Talking About WWII--Something Which Came to my Mind

[Bono]

I'm no fan of communists, but to join up with the NAZIs is absolutely unacceptable in my humble opinion.

A I pointed out, Dönitz, Hitler's sucessor, was guilty of no war crimes.

Donitz was convicted of "waging an aggressive war," but investigators concluded that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust.  I think that the defense introduced a letter from Adm. Halsey that he had used the same tactics that Donitz had. 

Gens. Michael Jackson and Wesley Clarck also engaged an agressive war against Serbian civilians, which was much worse than sinking a few boats, and even giving a warning most o the times. That's not the point, he and some otehrs were actually weath among the chaff, and they could be valuable allies.

[Huckleberry Finn]

An early collapse of Communism sounds good, but in that case Communists were martyrs. Now it's at least proved that Communism doesn't work in practise.

Bono. Where you got your idea that the Kosovo operation was the war against civilians? NATO's operation SAVED a lot of civilians.

[J. J.]

I'm no fan of communists, but to join up with the NAZIs is absolutely unacceptable in my humble opinion.

A I pointed out, Dönitz, Hitler's sucessor, was guilty of no war crimes.

Donitz was convicted of "waging an aggressive war," but investigators concluded that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust.  I think that the defense introduced a letter from Adm. Halsey that he had used the same tactics that Donitz had. 

Gens. Michael Jackson and Wesley Clarck also engaged an agressive war against Serbian civilians, which was much worse than sinking a few boats, and even giving a warning most o the times. That's not the point, he and some otehrs were actually weath among the chaff, and they could be valuable allies.

I am clearing up the point that you raised that Donitz was not convicted as a war criminal; indeed he was.  We can argue if this was a "crime" or not; the victors of WWI tried to charge the Kaiser with the same thing.

Now, was he involved in th Holocaust.  No, and thought that the rumors were Allied propaganda.  Ironically, so did a number of the Allies, until they saw the results.

[Bono]

An early collapse of Communism sounds good, but in that case Communists were martyrs. Now it's at least proved that Communism doesn't work in practise.

Bono. Where you got your idea that the Kosovo operation was the war against civilians? NATO's operation SAVED a lot of civilians.

I'm sure the people at the civil Hospitals and trains that were bombed would agree with you.

[Bono]

I'm no fan of communists, but to join up with the NAZIs is absolutely unacceptable in my humble opinion.

A I pointed out, Dönitz, Hitler's sucessor, was guilty of no war crimes.

Donitz was convicted of "waging an aggressive war," but investigators concluded that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust.  I think that the defense introduced a letter from Adm. Halsey that he had used the same tactics that Donitz had. 

Gens. Michael Jackson and Wesley Clarck also engaged an agressive war against Serbian civilians, which was much worse than sinking a few boats, and even giving a warning most o the times. That's not the point, he and some otehrs were actually weath among the chaff, and they could be valuable allies.

I am clearing up the point that you raised that Donitz was not convicted as a war criminal; indeed he was.  We can argue if this was a "crime" or not; the victors of WWI tried to charge the Kaiser with the same thing.

Now, was he involved in th Holocaust.  No, and thought that the rumors were Allied propaganda.  Ironically, so did a number of the Allies, until they saw the results.

Actually, he was harged with "Conspiracy to wage aggressive war" (count one), "Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression" (count two), and "crimes against the laws of war" (count three), but only found guilty of the last two.

[Huckleberry Finn]

An early collapse of Communism sounds good, but in that case Communists were martyrs. Now it's at least proved that Communism doesn't work in practise.

Bono. Where you got your idea that the Kosovo operation was the war against civilians? NATO's operation SAVED a lot of civilians.

I'm sure the people at the civil Hospitals and trains that were bombed would agree with you.

And do you claim that NATO intentionally bombed civilian targets?

Sounds typical leftist way of thinking.

[Bono]

An early collapse of Communism sounds good, but in that case Communists were martyrs. Now it's at least proved that Communism doesn't work in practise.

Bono. Where you got your idea that the Kosovo operation was the war against civilians? NATO's operation SAVED a lot of civilians.

I'm sure the people at the civil Hospitals and trains that were bombed would agree with you.

And do you claim that NATO intentionally bombed civilian targets?

Sounds typical leftist way of thinking.

i'm saying NATO waged illegal, unprovoked attack on a European country. Like the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media coverage in the spring of 1999 was a series of fraudulent justifications, beginning with US Defence Secretary William Cohen’s claim that "we’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged [Albanian] men missing... they may have been murdered." David Scheffer, the US ambassador at large for war crimes, announced that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been killed. Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War." The British press took its cue. "Flight from genocide," said the Daily Mail. "Echoes of the Holocaust," chorused the Sun and the Mirror. In November 1999, the Wall Street Journal published the results of its own investigation, dismissing "the mass grave obsession." Instead of "the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect ... the pattern is of scattered killings [mostly] in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army had been active." The Journal concluded that Nato stepped up its claims about Serb killing fields when it "saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by Nato’s bombs ... The war in Kosovo was "cruel, bitter, savage; genocide it wasn’t."

One year later, the International War Crimes Tribunal, a body effectively set up by Nato, announced that the final count of bodies found in Kosovo’s "mass graves" was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army. Like Iraq’s fabled weapons of mass destruction, the figures used by the US and British governments and echoed by journalists were inventions – along with Serb "rape camps" and Clinton’s and Blair’s claims that Nato never deliberately bombed civilians.

Code-named "Stage Three," Nato’s civilian targets included public transport, hospitals, schools, museums, churches. "It was common knowledge that Nato went to Stage Three [after a couple of weeks]," said James Bissell, the Canadian ambassador in Belgrade during the attack. "Otherwise, they would not have been bombing bridges on Sunday afternoons and market places."

Nato’s clients were the Kosovo Liberation Army. Seven years earlier, the KLA had been designated by the State Department as a terrorist organisation in league with Al Qaida. KLA thugs were feted; Foreign Secretary Robin Cook allowed them to call him on his mobile phone. "The Kosovo-Albanians played us like a Stradivarius," wrote the UN Balkans commander, Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, last April. "We have subsidised and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early 1990s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary."

Meanwhile, the trial of Milosevic proceeds as farce, not unlike an earlier show trial in The Hague: that of the Libyans blamed for the Lockerbie bomb. Milosevic was a brute; he was also a banker once regarded as the west’s man who was prepared to implement "economic reforms" in keeping with IMF, World Bank and European Community demands; to his cost, he refused to surrender sovereignty. The empire expects nothing less.

How Silent Are the ‘Humanitarian’ Invaders of Kosovo?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Donitz was convicted of "waging an aggressive war," but investigators concluded that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust.  I think that the defense introduced a letter from Adm. Halsey that he had used the same tactics that Donitz had.

Indeed.  We patterned our submarine tactics upon those of Donitz.  The only major WWII naval power that did not engage in unrestricted submarine warfare was Japan.  Whatever one has to say about the attrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII (and there is a lot to be said, mostly bad) the Imperial Japanese Navy conducted itself for the most part with honor, and in the case of the use of submarines, with a degree of honor that surpossed that of the Allies.

[Huckleberry Finn]

An early collapse of Communism sounds good, but in that case Communists were martyrs. Now it's at least proved that Communism doesn't work in practise.

Bono. Where you got your idea that the Kosovo operation was the war against civilians? NATO's operation SAVED a lot of civilians.

I'm sure the people at the civil Hospitals and trains that were bombed would agree with you.

And do you claim that NATO intentionally bombed civilian targets?

Sounds typical leftist way of thinking.

i'm saying NATO waged illegal, unprovoked attack on a European country. Like the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media coverage in the spring of 1999 was a series of fraudulent justifications, beginning with US Defence Secretary William Cohen’s claim that "we’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged [Albanian] men missing... they may have been murdered." David Scheffer, the US ambassador at large for war crimes, announced that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been killed. Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War." The British press took its cue. "Flight from genocide," said the Daily Mail. "Echoes of the Holocaust," chorused the Sun and the Mirror. In November 1999, the Wall Street Journal published the results of its own investigation, dismissing "the mass grave obsession." Instead of "the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect ... the pattern is of scattered killings [mostly] in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army had been active." The Journal concluded that Nato stepped up its claims about Serb killing fields when it "saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by Nato’s bombs ... The war in Kosovo was "cruel, bitter, savage; genocide it wasn’t."

One year later, the International War Crimes Tribunal, a body effectively set up by Nato, announced that the final count of bodies found in Kosovo’s "mass graves" was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army. Like Iraq’s fabled weapons of mass destruction, the figures used by the US and British governments and echoed by journalists were inventions – along with Serb "rape camps" and Clinton’s and Blair’s claims that Nato never deliberately bombed civilians.

Code-named "Stage Three," Nato’s civilian targets included public transport, hospitals, schools, museums, churches. "It was common knowledge that Nato went to Stage Three [after a couple of weeks]," said James Bissell, the Canadian ambassador in Belgrade during the attack. "Otherwise, they would not have been bombing bridges on Sunday afternoons and market places."

Nato’s clients were the Kosovo Liberation Army. Seven years earlier, the KLA had been designated by the State Department as a terrorist organisation in league with Al Qaida. KLA thugs were feted; Foreign Secretary Robin Cook allowed them to call him on his mobile phone. "The Kosovo-Albanians played us like a Stradivarius," wrote the UN Balkans commander, Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, last April. "We have subsidised and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early 1990s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary."

Meanwhile, the trial of Milosevic proceeds as farce, not unlike an earlier show trial in The Hague: that of the Libyans blamed for the Lockerbie bomb. Milosevic was a brute; he was also a banker once regarded as the west’s man who was prepared to implement "economic reforms" in keeping with IMF, World Bank and European Community demands; to his cost, he refused to surrender sovereignty. The empire expects nothing less.

How Silent Are the ‘Humanitarian’ Invaders of Kosovo?

Why do you believe all that?

The death toll in Kosovo was relative small because the US/NATO campaign stopped killing. I don't claim that all guys in KLA were so good.  All parties did war crimes, but Serbs were worst. Also, 90 percent of the population of Kosovo are Albanians so I think they have right to independence, especially after Serbian aggression.

The West did what had to be done. In early 90's over 200 000 people was killed in Bosnia, most of them by Serbian forces. Serbs also attacked Dubrovik and other cities in Croatia. The Kosovo operation was because Western countries (and voters) couldn't stand a new genocide in Balkans.

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/bosnia_genocide.htm

I find it strange that conservative and pro-America minded guy like you  are ready to believe that US and NATO airforces intentionally hit civilian targets. So you are blaming that they are doing same thing in Iraq or in Afghanistan as well? I'm sure that your friends in the Republican Party have some word about this.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You have to keep in mind that the allies would have acess to all the german techonology, and if they could get into building material quick, they'd have German heavy tanks like the Panther and Tiger, and Lufftwaffe's tactical bombers.

The German industial complex was largely toast by the end of WW II.
Rebuilding it or trying to build German designed equipment with Anglo-American industry would have been a problem thanks to the use of a different standard.  (Heck the slight difference between the American inch and the British inch caused weapon production problems in WW2.)

As for the “superiority” of the German tanks, The Panther was comparable with the T-34 (as it ought to have been as it was designed in response to that tank) and the Tiger II is clearly inferior to the Soviet IS-3.  When in came to tanks in WW2, the premier power was the Soviet Union.  All all points in the war, they had the best tanks, and by the end of the war, thanks to the brutal lessons they had learned, they had the tactic to go with them.  In a pinch, our own T-26 Pershing would have done well against the T-34, but I doubt if we could have shipped them over in the quantities needed to beat the Soviets in 1946.  The late-war Soviet planes were of a quality to match what the Allies had, and jets were still too experimental to be a decisive factor in combat in 1946.  A 1946 military campaign would have seen the Soviets occupying western Europe had we been stupid enough to try it.

[ATFFL]

To respond to Tredick- without American support the Soviets would not have won and I think the war on the Eastern front would have become a stalemate.  The Soviets would not have surrendered.  I think you are also underestimating the Soviets manufacturing prowess in WWII.  The Germans turned out over 100,000 tanks in WWII.  Almost outproducing the US 2 to 1.   The Soviets fought the bulk of the German army.  American units encountered several crack German units but many of them on the Western front were the "B" squad- foreign units, 4 F's, old men and younger soldiers.  The Soviets had the overwhelming majority of their army placed on the Eastern front to fight the Soviets.  The Soviets lost many men do to their tactics but they also inflicted far greater casualties on the Axis than did the Americans.  It was a team effort.  Americans were far superior in air power, especially in Long range bombing and naval power.  The Soviets had a lot more tanks, artilerry pieces etc.  It would have been bloody and horrible business.  And if we did defeat the Soviets and thus prevented Communism in China et al as Bono said we have no idea what form of goverance would have taken its place.   

How many tanks would the Soviets have produced without American steel or rubber or radios or machine tools?  How would they have gotten them to the front without American rolling stock?  How many tanks could they have produced if they did not have to build a single truck because the US sent so many?  How many men could they have fielded if they still needed millions to run the farms if American food did not arrive?

How many more tanks could the US have produced if they did not build all those extra trucks for the Soviets?  How many more divisions could have been fielded if the farms were reduced to not produce enough food for millions of Russians? 

[patrick1]

To respond to Tredick- without American support the Soviets would not have won and I think the war on the Eastern front would have become a stalemate.  The Soviets would not have surrendered.  I think you are also underestimating the Soviets manufacturing prowess in WWII.  The Germans turned out over 100,000 tanks in WWII.  Almost outproducing the US 2 to 1.   The Soviets fought the bulk of the German army.  American units encountered several crack German units but many of them on the Western front were the "B" squad- foreign units, 4 F's, old men and younger soldiers.  The Soviets had the overwhelming majority of their army placed on the Eastern front to fight the Soviets.  The Soviets lost many men do to their tactics but they also inflicted far greater casualties on the Axis than did the Americans.  It was a team effort.  Americans were far superior in air power, especially in Long range bombing and naval power.  The Soviets had a lot more tanks, artilerry pieces etc.  It would have been bloody and horrible business.  And if we did defeat the Soviets and thus prevented Communism in China et al as Bono said we have no idea what form of goverance would have taken its place.   

How many tanks would the Soviets have produced without American steel or rubber or radios or machine tools?  How would they have gotten them to the front without American rolling stock?  How many tanks could they have produced if they did not have to build a single truck because the US sent so many?  How many men could they have fielded if they still needed millions to run the farms if American food did not arrive?

How many more tanks could the US have produced if they did not build all those extra trucks for the Soviets?  How many more divisions could have been fielded if the farms were reduced to not produce enough food for millions of Russians? 

Obviously less.  The Soviet Union did have huge natural resources-iron ore/steel and oil among them.  Soviet manufacturing was hitting a high gear and accounted itself amazingly given the circumstances.  American money and machinery helped win the war but militarily speaking the Soviets defeated the Germans on the battlefield.  Without the U.S.. IMO there is a stalemate or protracted guerilla war on the Russian front,  Without the Soviets,the United States and U.K. lose countless millions battling the Germans- either that or we would have bombed Germany until there was no one left. 

[The Duke]

The US should not have fought the Soviets in hindsight, since we know that the USSR collapsed anyway.  Yes, a lot of people were killed in the Cold War, but the consequences of a march from Berlin to Moscow would have been horrendous.  The use of American atomic weapons would have resulted in tens of millions of dead Russian civilians.  It is very possible that, if no Russian surrender could be obtained, that the US/UK would have wiped Russia off the face of the Earth for all intents and purposes.  And oh, by the way, it would all be part of an unnecessary war of aggression where the west ceded the moral high ground forever by launching a war of aggression using nuclear arms.

I'm starting a Kosovo thread to keep this one on topic.