Was the "Total War" of WW2 a terrorist war?

[GarfieldLeChat]

Why FFS?

Is it funny that Dresden was used as a transit hub for Jews on their way to concentration camps?

Is that funny?

no you dull wit the suggestion that it was used as a major transit for jews though less so at the later end of the war althought being technically incorrect as actions against the jews increased toward the end of the war includign far greater atrosities than had previously meated out to the jews however due to this action alone it is totally conviecable that the previous level of transit of the jews would decrease due to the lessening numbers becuase of the aforementioned actions...

there fore a comment which says

Yes, sure, Dresden was also a major transit hub for Jews, although probably not so much at that late stage of the war.

has the accidental (but intentional i assume) humour of point this fact out...

try to be a little less dry in your life...

you might not have a heart attack...

 

[gsv]

Guess I should have defined my terms...
On the other hand, perhaps this thread is about questioning the term "terrorist", and about questioning the way we've chosen to conduct warfare in the past, even in the case of a war that we generally believe to have been fought for good reasons.

For the moment, I consider that terrorism is the targeting of non-mililtary populations with violence to achieve a military or political objective. So the IRA bomb in Enniskillen (sp?) was a terrorist attack, whereas the mortar attack on No. 10 was a legitimate guerilla attack (and a ballsy one at that).

I chose to mention Dresden in this context not because I don't think there was a military target there (I'd be shocked and amazed if there weren't), but because of the scale of civilian slaughter, the fact that this must have been anticipated (and therefore embraced) by Bomber Command, and that the consequent view by some that Harris should be considered a war criminal.

The same applies to both Japan and the blitz.

So is my understanding of the term "terrorist" correct and useful?
And does it apply to the conduct of both the Axis and the Allies in the Second World War?

Regardless of who we consider to be the good guys / the bad guys / victims / etc...


GS(v)

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Perhaps if you go into the rhelm of deep deep irony (why didn't they bomb it sooner), but I find it profoundly sad and enraging, although I can't do much about it now, not funny.

oh just fuck up you humourless mincer

 

[dylanredefined]

I dont think the strategic bombing of cities can be compared to terrorists bombs .It was total war and everything was considered a legimate
target Only the germans being beaten stoped them getting nuked .And if they had had a nuke would happily stuck in in a v2 and sent it to london .
There remains a debate about why chemical/biological weapons werent used. Supposedly Hitler not to keen on them from his experinces of ww1 and fear of retatilation from both sides .

 

[Hollis]

I dont think the strategic bombing of cities can be compared to terrorists bombs .It was total war and everything was considered a legimate
target

Guess it depends where you're coming from.

 

[kyser_soze]

I'm with Dylan on this one. I fail to see the point in differentiating bewtween attacks on civilian or military targets using the word 'terrror'.

Then again I'm also of the opinion that having rules to fight a war with are pointless since historically not one signatory to any kind of convention on respecting the right to life of civlians has stuck to it (ditto treatment of PoWs).

You could say that bombing cilvian populaiton centres can be used to instill terror (or Shock and Awe ) but to call mass attacks such as Dresden etc 'terrorist' attacks is, IMVHO, a misnomer.

 

[Hollis]

Yes - I agree it seems something of a pedantic point.

 

[energy]

He's not going to get it, so shouldn't bother trying...

Give me something funny to work with, and I'll get it.

 

[butterfly child]

Give me something funny to work with, and I'll get it.

I already did, but you didn't get it.

Humour - you either got it, or you haven't.

 

[kropotkin]

Yes, to me they were terrorist actions.

In order to think differently requires a historiography and narrative that is top-down, one in which a person living within the territory controlled by a power structure is somehow culpable for the actions of that elite. For a normal worker in Germany or Japan, these were terrorist in every sense.

Incidentally, Robert Macnamara was at the time working in the Pentagon doing statistics. He was analysing the frequency of bombs hitting targets versus planes lost in the strategic bombing of Japanese cities. To hit the targets, the planes had to fly low enough that they could be hit by anti-aircraft fire. He decided that on balance it would be better to switch to bombardment form a much higher altitude, and to replace the bombs with incendiary devices (Japanese cities at the time were constructed from extremely flammable materials). His paper was accepted and he became the architect of the firebombng of Japanese cities- he says that he thinks that one night alone it resulted in 10,000 civilian deaths.

That is the logic of states, and the logic of terrorism.

 

[kyser_soze]

Was Macnamara the chap that made that film about his time as SecDef?

Is it out on DVD yet cos I missed it in the cinemas.

 

[Poi E]

Was Macnamara the chap that made that film about his time as SecDef?

Is it out on DVD yet cos I missed it in the cinemas.

Yes, out on DVD "The Fog of War". Excellent documentary.

 

[kropotkin]

I have it if you want it, but yes, it is out on DVD.

 

[Hollis]

Yeah.. that was in that film wasn't it.

Call it terrorism or whatever.. They were trying to win a war.

Yeah - excellent documentary..

 

[kropotkin]

so are Al Quaida. So were the IRA. So did any number of organisations who employed terroriam as a tactic.

If it is wrong and anti-human when your enemy does it, it is equally wrong when you do it.

 

[kyser_soze]

I have it if you want it, but yes, it is out on DVD.

That's one to buy methinks.

If it is wrong and anti-human when your enemy does it, it is equally wrong when you do it.

Yeah, it's this thinking that's led me down my 'If you're at war anything is a legitimate target' thinking. War itself is inhuman and immoral so what's the point in trying to score moral points by introducing rules that are broken as soon as it's strategically or tactically useful to do so? I don't buy into the 'Well at least we have the rules there in the first place' line since

a. The winners will never be prosecuted for any breaches of said rules
b. once one side starts doing something the other will follow.

 

[Hollis]

so are Al Quaida. So were the IRA. So did any number of organisations who employed terroriam as a tactic.

If it is wrong and anti-human when your enemy does it, it is equally wrong when you do it.

Depends don't it. Means and ends. How can you say in absolute terms its "wrong". That's your value-judgement?

 

[kropotkin]

Can you say in absoute terms that rape is wrong?

I think you can.


If massacring civilians is wrong when done by the Germans, the Turkish, the Iraqis etc... then how can it be any different when done by the Us and UK?

 

[likesfish]

no the ww 2 just about everything thing was used and everybody was a target
the ira's "war" was diffrent
no citys were raised to the ground
when bombers went off off to bomb nobody was shooting at them
diffrent mindset back then as well

 

[Spion]

I'd scrub the word 'terrorism/ist' from the dictionary. It's overwhelming usage is one lodged in the existing power structure - used by states to describe enemy non-state acts of political violence against military and civilian targets. Examples include:

Afghan guerillas against USSR = resistance fighters
Afghan guerillas against USA/UK = terrorists

B52s carpet bombing sq kms of Iraqi conscripts = not terror
Roadside bomb against targets in post-invasion Iraq = terror

 

[Hollis]

Can you say in absoute terms that rape is wrong?

I think you can.

There's certainly less of an ethical trade-off there. Hence its easier to have a black & white viewpoint on it. I still don't think you can say in absolute terms its wrong - its part of a wider value system.

Re: the final part of the post... I think you have to look at the historical context.

 

[kropotkin]

no the ww 2 just about everything thing was used and everybody was a target
the ira's "war" was diffrent
no citys were raised to the ground
when bombers went off off to bomb nobody was shooting at them
diffrent mindset back then as well

Respect is due to a post with absolutely no argument content whatsoever.

 

[kyser_soze]

Krops - just out of interest, do you think that there's a case for reconsidering ideas like the Geneva convention etc to take account of 'terrorist' (FWOABW) action and how civil society can respond to it?

It strikes me that the 'rules of war' are geared up around linear combat, not the slow motion, non-linear action that typifies issue based warfare...any thoughts?

 

[energy]

I already did, but you didn't get it.

Humour - you either got it, or you haven't.

I don't want to get into a big argument, but the point you made previously was really quite pedantic, and still doesn't explain why it was funny.

 

[Spion]

War itself is inhuman and immoral

War is uniquely human.

And whether it is immoral depends on your morals

 

[Poi E]

War is uniquely human.

Nah, them chimps go at it too.

 

[Wookey]

There are problems with the definition of terrorism as it's been hijacked by the US government. But in the sense of using terror against a civilian population outside the traditional arena of war, then in my view Dresden and the Japanese bombings were terrorism.

That's not to say at least the nuclear attacks could not be retrospectively justified; at the time, the Axis powers had no idea how weak Japan was, no idea how scared of the Russian invasion of China they were - and actually, very little idea of how and if the atom bombs would really work. It's far easier to sit at this end of time, and say it was over-board, hammer/nutshell, etc. But reports coming in from the front line in Japan at the time suggested that many of the military personnel had as suicidal preference for death over ignominy - and that a traditional land invasion would have been a massacre on both sides.

As for Dresden, well, that was Churchill's idea, far too late to effect the war, and in keeping with his place as the first genuine user in history of city-wide bombing campaigns. That was a crime in my eyes, because it was an empty gesture, and the benefits even at the time were far from clear.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Why FFS?

Is it funny that Dresden was used as a transit hub for Jews on their way to concentration camps?

Is that funny?

No, what is funny (in a nasty yet ironic way) is your statement "...although probably not so much at that late stage of the war.', given that most of us had already been exterminated by then. It's the fact that you made the statement as a "statement of fact" and yet it (unintentionally) reflects the tragedy of how far the slaughter of our people had gone by 1944-45.

What do you do if you can't find humour in tragedy?
You spend the rest of your life crying.

 

[kropotkin]

There's certainly less of an ethical trade-off there. Hence its easier to have a black & white viewpoint on it. I still don't think you can say in absolute terms its wrong - its part of a wider value system.

Re: the final part of the post... I think you have to look at the historical context.

Can you explain it to me? I'm not a historian, but I am very resistant to this viewpoint.

I would have supported WW2 (most of my grandma's relatives were massacred in the camps in Poland)- either as part of a resistance force or within the brit army- I'm not quibbling on the validity of the war itself (although I would have a different interpretation of why it was being fought, and for whom). I cannot so far accept the legitimacy of the targetting of civilians- which is why I oppose it in all other contexts.

what about this particular historical context that makes it different?

 

[kyser_soze]

War is uniquely human.

And whether it is immoral depends on your morals

No it isn't - well at least from an interpretive point of view anyway (cos it's unlikely that animals would recognise and define something as 'war' in the way humans do)

There have been documented examples of warfare between simians and cetacean species and I'd be very surprised if it doen't happened in the insect world as well.

Same as rape, murder and loads of other suposedly uniquely human actions.