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People forget history is written by the victors. For example, on Sept 11th 1944, my hometown of Darmstadt (a unprotected city of little strategic importance th
by nickbauman 12y ago
People forget history is written by the victors.
For example, on Sept 11th 1944, my hometown of Darmstadt (a unprotected city of little strategic importance that late in the war: it had a single north-south / east-west railroad crossing, that's it) was bombed with white phosphorus by the British. 10,000 civilians died in the first few hours. 1/3 of the city was leveled. It's not clear to me right now, but my parents told me that white phosphorus was against the geneva convention even at the time.
- josefresco 12y agoThankfully, someone is writing the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmstadt#Nazi_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmstadt#Nazi_Germany
- nickbauman 12y agoI saw that a while ago. I hand't known about the resistance, either, that's amazing.
- iterationx 12y agoPeople say history is written by the victors but still accept the standard narrative.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoOn the other hand, Nazi Germany was pretty much "the devil" back then, and quite rightly so. Germans were bombing Britain, causing massive disruption and fear. We'd like to hope that modern societies would refrain from war crimes even in the face of fear and irrational anger, but in the "war on terror" this has happened again, albeit on a much smaller scale. I prefer not to pass judgement. I believe we should seek peace rather than "truth" whenever we can.
- DominikR 12y agoHitler was a US backed dictator in the same way that Saddam was for decades. Eventually it got out of hand and the USA had to declare war on Nazi Germany, but Hitler still managed to do what the US wanted him to do: Inflict maximum damage on the Soviet Union and weaken Europe so that the US could take over half of the continent.
- DanBC 12y agoSome of the English pilots involved regard the fire-bombing of Germany as a war crime. Indeed, one of the reasons it wasn't a war crime is because it no-one thought a country would bomb civilians and so "don't target civilians" didn't get written into any treaties. The change in attitude throughout the war, starting from a position of "do not bomb civilians" and ending with "fire bomb civilian populations to kill as many civilians as possible, in a probably horrible way" is covered nicely in Max Hastings' book "Bomber Command". http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics/dp/0330513613 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics... http://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Command-A-Touchstone-book/dp/0671680706 http://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Command-A-Touchstone-book/dp/06... (Why are US book covers so weird?!) Wikipedia has a tl;dr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command English Bomber Command suffered heavy losses. About 55,000 aircrew died, of a total about about 125,000 men. (That's around a 44% death rate, which is uncomfortably close to a coin-toss.)