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After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged. What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, the biggest atrocity in one attack, one bombing r

After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged. What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, the biggest atrocity in one attack, one bombing run (not one bomb, but one attack), ever. There is no honest judgement. There is no reciprocity. There is only the victors writing the history and punishing the non-victors, except the ones they pardon for being valuable.

refurb 4y ago
The countries that suffered the worst from Nazi Germany (the countries that become post-war USSR, France) also had some of the lightest touches when it came to persecuting war criminals after WW2. Why? Because the war didn’t happen in a vacuum. The decision became a practical one and there were more important things to do.
freemint 4y ago
While it might have been a war crime the existing international legal mechanism were unable to deal with such war crimes. The Nürnberger Prozesse were not run by an international mechanism but by the allied forces. Similar in Japan.
saiya-jin 4y ago
I think what US lacks severely is humility. That big ego acknowledging that even they can and sometimes do fuckup big time, despite all good that is done. This very effectively prevents recognizing and addressing issues like these and much needed improvement. It goes deeper - US needs allies, everybody does. But if you position yourself above everybody else and treat rest as sub-humans (which is what effectively various US laws state), people and nations will align with you only of its convenient for them, and not for 1 second more. You will receive a lot of hatred, open and hidden. Nothing healthy for long term empire.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  I think we in Europe are somehow slowly starting to understand that. We have big powers like Germany and France, and a lot of smaller countries. If the big countries want to be respected and not treated like the USA (=someone who can help you but can become a bully in an instant when it suits them), they need to be more open and less egoistical. This needs to happen on a global scale, though, to really work.
timmy-turner 4y ago
No, Dresden was a big garrison city, manufacturing and transportation hub. Bombing it, as cruel at is was, served a purpose for the Allies to remove safe retreats for the Germans. Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war. A quite vocal minority still supports neofaschism up to this day. In the 90ies they installed the myth of the "holocaust bombing" as an allied war crime, trying to turn themselves into the victims of war.
- grapeskin 4y ago
  > Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war. Loads of Afghans support the Taliban. Doesn't mean firebombing any city there is the proper answer to anything there. And loads of people support the US government, the Russian government, the British government, and so on and so on. All of those countries have some absolutely massive atrocities under their belts. And absolutely none of it is deserving of burning the flesh off civilians and children.
IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
This equivocation between Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust (not a war crime, but a crime against humanity) on the one side, and whatever excesses the allies committed, is deeply misguided. And I say that as a German. There is obviously an element of “the victor gets to write history” to the Nuremberg Trials. But there is still an underlying, objective truth of grave injustice, and the trials did the best that was possible under the circumstances to capture it. Dresden, Nagasaki, My Lai, the Iraq war in its entirety: all of these were wrong, to different extends and for differing reasons. The industrial slaughter of more than four million people, intended to wipe out a culture and motivated by nothing but shallow hatred, still stands apart, incomparable.
- adastra22 4y ago
  Mỹ Lai doesn't belong on that list. It was straight-up indiscriminate rape-and-murder of an entire village--and is just the best documented episode of many in that war. The tactical or strategic justification for the action was a stretch, at best. If anything it should be grouped with German actions in Belgium in WW1, or the Japanese in Nanking.
simonh 4y ago
>After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged. >What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, ... It would only have been a war crime if the city was undefended. Since Dresden had AA guns and fighters defending it those attacks were not war crimes. Bear in mind the same test was applied to german bomber attacks, no germans were convicted for the bombings of Coventry or London, so there was no inconsistency in the way bomber attacks by the two sides were treated.
- sofixa 4y ago
  That logic seems very flimsy. Every city had AA guns and fighters protecting it. In the same way that massacring a bunch of civilians in a village that was defended by armed soldiers is still a war crime. For a counterpoint, Alexander Löhr was hanged in Belgrade after the war, in part because of the bombing of the city he commanded.
  - simonh 4y ago
    >That logic seems very flimsy.... Maybe, but that was the legal standard at the time. I've no idea what the charges and evidence were levelled at Löhr beyond the few lines in Wikipedia, except that his fate seems richly deserved for numerous reasons and it seems likely many of them had a perfectly valid legal basis. If there were any lapses in legal nicety, I shed no tears over the matter.
    - nl 4y ago
      It wasn't the legal standard at the time. The defense used was generally that there were legitimate military targets (eg arms factories).
      - simonh 4y ago
        From the Hague Convention of 1907 regarding ‘the Laws and Customs of War on Land’: Article 25 The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

refurb 4y ago

The countries that suffered the worst from Nazi Germany (the countries that become post-war USSR, France) also had some of the lightest touches when it came to persecuting war criminals after WW2. Why? Because the war didn’t happen in a vacuum. The decision became a practical one and there were more important things to do.

freemint 4y ago

While it might have been a war crime the existing international legal mechanism were unable to deal with such war crimes. The Nürnberger Prozesse were not run by an international mechanism but by the allied forces. Similar in Japan.

saiya-jin 4y ago

I think what US lacks severely is humility. That big ego acknowledging that even they can and sometimes do fuckup big time, despite all good that is done. This very effectively prevents recognizing and addressing issues like these and much needed improvement. It goes deeper - US needs allies, everybody does. But if you position yourself above everybody else and treat rest as sub-humans (which is what effectively various US laws state), people and nations will align with you only of its convenient for them, and not for 1 second more. You will receive a lot of hatred, open and hidden. Nothing healthy for long term empire.

dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
I think we in Europe are somehow slowly starting to understand that. We have big powers like Germany and France, and a lot of smaller countries. If the big countries want to be respected and not treated like the USA (=someone who can help you but can become a bully in an instant when it suits them), they need to be more open and less egoistical. This needs to happen on a global scale, though, to really work.

timmy-turner 4y ago

No, Dresden was a big garrison city, manufacturing and transportation hub. Bombing it, as cruel at is was, served a purpose for the Allies to remove safe retreats for the Germans. Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war. A quite vocal minority still supports neofaschism up to this day. In the 90ies they installed the myth of the "holocaust bombing" as an allied war crime, trying to turn themselves into the victims of war.

grapeskin 4y ago
> Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war. Loads of Afghans support the Taliban. Doesn't mean firebombing any city there is the proper answer to anything there. And loads of people support the US government, the Russian government, the British government, and so on and so on. All of those countries have some absolutely massive atrocities under their belts. And absolutely none of it is deserving of burning the flesh off civilians and children.

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

This equivocation between Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust (not a war crime, but a crime against humanity) on the one side, and whatever excesses the allies committed, is deeply misguided. And I say that as a German. There is obviously an element of “the victor gets to write history” to the Nuremberg Trials. But there is still an underlying, objective truth of grave injustice, and the trials did the best that was possible under the circumstances to capture it. Dresden, Nagasaki, My Lai, the Iraq war in its entirety: all of these were wrong, to different extends and for differing reasons. The industrial slaughter of more than four million people, intended to wipe out a culture and motivated by nothing but shallow hatred, still stands apart, incomparable.

adastra22 4y ago
Mỹ Lai doesn't belong on that list. It was straight-up indiscriminate rape-and-murder of an entire village--and is just the best documented episode of many in that war. The tactical or strategic justification for the action was a stretch, at best. If anything it should be grouped with German actions in Belgium in WW1, or the Japanese in Nanking.

simonh 4y ago

>After WWII, no allied commanders were hanged. >What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, ... It would only have been a war crime if the city was undefended. Since Dresden had AA guns and fighters defending it those attacks were not war crimes. Bear in mind the same test was applied to german bomber attacks, no germans were convicted for the bombings of Coventry or London, so there was no inconsistency in the way bomber attacks by the two sides were treated.

sofixa 4y ago
That logic seems very flimsy. Every city had AA guns and fighters protecting it. In the same way that massacring a bunch of civilians in a village that was defended by armed soldiers is still a war crime. For a counterpoint, Alexander Löhr was hanged in Belgrade after the war, in part because of the bombing of the city he commanded.
- simonh 4y ago
  >That logic seems very flimsy.... Maybe, but that was the legal standard at the time. I've no idea what the charges and evidence were levelled at Löhr beyond the few lines in Wikipedia, except that his fate seems richly deserved for numerous reasons and it seems likely many of them had a perfectly valid legal basis. If there were any lapses in legal nicety, I shed no tears over the matter.
  - nl 4y ago
    It wasn't the legal standard at the time. The defense used was generally that there were legitimate military targets (eg arms factories).
    - simonh 4y ago
      From the Hague Convention of 1907 regarding ‘the Laws and Customs of War on Land’: Article 25 The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.