The Allies' war crimes

[prune]

(I post this in this section as it HAS to do with 20th century war crimes and the Holocaust, which could have been prevented if... (!!) Though of course it would have fit well in the Allies section)

Many think that John Wayne and soldier Ryan saved Europe from fascism, that Angloamerica saved the old continent, and that the disembarkation in Normandy was the great decisive action. It was not so.

Neither the course of the war, nor the defeat of fascism, were decided there. The main heroes were not John Wayne nor soldier Ryan, but people bearing Slavic last names who died in a country that no longer exists. The really decisive scenes were Moscow, Leningrad (S. Petersburg), Stalingrad (Volgograd) and Kursk.

In the Eastern front, the Third Reich lost 10 million soldiers and officials who died, were hurt and disappeared, 48,000 armored vehicles and vehicles of assault, 167,000 artillery systems. 607 divisions were destroyed. All this represents 75% of the German total losses in World War II.
The difference in the military scale is overwhelming. In Normandy 10,000 dead allies were registered, 4,300 British and Canadian and 6,000 Americans. In the great battles of the East, the dead were counted in hundreds of thousands. In the battle of Moscow about 3 million soldiers and 2,000 tanks participated. There the USSR used half of its army, Germany one third. In Germany, an important battle of the other front, the Germans had between 60,000 and 70,000 soldiers.

The scale of the human suffering is also incomparable. The geopolitics of Hitler did not predict the existence of a Russian state in Europe and the Slavs were very low in their racist scale. The East was a life and death war zone, very different from the one in the West. The cities and the towns were destroyed, frequently along with their inhabitants. One of each four inhabitants of Bielorrussia, one of each three of Leningrad, Pskov and Smolensk died.

The Anglo-American war effort in Europe did not begin until 1943, when it was clear that the USSR had stopped the attack and that the defeat of Germany was inevitable. But, would there have been a "second front" if the things had gone well to Hitler in the East?

In the agreement between the British and the Soviets on common military actions against Germany of July of 1941, Stalin requested the opening of a "second in front" in Europe, that is an allied disembarkation that would alleviate the pressure supported by the USSR. The answer was much delayed.

The winter of 1941, with the Germans at the doors of Moscow, was critical. That year the USSR lost half of the military of the entire war, 9 million were dead, hurt and imprisoned (two thirds of the 27.6 million Soviet dead in the war were civilians), but only 2% of the total received the provisions that their companions of coalition sent them during the war. The declassified documents of the Soviet archives are full of declarations of Western allies that abounded in an inconvenience to hurry. Why not to leave two fierce fighters devour each other?

The Anglo-American disembarked in the remotest and worse places to alleviate the pressure undergone by the USSR; first in North Africa (November ‘42), soon after in Sicily (July ‘43), next in continental Italy (September ‘ 43 and January ‘ 44), and only less than a year before the end of the war (in June ‘ 44) in Normandy.

By then, the Soviet army had already arrived - 6 months before the war - at the Polish border. The democracies had to hurry if they wanted to take some position in Europe and to avoid that "the Russians" arrive in Paris, as they had done in the past.

A manifested distrust presided over the Soviet-Western antifascist alliance from its very beginnings. Their reasons were many and diverse. On the Western part it is accepted, for example, that the German-Soviet ’39 pact demonstrated the kinship between nazism and stalinism. Of the shames of the democracies, of their attitude towards fascism on the eve of the war and of their imperial kinships with Hitler and Mussolini, hardly anyone speaks. Surely because of the manifestation of that fascism in the present times.

On the eve of World War II, those democratic politicians of Europe and America who soon "would save Europe" maintained close links with Hitler and Mussolini. The United States had supported the Italian dictator from his arrival to power in 1922, including the Italians’ excesses, since they represented, after all, a the threat to the Bolsheviks... The American investments in Italy and facist Germany did not diminish in the Thirties, but increased. “Hitler rendered a great service not just to Germany, but to all Western Europe, by shutting off the passage to Communism - for that reason it is legitimate to see in Germany a Western wall against the Bolshevism", said the British Secretary of exteriors, Lord Halifax, in 1938.

London and Berlin could therefore arrive at a common "understanding". Halifax arranged to grant Germany everything she requested; "Danzig, Austria and Czechoslovakia", provided those annexations were carried out, "in pacific and evolutionary form". The principles of that Europe had been also photographed in their attitude towards the Spanish Republic. The idea that the projects of Hitler were well informed, that everybody could be integrated in them, and that the threat was elsewhere, was common in the governments of Europe towards the end of the 30’s. With Neville Chamberlain as head of government in London and Edouard Daladier in Paris, the democracies described the transfer of Czechoslovakia to the Reich practiced by the Conference of Munich as a "peace with honor".

Polish Secretary of State Jozef Beck promised to support the Nazi claim on Austria and to consider the interests of the Reich before a "possible attack (by the Polish) against Lithuania". The Polish ambassador in Paris, Lukaszewicz, explained the European “game” to his North American colleagues: it was a fight between nazism and the bolshevism, in whose fields was included also "agents of Moscow" like the Czechoslovakian President, Edvard Benes. "Germany and Poland will make Russians run away in three months", said the ambassador, on the eve of the aggression against his own country which marked "the official" beginning of World War II.
By then, that war already had eight years of history throughout the world. Yet in the imperial dominions of Asia and Africa, the war, the invasion and the racism did not count since they did not collide with the interests of the occupiers.

In 1931 the Japanese had seized a piece of China greater than France. In 1933 and 1935 they had expanded their invasion to other three Chinese provinces, practicing their chemical and bacteriological war by experimenting on the civilian populace. In 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia, with Marshal Badoglio using bombs loaded with yperite against the civil populace. In July 1939 the British government declared "to completely recognize the present situation in China". Neither London nor Washington protested or were against the Japanese attacking Mongolia in May 1939, imagining they could destroy her rear, the USSR: the battle of Jaljyn Gol produced more dead than the entire campaign of the German invasion of France.

Leopold Amery, who was in charge of "India Office", explained clearly in the House of Commons why the British defended the Japanese aggression against China: "if we condemned what Japan has done in China, we would also have to condemn what England has done in Egypt and India".
In a book written in a British prison between April and September 1944, agreeing with the disembarkation in Normandy, Nehru, founder of the New India explained the situation: "Behind some of those democracies there were empires in which sometimes there was no democracy and where reigned the same type of authoritarianism (racist) that is associated with fascism, so naturally those Western democracies felt some type of ideological kinship with fascism".
"The British policy had been almost uninterruptedly profacist and pro-Nazi", summarized Nehru in his cell at the Fort of Ahmadnagar, but everything finished, when they saw that "natural ally", that relative, turned against the Western interests. "It was made obvious more and more that, in spite of the desire to calm Hitler, his was becoming the dominant power in Europe, disassembling completely and threatening the vital interests of the British Empire".

The result was an alliance forged on the circumstances and the stupidity of Hitler, who, if the USSR had been attacked instead of having attacking Poland first, would have been applauded by the democracies. This idea was expressed at the end of the war by Hitler himself in a lesser known text. In February 1945, Martin Bormann gathered several of Hitler’s monologues which have the value of a political testament. Two months before his death, Hitler agreed in them, with an emphasis on the British and American politicians before the war, when reflecting on the errors that had lead to the defeat. The campaign against Russia was "inevitable", he said, recognizing the war on two fronts had been an error, but the last responsibility was that of Americans and British, with whom it would have been possible to reach an agreement. "The war against America is a tragedy, illogical and devoid of all foundation. Only the Jewish conspiracy against Germany has made it possible"… Overcome by delirium, his glance to the future, he included a prognosis of the bipolar world that was approaching: "With the defeat of the Reich and the appearance of the Asian, African and South American nationalisms, only two powers able to confront themselves will be left in the world; the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of history and geography will push them towards a test of force, military or economic and ideological as well".

The most formidable propaganda apparatus and public relations in world history has made a legend of its ever-victorious history. Hollywood, the mediatic industry in the hands of tycoons, the systems which are the official feeders of that industry and, of course, the army of paid affluent conformists in charge to transmit it, have written the most “advisable” version: the victory was America’s.

Vindicating the only positive role that the foreign armed intervention of the United States has had in its history in the last century, the President sells his present-day crusades. The French, the Italians, the Belgians and the Dutch are thus eternally grateful to America and the Europeans’ serfdom to soldier Ryan is maintained, even when confronted with a long list of unpunished crimes committed by the American militarism since then and the ongoing destruction of the fragile international rights.

Rafael Poch – La Vanguardia

http://www.lavanguardia.es/premium/publ ... SUBORDRE=3

[David Thompson]

prune -- Your caption is highly misleading. The original title of the essay is "Aniversario en la vieja Europa," and this unsourced polemical essay has more to do with the writer's rose-colored political outlook than war crimes.

"agents of Moscow" like the Czechoslovakian President, Edvard Horseradish.

He probably means Edvard Beneš.

[prune]

He certainly meant Edvard Beneš, sorry. I rushed to translate this article from Spanish into English with an online translator.
The title is one of my interpretations of the article. And I don't think my interpretation is a misleading one.
Rafael Poch was a Moscow correspondent for La Vanguardia between 1988 and 2002, and before that he had been editor of the DPA agency in Hamburg and traveling correspondent in Eastern Europe from 1983 to 1987, and during this time he had studied contemporary history and had also managed to get access to lots of important quality information. He also collaborated with Le Monde Diplomatique (the Spanish edition) from 1999 to 2002.
He obviosuly seems to know a bit more about the contemporary history of Europe than most mainstream journalists, and his reports are, I think, among the best documented ones. Which might hurt some, apparently.
If you have any arguments that contradict his 'unsourced' polemics, I'd be curious to hear them.

Maria Serban

[henryk]

Prune and the author of the article ignore the invasion of Poland Sept 1939 by the USSR and the removal of more than 1 million of its citzens, many to their death. Also the subsequent 50 year old occupation of Eastern Europe by the foreign Communist philosophy.

[Marcus]

Drop the personal remarks everyone.


Which war crime(s) exactly are you accusing the (western) Allies of here prune?

/Marcus

[Rob - wssob2]

Hi Prune, Regardless of polemics, perhaps you could break your post into paragraphs so that its easier to read.

[David Thompson]

A series of off-topic posts containing various unsourced opinions, personal remarks about other posters, etc. were deleted by the moderator pursuant to the forum and section rules -- DT.

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

prune -- You wrote:

He obviosuly seems to know a bit more about the contemporary history of Europe than most mainstream journalists, and his reports are, I think, among the best documented ones. Which might hurt some, apparently.
If you have any arguments that contradict his 'unsourced' polemics, I'd be curious to hear them.

If the author relies on documentary evidence, he didn't bother to include any, and I doubt that anyone here is hurt -- though they may be annoyed -- by the author's sourcing failure. If he is better informed than the last several generations of communist journalists, it's not obvious from his essay. As for your last comment, I'm still waiting to see something relevant to the subject matter of this section of the forum. The section rules provide:

D. Topicality

The fifth rule of the forum is: "Keep the message on topic." There are two aspects to this rule. The first involves topics which may be discussed in this section of the forum. The second involves staying on topic when posting to a thread.

Permissible subjects for this section of the forum are the holocaust and twentieth century war crimes. If a thread isn't discussing something related to those subjects, it's off-topic.

See also the sections on questions, claims and proof:

When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.

Also, undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless posts and threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum. For more on this subject, see the announcement at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 676#990676

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

A general reference to a website, or a book without page references; citations or links to racist websites; generalized citations to book reviews; and citations to unsourced articles.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.

and opinion posts:

3. Opinions

Since the purpose of this section of the forum is to exchange information and hold informed discussions about historical problems, posts which express unsolicited opinions without supporting facts and sources do not promote the purposes of the forum. Consequently, such posts are subject to deletion after a warning to the poster.

The same reasoning applies to opinion threads

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

[David Thompson]

Since this miscaptioned thread has little, if anything, to do with war crimes, I'll move it from H&WC to the "WWII in General" section of the forum for discussion there.

For an English-language critique of the article by Rafael Poch de Feliu, see:

“The USSR saved Europe from fascism”
http://oreneta.com/kalebeul/2004/06/06/ ... m-fascism/

A google search using the name "Rafael Poch" will turn up a number of pages (articles almost entirely in Spanish) discussing this fellow, his outlook, his articles, and his career.

[prune]

Anythingarian bubbles... that pretty much says it all, indeed.

[South]

Good morning Prune,

Concur; Normandy was not the decisive action that saved Europe.

Pearl Harbor was.

After the factories started their production runs, the fate of part of Europe was determined.

One reason - although not a major reason - for the huge losses by the USSR can be traced to the purges. After the loss of Marshall Tukachevsky, 2 other marshalls were lost of the Soviet Union's 5; 13 of 15 army commanders lost; 57 of 85 corps commanders and 110 of 195 division commanders lost to the purges. Can't blame John Wayne for this.

Can you guess the reason Stalin did not get his immediate 2nd front request forfilled?

The 1931 China territorial loss was "Mukden Incident" 18 Sep 31. Not sure if you're measuring France with Algeria. Algeria was not a French colony but a Department (actually 3 Departments).

Do you accept the losses around Iceland and the Atlantic ship sinkings not devastating enough to be listed with the land battles of the Eastern front ?

Welcome to NATO.


Warm regards,


Bob

[Ironmachine]

Poch's essay is nothing more than a diatribe against Georg Bush and the United States, as can be seen from the last three paragraphs of the original article, which prune has not translated:

El hombre que, según las encuestas, encarna la guerra y promueve la desestabilización global, para la mayoría de los europeos, habla hoy en Normandía de moral, de libertad y de principios, y recibe el tributo y el aplauso de los dirigentes de la "vieja Europa".
La generosidad y el heroísmo de los 10.000 caídos en aquellas playas francesas sirve, así, para reivindicar su "guerra contra el terrorismo", la destrucción de los frágiles rudimentos del derecho internacional y del control de armamentos, la agresión preventiva o "humanitaria", el armamentismo y la banalización del uso del arma nuclear en guerras convencionales. Es el momento de recordar quien era el máximo representante de esas mismas tendencias en el mundo de hace 60 años.
La guerra no la ganó el soldado Ryan en Normandía, pero un indigno peligroso reivindica su gloria.

Translation:
"The man who, according to polls, embodies the war and promotes global destabilization for most Europeans, spoke today in Normandy about morality, liberty and principles, and received the tribute and the applause of the leaders of the "old Europe".
The generosity and heroism of the 10,000 killed in those French beaches served, as well, to assert its "war against terrorism", the destruction of the fragile rudiments of international law and arms control, the preventive or "humanitarian" aggression, the arms race and the trivialization of the use of nuclear weapons in conventional wars. It's time to remember who was the main representative of those same trends in the world of 60 years ago.
The war was not won Private Ryan in Normandy, but a dangerous unworthy claims its glory."

And also in the last sentence of this paragraph, that prune also forgot to translate:
"The most formidable propaganda apparatus and public relations in world history has made a legend of its ever-victorious history. Hollywood, the mediatic industry in the hands of tycoons, the systems which are the official feeders of that industry and, of course, the army of paid affluent conformists in charge to transmit it, have written the most “advisable” version: the victory was America’s. And so we come to the speech by George Bush in the anniversary of the landing."

With that in mind, and knowing quite well the political beliefs of the author, I found nothing surprising in the essay. Not even the twisting of history to fit into the author's own view.

.

[Andreas]

Anythingarian bubbles... that pretty much says it all, indeed.

Those sort of incomprehensible and utterly pointless one-liners are not the preferred method of exchange of opinions on this forum. In the future they will be deleted.

If you continue to be unwilling to address points raised by others in response to the original post, this thread will lose the tiny bit of usefulness it currently has, with the logical consequences to follow.

Thank you.

Andreas

[Art]

Prune and the author of the article ignore the invasion of Poland Sept 1939 by the USSR and the removal of more than 1 million of its citzens.

That is en exaggerated figure. See http://www.memo.ru/history/POLAcy/Index.htm for information from modern researches..

[prune]

Good morning Prune,

Concur; Normandy was not the decisive action that saved Europe.

Pearl Harbor was.

After the factories started their production runs, the fate of part of Europe was determined.

One reason - although not a major reason - for the huge losses by the USSR can be traced to the purges. After the loss of Marshall Tukachevsky, 2 other marshalls were lost of the Soviet Union's 5; 13 of 15 army commanders lost; 57 of 85 corps commanders and 110 of 195 division commanders lost to the purges. Can't blame John Wayne for this.

Can you guess the reason Stalin did not get his immediate 2nd front request forfilled?

The 1931 China territorial loss was "Mukden Incident" 18 Sep 31. Not sure if you're measuring France with Algeria. Algeria was not a French colony but a Department (actually 3 Departments).

Do you accept the losses around Iceland and the Atlantic ship sinkings not devastating enough to be listed with the land battles of the Eastern front ?

Welcome to NATO.


Warm regards,


Bob

Hi, Bob

You're saying Pearl Harbor was the decisive action that saved Europe. So the US' declaration of war against the Axis was decisive?... I wonder why... Even if the Japanese strike was tremendously devastating, the losses on the Pacific theatre and the consequent US' being drawn into ww2 were trivial compared to the combats that had the history-altering consequences and that took place on the Eastern European theatre. To me it seems that the biggest contribution to the utter defeat of the Axis powers was that of the Ussr.

Any loss is devastating during a war. The individual merit of each American soldier who fought at Pearl Harbour or on the Omaha Beach, on the bridges of Holland or in the forests of the Ardennes is to be valued no less than anyone else’s who fought the Nazism. Each GI of ww2 deserves as much respect and admiration as each Russian, British, French, Belgian, Yugoslav or Chinese soldier. On the other hand, if we talk about the nations involved in ww2, not individuals, the contribution of the US to the victory over Nazism is inferior to that of the Soviet Union.

Ussr’s effort had much greater strategic implications in fighting Nazism:
When the Americans and the British landed on the continent, they were in front of 56 German divisions, disseminated in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. At the same time, the Soviets were facing 193 divisions, on a front which extended from the Baltic to the Balkans. The day before June 6, a third of the surviving soldiers of the Wehrmacht had already endured a wound with the combat. 11% were wounded twice or more. These wounded people constituted, beside the contingents of kids and very old soldiers, the main part of the troops quartered in the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall. The ‘fresh’ troops, who had the best armored equipment, heavy artillery and all the rest of the Luftwaffe, fought in Ukraine and Byelorussia. At the height of the offensive in France and in Benelux, the Americans will align 94 divisions, the British 31, the French 14. During this time, there were 491 Soviet divisions engaged in the Eastern battles.

But most importantly, at the time of the Allies’ landing in Normandy, Germany was already virtually overcome. From 3,25 million German soldiers killed or missing during the war, 2 millions fell between June, 1941 (the invasion of the Ussr) and the landing of June, 1944. Less than 100.000 had fallen before June ‘41. And of the 1,2 million German losses after June 6 ‘44, two thirds were on the eastern front. Only the battle of Stalingrad eliminated (destruction or captures) twice more German divisions than all the operations led in the West between the landing and the capitulation. All in all, 85 % of the German military losses of the second world war are due to the Red Army (the cause of the German civilian losses was different though: they were caused, initially, by the exterminations operated by the Nazis themselves and then as a result of the massive bombardments of civil targets by the RAF and the USAF.

Urss suffered the most severe losses:
In this war, the United States lost 400.000 soldiers, sailors and aviators and some 6.000 civilians (primarily merchant marines). As for the Soviets they underwent, according to various sources, from 9 to 12 million military losses and 17 and 20 million civilian losses. It was calculated that 80% of the Russian men born in 1923 did not survive ww2. Also, the Chinese losses in the fight against Japan - which amount to millions - are infinitely higher (and infinitely less known) than the American ones.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... rchart.png

My conclusions:
- It is in front of Moscow, during the winter of ‘41-‘42, that Hitler’s army was stopped for the first time.
- It is in Stalingrad, during the winter of ‘42-‘43, that Hitler’s army underwent the heaviest historical defeat.
- For two years Stalin had been calling on the English and the Americans to open a second front, and it was in vain.
- It is in Kursk, July ‘43, that the Nazis’ hardcore firepower – the Pantzers divisions - was definitively broken (500.000 people killed and 1000 tanks destroyed in a ten days fight!).

And all these don’t constitute crimes, of course, if they don't collide with the interests of the powers involved - war had been going on for eight years in various parts of the world before the ww2 started, with macabre consequences:
UK recognized Japan's offensives in China and did nothing. The Chinese losses in the fight against Japan – millions died – were infinitely less known than the American ones. Neither Britain nor America seemed to care;
In 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia, with Marshal Badoglio using bombs loaded with yperite against the civil populace. Neither Britain nor America seemed to care;
In May 1939 the Japanese attacked Mongolia – both Britain and America were happy, thinking a neighbour of the USSR could be destroyed: the battle of Jaljyn Gol produced more dead than the entire campaign of the German invasion of France;
Lord Halifax arranged to grant Hitler the annexation of Danzig, Austria and Czechoslovakia if they were carried out "in pacific and evolutionary form". The delivery of Czechoslovakia to the Reich practiced by the Conference of Munich was described by the Allies as a "peace with honor";
In the imperial dominions of Asia and Africa, war, invasion, occupation and racism by the Allies took place;
And finally, the second front, opened late, wouldn’t have been opened if it had seemed that Hitler would win.

Maria

[Penn44]

Prune:

Learn to break down your post containing your mega-claims into separate threads so they can be properly discussed. From what I can tell, you try to raise two major points:

1) The role of individual countries in the defeat of Nazi Germany with the claim that the USSR had the most significant role;
2) The foreign policies of Western nations prior to the war, in particular, those of the UK and the US, which you contend gave support to the early expansionist drives of the Axis powers.

These points are best answered if you created separate threads for each of them. It's hard to answer several major questions of WWII within a single thread, unless of course, you never intended to raise them as questions, that you just needed an Internet soapbox to pontificate your moralistic, political rants.

Penn44

.