if we had finished it in '44 and dropped it, I'm pretty sure that would have been the end). The added benifit would possibly have been that the Russians could have been kept out of most of Eastern and Central Europe, so there would have been millions of lives saved all around.

Honestly though, my sympathy for the German populace at large is virtually nill. As much as people like zappaisfrank protest, it was pretty well known among the German populace what was going on in their country at the time. Companies like IG Farben were receiving shipments of human teeth to extract the gold fillings from. Jews had all been rounded up and shipped off, somewhere. Mysteriously, there was all this new clothing to give out as charity. I call bullshiat to anyone who claims the German populace had no clue. Plus, most of the myth of the scary SS keeping a terrified German populace in line is just that, a myth. For the most part, the SS had few officers assigned to German population centers and the vast majority of their "spies" on the populace were regular people turning in their neighbors due to their own fanaticism. I watched a German documentary a few years ago where a journalist had gone through the SS records of a town of about 50,000 people, and discovered that they had only 2 SS agents for the entire city. He actually found signed accusations by regular people turning in their neighbors for looking like Jews or consorting with Jews or Communists. He confronted one woman about her accusation, that directly led to the death of one of her neighbors. It was sickening. I wish I remembered the name of the documentary (but since this is Fark, and nothing is obscure on Fark, someone probably knows what I am talking about).

PC LOAD LETTER: Is that demeaning the US? No. Based on the info and intel, it was a reasonable plan. It didn't work as expected. You know, the US does make mistakes. Even in WW2.

It bothers me slightly that, as well as single handedly winning WW2, the US was wholly responsible for military strategy even when that was principally being driven by Sir Norman Bottomley, Arthur Harris, and Winston Churchill.

Dancin in Arson
You should see the WWI "Blackadder." Funny stuff, kind of scary too. There's a scene the night before a big push, where the general is casually using a dustpan and brush to pick up all the little toy soldiers he has on his model of the battlefield.

It does look like this has degraded into the usual flamewar, though. So I'm going back to work.

twilson2

Those soldiers died to protect our freedom of speech

And anybody that sez anything bad about the military should have their ass kicked.

Those soldiers died to protect our freedom to not get farking shot to death. Let's limit the cliches a little bit.

HellbentForLeather

Hey jackass, does it occur to you that people aren't protesting America, but rather the idiots who try to hijack America to suit their own ends? You are so blind to your own sides attempts to suit themselves up in red white and blue and you are so quick to drink the Koolaid and believe that being against those chickenhawks = being against America.

Let me put it this way: If there is a gay march parade, and the marchers dress themselves up in flags and hold signs that say "Being against Gays is being against America," you wouldn't be wrong to say you disagree and don't think the flag should be used as such. Just because they have the American flag doesn't mean you have to agree with what they are saying, and disagreeing with what they are saying doesn't mean you are against America.

Well, to the left your side looks just like that. You go and tlak about how patriotic you are, how much you support the troops, etc. Yet most of you don't serve. Look at your administration, almost none of them have chosen to serve (and actively avoided service when it shouldn't have been their choice). You put troops in harms way unnecessarily. And you dress yourselves up in Red White nad Blue and treat any dissent from your party line as being 'unamerican'.

Well fark you. I'm as American as you will ever be, I don't cheat on my taxes, I don't enjoy watching American soldiers die, and I want to hold the leadership of my nation accountable for their actions.

If that makes me unamerican in your eyes, or if you see that as spitting on the flag, I don't care. I've been saying this for years, and according to most of America YOU are in the minority, so piss off.

>> I have the highest respect for those who wear the uniform.

Just not enough respect to put one on yourself eh chickenshiat
chickenhawk.

These veterans are upset about the wording on the plaque? It simply states a fact. If reading it brings about some sort of latent guilt then go talk to a psychiatrist. A few people have already said it but I feel like saying it too. War is hell. Nasty things happen during a war. Some acts will get you tried as a war criminal. Others fall into the huge grey area of "shiat happens".

thejoyofpi

Dancin_In_Anson: The entire episode of WWI is mind boggling.

Probably the single biggest pointless waste of life in human history.


Right after the abortion industry and communism; Two things a liberal loves.

/suck it libs

ericjohnson0: AMEN to that.

Okay, you gave away your act. You're like the Stephen Colbert of Fark, but less funny.

ericjohnson0
Why are we at war with Germany? THEY never attacked us! After six weeks of death and chaos we must admit that Normandy is a quagmire... we MUST withdraw...

I see what you did there.

Jackass.

Allied air raids:

Cologne-500
Bremen-NA
Essen-NA
Hamburg-46,000
Kassel-10,000
Darmstadt-13,000
Pforzheim-23,000
Swinemuende-23,000
Dresden -35,000
Berlin-NA


Over 12,000,000 killed by the German Holocaust including Jews and Soviet prisoners of war


Next

twilson2: And anybody that sez anything bad about the military should have their ass kicked.

Come and get me, jackass, because I've said some naughty things about the modern day military

Digitalstrange: they voted the Nazi power overwhelmingly into power knowing full well of its empire building agenda. They got what they asked for.

So I can get killed because other people voted for Bush? Weak!

/not comparing Bush to Nazis, just saying that a citizen shouldn't be held accountable for another citizen's actions
//not saying it isn't inevitable for citizens to be killed, but why not just say that then instead of trying to rationalize it?

Digitalstrange: they voted the Nazi power overwhelmingly into power knowing full well of its empire building agenda. They got what they asked for.

Yeah, Hitler's rise had nothing to do with the horrible depression that was gripping the world, or the fact that he used his thug-like tactics and cronies to pretty violently take control of the Reichstag.

So, of course, every German that didn't risk their lives to publicly denounce Hitler was obviously a cowardly Nazi sympathizer and deserved to instead be blown to tiny bits by the Allies.

Fark the Nazis, Facists and the Hirohito.
Fark people that second guess a need to destroy the aforementioned.

/That is all

imgod2u

I see nothing wrong with that. I'm sure we all believe, or want to believe, that those leaders did what they thought was right at the time. How is that in any way contradictory to look back and think what should have been done with the clarity of hindsight?

But the artificial insertion of modern sensibilities into history is actually harmful to any lesson that can be drawn from the past.

thejoyofpi
Okay, you gave away your act. You're like the Stephen Colbert of Fark, but less funny.

-grumble-

I am a wee bit of a belligerent prick, but I'm not a troll... I am serious about what I post.

Dancin_In_Anson: Have you read Keegan's book on WWI?

No, but I will now, thanks. I did read Winston Churchill's history of it (The World Crisis) and it's pretty amazing to see how even powerful political insiders could do nothing to combat the stupidity of military leaders.

pendy575
Indiscriminately bombing civilians huh? Ya...no revisionism there.

When did I say indiscriminately bombing civilians, aside from indicating how absurd it would be to think that the crewmen decided one day to just start indiscriminately bombing civilians.

My quote was (mean think not this):

Do you [think] those pilots and crew woke up one day and said "You know, we could be bombing factories and stopping the war machine, but we feel like indiscriminately bombing civilians"? Do you honestly think that this article is trying to give that impression?

ericjohnson0 is Bertram Ruumford.

monkeytaco420
Fark the Nazis, Facists and the Hirohito.
Fark people that second guess a need to destroy the aforementioned.

/That is all

Monkeytaco420 wins the thread... Back to Work.

ericjohnson0: I am a wee bit of a belligerent prick, but I'm not a troll... I am serious about what I post.

You do know that FDR and Truman were liberal Democrats, right? ;)

I mean, FDR even brought the welfare state to the US.

Yeah the military is filled with real manly men.

It's just a coincidence we got the shiat kicked out of us by the cavemen in vietnam even though we had vastly superior weapons...

(and are presently getting the shiat kicked out of us again in Iraq)

From_The_Year_2000 [TotalFark]

So I can get killed because other people voted for Bush? Weak!

then move to Canada asshole

/served my military service under Clinton mostly and was still proud to wear the uniform - fark off

ericjohnson0

Hillybillypharmacist
I'm glad none of those jackass Democrats were in office during WWII.

AMEN to that.

You have just defined something. I'm still trying to figure out what it is. It's definitely the apotheosis of something. Ignorance seems too small a word.

What the hell is wrong with telling the truth?

Because it's misleading, and therefore is not truthful.


The only "controversy" is a recent attempt by revisionists to put a negative spin on the allies effort during WWII.

BeowulfSmith

You know, the only whatifying I like to do about WWII is to think about what if we had developed the atomic bomb earlier in the war, so we could have dropped it on Germany. It would have likely have stopped the war much earlier (if we had finished it in '44 and dropped it, I'm pretty sure that would have been the end). The added benifit would possibly have been that the Russians could have been kept out of most of Eastern and Central Europe, so there would have been millions of lives saved all around.

Honestly though, my sympathy for the German populace at large is virtually nill. As much as people like zappaisfrank protest, it was pretty well known among the German populace what was going on in their country at the time. Companies like IG Farben were receiving shipments of human teeth to extract the gold fillings from. Jews had all been rounded up and shipped off, somewhere. Mysteriously, there was all this new clothing to give out as charity. I call bullshiat to anyone who claims the German populace had no clue. Plus, most of the myth of the scary SS keeping a terrified German populace in line is just that, a myth. For the most part, the SS had few officers assigned to German population centers and the vast majority of their "spies" on the populace were regular people turning in their neighbors due to their own fanaticism. I watched a German documentary a few years ago where a journalist had gone through the SS records of a town of about 50,000 people, and discovered that they had only 2 SS agents for the entire city. He actually found signed accusations by regular people turning in their neighbors for looking like Jews or consorting with Jews or Communists. He confronted one woman about her accusation, that directly led to the death of one of her neighbors. It was sickening. I wish I remembered the name of the documentary (but since this is Fark, and nothing is obscure on Fark, someone probably knows what I am talking about).

Very valid points. The classic book 'they thought they were free' is one of the best explorations of the attitudes of regular germans during WWII. Lest we forget Hitler was an overwhelmingly popular leader who was elected (!) by the common german over the occasional objections of much of the intellectual elite. To say that most germans were not in any way complicit in his mass murder (both in camps and in aggressive acquisitive wars) is not realistic.

However, because germans supported bad policies doesn't mean they deserved to die, necessarily (although it might in instances) and SOME germans didn't support those policies. The death of the conscientious german at the hands of allied bombs or otherwise is on the head of the Nazi leadership for forcing the allies hand in harming the innocent. By the way, Hitler and the nazi's directly murdered as many conscientious germans as he possibly could, should the nazi's have survived the war, after the extermination of jews, the wholesale extermination of white opponents of the fatherland would be the next step, as many documents and letters from party officials suggest.

So although the allies killed some of the minority of germans who weren't complicit in hitler's actions, they probably saved a great many more.

PC LOAD LETTER

Looking back and saying things like "targeting oil reserves would have had a bigger impact" is definitely how one learns from history. Taking this knowledge and jumping to the conclusion that not trageting oil reserves means they only wanted to target civilian populations is revisionist. The damage from bombing in WWII was mostly collateral damage...the bombs just were not accurate. A whole lot of them needed to be dropped to even hit the proposed targets. Many time the proposed targets were close to civilian populations. This is fact.

There are lots of reasons to not target oil reserves by the way and focus on factories and train tracks instead.

monkeytaco420: Fark the Nazis, Facists and the Hirohito.
Fark people that second guess a need to destroy the aforementioned.

I'm confused. Didn't Hirohito reign in Japan until 1989, 45 years after the war ended? I thought we destroyed him?

twilson2: by the cavemen in vietnam even though we had vastly superior weapons...

Cavemen? I think you mean small, normally quiet, polite chain-smokers.

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested by asshatted liberturds.

You want revisionism, there's your revisionism. Now let's talk about why it was better to fry millions in Tokyo and Osaka fire bombings and hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings than let the entire country slowly starve to death over the following winter or worse suffer millions of allied casualties in an invasion.

fatal_exception

These veterans are upset about the wording on the plaque? It simply states a fact.

No it doesn't simply state a fact, it strongly implies one particular highly prejudicial interpretation of a myraid of controversial facts... AS IF it were simply a matter of record.

That's the whole problem.

OscarTamerz: You want revisionism, there's your revisionism. Now let's talk about why it was better to fry millions in Tokyo and Osaka fire bombings and hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings than let the entire country slowly starve to death over the following winter or worse suffer millions of allied casualties in an invasion.

Or let the Russians land first....

Phil Mousyshiatz
You have just defined something. I'm still trying to figure out what it is. It's definitely the apotheosis of something. Ignorance seems too small a word.

Yeah, I know. I used 'Amen' in a positive fashion, as an affirmation. With all the neocoMs around here, that is a cardinal sin...uh... faux pas... can't go mentioning religion that may offend someone... shhhh...

So what?

BURN the unbeliever! KILL the heretic!

How DARE you discuss WW2! Every single person involved on our side was a HERO!

/sarcasm
// Ordo Malleus is here to purge this heresy.

zappaisfrank: When a country makes war, the civilian population is kinda on it's own. It's a sad part of war, but you can't isolate your attacks on just the leaders or just where the opposing army is. At least you couldn't in 1942.

Then you get what goes on today with our pinpoint bombing and letting people that we won't bomb civilian areas or religious complexes, or hospitals, so that is where they put their valuable military hardware. You can't win a war by following the Geneva convention accord or being politically correct if the other side does not.

OBTW vertigo32

That pie chart is a little misleading since the vast majority of deaths, both civilian and military, that the Allies suffered were Russian.

vertigo32

Your question presumes that the Allies were indisciminately bombing civilians. Your statement may remove the guilt from the pilots but starts with the premise that the Allies were deliberately targeting civilians. Not true and revisionist.

OscarTamerz

Many people look past the obvious horror and look at the projections of the cost in lives of an invasion of japans mainland. They were training women and children to resist with farm implements. They figured it could very well turn into the biggest blood bath of the war. While costing a horror in Allied casualties as well. It feels immoral arguing for the nuclear option, but it may well have been the utter shock that it produced that forced japan from it's death before dishonour suicidal path.

Digitalstrange: then move to Canada asshole

See, I love my country, and I'd rather not move. Don't you think it's more reasonable that maybe someone who is trying to punish Bush just punishes... Bush? We can compromise with just the red states if you'd like, but to say every citizen is to blame I think is a bit harsh, and that seems to be what you were saying.

AmberWolf
BURN the unbeliever! KILL the heretic!
How DARE you discuss WW2! Every single person involved on our side was a HERO!
/sarcasm
// Ordo Malleus is here to purge this heresy.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

/eric's mind for example...

pendy575: Your question presumes that the Allies were indisciminately bombing civilians. Your statement may remove the guilt from the pilots but starts with the premise that the Allies were deliberately targeting civilians.

So we never deliberately targeted civilians in places like Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki? Who's the revisionist now?

ericjohnson0

So you are just a constant troll. Get some friends for god sake, this can't be that entertaining to you.