Re: Hiroshima, Nanjing, Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Leningrad et al:

[hedgehog]

Can we all agree that the death and destruction of World War II was horrible no matter who was involved? Can we agree that the very old, the very young and most women were innocent victims on all sides? Can we look back and see how diplomacy might have prevented the war? Most important,

What can we do today that we are not doing, so future generations will not look back and argue about whether this or that bloodiness was justified and/or necessary?

[Indydem]

1. What diplomacy would have worked with Hitler? n/t

[hedgehog]

3. What diplomacy might have prevented the rise of Hitler?

[rug]

10. For one thing, Ford could have been stopped from building him up.

[Javaman]

18. Ford provided hitler with trucks early on.

IBM made the process of killing people orderly.

Thyssen, Krupp and Bosch, built and oiled the machine.

The list goes on and on.

[Javaman]

14. We could have just given him all those nations he rolled into via blitzkreig.

:rofl:

And handed over 6 million plus people for slaughter.

Yeah, that old hilter, he was a real flexable guy. LOL

[thebestsas]

59. hitler

well, first hilter couled of been killed before he took office. Or dimricy so he can be impeached.

[grantcart]

6. Multilateral diplomacy

If the world unites against a Hitler then they have no where to go. One of the breakdowns of the diplomatic European world is that security was thought to have been achieved through bilateral non aggression pacts, Britain signing with Poland, for example.

The usefulness of multilateral approaches is the foundation of the Security Council and when united no mad man can successfully withstand a united front.

[hedgehog]

9. I never think to write down titles at the time, but I read a recent book

that made a good case that from the Japanese point of view, we forced them to attack us.

On edit: as I recall, the author made the wry observation that one of Japan's sins was to treat other Asians with the same contempt the British, French and Dutch did. Everyone knows only white people are allowed to consider themselves superior to all others!

(and just in case, :sarcasm: )

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

13. I'm not sure which part is the sarcasm, but...

we really did force them to attack us... or leave China.

Those were their only two options.

In hindsight, they probably should have left China.

(Key and hard to believe fact about the world of 1940. The US accounted for 90% of the world's oil exports at the time.)

[Javaman]

15. Exactly. FDR cut off oil exports because Japan refused to leave China.

I don't believe for a second however, that we "forced them" to do anything. The choice was theirs to make.

With a weak emperor and a crazy ass Military minister in Tojo, their expansionistic dreams were pretty much set in stone before they attack pearl or FDR cut off the oil.

Aside from their smaller Alaskan campaign, the other attacks on Dec 7th and 8th were in areas rich in Natural resources.

They wanted us crippled so we couldn't retaliate. To me, that alone means they knew perfectly well what they were doing and that we couldn't have stopped their ambitions.

They were still going to do what they were going to do whether we wanted them or not. Our exported oil would have just furthered their aims via their war machine.

And since it was our oil to export, it is also our choice to whom we sell. An over aggressive military dictatorship was against everything Americans, at the time, were against. Today, not so much, give our own foreign policy.

[grantcart]

20. and what forced them to attack China

and what forced them to attack Russia 30 years earlier.


If it is FDR's actions that 'forced' the action then why did they also attack Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Philipines, Siam on the same day.


It is an academic argument that is made by people who know that Americans are defensive about use of force. One place that you don't hear such arguments is Japan. They know that their society got hijacked by a bunch of lunatics, not unlike Bin Ladin is trying to hijack Islam, and they have no illusions about what the war did to Japan, let alone the countries it attacked.

[hedgehog]

22. If we cut off Japan's oil to prevent their expansion into China,

what did we do at the same time to force France out of Indo-China, England out of India, Belgium out of the Congo, the Dutch out of Indonesia, etc, etc. We had plans to free the Philippines, but at the time we held them by force of conquest. We all learned in school that Japan was expanding into China and had to stopped, but our text books ignored the fact that the Western powers were engaged in the same activities. My sarcasm above was to point out that we all make the assumption that it was OK for the West but wrong for Japan.

[Javaman]

34. And that's the irony...

It's bad when military dictators do it, but it's just fine if corporations do it. LOL

We have quite the illustrious history of colonization by corporation, but we as a country will be hell bent if we ever admit to such as a nation.

United fruit, Dole, Firestone, Ford, Goodyear, Standard Oil, Esso, to name a few.

[Javaman]

31. Interesting isn't it?

Yeah, it was all FDR's fault. LOL

If anyone wanted to look a little deeper into the issue, they would find out that both Shell and Standard Oil were well entrenched in oil extraction in both those areas.

But why do that, when people can blame FDR! LOL

The other two main components that run a war machine are iron ore and rubber. Manchuria, the Philippines and Siam have iron ore, the other nation plus the Philippines Siam also had huge rubber industries. Which, I might add, a huge portion were under the control of Goodyear and Firestone.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

35. It is not an expression of sympathy to note that something was precipitated

If somebody wants to say that we forced Japan to attack us as some revisionist blame-America thing that's beyond stupid.

On the other hand, given our historical approach to comparatively trivial disruptions of energy it is worth noting, just for the sake of historical, not moral, perspective that Pearl Harbor was predictably precipitated. (Except that we thought the attack to be tactically impossible, hence the lack of alert and assumption that the Philippines would be first.)

I recall the first Arab oil embargo and there was no sense in America that any nation had the right to withhold oil... from America. And we have been in kill-the-arabs mode ever since.

People take a strong view of oil embargoes.

If any author seeks to in any way excuse Japan, that's absurd.

But in the tit-for-tat progression of things, Japan had no options but to become a diminished nation or else strike out at the US and Britain.

And nobody watching Americans acquiesce to our invasion of Iraq can pretend we would do any different in the face of a comparable oil embargo.

Not because it would be right, but because it is what a militarist power reliably does.

[hedgehog]

38. I don't excuse Japan, merely note that the West wasn't entirely an

innocent party. Once things got to a certain point, could we have morally stayed out of the war? That's a hard question. I think that that's the real question asked by Steven Speilberg's "Saving Private Ryan". Millions died to save a million others. We all have to ask ourselves, were we worth it?

[grantcart]

42. That the discussion even involves our actions simply shows how

historical centric we are.


Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because they wanted to create an Empire. Its the same reason that they attacked China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and threatened war with Siam.


Their desire to have an empire was a result of their fanatical belief system. After their wall of seperation with the outside world was pierced they were in a complete existential vacuum. They were only able to reassemble their self respect after they successfully conducted a sneak attack and defeated a 'European' country, Russia.

After their victory in the Russo-Japan War they became hardcore militants obsessed with their own racial superiority over its neighbors. From that time on Japan's involvement in a large scale regional war that would establish themselves at the center of a large Empire. All of their military and economic planning was centered on that reality.

Yes they would have preferred to have negotiated that with the US and Stalin but short of dividing the world into spheres for superpowers the Japanese were on a course military conflict to establish their own regional domination.

If we sold them the oil or didn't, Japan's conversion to a militant military dictatorship was complete and no outside force had any real effect on it. Sometimes countries make decisions without any regard to what we are doing and our actions are really only sub plots.

Japan always had lots of options, they could have gone to these same areas and developed the economic relations they needed to survive, just like they did after the war. If they simply agreed to leave China there would have been no embargo. Lots of countries do quite well without natural resources. Singapore has no natural resources, it doesn't have enough drinking water and yet it has been able to survive without using military force. Japan's aggression was as naked as Germany's, in some ways it was even more fanatical.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

44. Of course. That's the point.

Given what Japan was there was zero chance of her abandoning imperial dreams.

Hence there was zero chance that she would not have struck out at the US and UK when her military and industrial capacity was threatened (meaningfully) by an oil embargo.

I think with-holding resources from your dire enemies is sensible.

The only point (that I intended to be) in play here is that there was nothing *surprising* about the outbreak of the war given the circumstances.

And the points you make are part of that argument, not contrary to it.

Japan was not going to back down because Japan was, indeed, belligerent and crazy.

[county worker]

55. Japan struck the US because the US was the only power in the Pacific capable of stopping their

aggression in the Pacific.

[hedgehog]

21. Why should we have expected them to leave China, when we had

a military presence there, when we were in the Philippines, when France was in Indo-China, when Belgium occupied the Congo, when Great Britain occupied India (and Ulster), when the Dutch occupied Indonesia and when Germany, France and Great Britain had carved up the rest of Africa? The West created an economy dependent on foreign possessions, then got all huffy when Japan tried to join the club. Japan's atrocities in China could be matched by any one of the Western powers.

[grantcart]

19. From the Japanese point of vew we DID force hem to attack us

That is what happens when you have such an insular point of view, you end up justifying all of the worlds actions as being centered on your reality.

When you end up trulely believing that your Emperor is the center of the earth everything that happens is defined how it effects Japan.

It is idiocy to give that view any credit now however.

What that author (and all of the Japanese that have argued the same approach for the last two decades) fail to mention is that Japan had initiated three wars by suprise attack in 40 years, Russia, China and the US.

This approach also fails to explain why the Japanese also were forced to attack the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Siam also on the same day.

[county worker]

32. Study the Washington and London Naval Treaties and get back to me.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

11. My personal view...

Make him invade the Sudetenland and lose.

Hitler arose through a weird infatuation with him by France and the UK that led to terrible intelligence analysis. Germany vs. Czechoslovakia on Czech turf was a 50-50 proposition a the time, even without western assistance/intervention. (The German war machine was growing exponentially. 1937 was different from 1938, 38 from 39, etc.)

The allies should have gone to war with Hitler in 1937.

But then who would protect us from Stalin? (A pointed question!)

France could have taken Hitler out at will early on but France was as anti-semite anti-bolshevik as Germany.

The usual clusterfuck.

And in any event, either Germany or Russia was going to add Poland before 1950 no matter who was running either country...

IMO.

[Javaman]

16. All great points. nt

[hedgehog]

26. One of the much ignored factors in the history of WWII is the number of

prominent people in England and France who thought that Hitler was an alright guy with great ideas. Just why do you think Edward the Duke of Windsor was parked in Bermuda for the duration? There was serious concern that if Hitler succeeded in conquering England, old Eddie and Wallace would have been happy to be placed on the throne.

[county worker]

37. Neither France, England or the United States had the war materials to win a war with Germany

in the 1930's.

The U. S. also decided to stay out of the European war.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

43. The US was a non-factor. The UK and France certainly had the resources in the 30s

There were German generals who planned to overthrow Hitler if he tried to invade Czechoslovakia, knowing that Germany would lose at the time.

Three years later Germany rolled through France like they were on vacation.

This is not surprising... Germany's military capacity was expanding exponentially because they were on a de facto war footing. And the UK or France could have done the same. They chose not to.

Had France on her own declared war on Germany in 1937 she would have won. The same for the UK on its own. It was just a matter of diverting some resources to the task. By 1940 France was too far behind to catch up.

You might as well say that the US couldn't have beaten Japan in 1941. We couldn't... But we were certain to win any war with them eventually.

America had almost no army in 1940 but in 1944 was at the highest military industrial capacity anyone had ever seen.

And Russia was right there with us.

The historical analysis of who had how many tanks on which particular date and so forth is not very useful. By that standard the US couldn't have won a war with anyone in the late 1930s, yet every nation in the world knew they could not win an all-out war with the US. There is no contradiction there.

The question in Europe was at what point could France and the northern countries be over-run, negating the longer term use of their industrial capacity?

Obviously by 1940 Germany could win a quick victory vs. France. In 1937 Germany could not have. And in 1937 Germany was in no position to win a *long* war against France and the UK.

(Both Japan and Germany sought to make the war more trouble than America felt like pursuing, and thus subject to negotiated settlement. Neither power ever expected to invade America. Nobody could.)

[county worker]

45. You are wrong. Have you heard of Lend Lease?

England could not have won a war with Germany without our war industry. Also Russia needed help from the allies.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

52. I am not discussing, I am educating

I am improving your understanding of something.

Accept it or not.

Free country.

[county worker]

54. You are educating me to the fact that England had the means to defeat Germany in 1936?

Is that what you are saying?

Please educate me about Dunkirk and Lend Lease. While you are at it tell me about Operation Torch and the war in North Africa.

I forgot one. Teach me about the Arsenal of Democracy.

[county worker]

46. Had we not won the Battle of Midway we would have lost to Japan.

Almost by accident 4 Japanese carriers were sunk at the Battle of Midway.

[county worker]

36. Here's your united world!

On January 3, 1935, Ethiopia appealed to the League of Nations for arbitration in the Walwal incident. But the League's response was inconcludent. The following analysis of an Arbitration Committee belonging to League of Nations assolved both parts from any charge<9>. In actuality, many nations were working independently of the League in order to keep Italy as an ally. Shortly after Ethiopia's initial appeal, Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Laval of France and Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare met with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssinia_Crisis

[Posteritatis]

24. You'd probably have to go back to 1918, or even before 1914, to do that, really. (nt)

[hedgehog]

27. Which brings us back to my question; what seeds of war are we planting today?

Edit: Did you know Ho Chi Minh went to the Versailles Conference thinking that he could win independence for Viet Nam through peaceful negotiation? After all, hadn't England gone to war to ensure the independence of another small nation (Belgium)? Ho Chi Minh went home disappointed, and so did the Irish. WWII isn't the only conflict with ties to Versailles.

[grantcart]

48. Amusing assumption

You have a little bit of the story right. He did go to the conference. No one had any idea who this assistant cook was at the time.


At that time Ho Chi Minh had no work experience of any kind in Viet Nam and had left to become a ship's cook helper. He travelled around the world, including the US and England. He had not lived in Viet Nam for 7 years had no connection with any resistance or political groups either in Viet Nam or France, just a guy showing up at the conference without any political connections at all.

He did not go home however, and if he did no one would have known him outside of his family.

First he became one of the founders of the French Communist Party.

Then he went to the Soviet Union and became one of Stalin's Comintern Stooges. What was remarkable about Ho is that of all of the Third World Nationalists that Stalin retained and trained to export revolution, Ho was the only one that wasn't killed by Stalin's paranoia.

He then returned to France and betrayed one of his communist competitors and was a paid agent of the French police.


He still did not return to Vietnam 'disappointed'. He went to China as a paid revolutionary agent of the Fifth Comintern. He was then posted to Siam and helped found the Siam Communist Party in North East Thailand.

After that he went to China, Italy, the Soviet Union and back to China. For most of this period most people thought he was Chinese, having married a Chinese woman to learn to speak Chinese fluently. Only after WWII started in earnest did he rename himself Ho Chi Minh. In 1941, 23 years after Versailleand 30 years since he left as a student did Ho Chi Minh return to Vietnam, a hardened revolutionary military and political agent supported by Stalin, completely unknown to the people of Vietnam who had never heard of him.

That he would become leader of the Viet Minh 4 years later is a testimony to his remarkable skills. In 1919 he was simply an unemployed unskilled laborer and his claims to represent the Vietnamese people would have had the gravitas of a 'birther'. Over the next 22 years he would travel outside of Vietnam and invent 'Ho Chi Minh' surviving revolutionary intrigue, Stalinist plots and, perhaps most threateneing, severe TB. There is no reason that anyone should have taken Nguyễn Tất Thành, an unemployed unskilled worker with no known ties to Vietnam seriously in 1919.

[struggle4progress]

56. If Europe had stood up to him on rearmament or the annexation of Czechoslovakia,

it's possible that internal politics in Germany would have progressed differently: for example, elements in the German military reached out to the English in hopes that the government there would take a firm stand on Czechoslovakia, with the idea that the political consequences would make Hitler's ouster easy

Of course, it's quite impossible to know. But the Nazis had to do some serious political work to consolidate their power in first few years after Hitler was appointed

[OZark Dem]

2. We should apologize for Hiroshima when

The Japanese Government apologizes for the Bataan March.

[Kilroy003]

12. Does this count?

"On May 30, 2009, at the 64th and final reunion of Bataan Death March survivors in San Antonio, Texas, Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki apologized to the assembled survivors for the Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war, on behalf of the Japanese government.<4>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March

[uppityperson]

25. Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki apologized to the assembled survivors for the Japan

Interesting, thank you. seems like it should.

[Posteritatis]

23. Or Unit 731. (nt)

[uppityperson]

4. frustrating, isn't it? k&r

[hedgehog]

7. I'm used to it. I've been having a gentle disagreement with my mother that

it doesn't serve any purpose to compare the Holocaust to the Great Hunger to decide which was worse. . Both were government actions (or in technically in the case of England, government inaction) that led to near genocide. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about the near genocide of Native Americans or the murder of millions on the Middle Passage and enslavement of the survivors. People suffered and died. It shouldn't have happened.

[Taverner]

5. You: Preacher, Me: Choir

I'm anti Massacre, personally

[gratuitous]

8. Heretic

The High Church of Redemptive Violence preaches that violence will overcome violence, and everyone who suffers deserves it. If you're going to start questioning the basic tenets of the national religion of the United States, how in the world do you expect us to dominate the world forever and ever (or at least until someone else comes up with a bigger bang-bang)? This is the sort of post that borders on blasphemy! You have to be a hard-eyed realist to see that death and destruction especially of the very old, the very young and most women is absolutely necessary if violence will vindicate us to future generations. And it will, by thunder!

[Javaman]

17. Also Stalingrad. Perhaps the longest bloodest and largest continuous battle during the war.

We are humans, we kill. Worse off, we kill for sport.

[county worker]

28. "diplomacy might have prevented the war"

1. We were in talks with Japan when they attacked Pearl Harbor
2. Nevil Chamberlain got a peace treaty from Hitler
3. Germany and Russia had a non aggression treaty


Yeah I give you diplomacy in WWII and raise you an atom bomb!

[hedgehog]

29. Too little, too late is a poor example of the usefullness of diplomacy.

[county worker]

33. A convenient no risk reply

[hedgehog]

39. What if the Guns of August had never fired? Who the hell can

really come up with a good reason for WWI? What if the Christmas Truce of 1914 had held? In many ways, WWII was WWI part 2.

[county worker]

40. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo that's what

National Socialism, Fascism, Emperor worship

[Javaman]

47. Not quite that simple...

do you know why there was a rise in fascism in both Italy and Germany?

Do you know how Japan came to have people such as Tojo in his position of power?

Simple: global depression combined with extremely old fashion concepts of war reparations.

Germany in the 1920's was a horrible horrible place to live economically speaking. The Wiemar Republic was a joke. hitler rose to power because he provided a sense of pride again to the German people, it was only later that he was revealed to be the racist megalomaniac that he was.

Italy the same. For many years, Italy wasn't a rich nation, although it took only a limited roll in WW1, the cost almost killed it. Couple that with the notorious corruption well known in the revolving door Italian Government.

Japan, suffered one of their most devastation earthquakes in 1924 and was unable to help it's own people and had to seek international help. An old joke during WWII was, "sure we send them our steel to rebuild, now they are firing it back at us". In swoops military dictators to resort "pride" to the people.

"National Socialism, Fascism, Emperor worship" doesn't drop from the sky, it has to come from someplace, be fed and nurtured to grow in the monsters they become.

Japan wanted to revive the tradition of the Samurai. Germany, the Teutonic Order. Italy, the Glory of Rome. All these dictators played upon these themes to empower their populations.

There is so much more to this, it's not just a simple matter. All of the above types of governments arise from something very simple: fear.

[county worker]

49. I didn't say it was a simple matter. My point is that you could not negotiate with them.

I have a better than average knowledge of the years from the end of WWI till now. I was born in 1946. I was told about the war from those who lived it. My grand parents were from Naples.


I'll tell you this. The greatest lesson I learned from DU is that history is what the majority of people think it is and those who write about it never lived it.

[Javaman]

51. As do I...

My grandmother is from Naples as well and my grandfather from Sicily.

I have relatives that lived under german occupation in both Italy, France and Germany.

I have relatives that lived though WWI in Alsace Loraine.

I have immediate family that fought in Europe under Patton and an extended cousin that was at Stalingrad.

As a result of all of this history, I study it and study it closely.

So I know of what I speak.

And my point is, if you see my other posts in this thread, is I agree with you. However, my point in my reply was: many people think this stuff just happens, that there is no lead up, no cause, that people just wake up one day thinking, "you know, I might just give that national socialism a try!". Sadly, in the state in which we find ourselves today, people believe that because they refuse to separate nationalism from being patriotic.

So, if I came off a little harsh, I apologize, but you have to understand why I posted what I posted.

Now that I know your history, I will give you more credit next time.

Cheers.

[county worker]

53. We have a lot in common. My dad fought under Patton as did my wife's step dad

It seems like this stuff is meant to bring us together more than divide us.

[ShamelessHussy]

30. the best way to achieve that call is to never forget what happened in the past

thats one thing i am very thankful for, is that they still go on... what i fear the most is when they stop.

[BlueCheese]

41. War is horrible.

No argument there.

Yes, there were a lot of innocent people killed in World War II. However, that doesn't mean those responsible are equally guilty or equally wrong. There was the deliberate mass murder of millions of civilians as perpetrated by Germany and Japan, and then the unwanted though foreseeable civilian deaths of Allied bombing. In retrospect, certain Allied operations did too much harm to justify the benefits. But the United States was about as unambiguously on the side of good as it is possible to be during a war.

[Javaman]

50. exactly.

war makes for some interesting justifications, but while the Germans and Japanese starved their POW's to death, the US did not. While the Germans killed 6 million+ people the US, although late in the game, allowed Jews and other people not wanted by the Germans to emigrate here. While Germans and Japanese experimented on people for various screwed up reasons, the US did make wide spread use of and invented many medicines still used today during that war.

This is aside from the bombings of cities by both sides and the killing of civilians by both sides, but like you said, "But the United States was about as unambiguously on the side of good as it is possible to be during a war."

While our methods are certainly questionable the over arching mission was to free Europe and the nations of Asia.

[MicaelS]

57. Yes, Yes, and Absolutely fucking no way, no how.

The idea that diplomacy could have stopped Hitler, or the Japanese, is Rose-colored hindsight of the worst kind.

[thebestsas]

58. ww2

Ok, the slaves anseries get money erery person anseries who got killed in ww2 shude get something right?