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The point is that modern war is an industrial process. The failure to recognize this led to the vulnerability of the US processes from Viet Nam through the 200

by gumby 3y ago

The point is that modern war is an industrial process. The failure to recognize this led to the vulnerability of the US processes from Viet Nam through the 2000s' Iraq and Afghanistan. The irony of this failure is that the US civil war was the first true economy-vs-economy conflict, with mechanized rail changing the scope and nature of conflict (while actual combat was still with napoleonic-class cannon, cavalry charge and the like). European powers mostly ignored this conflict, and so it took a while for them to understand what WWI was really about. Then the US took this lesson to heart, and didn't recognize that the only alternative for their adversaries was asymmetrical combat...a full circle as that was the approach the US had taken in its own war of liberation from a superpower. The other, even more meaningful point about industrialized warfare is that it has its own Taylorist logic. For the European theatre, they built an enormous machine that assembled planes, filled them with fuel and tons of bombs, and then daily launched them eastward from the UK. Long after this machine could materially affect the course of the war it was still operating at full tilt, with the allies seemingly unable to switch it off. In small (pop < 50K ppl today) cities of Germany you can find plaques in the Marktplätze indicating that the city had been flattened, bombed for the first time, in late April 1945. The machine had been flattening cities in order of importance, and had run down the list to the point where they'd run out of anything worth bombing. It's hard to argue that any of those bombings were individually "unethical" (assuming you can accept carpet bombing cities at all) because they were bureaucratic decisions with no real room for individual judgement any more. That is a critical lesson both for wartime and for peacetime. We don't really mind if a company makes a worthless product -- it merely goes out of business. But at the state/strategic level it can be tragic.

ltbarcly3 3y ago
The Germans could have avoided bombing entirely by not attacking their neighbors and trying to genocide 1/2 or more of the population of the countries they invaded to "make room" for more Germans. At any point in the war the Germans could have stopped it, but they didn't, they kept shoveling children in to ovens (or for slavs, bullets to the back of the head at the edge of a ditch). All the German cities could have been spared if they had simply stopped murdering everyone and stealing everything. That they chose to continue isn't the fault of the victims who were desperately trying to conclude the war to avoid the sensless deaths. There are moral grey areas in war but trying to find them in the desperate attempts to slow down and stop the NAZI genocide machine, by the victims of that machine who were still being killed by the millions, is a bit insulting. I would love to be able to put these great military minds in charge of the allies in 1940 and see how well they stick to their moral sensibilities as they become directly responsible for more and more deaths.
- petsfed 3y ago
  Not that I disagree, Germany unequivocally started it and it was unequivocally the best outcome to have them lose the war. Further, because the Germans failed to prepare for a counterattack (or even a less than overwhelming victory) from the jump, they had no strategy that could lead them to winning the war. But there are 2 important points to consider: 1) The allies did not care about the Nazi genocide until after the war had begun in earnest. In the US, whatever anti-anti-semitism Roosevelt felt, it was clearly less important to him than losing the anti-semite vote by stridently coming out in opposition to the Holocaust already in motion (or even permitting the refugees from the Holocaust to come to the US). Stopping the Holocaust or the Japanese crimes against humanity was, for the most part, a consequence of accomplishing their other strategic goals, not a strategic goal unto itself. 2) The terms of the treaty of Versailles was unambiguously a major cause of Hitler's rise to power and the start of WW2. England's and (especially) France's desire to punish Germany led to a lot of terms that punished the people of Germany, but largely left the decision-makers relatively unscathed.
  - skyechurch 3y ago
    >The allies did not care about the Nazi genocide until after the war had begun in earnest. The Wannsee Conference was January 1942, all the allies were quite fully at war with the axis powers. I'm not aware of any further steps they could have taken aside from total war and industrial incineration of cities (which, as OP's article bemoans, they 110% committed to.) >Stopping the Holocaust or the Japanese crimes against humanity was, for the most part, a consequence of accomplishing their other strategic goals, not a strategic goal unto itself. Not true. Ending the Holocaust was a war aim and plans were considered for operations specifically to disrupt it, but nothing was ever proposed that would be as effective as simply winning the war.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      A lot of things we now recognize as actual genocide had happened prior to the Wannsee Conference. Kristalnacht, the Aryanization of businesses, the Babi Yar massacre, etc. You'd have to ignore a lot of out-and-out massacres of specifically Jews (in addition to a whole bunch of other war crimes) to think that the Nazis were not already fully committed to the concept of extermination prior to that conference. You should understand the Wannsee Conference as an effort to consolidate and scale up the extermination process, not as its birth place. I don't have a hard time imagining the Wannsee Conference as stemming from a post-mortem (pardon the pun) of the Babi Yar massacre in particular, as the Nazis came to terms with the overall cost of doing a genocide manually.
tgv 3y ago
> The point is that modern war is an industrial process. And had been for at least 300 years at that time. Germany did know the 30 year war. It was a bit of a sore point. And it is obvious that you can't fight a war without industrial support. Economical warfare was also at least 300 years old back then. Neither is even mentioned in the article. It is also a much wider and more abstract point than the bombing of Hamburg. The article mixes ethical, moral, economical, technical, strategic and political ideas and ideology until the point is utterly lost. > Long after this machine could materially affect the course of the war That's very much a hindsight argument that may sound rational, but omits a lot of considerations. The Germans kept fighting until the bitter end; why didn't they stop if they could no longer affect the outcome of the war? There apparently was a reason to keep going. Even after the capitulation, German troops made casualties. Pure revenge, paving the way for the troops, and stopping the approaching Soviet army may also have influenced UK/US policy, as did perhaps the idea that Germany really had to be prevented from rebuilding its army, a painful lesson from WW1. > the allies seemingly unable to switch it off They did stop bombing once Germany had capitulated though, so they did have that capacity. It was not an autonomous process.

by gumby 3y ago

ltbarcly3 3y ago

The Germans could have avoided bombing entirely by not attacking their neighbors and trying to genocide 1/2 or more of the population of the countries they invaded to "make room" for more Germans. At any point in the war the Germans could have stopped it, but they didn't, they kept shoveling children in to ovens (or for slavs, bullets to the back of the head at the edge of a ditch). All the German cities could have been spared if they had simply stopped murdering everyone and stealing everything. That they chose to continue isn't the fault of the victims who were desperately trying to conclude the war to avoid the sensless deaths. There are moral grey areas in war but trying to find them in the desperate attempts to slow down and stop the NAZI genocide machine, by the victims of that machine who were still being killed by the millions, is a bit insulting. I would love to be able to put these great military minds in charge of the allies in 1940 and see how well they stick to their moral sensibilities as they become directly responsible for more and more deaths.

petsfed 3y ago
Not that I disagree, Germany unequivocally started it and it was unequivocally the best outcome to have them lose the war. Further, because the Germans failed to prepare for a counterattack (or even a less than overwhelming victory) from the jump, they had no strategy that could lead them to winning the war. But there are 2 important points to consider: 1) The allies did not care about the Nazi genocide until after the war had begun in earnest. In the US, whatever anti-anti-semitism Roosevelt felt, it was clearly less important to him than losing the anti-semite vote by stridently coming out in opposition to the Holocaust already in motion (or even permitting the refugees from the Holocaust to come to the US). Stopping the Holocaust or the Japanese crimes against humanity was, for the most part, a consequence of accomplishing their other strategic goals, not a strategic goal unto itself. 2) The terms of the treaty of Versailles was unambiguously a major cause of Hitler's rise to power and the start of WW2. England's and (especially) France's desire to punish Germany led to a lot of terms that punished the people of Germany, but largely left the decision-makers relatively unscathed.
- skyechurch 3y ago
  >The allies did not care about the Nazi genocide until after the war had begun in earnest. The Wannsee Conference was January 1942, all the allies were quite fully at war with the axis powers. I'm not aware of any further steps they could have taken aside from total war and industrial incineration of cities (which, as OP's article bemoans, they 110% committed to.) >Stopping the Holocaust or the Japanese crimes against humanity was, for the most part, a consequence of accomplishing their other strategic goals, not a strategic goal unto itself. Not true. Ending the Holocaust was a war aim and plans were considered for operations specifically to disrupt it, but nothing was ever proposed that would be as effective as simply winning the war.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    A lot of things we now recognize as actual genocide had happened prior to the Wannsee Conference. Kristalnacht, the Aryanization of businesses, the Babi Yar massacre, etc. You'd have to ignore a lot of out-and-out massacres of specifically Jews (in addition to a whole bunch of other war crimes) to think that the Nazis were not already fully committed to the concept of extermination prior to that conference. You should understand the Wannsee Conference as an effort to consolidate and scale up the extermination process, not as its birth place. I don't have a hard time imagining the Wannsee Conference as stemming from a post-mortem (pardon the pun) of the Babi Yar massacre in particular, as the Nazis came to terms with the overall cost of doing a genocide manually.

tgv 3y ago

> The point is that modern war is an industrial process. And had been for at least 300 years at that time. Germany did know the 30 year war. It was a bit of a sore point. And it is obvious that you can't fight a war without industrial support. Economical warfare was also at least 300 years old back then. Neither is even mentioned in the article. It is also a much wider and more abstract point than the bombing of Hamburg. The article mixes ethical, moral, economical, technical, strategic and political ideas and ideology until the point is utterly lost. > Long after this machine could materially affect the course of the war That's very much a hindsight argument that may sound rational, but omits a lot of considerations. The Germans kept fighting until the bitter end; why didn't they stop if they could no longer affect the outcome of the war? There apparently was a reason to keep going. Even after the capitulation, German troops made casualties. Pure revenge, paving the way for the troops, and stopping the approaching Soviet army may also have influenced UK/US policy, as did perhaps the idea that Germany really had to be prevented from rebuilding its army, a painful lesson from WW1. > the allies seemingly unable to switch it off They did stop bombing once Germany had capitulated though, so they did have that capacity. It was not an autonomous process.