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Oh I agree with you. It is just that the dam busters raid was such a powerful propaganda piece - "English ingenuity over the Evil Empire" type thing, and I tru

Oh I agree with you. It is just that the dam busters raid was such a powerful propaganda piece - "English ingenuity over the Evil Empire" type thing, and I truly do admire the technical skills and bravery involved in the whole raid. But the downvotes that my comment above (and no doubt this one) gets just exacerbates the whitewashing of Allied atrocities during WWII. Case in point: "Bomber command lost nearly 50% of their crew during WWII" - "Oh dear that is terrible tragedy - upvotes for you, my friend for pointing out this invaluable fact." "Lots of German civilians were killed in the floods after the Dambuster raid" - "Meh, who cares? Cost of war. Downvoted. NEXT!"

sujayakar 10y ago
Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting to compare Germany with Japan in that case. Japanese cultural memory and historiography intensely remembers the suffering of civilians from famine, firebombing, and nuclear weapons [1] (but rarely from the military itself [2]), but even suggesting that German civilians suffered unnecessarily from strategic bombing in Der Brand (2002) earned Jörg Friedrich, a German historian of Nazi war crimes, widespread censure. [1] Grave of the Fireflies is a gorgeous, heartbreaking film. Highly recommended! [2] See the discussion of Okinawa in http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html
nsomaru 10y ago
Hmm. I suppose this would be unfair if it were just a case of "Allies won and Axis didn't, so let's tell Allied stories and not Axis ones." But the Germans were aggressors in this case, whose democratically elected leader initiated and waged one of the most terrible wars that the world has ever seen. So maybe the reaction you're seeing is a result of that?
DanBC 10y ago
Not sure if it helps, but previously I've mentioned the bombing of civilians: 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932493#5934692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932493#5934692 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171303#9171730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171303#9171730

sujayakar 10y ago

Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting to compare Germany with Japan in that case. Japanese cultural memory and historiography intensely remembers the suffering of civilians from famine, firebombing, and nuclear weapons [1] (but rarely from the military itself [2]), but even suggesting that German civilians suffered unnecessarily from strategic bombing in Der Brand (2002) earned Jörg Friedrich, a German historian of Nazi war crimes, widespread censure. [1] Grave of the Fireflies is a gorgeous, heartbreaking film. Highly recommended! [2] See the discussion of Okinawa in http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html

nsomaru 10y ago

Hmm. I suppose this would be unfair if it were just a case of "Allies won and Axis didn't, so let's tell Allied stories and not Axis ones." But the Germans were aggressors in this case, whose democratically elected leader initiated and waged one of the most terrible wars that the world has ever seen. So maybe the reaction you're seeing is a result of that?

DanBC 10y ago

Not sure if it helps, but previously I've mentioned the bombing of civilians: 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932493#5934692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932493#5934692 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171303#9171730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171303#9171730