Hiroshima visit, a missed op.

[Karl7]

Suppose that the Nazi government found that the Jews living within German-held territory opposed the Nazi war effort, and were doing everything they possibly could to thwart it. Would you feel the Nazi government had a legal right to exterminate this Jewish population every bit as vigorously as the Allies were working to exterminate the German people?

War between nations and quelling insurgencies are not really analogous, thus the question isn’t correct.

Let just say, I don’t believe in “universal human rights.” I know that’s not popular these days. But I really don’t see any basis for their existence other than aspiration, i.e. they are “good” so they must be.  People at best have only natural rights, which are secured and augmented by government. If you live in the state of nature and someone kills you, well too bad. If you live in society governed by law then you are protected by the criminal law. If one segment of society, say the Jews, start blowing up your railroads or whatever, then they would be prosecuted as criminals. I guess your criminal law could be as harsh as you want. I suppose that’s a matter of taste. But that really isn’t relative to two nations at war.

If you don’t feel that such an act would have been legal, then please explain why the Allies were allowed to target and exterminate civilians, and why the Axis wasn’t allowed to do so.

Ok, I think this is where the confusion lies. War and law can only exist in the absence of the other. One negates the other. The reason is axiomatic and self-evident. If someone attempts to dominate you by force, no law, by itself, is going to help you, especially if the attacker doesn’t care.  Once war is unleashed winning is all that matters. Sure, I guess you can try to stipulate that you won’t do X destructive thing if your enemy doesn’t etc. But that is also unenforceable.  There was no real reason why Germany couldn’t have used poison gas in WWII. The Germans just thought better of it, and I guess took the chance others wouldn’t do it, which paid off in the end.  But there is no reason they couldn’t have.

As for bombing, I am not condemning anyone for it, Axis or Allies.

As for the atomic bombing of Japan: the Japanese government had agreed to a conditional surrender months before the bomb was dropped. The bomb was not necessary for the U.S. to win the war–we’d done that already. The only reason the bomb was “necessary” was because “unconditional surrender” made better propaganda than the phrase “we let them surrender with some dignity.”

Yes, I am aware of that history. I had to write an essay on it in High School about if the A-bombs were justified in light of Japanese peace feelers.  Again, who cares?!  If I am in a total war situation with a deadly opponent, and they start saying TO OTHER PEOPLE, “maybe I’ll surrender if blah blah blah” – why should I do anything but continue to blow them away? The allied terms were set. The Japanese did not accept them. EVEN AFTER TAKING 1 A BOMB.  It took 2.

In the postwar era, a Japanese court correctly found that the atomic bombings had been illegal, because conditions 2) and 3) had not been met.

Who cares.

Treaties are NOT laws, no matter how hard you pound the table. The only real penalty for breaking a treaty is war. So you’re back to bombing civilians in the name of stopping the bombing of civilians.

I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. The Allies bomb the hell out the Axis, then turn around AFTER the war and start saying oh, that was bad, but then adopt as THE cornerstone of national defense policy to totally annihilate their enemies with nuclear bombs, building thousands…

It just goes to show you that all this hysteria about “BOMBING CIVILIANS” is just frankly silly.  Yes, it is mean, and it shouldn’t happen in a nice world.  But when the going gets tough, the bombs got to fall. Sorry.

Have a nice day  : :-D

[KurtGodel7]

@Karl7:

Suppose that the Nazi government found that the Jews living within German-held territory opposed the Nazi war effort, and were doing everything they possibly could to thwart it. Would you feel the Nazi government had a legal right to exterminate this Jewish population every bit as vigorously as the Allies were working to exterminate the German people?

War between nations and quelling insurgencies are not really analogous, thus the question isn’t correct.

Let just say, I don’t believe in “universal human rights.” I know that’s not popular these days. But I really don’t see any basis for their existence other than aspiration, i.e. they are “good” so they must be.  People at best have only natural rights, which are secured and augmented by government. If you live in the state of nature and someone kills you, well too bad. If you live in society governed by law then you are protected by the criminal law. If one segment of society, say the Jews, start blowing up your railroads or whatever, then they would be prosecuted as criminals. I guess your criminal law could be as harsh as you want. I suppose that’s a matter of taste. But that really isn’t relative to two nations at war.

Ok, I think this is where the confusion lies. War and law can only exist in the absence of the other. One negates the other. The reason is axiomatic and self-evident. If someone attempts to dominate you by force, no law, by itself, is going to help you, especially if the attacker doesn’t care.  Once war is unleashed winning is all that matters. Sure, I guess you can try to stipulate that you won’t do X destructive thing if your enemy doesn’t etc. But that is also unenforceable.  There was no real reason why Germany couldn’t have used poison gas in WWII. The Germans just thought better of it, and I guess took the chance others wouldn’t do it, which paid off in the end.  But there is no reason they couldn’t have.

As for bombing, I am not condemning anyone for it, Axis or Allies.

Yes, I am aware of that history. I had to write an essay on it in High School about if the A-bombs were justified in light of Japanese peace feelers.  Again, who cares?!  If I am in a total war situation with a deadly opponent, and they start saying TO OTHER PEOPLE, “maybe I’ll surrender if blah blah blah” – why should I do anything but continue to blow them away? The allied terms were set. The Japanese did not accept them. EVEN AFTER TAKING 1 A BOMB.  It took 2.

Who cares.

Treaties are NOT laws, no matter how hard you pound the table. The only real penalty for breaking a treaty is war. So you’re back to bombing civilians in the name of stopping the bombing of civilians.

I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. The Allies bomb the hell out the Axis, then turn around AFTER the war and start saying oh, that was bad, but then adopt as THE cornerstone of national defense policy to totally annihilate their enemies with nuclear bombs, building thousands…

It just goes to show you that all this hysteria about “BOMBING CIVILIANS” is just frankly silly.  Yes, it is mean, and it shouldn’t happen in a nice world.  But when the going gets tough, the bombs got to fall. Sorry.

Have a nice day  : :-D

If I understand your logic correctly, law and war are mutually exclusive. Shortly after Hitler came to power, three large Jewish organizations declared war on the Nazi regime. Granted, those organizations didn’t necessarily speak for all Jews. But in this particular instance, it’s reasonable to suppose that the anti-Nazi sentiments expressed by those organizations were shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews.

Germany went to war in 1939, against enemies stronger than itself. With the exception of Stalin in late '41, none of the Big Three Allied powers showed the slightest interest in negotiating peace with Germany, or accepting anything other than unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender would mean mass murder in postwar west Germany (Morgenthau Plan), and mass murder in eastern Germany (Soviet occupation).

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany. You’ve argued that all law goes out the window if your nation is in a state of war. Such a state of war clearly existed between the Nazi government on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other.

The laws of war do not exist to protect governments. Governments do not derive benefit from the existence of such laws, and will often ignore them if they think they can get away with doing so. The laws of war exist to provide some protection to the people–to make the conflict less brutal and bloody than it otherwise would have been. During WWII, there was an arrangement among all parties not to use chemical weapons against each other, for example. It was understood that if any one participant violated that arrangement, its enemies would quickly follow suit. That arrangement was harmful to Germany, because its chemical weapons research was easily ten years ahead of the Allies’. Maybe more.

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations. It was in their interest to ignore the laws of war in those areas, except to the extent they cared about minimizing civilian casualties. Nothing about Allied actions remotely suggests that minimizing civilian harm had ever been a relevant consideration. Not that Axis governments were angels in that regard–they certainly weren’t! But of the two, Allied brutality toward enemy civilian populations exceeded that of the Axis. That Allied brutality demonstrates the hollowness of the main Allied propaganda theme: the claim that Allied leaders were horrified by Axis atrocities. Such claims ring hollow once it’s realized that Allied leaders committed worse atrocities than did the Axis.

[Imperious Leader]

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany.

More bullcrap as usual. Hitler had Jews killed before WW2 as well as many others. Did Hoover say otherwise?  Jewish community was just trying to save its own from getting murdered for no reason out of hate. It was not war Kurt it was one of extermination and survival for Jews. I guess Hoover didn’t write about this?

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations.

The problem with all this is that the Axis governments were much better-positioned than the Allies to impose systematic practices of wholescale extermination and crimes against humanity and to employ Einsatzgruppen against civilian populations. The deliberate “hunger plan” was one such plan to rid Europe of tens of millions during the war.

The Allies on the other hand did what any other nation in a position since Napoleonic times…an economic blockade to lessen the ability of these nations to sustain so much suffering against the human race. The Union did it with their anaconda plan, UK did it in ww2 with a naval blockade of the Baltic, and UK and USA sunk lots of axis transports.

[Gargantua]

[Karl7]

If I understand your logic correctly, law and war are mutually exclusive. Shortly after Hitler came to power, three large Jewish organizations declared war on the Nazi regime. Granted, those organizations didn’t necessarily speak for all Jews. But in this particular instance, it’s reasonable to suppose that the anti-Nazi sentiments expressed by those organizations were shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews.

Germany went to war in 1939, against enemies stronger than itself. With the exception of Stalin in late '41, none of the Big Three Allied powers showed the slightest interest in negotiating peace with Germany, or accepting anything other than unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender would mean mass murder in postwar west Germany (Morgenthau Plan), and mass murder in eastern Germany (Soviet occupation).

When the decision was made to kill Jews, Germany was in a state of war, and the Jewish community was in a state of war against Germany. You’ve argued that all law goes out the window if your nation is in a state of war. Such a state of war clearly existed between the Nazi government on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other.

The laws of war do not exist to protect governments. Governments do not derive benefit from the existence of such laws, and will often ignore them if they think they can get away with doing so. The laws of war exist to provide some protection to the people–to make the conflict less brutal and bloody than it otherwise would have been. During WWII, there was an arrangement among all parties not to use chemical weapons against each other, for example. It was understood that if any one participant violated that arrangement, its enemies would quickly follow suit. That arrangement was harmful to Germany, because its chemical weapons research was easily ten years ahead of the Allies’. Maybe more.

The problem with all this is that the Allied governments were much better-positioned than the Axis to impose food blockades and to employ heavy bombers against civilian populations. It was in their interest to ignore the laws of war in those areas, except to the extent they cared about minimizing civilian casualties. Nothing about Allied actions remotely suggests that minimizing civilian harm had ever been a relevant consideration. Not that Axis governments were angels in that regard–they certainly weren’t! But of the two, Allied brutality toward enemy civilian populations exceeded that of the Axis. That Allied brutality demonstrates the hollowness of the main Allied propaganda theme: the claim that Allied leaders were horrified by Axis atrocities. Such claims ring hollow once it’s realized that Allied leaders committed worse atrocities than did the Axis.

Kurt, I respect your thoughts on this. You’ve definitely put a lot into it. Our disagreement is not one of tit for tat. The Allies decimated German cities. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen it. I was in Germany for a wedding and during that time I went to Darmstadt. There I saw some memorials to the allied bombing raids. I was simultaneously repulsed but proud. USA blew in and killed! But then a city was leveled. Not great for USA or Germany, but sadly necessary.

My point is only that when the fighting starts, the gloves come off and the winners don’t care how bloody it gets. That’s all. Indeed, when the casualties start coming in, few if any will care if the violence is “respecting international norms.”  Vengeance is the watch word–meeting out all necessary violence the goal.

You say that the Allies were wrong in the war effort because they leveled greater firepower than was necessary? That’s an after the fact justification. Germany and Japan were deadly strong.  No nation in that situation should be held account for “overestimation” of the amount of violence it needs to dispense to win.

The idea of “proportionality” has got to be one of the dumbest military ideas in history. In the middle of the fight how do you even know?  Winning is all that matters, and if you overshoot, well, so what–as long as you win!

[aequitas-et-veritas]

Respect to you Karl7.

You should revisit Germany and come down south!
It is Incredible what germans have rebuilt after WWII.
Nuernberg was plain after the Allied Bombing campaigns.

You could have looked down from the 10th Freeway to the fifth or seventh street
in L.A. without beeing hindred by any buildings.

[Wolfshanze]

Kurt knows that if Germany or Japan had the Atomic Bomb, they would have refused to use it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

[Karl7]

@Wolfshanze:

Kurt knows that if Germany or Japan had the Atomic Bomb, they would have refused to use it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

Ha, well… if Germany had been able to get an A-bomb (unlikely I know) before D-day, NOT using it but threatening to use it might have been the optimal strategy.

Would the US/UK have continued the war under the threat of losing London?

Of course, even w/an A-bomb and the US/UK off their back, could the Germans have withstood the Russians?  Production of any German bomb would have likely been slow, so use as a tactical weapon on the eastern front would have been speculative in its effectiveness.

I remember David Glantz saying the damage done on the eastern from was basically equivalent to a theater nuclear war… minus the radiation…

[KurtGodel7]

@Karl7:

Kurt, I respect your thoughts on this. You’ve definitely put a lot into it. Our disagreement is not one of tit for tat. The Allies decimated German cities. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen it. I was in Germany for a wedding and during that time I went to Darmstadt. There I saw some memorials to the allied bombing raids. I was simultaneously repulsed but proud. USA blew in and killed! But then a city was leveled. Not great for USA or Germany, but sadly necessary.

My point is only that when the fighting starts, the gloves come off and the winners don’t care how bloody it gets. That’s all. Indeed, when the casualties start coming in, few if any will care if the violence is “respecting international norms.”  Vengeance is the watch word–meeting out all necessary violence the goal.

You say that the Allies were wrong in the war effort because they leveled greater firepower than was necessary? That’s an after the fact justification. Germany and Japan were deadly strong.  No nation in that situation should be held account for “overestimation” of the amount of violence it needs to dispense to win.

The idea of “proportionality” has got to be one of the dumbest military ideas in history. In the middle of the fight how do you even know?  Winning is all that matters, and if you overshoot, well, so what–as long as you win!

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

You wrote about how it was justified for the Allied gloves to “come off” once war started. The problem with that is that the Allied had never actually been wearing gloves. Their prewar actions–especially by the Soviet government–demonstrated a brutality rarely equaled in human history.

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths. Did that food blockade have military value? Absolutely! Stalin’s regime was so horrible that, had Hitler been able to actually feed the people within his own borders, many or most Soviets would have gone over to the Nazi side. From the Allied perspective, it was absolutely necessary to convince the Soviet people that the National Socialist government was waging a war of extermination against them–that it was deliberately starving all Slavs to death. Only then would Hitler seem even worse than Stalin. But that propaganda campaign was only going to work if Germany physically couldn’t feed everyone within its borders. Stalin understood this as well, which is why he ordered the removal or destruction of all food supplies and farming equipment as part of his scorched earth policy.

During the early postwar period, the American government instituted the Morgenthau Plan (a.k.a. JCS 1067). In 1947 Herbert Hoover wrote, “There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a ‘pastoral state’. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.” It is estimated that a minimum of 6 million Germans starved to death during the three years that the Morgenthau Plan had been in place.

Nor was the Morgenthau Plan the only Western plutocratic crime against humanity during the early postwar period. There was also Operation Keelhaul, which most likely resulted in millions of death among refugees from the Soviet Union. And there was the treatment of German POWs during the postwar period, which also resulted in large numbers of illegal deaths.

Allied plutocrats condemned the Nazi government using morally universalist language. But the Allied plutocrats were not moral universalists. They themselves had no objection at all to murdering millions, or even tens of millions, of innocent people. They committed these murders not just during a time of world war, but for at least the first three years of the postwar period.

[Imperious Leader]

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

The NAZI government engineered the Hunger Program in the early 1940s. That famine killed 50 million innocent people, including 8 million children. The Hitlers administration’s response to that program was to whitewash it. Just as Hitlers administration whitewashed a number of subversive Nazi activities directed against the world.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

[Imperious Leader]

Kurt is referring to the NAZI HUNGER PLAN, which used the faux appearance of a “economic blockage” to excuse genocide and wars of exterminations against many people.Kurt knows this but because he likes them, defends them to the point of looking ridiculous.

[KurtGodel7]

@aequitas:

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

The failure of the Hunger Plan did not lessen the death toll caused by the Allied plutocrats’ food blockade. the failure of the Hunger Plan meant that the German government did not obtain nearly as much food from the captured Soviet countryside as it had planned. (That food instead went to captured Soviet cities.) Because the German government didn’t obtain the expected quantity of food, it was impossible to carry out Hitler’s order to feed the Soviet POWs. Those POWs had been conscripted to work in German weapons factories, and were an essential part of the German war effort. Hitler’s order to feed them was based on military necessity, not racial ideology. The fact that millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity was the result of the Allied food blockade, and a result of the failure of the Hunger Plan.

[Imperious Leader]

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.
:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

There are a few needles of truth in your post, mixed in with whopping haystacks of error. You are correct to assert that Britain imposed food blockades in both world wars. The British food blockade was instrumental in the Entente’s victory, having resulted in 400,000 - 750,000 civilian deaths in Germany and Austria. Even more importantly (from the Entente perspective) the food blockade lowered the Centrals’ morale, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Kaiser’s government. Hitler had learned from the Kaiser’s mistake, and was determined to do whatever it took to prevent starvation among the German people, even if that meant starving Slavs.

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization. The Ukraine, for example, produced a much smaller food surplus in WWII than it had in WWI. Overall, the western Soviet Union ran at a food deficit. The same could also be said about Germany, and every major nation Germany captured. Even France ran at a food deficit, due in part to the fact that the British blockade cut Europe off from external fertilizer imports. Poland also ran at a food deficit.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would. Churchill knew full well this was the case when he opted to impose a food blockade on Germany. The resulting food shortages are described in Adam Tooze’s book Wages of Destruction. Tooze was awarded the Wolfson History prize. The book has been praised by The Times (London), The Wall Street Journal, and History Today, and is rated 4.5 stars on Amazon. For those unwilling to buy this magnificent history book, there is always the Wikipedia article.

---

As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe’s 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation and diseases such as influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus and cholera were a threat. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee began gathering funds to send aid. Former president Herbert Hoover, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during World War I, wrote:[33]

The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history. . . .

In January [1941] Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . . Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories – less than half the amount necessary to sustain life – and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school.

---

[Imperious Leader]

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

There are a few needles of truth in your post

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization.

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . .

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

You have embraced a number of outright fabrications in this thread, including the claim that I’d cited neo-Nazi sources, the claim that I’d denied the Holocaust, and now the claim that there was no Allied food blockade during WWII. (Even though I’ve provided rock solid sources to prove there was such a blockade.) Your attempt to lighten the nastiness and deceptiveness of your posts by making jokes about Goering’s corpulence has fallen flat.

But in acting this way you are actually providing a service. Not a service you intended to provide. But a genuine service nonetheless.

Will you succeed in leading many astray? Absolutely. The tenor of your posts exactly corresponds with the highly propagandistic approach to WWII always taken in Western schools and the Western MSM. That gives you an enormous head start in discussions such as this. Most of those reading this want to believe you, and don’t want to believe me. For someone in that position, believing your posts represents the easy choice.

Anyone with the strength, courage, and intellectual integrity necessary to make the right choice is a person well worth knowing. I’m sure there are also plenty of people worth knowing whom you and others like you have misled. But that isn’t the point. The point is that if one could gather a group of people who reject every word you and others like you have ever written, you’d have a very good group of people! Smart, not easily deceived, intellectually honest, strong, altruistic.

In a world where true statements were also popular, the above-described group would get plenty of bandwagon followers. Such followers are unnecessary, and represent subtraction by addition. Getting rid of such bandwagon followers is much easier with your help, and the help of others like you, than would have been the case without.

[Imperious Leader]

You have embraced a number of outright fabrications in this thread, including the claim that I’d cited neo-Nazi sources, the claim that I’d denied the Holocaust, and now the claim that there was no Allied food blockade during WWII.

Germany imposed a food blockade on England, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Holland, and may others. Do you think any nation will just let her enemies receive food shipments during wartime?

Your attempt to lighten the nastiness and deceptiveness of your posts by making jokes about Goering’s corpulence has fallen flat.

But since he didn’t lose weight, doesn’t that mean he had enough food?

Even though I’ve provided rock solid sources to prove there was such a blockade.

You provided nothing to support your claims. The Allies did what they have been doing since Napoleonic times… Economic blockade. If anything Germany tried to blockade England by her U-boat campaign.

Anyone with the strength, courage, and intellectual integrity necessary to make the right choice is a person well worth knowing. I’m sure there are also plenty of people worth knowing whom you and others like you have misled. But that isn’t the point. The point is that if one could gather a group of people who reject every word you and others like you have ever written, you’d have a very good group of people! Smart, not easily deceived, intellectually honest, strong, altruistic.

Their is no “courage” in being misguided by bogus facts. And especially how you never acknowledge the Nazi’s as doing anything wrong. I have never seen any post from you that focus on Nazi atrocities, while when that topic is taken by another member, you go into this soapbox rant about how bad the Allies were worse, typically making Churchill look like the devil. Churchill had real courage during the war, while the Nazi’s were punk cowards who just made up garbage lies to cover up crimes against humanity. Then you make up this nonsense of how Hitler the good guy needed to murder tens of millions to save “starving Germans” you are so disingenuous to a fault, you might as well put your head in the sand and pull out a white flag. The exact methods of counterpoint and propaganda are the ones that the Nazis used as arguments. In each case, you subscribe to the same lies the Nazis used to cover up horrific acts of violence.

Germany started the war in the first place, so if they were starving don’t you think its their own fault for continuing the war when they could just surrender before Europe is destroyed and everyone is starved to death? Germany created the problem from the get go, then you defend them for how the Allies responded knowing fully well that Hitler was making this lie about “oh poor us we are starving” as the excuse for extermination against many groups under Nazi control?

How do you buy hook, line, and sinker all Nazi propaganda during the war Kurt? Everything you say in this manner is the exact things Germany made as propaganda slogans.

Every view you have is basically the wrong one. All the resources you cite were ones that you found that confirm ridiculous outcomes and conclusions. So essentially, you just found books
( bought and read) that follow that reasoning. In reality, those books were written to sell fringe ideas so people will buy them since the truth is boring these days, people favor controversial ideas to excite reading the obvious truths. Thats why today you see alot of these " If Hitler would have defeated Stalin Europe would be like this" types of books. People love the “what if factor”.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

You provided nothing to support your claims.

Of the lies you told in your post, I’ll focus on the one quoted above. I’ve made two claims relevant to this discussion: 1) That Churchill imposed a food blockade on Germany, and 2) That this food blockade caused massive starvation in German-held territory during WWII.

I’ve cited three sources in support of the first claim: a book written by a former U.S. president, a book written by an award-winning historian, and a Wikipedia article containing 87 references. The latter two sources also support my second claim. But time and again, you conveniently ignore or misrepresent facts you don’t like, or that don’t fit your chosen narrative. You are not responding to what I’m saying. You are testing the waters to see how much distortion you can get away with before people other than me start calling you out.

Below is a quote from p. 541 of Tooze’s work Wages of Destruction.

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Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers [mostly Soviet POWs] be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population.

---

[Imperious Leader]

Below is a quote from p. 541 of Tooze’s work Wages of Destruction.

---

Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers [mostly Soviet POWs] be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population.

This is not a source. The same thing was going on in England et al , except they are talking about normal citizens working in factories as opposed to forced and or slave labor. The same message was probably discussed in 1940, 1941 by British leadership to induce more rationing since Germany was sinking vast amounts of shipping. The discussion in Germany’s case is “how to keep feeding slave labor enough food so they don’t die” It has nothing to do with the German people, except they are being rationed ( like in every Allied and Axis country) so that all these slaves can continue to work without dying. The entire problem that Tooze points out is among other things, Hitler and National Socialism tried to set up Germany preparation for war by “will and technology” and not realizing that globalization was a main ingredient to sustaining an economy. Hitler was never prepared for war and the “Speer Miracle” is bogus. In reality, Germany suffered or would have suffered in any war because they relied on military answers rather than proofing economic ones. Hitler didn’t want women to work in factories ( they were expected to raise families) and men were serving in the military. Leaving only forced and slave labor to produce ( and obviously normal production would be depressed from this labor). So in the end, the effects that Germany suffered were not from Churchill, but a direct result of the failed preparation of Germany for general war. The “Victory on the cheap” was Hitlers only solution and success related to vanquishing smaller nations, then ran into huge logistical problems when trying to conquer nations with larger populations and greater propensity to ramp up economy during wartime and failed…it was their own fault. Funny how you didn’t get this from Tooze, which is his main point. I guess its true that you only read what you want too.

Adam Tooze’s controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler’s surprisingly prescient vision- ultimately hindered by Germany’s limited resources and his own racial ideology-was to create a German super-state to dominate Europe and compete with what he saw as America’s overwhelming power in a soon-to- be globalized world. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that is already setting off debate in Germany and will fundamentally change the way in which history views the Second World War.

This is how they characterize his book because it sells more copies to have a radical idea. He is not mainstream and he only presents a theory.

Even this Tooze sums up that Germany was attempting to win “war on the cheap” with limited resources even prewar and nothing is really in his book that " Germany had all these food shortages caused entirely by the Allies", rather Germany compounded her problems with each new country she invaded. Thats Germany’s fault, not the Allies who responded whatever way they could. This is how your argument fails entirely. He further says Germany didn’t have the infrastructure or was prepared for war, and since England didn’t surrender in 1940, Hitler was forced out of economic necessity to attack the Soviets. Hitler caused all his own problems by starting a war he could not finish because he was not ready economically for war. Thats the gist of that book.