I am not a Boss, so oblige me by not referring to me as such - unless of course you mean Boss in the other sense, i.e. stud, then of course you are correct. The fact that you were born in l950 and were therefore not a confidant of Truman or his Military Staff would seem to preclude you from knowing what was in the their minds when when they conducted the war against the Japanese in l945. But do carry on. I am always pleased to get another off-beat view-point.
Sure, Boss, whatever you say . . .
Tommy,
Setanta's point of view is the prevailing opinion of most competent historians. One doesn't have to have lived during the Napoleonic Era to gain understanding of event, and even motivations. Indeed, few 19th observers had the same depth of insight and understanding of the events they lived through as a reasonably able undergraduate student of today would have.
Few the scientists who worked on the first bombs really understood and appreciated what the genie was that theywere releasing on the world. Political figures had a much harder time of grasping that the atomic bomb was a qualitative change, not just an increase in destructive scale. Truman was no dummy, and he was advised by General Marshall, perhaps the most important American general officer since Washington. The American leadership had every reason to suppose that the Japanese defense of their homeland would be even more determined than that offered at Okinawa. Neither was particularily vengeful, nor a bleeding heart reluctant to pay the blood price of victory. Let it be the other fellow's blood that is paid, especially since they started the war. As terrible as the use of atomic weapons was, many remain convinced that not to have used the nuclear option would have cost far more.
Finally, why become upset over a linguistic notion. I used to call everyone "darl'n" as a means, I thought, of appearing less formal. One of my subordinates pointed out that when I started calling folks "Darl'n", staff began to prepare for a storm. It appears that unconsciously I used the affectionate term most when I was about ready to hand someone their head. Ah well. Chill out, life's too short to sweat the small stuff.
Thanks, everybody. I have been learning a lot in this discussion. I have never been much of a student of wars - the barbaric levels to which both sides sink turns me off. I think my attention was caught by the word 'revisionist.' I think it takes a lot longer than this for revisionism to quit taking place, in general, where there is free flow of information. But eventually the ones with axes to grind should drop off. I just wished to complement everybody who participated.
See the comment of today's The Guardian:
Germany's unmourned victims
Asherman. You may call me darlin' anytime! But seriously I tend not to be familiar with people until we have been formally introduced.
To the subject at hand. I have got around to reading 'Der Brand'. I do agree that we cannot reject out of hand the author's request that we look at our past without recoutrse to a misplaced patriotism and 'My Rountry right or Wrong'. My father, who is 86 years of age, and who is partially bed-ridden, is taking an interest in these posts and people's 'take' on the rights and wrongs of actions taken in the Second War. (I visit and read to him every day - he considers Setanta well read on this subject. Anyway his take on it is horror of the atrocities of war no matter who was the instigator. He entered Bremen, Hamburg and was Stationed in Cuxhaven after the war for a year. He said he was pretty much hardened to war, but the unburied and burnt corpses shrivelled by the great heat generated by the bombs made him think that there must be another way. But, as he told me, he was torn several ways by the inhumanity he saw, and his feelings were, given that he was a Southern Irishman fighting in a British war, ambivalent, but tending towards Britain. After all we did not shoot prisoners. Certain rules were maintained. There was very little, if any looting, not was there a needless defilement of property.
All I can say is, after hearing what my father, a Regular Army Soldier from 1934 until l946, said, was that to bring one's personal doubts into the rights and wrongs of this particular War, during the actions ordered by Sir Winston Churchill, was not the way to win a war that threatened one's country. However, afterwards, his personal doubts were such that he terminated a fairly good career for the vagaries of civilian life. He admits, and I am persuaded and convinced by his reasoning that the author's case cannot be ignored. I agree with Sir Max Hastings, in his book Bomber Command, "The men of the Army of Occupation were at first awed and then increasingly dismayed, by the total devastation of Germany".
Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris was not exactly ostracised at the end of the war, but he certainly found it more comfortable to emigrate to South Africa. Bomber Command was refused recognition of its war efforts.
Harris was eventually awared a grudging baronetcy in the middle Fifties.
But let us ask ourselves a couple of questions:
When did we become ashamed of the actions carried out by Harris and Bomber Command on our behalf?
Were the actions of Harris and Bomber Command (and the Allies) in the final months of the war a pertinant factor in the bringing down of the German economy and a shortening of the war?
Yes, I think that Friedrich's book is relevent - but what are we to do to prevent current and future conflict.
Our consciences are pricked by this book, but others are not.
Who do you mean by 'others' Tommy?
Also where is your father from in Ireland? As the Free State/Eire was neutral why did he join up? Please pass on my best wishes. Steve
During the late 1960's and the early 1970's, university historians (a a mongrel breed obtained by crossing sincere historians with the politically vindictive) began to claim that the allied bombing offensive had not been effective. Their basis for this concludsion was that German war production reached its "peak" after allied bombing had reached its "peak."
This was disingenuous at best, and a prostitution of history for political ends at worst--i personally feel that the latter case applied by and large. These "historians" were opposed to the bombing of North Vietnam, and were setting out to prove that it would be ineffective. All were certainly familiar with Karl Marx, and many had already demonstrated in their work the propensity to "enlist" history in aid of a political end. Their concerns were primarily to achieve a political end and to add luster to their personal reputations with the narrow community of the academic historian.
An examination of the thesis is useful, and revealing. Using Occams razor, and modifying its injunction not to multiply causes, i will begin with the simplest objection. What constitutes the "peak" of German war production, and what constitutes the "peak" of Allied bombing. I have already mentioned the alarm felt by Albert Speer upon viewing Schweinfurt after what the Americans had considered a failed raid. I read Speer's book more than 30 years ago, so, rather than give a reference which is too vague, i will refer you to Decision over Schweinfurt, a policty study of the Unites States Army Air Force bombing campaign. USAAF planners wished to achieve a rate of 10% of bombs within 1000 yards of ground zero. After the war, where it was possible to identify hits near ground zero, and in particularly in Schweinfurt, it was evident that the Norden bomb sight had performed beyond expectations, and had exceeded the goal. So how could Germans have reached the "peak" of their war time production after the Spring of 1944 (set by the revisionist academic historians as the "peak" of the Allied bombing campaign)? These "historians" had used raw data on the production of munitions, and components and spare parts of weapons systems, without a realistic assessment of the value of such production. To keep the aircraft factories running, and the tank production lines, and the submarine shipyards, the production of railway rolling stock was allowed to sink drastically, and eventually to stop altogether. The exigencies of the massive armored collisions on the plains of the Ukraine had already gutted the production of agricultural tools and machines (the same was true in the Soviet Union--the Felix Dershinsky and Red October tractor factories in Stalingrad were converted to produce tanks, which rolled off the production lines, and unpainted and partially crewed by factory workers, headed for the battle line). You can produce all the ball- and roller-bearings you want (parts crucial to the highly technically, actually over-built German weapons systems), but it won't do you damned much good if their are not freight trains and no trucks to get them to the aircraft plants. It is also difficult to maintain an army in the field when agricultural production falls drastically--and this was a problem for Germany in the first world war when there was no bombing. The German offensive against Gough's Fifth Army in spring, 1918, ground to a halt as much because of the looting of food from English depots by half-starved Prussian soldiers as it did because of French or English lines firmed up. In the second world war, the failure of the agricultural industry was not as dramatic, because POW's, concentration camp internees and the people in occupied territories were left to starve--but my point is to underline the dubious nature of the claim that Germany reached a "peak" of production after the Allied reached a "peak" of bombing.
The "peak" of the Allied bombing offensive is given by these earliest of the "revisionists" as the spring of 1944. If one simply looks at the number of bombers which targeted industry in the German and Austrian heartland, this would seem to be true. However, this once again requires selective historical vision. With the approach of "D-Day," Eisenhower had demanded, and had been granted, control of targeting by the 8th and 9th AAF's and the RAF. He then unleashed his "Transportation Plan." His object was to completely destroy ground communications in France. This plan largely succeeded. French civilian casualties mounted, and the Germans quickly reached a point where daylight travel was impossible. This meant that German and Austrian industry were now subject only to the kindly attentions of Army Air Force and RAF forces in Italy and North Africa--so with a little smoke and mirrors, it can be claimed that the spring of 1944 represents the peak of allied bombing. After the Allied invasion forces were well inland, and the effectiveness of the Transportation Plan was nullified, the bombers which returned to targets in Germany and Austria had a difficult time finding targets. Many German industries had been divided into small operations, and were set up underground--literally. This was as effective a curtailment of German production, as the means of transporting compenents and spare parts to assembly plants and maintenance areas simply did not exist any longer. This was the period of the war in which the RAF began to fly in daylight (the P51 Mustang could escort a bomber stream to Berlin, and still have hours of flight time left; Hawker Hurricanes based in France, Belgium and Holland had the range to escort RAF formations), and the Americans joined such dubious efforts as the second "1000 plane" raid on Cologne, and the revenge bombing of Dresden. In The First and the Last, Adolf Galland describes Mustangs ranging over the countryside picking targets of opportunity, and following German fighters back to their air bases, until the fighters were reduced to flying out of forests, using dirt roads as runways.
The continuingly popular assertion that Allied bombing was ineffective in destroying Germany's ability to make war simply will not stand up to close examination.
I think Tommy means by "others" the terrorists who are today's equivalent of Nazis . . . or perhaps simply the hateful everywhere . . .
Setant has got it in one. 'Others' - those who reckon that war is only means to achieve their ends whether they be legitimate or not.
My father came from County Cork. He and three of his brothers and one sister "emigrated " to London between l930 and l934 and went into what is euphemistically known then as "service". It was while he was an assistant cook to a member of the "gentry" that he enlisted into the Territorial Army in l933 and transferred to the Regular Army in l934. At this time Southern Ireland was still an 'Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth'. Irish 'neutrality' was more in the name than the actuality and Southern Irishmen had no qualms about enlisting into a foreign army; after all the Irish had been world-wide mercenaries for years, thought they drew the line at the Wehrmacht. One thing that most Irish soldiers were ashamed of, whoever they served with, was President De Valera's note of condolence to the German Ambassador to Ireland on the death of the Fuhrer.
Tommy wrote:....Southern Irishmen had no qualms about enlisting into a foreign army; after all the Irish had been world-wide mercenaries for years, thought they drew the line at the Wehrmacht. One thing that most Irish soldiers were ashamed of, whoever they served with, was President De Valera's note of condolence to the German Ambassador to Ireland on the death of the Fuhrer.
The tradition of Irishmen serving in foreign armies is an old one, going back to the Wild Geese - and a subject rich enough for it's own thread. I've read of the Irish Brigades (both the French and American ones) but know few specifics of Irish fighting men in the service of Spain and Austria (for starters).
I've always found DeValera to be an unsavory sort, but perhaps I fail to do him justice.
For those with any interest in the subject, it might interest them to know that the two main infantry organizations which accompanied Rochambeau to America during our revolution--and therefore were participants in the Yorktown seige--were the Irish and the Welsh-Irish regiments . . .
More on the Revolution: I also recall reading that the marines on John Paul Jones'
Bonhomme Richard were members of the (French) Irish Brigade - but I read this online; can't say that I've seen it noted elsewhere. Here's the link:
http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/revhome.html
And an informative link on the Wild Geese:
http://www.doyle.com.au/wild_geese.htm
More on the Irish Brigade in French service:
http://www.wargames.co.uk/RandomS/Cremona.htm
Just adding that a 'French' unit, the "Royal-Deux Ponts unit", was German, from the principality of Zweibrücken, which is German for 'two bridges', which means 'deux ponts' in French.
Thanks Tommy
I believe another famous Irishman comes from Cork, now would that be Roy Keane would it not?
I understand why someone would emigrate and end up joining the army. Its been done before!
What does Father think about "President De Valera's note of condolence to the German Ambassador to Ireland on the death of the Fuhrer"?
He thought it carried international diplomacy too far!
I did not read all the posts in this forum, but would like to add a little tidbit about the Germans during WWII. I didn't know this until my visit to St Petersburg a couple years ago. The Germans wiped out half of St Petersburg's population during WWII, and most were civilians. ** Another interesting tidbit: When the Germans were approaching St Petersburg, the curator at the Catherine the Great's palace removed the amber from the Amber Room, and shipped it to Siberia. After the war, the German's paid to re-install the amber into the palace. It's one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever seen in a palace. c.i.
Re. The Amber Room
I was under the impression that the Amber Room has never been recovered. The Amber Room is often cited as one of the great lost treasures of the world.
Lithuania, now free of the Soviet's, has relied on the export of amber for much needed foriegn cash reserves. My wife, whose ancestors came from Lithuania, has been very sympathetic to the cause of Lithuanian independance. She is doing her bit by buying amber at every opportunity. Last year alone, I think we contributed about 38% of Lithuania's foriegn purchases. It hasn't yet been determined exactly which room here at Corazon will be converted into our own version of the famous Amber Room of St. Pete.
I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but May, 2003 will mark the third centenniel of the foundation of St. Petersburgh.
Asherman, No, the Amber Room was in renovation when I visited, but about 90 complete. I have a brochure photo of the Amber Room that I'd be more than happy to send to your email address - if you wish. The brochure also states it was the Eighth Wonder of the World when it was first completed. c.i.
