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Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it i
by DubiousPusher 4y ago
Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college.
Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for example manifested in the reluctance of the US to fly bombing missions at night which for obvious reasons was preferred by the British.
Near the end of 1944 however, Allied High Command became concerned that the war might stretch into autumn 1945 and they were hoping the Soviet winter campaign could end the war early. So they initiated their own indiscriminant bombing campaign. In his autobiography, James Doolittle wrote that he opposed the bombing campaign of Berlin because it would , “...violate the basic American principle of precision bombing of targets of strictly military significance...”. In the end, the US adopted the UK's bombing regime and would pursue similar and even more liberal approaches later in the Cold War.
And it is not as if urban bombing wasn't a subject of moral discussion. In WWI the dropping of a grenade upon Paris by a pilot had made it clear that aerial bombardment would probably become a thing. There was a great deal of discussion through the interwar period. In the end though, it seems practicality will triumph over ideals given enough stress and time.
- nautilius 4y agoOoh, nice! "Targeting industrial workers to target the war making capacity" sounds so much nicer than "indiscriminate mass killing of civilians". Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming, but let's stop lying to ourselves, shall we?
- swayvil 4y agoIf we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them. It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.
- SXX 4y agoSentient AI will fix it. We might not like the fix though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 4y ago> If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? Yes, absolutely. Deferring to authority is no excuse for morally abhorrent behaviour. Of course if you’re under threat that’s a different matter. But blind trust in leadership is a poor excuse. It’s not like the nazis had no detractors in Germany.
- swayvil 4y agoOf course it isn't blind trust. Good arguments will be made. Extremely plausible lies uttered by trustworthy authorities and echoed by your friends and peers. Don't imagine that even you are immune. Does believing it make you a bad person? Of course not. You're only doing what's right and sensible.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoIndeed. Large parts of the west went through this process less than 20 years ago in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. And something like half a million died. It’s not like this is just a theoretical exercise.
- nicoburns 4y agoI feel like the Iraq war is not a good example if you want to claim that it was good people misled. Millions (including me) protested against that war. There was really no excuse for supporting it.
- 4y ago
- spywaregorilla 4y agoTargeting industrial facilities however seems likely to work though.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI think in principle there is a difference, or could be. They might prioritize neighborhoods with the greatest concentration of workers in strategic industries, rather than the neighborhoods with the largest populations. But... is that really what they were doing? > In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted.[10] According to historian Donald Miller, "the economic disruption would have been far greater had Bomber Command targeted the suburban areas where most of Dresden's manufacturing might was concentrated".[48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Military_and_industrial_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...
- dylan604 4y ago>Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming, See, now there you go, giving in to the same logic you're trying to make fun of in the first sentence. Saying all Germans is like saying all Ukrainians welcome being annexed by Russia. Some probably went along because it seemed at the time the easiest way from receiving bullets into parts of their anatomy even if they didn't actually like it.
- john_the_writer 4y agoYep. Grand-dad had a choice. They shoot him, his wife and kids, or he accepts being drafted.
- missedthecue 4y agoThe germans would execute the children of draft dodgers? Really?
- nautilius 4y agoI called out the euphemism that hid an atrocity - not clear where you think I am doing that here?
- maxbond 4y agoYou used a different euphemism ("they had it coming") which also serves as atrocity apologia. Which I think goes to show how slippery the myths of violence in our society are, how even when making a conscious effort to recognize and name them they can get away from us. In the same way "industrial workers" can be used to dehumanize and to justify the unjustifiable, "people who had to coming" seeks to put all Germans in the same box and then judge each of them by the worst actions of any of them, in order to sentence them to death. I appreciate your comments.
- merely-unlikely 4y agoDon’t forget the firebombings of Japan that caused even more destruction than the two atomic bombs. > The full fury of firebombing and napalm was unleashed on the night of March 9-10, 1945 when LeMay sent 334 B-29s low over Tokyo from the Marianas.5 In contrast to earlier US tactical bombing strategies emphasizing military targets, their mission was to reduce much of the city to rubble, kill its citizens, force survivors to flee, and instill terror in the survivors. > Overall, by Sahr Conway-Lanz’s calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which took 140,000 lives by the end of 1945.13 Cary Karacas and Bret Fisk conclude that the firebombing raids “destroyed a significant percentage of most of Japan’s cities, wiped out a quarter of all housing in the country, made nine million people homeless, and killed at least 187,000 civilians, and injured 214,000 more,” while suggesting that the actual figures are likely higher.14 https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html
- I_dev_outdoors 4y agoIf anyone wants to read more about this, there's a book called "the bomber mafia" that covers it in detail.
- cafard 4y ago"Precision bombing" can use a little scrutiny of its own. The USAAF killed General McNair and quite a few of his troops in broad daylight.
- foogazi 4y ago> The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. Note also that the British had been subjected to night bombing raids themselves