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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 inva

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.
    - skyechurch 3y ago
      The outcome of the Wannsee Conference was Auschwitz, an intensification by a factor of 1000 of what had gone before. The point is not that this represents the absolute beginning of German attacks on Jews, just that it represents the beginning of turning a death count in the 1000s to one in the millions, which is what we call "the Holocaust". All of this, and the serious strategic deliberations in real time of what to do about it, is a matter of historical record, which has been gone over quite thoroughly over 80 years.

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.
  - skyechurch 3y ago
    The outcome of the Wannsee Conference was Auschwitz, an intensification by a factor of 1000 of what had gone before. The point is not that this represents the absolute beginning of German attacks on Jews, just that it represents the beginning of turning a death count in the 1000s to one in the millions, which is what we call "the Holocaust". All of this, and the serious strategic deliberations in real time of what to do about it, is a matter of historical record, which has been gone over quite thoroughly over 80 years.