peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
I didn't say it was.....
Most heinous British war crime?
- Thread starter rascal
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I didn't say it was.....
But the Mau Mau rebellion and the American Plains Indians are about as alike as the American occupation of the Philippines and the Anglo-Saxon conquest of (what would later be known as) England.
Why would you reference one in relation to the other, or expect a scholar of one to also write about the other?
The genocide of Native Americans has been well documented by many Americans.
gorgeousgeorgeEFC
Player Valuation: £25m
The bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo War and the bombing of Germany during WWII, Dresden in particular. Also, the unlawful shooting of IRA combatants in 1988 in Gibralter.
The British army was called in by the Unionist government because the Irish government were calling for the UN to intervene.
"1969: British troops sent into Northern Ireland
The British Government has sent troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.
It follows three days and two nights of violence in the mainly-Catholic Bogside area of Londonderry. Trouble has also erupted in Belfast and other towns across Northern Ireland.
It also comes after a speech by the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, Jack Lynch, regarded by many as "outrageous interference" in which he called for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be sent to the province.
He also called for Anglo-Irish talks on the future of Northern Ireland".
"Shortly after 1700 hours local time, 300 troops from the 1st Battalion, Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, occupied the centre of Londonderry, replacing the exhausted police officers who had been patrolling the cordons around the Bogside.
They have been on standby for the past couple of days.
The arrival of the British troops was greeted with cheering and singing from behind the barricades in the Roman Catholic area of Londonderry.
They were chanting: "We've won, we've won. We've brought down the government."
The trouble began three days ago during the annual Apprentice Boys march, which marks the 13 boy supporters of William of Orange who defended Londonderry against the forces of the Catholic King James II in 1688".
dandydan
Player Valuation: £40m
Isn't that what they did at first? The mutual hatred was fostered by the IRA.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
He did - the Hola Massacre speech of 1959. Dennis Healey said it was the greatest speech he ever heard.
that bono has a lot to answer for...grrrrrr !!!!
gorgeousgeorgeEFC
Player Valuation: £25m
I never agreed with Enoch Powell's awful views on immigration and I never will, but he was a man of integrity and intelligence. And he was no Nick Griffin.
Gwlacticos
Player Valuation: £15m
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court, for a crime they didn't commit.
The pedestrianisation of Norwich City centre
Old Blue 2
Player Valuation: £40m
I've read through this thread with interest, particularly the naming of the bombing of Dresden as a war crime.
Those who state so do not, I believe, understand the full context of the raid. That context is the whole war and what was required to win. The context is also what had gone before. One needs also to understand all of the elements that went in to waging the Second World War.
The above may sound rather simplistic and obvious, but it easy to forget the obvious and just sit in judgement on one raid in particular.
The battle lines were drawn in September 1939 when the Luftwaffe bombed Poland, in particular, Warsaw. Military target...?
Then followed the bombing of Amsterdam during the Western Campaign in the Spring of 1940. The Germans claim the order went out to stop the raid as the Dutch had capitulated, but was never received by the attacking unit. Military target...?
The Battle of Britain. 15th August 1940. The Luftwaffe raid on Kenley airfield actually hit Croydon in Greater London and in the process hit the residential area. Any attack on Greater London at the time was off-limits. The Commanding Officer of the unit that carried out the raid (Walter Rubensdörffer) would have been court-martialled had he survived the raid.
And on to 7th September 1940, when the Luftwaffe deliberately turned to bombing London, claiming to attack legitimate targets by day, but by night...? Their navigation system at the time could not identify military targets at night, even when carried out by Kampfgruppe 100, the specialist unit whose role was to go in and mark the target on many occasions. Ditto for a host of other cities attacked at night over the following months.
And so the height of the bar had been set. Civilians were now a legitimate target. Why? Because civilians were the workforce of the war industry. Without them, production of the necessary material reduces or ceases. To take out the civilian workforce became as legitimate as the soldier on the ground, the pilot in the sky, the sailor on the high seas.
And so passing through the war years one arrives at Dresden. How did things stand at the time of the Dresden raids in February 1945? We (the Brit Empire, the USA, the Russians, and other various nations) were still fighting and still dying in the struggle to overcome Germany. Undisputed fact. So what was Dresden at the time? Its position has been underplayed in the last decades by German historians, which is a trait that they appear to enjoy following across numerous events of World War Two (even going as far as saying that the Battle of Britain never took place - I know this as I've spoken to several of them). That underplaying of the role of Dresden has been taken up by historians over here, and has resulted in the raid on Dresden being demonised to the point of it now being called a war crime. Dresden was a city that had industrial complexes that were still producing for the Third Reich. Ergo, a workforce involved in producing the weapons that would be used against the Allies. Dresden was a major communications hub with major transport routes running both east-west and north-south. Do we leave such a scenario alone to continue unmolested?
It can never be accurately gauged how many Allied lives were 'saved' as a result of the loss of the workforce in that location and area, since that can never be accurately judged.
War is dirty. Never has the phrase 'You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind' been more apt than in the Second World War when Germany initially bombed the crap out of many cities, and laid waste vast tracts of the Soviet Union (and in the process murdered millions), only to find that ultimately, what they had done to others had been turned on them with far greater power than they had meted out. Let us also not forget their first use of the ICBM (the V-2).
If the bombing of Dresden meant the hastening of the end of the war, and countless Allied lives being saved, then that is what it took, and should be seen as such. The loss of civilian lives is always to be lamented in war, as is the loss of all lives, but sometimes actions have to be set in their proper context. I hope all I have written above goes some to explaining my views on the matter.
From someone whose parents house (131 Lathom Street) received a direct hit in the May blitz of 1941.
Those who state so do not, I believe, understand the full context of the raid. That context is the whole war and what was required to win. The context is also what had gone before. One needs also to understand all of the elements that went in to waging the Second World War.
The above may sound rather simplistic and obvious, but it easy to forget the obvious and just sit in judgement on one raid in particular.
The battle lines were drawn in September 1939 when the Luftwaffe bombed Poland, in particular, Warsaw. Military target...?
Then followed the bombing of Amsterdam during the Western Campaign in the Spring of 1940. The Germans claim the order went out to stop the raid as the Dutch had capitulated, but was never received by the attacking unit. Military target...?
The Battle of Britain. 15th August 1940. The Luftwaffe raid on Kenley airfield actually hit Croydon in Greater London and in the process hit the residential area. Any attack on Greater London at the time was off-limits. The Commanding Officer of the unit that carried out the raid (Walter Rubensdörffer) would have been court-martialled had he survived the raid.
And on to 7th September 1940, when the Luftwaffe deliberately turned to bombing London, claiming to attack legitimate targets by day, but by night...? Their navigation system at the time could not identify military targets at night, even when carried out by Kampfgruppe 100, the specialist unit whose role was to go in and mark the target on many occasions. Ditto for a host of other cities attacked at night over the following months.
And so the height of the bar had been set. Civilians were now a legitimate target. Why? Because civilians were the workforce of the war industry. Without them, production of the necessary material reduces or ceases. To take out the civilian workforce became as legitimate as the soldier on the ground, the pilot in the sky, the sailor on the high seas.
And so passing through the war years one arrives at Dresden. How did things stand at the time of the Dresden raids in February 1945? We (the Brit Empire, the USA, the Russians, and other various nations) were still fighting and still dying in the struggle to overcome Germany. Undisputed fact. So what was Dresden at the time? Its position has been underplayed in the last decades by German historians, which is a trait that they appear to enjoy following across numerous events of World War Two (even going as far as saying that the Battle of Britain never took place - I know this as I've spoken to several of them). That underplaying of the role of Dresden has been taken up by historians over here, and has resulted in the raid on Dresden being demonised to the point of it now being called a war crime. Dresden was a city that had industrial complexes that were still producing for the Third Reich. Ergo, a workforce involved in producing the weapons that would be used against the Allies. Dresden was a major communications hub with major transport routes running both east-west and north-south. Do we leave such a scenario alone to continue unmolested?
It can never be accurately gauged how many Allied lives were 'saved' as a result of the loss of the workforce in that location and area, since that can never be accurately judged.
War is dirty. Never has the phrase 'You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind' been more apt than in the Second World War when Germany initially bombed the crap out of many cities, and laid waste vast tracts of the Soviet Union (and in the process murdered millions), only to find that ultimately, what they had done to others had been turned on them with far greater power than they had meted out. Let us also not forget their first use of the ICBM (the V-2).
If the bombing of Dresden meant the hastening of the end of the war, and countless Allied lives being saved, then that is what it took, and should be seen as such. The loss of civilian lives is always to be lamented in war, as is the loss of all lives, but sometimes actions have to be set in their proper context. I hope all I have written above goes some to explaining my views on the matter.
From someone whose parents house (131 Lathom Street) received a direct hit in the May blitz of 1941.
Gwlacticos
Player Valuation: £15m
These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade, to the Los Angeles underground.
This topic made it to 12 pages. Things have really changed around here
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