Re: THE FIRST WORLD WAR as reported in the daily news
Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 3:38 pm
Duncan, WWII was the only war that had to be won by our side against the Germans and those countries that sided with them. WWI was all about pride on both sides and the winner looking to be at the throat of the loser and making them pay. It could have ended a lot earlier than it did.
In WWII, those that fought it on the side of the allies were deserving of being remembered as "the greatest generation". At the same time, from the point of view of horrors committed, our side did it's share of wholesale slaughter of non combatants....actually more. Dresden for instance:
Remember that experimental atom bomb that we first tried out on Japan to shorten the war? The US had no idea how much actual damage it would do. When we saw how terrible it was, and the Japs didn't surrender immediately, we dropped another one. The second time we know what it would do and how many it would kill or terribly injure. The Germans and Japs didn't have an atomic weapon yet so we were first....and only..for the moment... to use atomic weapons to kill large numbers of people.
The only evil thing that the Germans did that the allies didn't do, was to produce extermination camps in WWII.....save maybe the Russians which often just killed people without going to the trouble of herding them into camps first. The millions of civilians, particularly Jews, that the Germans methodically murdered was truly an atrocity of enormous proportions that the Allies were innocent of copying..
There are no wars in which the innocent don't suffer....and usually suffer the most. .. My opinion of course and to each his own.
In WWII, those that fought it on the side of the allies were deserving of being remembered as "the greatest generation". At the same time, from the point of view of horrors committed, our side did it's share of wholesale slaughter of non combatants....actually more. Dresden for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_o ... rld_War_IIThe bombing of Dresden was a British/American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, that took place during the Second World War in the European Theatre. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city.[1] The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed over 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre.[2] An estimated 22,700[3] to 25,000[4] people were killed, although larger casualty figures have been claimed over the years
Remember that experimental atom bomb that we first tried out on Japan to shorten the war? The US had no idea how much actual damage it would do. When we saw how terrible it was, and the Japs didn't surrender immediately, we dropped another one. The second time we know what it would do and how many it would kill or terribly injure. The Germans and Japs didn't have an atomic weapon yet so we were first....and only..for the moment... to use atomic weapons to kill large numbers of people.
The only evil thing that the Germans did that the allies didn't do, was to produce extermination camps in WWII.....save maybe the Russians which often just killed people without going to the trouble of herding them into camps first. The millions of civilians, particularly Jews, that the Germans methodically murdered was truly an atrocity of enormous proportions that the Allies were innocent of copying..
There are no wars in which the innocent don't suffer....and usually suffer the most. .. My opinion of course and to each his own.
