Greatest Allied Atrocity of W.W.II

The USSR was not really expansionist. It did expand into Poland and Germany, but to be fair they had been invaded from that exact corridor four times in 100 years, so a certain amount of
pessimism might be allowed. As for the rest of what would become the Warsaw pact, they did not start to impose themselves in those countries until after the Marshall plan, which they saw, rightly or wrongly, as economic imperialism.

During the Cold War itself, they were arguably no more expansionist than the US.

Now that being said, the merciless nature of Stalin is not in dispute, and his death was a breath of light to the world...

 

thank you vermillion, that was just what i wanted to say.
A few months ago my teacher mistakenly called the japanese internment camps "concentration camps". Right away i shot out "name ONE time where japanese were shot by the guards, name one time where the japanese were forced to stavre to death for the liking of the guards, and name one time where the japanese were put to burned in ovens."
She became speachless. I just hate it when concentration/extermination camps are even remotely compared to anything. But Fredich is right, in a way. BEFORE the Third Reich, the British came out with the idea of "concentrating" a ton of POW's in a camp, pretty much how you would keep criminals. So comparing the prewar British "concentration" camps to Internment camps would be sort of a correct comparision. Otherwise here is no comparision.

 

Since you like to quote history you could at least get it right. The British used concentration camps in the Boer War in the context of what a concentration camp originally meant and meant at that time. This was to concentrate population onto one site where they could most easily be policed, instead of policing them in their locales. This however, was not a British invention, the Spaniards used them in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898 immediately prior to the Boer War.

A problem the British faced was that the Boers were fighting irregular guerrilla warfare with forces drawn from civil militia. Many of the Boers were farmers and would form into their local ‘Commando’ (this was the inspiration for Dudley Clarke proposing the term in 1940 – he grew up there - the term itself however, is Portuguese!), go out and raid the British, then return to their or someone else's farm if they could and their orders facilitated this. Whether or not any farm actually produced Commandos, almost every farm was sympathetic to them and would provide them aid and shelter, or, at the very least provided them with a source of supply and shelter. This system of 'Commandos' is very similar to what was done in the Texas Rangers (1836-).

So, the logic of 100 years ago was while each farm could not be individually policed, the farmers should be collected together into one camp, which could be easily policed. Why all the deaths in these camps? Quite simply the British hadn’t done this before and the planners got their logistics horribly wrong! Overcrowding, lack of proper sanitation, lack of medical staff and lack of proper food for the numbers they accumulated. Their own Army was struggling with rations and had first call on what was available. Visiting British dignitaries came back to Britain and rang the alarm bells on the state of these camps themselves which was publicised in the British press and in Parliament. Yes, and as another measure, many farms were torched to deprive the Commandos of resources they could call upon. By today’s standards this is unacceptable, but 100 years ago it was very logical. That said it was done as recently as in Vietnam by the Americans.

Hence the appalling conditions and fatalities in the British concentration camps were not by design but 40 years later in the hands of the nazis they were.

No.9

 

Question for the 'Spirit Researcher', what's all the swastikas about in the picture and the tablecloth?



No.9

 

No. 9 - thanks for laying the old 'British invented concentration camps' chestnut to rest once again...

 

I´d like to hear a couple of answers if this is true:

Why were the western allied, especially the UK and the USA infiltrated with russian spies? Check the "spies like us" thread if needed. This is common knowledge these days.

Why Stalin and Churchill split the eastern Europe between themselves on a piece of paper?

Was USSR a communist government or just a country lead by a dictator? The main message of Communism is that it is an universial revolution. So it cannot be a national incident only.

Why was there Comintern and why was there later Cominform?

 

Welcome Martin. Nowadays ‘concentration camp’ tends to have only one implication, which, in light of what it came to mean in W.W.II, is quite understandable.

Another snippet about the Boer War and the British Army, it stopped officers dressing and parading like peacocks so everyone ‘knew who they were’. The Boers took advantage of this and made sure they were targeted first.

No.9

 

Oops, sorry, forgot!

Thanx for the info on Boer wars and camps and the British Army, No 9!

 

Since you brought up the first point, I thought I would add something. A lot of Russian POW's were not executed, just interned. One group who were killed (either executed or sent to Gulags)were the Cossacks who fought for the Germans. My grandfather was the OC detatchment sent to put a group of Cossacks onto a train, the Cossacks refused to go and made it very clear why (apparently some of them had families with them). My grandpa ordered the largest, proudest men in the group to be brought out, put him up against a wall and threatened to shoot him, he got on and the rest son followed.I don't believe he would have had him shot and he was just following orders, however the sending of these troops back to Russia was nothing less than a war crime.

 

seems to me "War Crimes" is the catch-all PC phrase of the week

 

"Enemies of the state must disappear" or something like that.....

Abracadabra!



http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/exhibits/berlin_wall/censorship.htm

 

Hi No.9...

The photograph is of my wife and I at the 1997 MAX show when I first introduced my book. I had written, an expose`on Third Reich badge collecting. The swastika is a part of the cover design, as well as the promotional material.

However, it is not connected to my present "Research Project", which is my topic under the "Free Fire Zone" section of this forum.

The emblem on the tablecloth is the MAX shows logo.

Richard

[ 20. December 2003, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: Geistforscher ]

 

On Dachau April 29, 1945:

I can understand the US soldiers´feelings but I´m sure the German soldiers did not try to attack the US soldiers as claimed. On the site below there´s a photo of the Germans after they were shot ( most of them ) and none, even though only one fourth of the total length of the wall is visible, has taken any steps forward. So it was on purpose and not an accident. Read more from the site. It´s totally a different thing to consider whether it is a military court situation for the US soldiers as camp guards had escaped and the US soldiers killed the wrong men. Anyway, IF they meant to kill the camp guards only. The problem with imminent execution as always...



http://www.humanitas-international.org/archive/dachau-liberation/

 

Atrocity: Shockingly cruel and inhumane.

For those that questioned my list of Katyn, Hiroshoma and Nagasaki, Dresden or Internment of Japanese civilians as atrocities:... I did not state if "I thought" these were atrocities, merely reflected on what many people feel were atrocities.

1. Katyn is listed because unarmed Polish POW's were killed. If you were a Soviet revolutionary attempting to start the so called marxist revolution throughout Europe then this was a pitiful small amount of People killed to help advance Soviet Objectives.Many lives were probably spared by eliminating the core of possible Polish resistance prior to the end of WW2. The West doesn't view Katyn that way.

2. Why would I list Katyn and internment of Japanese Americans in the same list?? Simply, in a free Democratic Society US Civilians are only to be tried by due process, and all Americans are supposedly guaranteed their rights by the constitution. Japanese Americans were convicted of treason as a group and interned. Woman and Children included. How many of these children do you think were a threat to US national security? America was supposed to be fighting WW2 for freedom and Democracy against tyrranical countries that placed non-combatant civilians in concentration camps. This was and still is a major black-eye for the US. Could you really imagine the US rounding up all Islamic foreign nationals after 9-11? And interning them?; and having the rest of the world not calling it an outright atrocity. Not all atrocities need bloodshed to rise to unacceptable levels.

3. Dresden was not a legitimate military target and served no real military purpose except for putting firther strain on German resources by displacing civilians and destroying their shelter and livelyhoods. Bomber Harris the Mastermind of these raids is not held in the highest regards amongst his own countrymen. Is killing unarmed civilians a legitimate military strategy or not? Coalition precision bombing during the Gulf Wars shows that the West (US and UK) do not view bombing civilians and causing substantial civilian non-combatant casualties as a viable strategy either.

4. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilian targets for the most part. Could the US have demonstrated their power by choosing sites with more value strategically with less civilian casualties? Probably. Would a Japanese civilian consider these atrocities?. Japanese views would probably differ from that held by many Americans.

Any of these actions can be justified by the country that perpetrated them. Unless everyone on this planet is of like mind then no-one will ever agree on which are atrocities. Race, creed, religion, nationality, political affiliation etc. will affect peoples viewpoints.

 

Britain also interned people of German/Italian extraction and put them in camps on the Isle of Man. After investigation, those deemed not to be a threat were released. Those left were either shipped to Canada to internment camps, or even Australia in some cases.
After a while, the whole policy was questioned and dropped, those interned being returned to Britain (except hard-core nazis).
I've yet to hear anyone describe the episode as either a "war crime" or "atrocity" though, unfortunate as it was.

Regards,
Gordon

 

At the time, bombing civilians was viewed as a legitimate strategy by both sides.

The military morality of 1991/2003 is irrelevent to discussing Dresden or any part of the war between 1939-45.

[EDIT - I don't wish to derail this thread and start another Dresden debate, plenty of pre-existing threads for that]

[ 21. December 2003, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: Greenjacket ]

 

Using your own definition (which personally strikes me as too broad), the internment of Japanese Americans cannot be called an atrocity as they were not treated with shockingly cruel inhumanity.

The episode was certainly a racist injustice, and is understandably condemned, but the US government did give compensation both in 1948 and again in 1988. The label 'atrocity' can only be applied in context, and set in context with the real atrocities committed during the war, internment of Japanese Americans doesn't register on the scale, even by your own definition. The reactions of today’s world to such an internment now is irrelevant to this.

 

The greatest allied atrocity in the second world war??

The "fat man" Bloody hell!! it killed poor little 400.000 Hiroshimi-ans

 

Thought the fact that it was a necessary weapon has been dealt with many times in many threads, It bears mentioning that 400,000 is a gross exaggeration, by anyone's estimates.