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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29410 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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This kind of indiscriminate murder was the norm among Axis countries. For example the "kill 1 in 10" rule was something the Germans frequently deployed when "pacifying" unruly communities in Yugoslavia or Greece or Italy. (They were likely to do far worse in Eastern Europe)

For the Allies, no this was not normal. Violence against civilians in occupied territory was either very rare (western Allies) or common and unrestrained (Soviets), but in any case not typically used as an overtly political tool to quash dissent.

It’s more accurate to say that the western Allies did not use violence against civilians as a political tool after their states had surrendered. Hiroshima, etc.

Yes, that's why I specified "in occupied territory." The western Allies didn't necessarily consider enemy civilians to be "fair game" per se, but there was certainly a murkier moral world view than might have wished to be remembered. Certainly the strategic bombing offensives engaged in a similar kind of euphemistic language ("morale bombing", attacking the "enemy housing stock") as the Nazis did with respect to targeting civilian populations.

It was the norm for Allies as well, the prime example is ethnic cleansing and atrocities in East Prussia, but there are also additional atrocities after war related to ethnic cleansing of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia. I hope you know that Stalin decided to move Poland couple of hundreds miles to the left - just because he could. So much for third worlders whining about "artificial borders created by ignoramuses during some stupid conference of superpowers". Welcome to borders of the whole Europe - especially after WW1 and WW2. All in all around 12 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from lands they lived in for up to 1 000 years with 500k-2.5 million deaths.

But there were also atrocities committed by allies. French and especially colonial forces committed mass rapes in Stuttgart and other cities, carpet bombing of allied cities such as in France with tens of thousand of casualties, and of course we can also mention how Allies and especially French just waltzed into Indochina and especially Vietnam and committed atrocities during the liberation, basically turning WW2 into Vietnam war. Many other bloody anticolonial wars were ignited right after the WW2 such as war in Algeria against France or war in Kenya against British Empire or "Malayan Emergency" - which also included a nice masaacre an ethnic cleansing and it was also a test of new chemical weapon called Agent Orange by Brits. You know, a cookie cutter (and very successful) allied police action. Post WW2 was incredibly bloody period, let's not kid about that.

Late 1940ies and early 50ies were a completely different period, it was still very much a period where carpet bombing, ethnic cleansing and huge conflicts was a norm. It is not as if it was not a norm after that, you still have sanctioned ethnic cleansing if you have the right backing such as ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia during operation Storm, or if you are not interesting for international audience various atrocities now being perpetrated in whole Sahel region including Mali, Northern/Central Nigeria, Sudan and many other places.

You’re mixing up a couple of things here. The atrocities that took place in East Prussia were the usual sort of war crimes committed as acts of revenge and as an outburst of revelry and barbaric violence. It’s a stretch to say that these represented a systematic state policy. The expulsion of the German minorities happened after the war and cannot be considered war crimes as such, and took place in the context where the Nazi government used the defense of those minorities as a pretext to occupy and attack neighboring countries. Strictly speaking, no military considerations were involved, only political ones.

The German war crimes that are brought up in this discussion were committed in the context of a hostage-taking policy, which in itself was not considered to be against the laws of war before 1949.

Churchill gassing the Iraqis just entered the chat.

A fairly extensive Wiki article is dedicated to this mysterious subject.

The wiki isn't fantastically put together, but I didn't know about the conflicting sources. I've only ever seen it posited as an established fact, including by some individuals who otherwise defended Churchill. Thanks.

No need to mention it. I was myself surprised when I came across this article. I just assumed that the Brits deployed lethal poison gas there as standard practice without a second thought.

It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of [tear-inducing] gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.

I always forget how clear a speaker Churchill is.

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