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» Ship of Fools   » Ship's Locker   » Limbo   » Purgatory: When did World War II become a just war? (Page 1)

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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: When did World War II become a just war?
Beeswax Altar
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Almost everybody but the most ardent pacifist considers World War II to have been an example of a just war. My question is at what point, if ever, did it become just. Also, when did it become just for each nation to join the Allies?

A few possibilities:

Did the war become just when Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles or was the Treaty of Versailles unjust in itself?

Did it become just when Hitler invaded nations that wouldn't have chosen to be part of Germany?

Was it only just for nations acting in self defense against Axis aggression?

Was it unjust because even wars in response to aggression are unjust?

[ 29. January 2013, 00:01: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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leo
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As an almost-pacifist, i consider WW2 to have been a Just War, within the definitions of Aristotle and Aquinas, up to the point of saturation bombing. Then it ceased to be a just way because of the intention to kill civilians as an aim rather than as collateral.

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ken
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Take your pick:

  • October 1935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia
  • July 1936 Falangist rebellion in Spain rescued by Franco's soldiers airlifted in from Africa by Nazi and Italian planes
  • July 1937 unprovoked Japanese invasion of China
  • March 1938 Anschluss
  • October 1938 Nazi annexation of Sudentland
  • November 1938 Kristallnacht
  • March 1939 German military occupation of the rest of Czeckoslovakia


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Ken

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Truman White
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Or how about when he started laying out plans for the systematic genocide of Jews (amongst others)?
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quetzalcoatl
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Your point about Versailles is interesting, as one of the causes of the war is often said to be the humiliation heaped on Germany through that - for example, French troops were stationed along the Rhine, and I think later occupied the Ruhr.

So to an extent, German anger at that was justified, and indeed, some measure of fight back maybe.

But of course, Hitler took everything way beyond that, and became totally expansionist.

When that happened, then presumably it became just for conquered nations to fight back themselves against Germany, as far as I understand just war theory. Thus, it was just for the Norwegians to fight back in the resistance, and so on.

But, as already observed, the anti-German struggle itself broke the rules of war, probably, i.e. deliberate killing of civilians.

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Arethosemyfeet
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The alliance with Stalin's USSR rather puts in doubt the requirement that having the war must lead to a better outcome than not having a war.
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jbohn
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Take your pick:

  • October 1935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia
  • July 1936 Falangist rebellion in Spain rescued by Franco's soldiers airlifted in from Africa by Nazi and Italian planes
  • July 1937 unprovoked Japanese invasion of China
  • March 1938 Anschluss
  • October 1938 Nazi annexation of Sudentland
  • November 1938 Kristallnacht
  • March 1939 German military occupation of the rest of Czeckoslovakia

For those of us in the US:

  • December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii


[ 12. November 2012, 17:41: Message edited by: jbohn ]

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
the US:

December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

No, that cannot be true. It might be the moment that the USA got involved in the shooting war on a large scale, but it can't be the moment the war became just if it ever was just before.

Surely a war - or any other activity - cannot be just for one participant and unjust for another co-operating with them? If it was morally right for, say, Chinese people to violently resist the Japanese invasion before December 1941, or for Norwegians to resist the German invasion, then participation in the war on the Allied side was already just before that date. And surely if it was just later it must have been just before? It would be rather odd to claim that the Norwegian war against the Germans was unjust and then magically became just because someone they weren't even at war with themselves attacked someone else on the other side of the world!

And the corollary of that is that it must have been unjust, immoral, for German or Japanese soldiers to take part in their invasions of those countries. If the Allied cause was just than the correct thing for a German to do would have been to change sides (as of course many did, from Thomas Mann to Marlene Dietrich, as well as many thousands of German Jews who had escaped to America or Britain or Palestine) or at the very least to attempt to remain out of the war.

Or do you think it morally permissible to remain out of a just war? Its one thing to claim that a particular war is just for the defending side, another to claim that everyone on the side of right must join that side, that in effect it would be a sin not to fight. But then is it a sin to refuse to take part in defending someone attacked on the street? If you are walking home tonight and you see someone being raped is it your duty to try to rescue them if you have the means? And if so, how is that different from a duty to take part in a just war - if there can be such a thing as a just war?

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quetzalcoatl
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I'm not sure if Kristallnacht falls under just war theory, as it was an attack on German citizens, hence an internal issue. I don't know if that is covered - I suppose this was germane to the Iraq war, and is germane to the situation in Syria. Of course, it is easily distorted towards 'liberal interventionism' and so on, or even right-wing interventionism. We are invading your country to put right the injustices perpetrated by the present regime - hmm.

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tclune
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
the US:

December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

No, that cannot be true. It might be the moment that the USA got involved in the shooting war on a large scale, but it can't be the moment the war became just if it ever was just before.

This strikes me as false. The US had no alternative other than surrender at that point, so it was fully justified in entering the war. It is certainly possible that others may not have been justified in doing so, even if they were allies of the US. The reasons that the various allies joined in the fight were all distinct, so why couldn't they each have a different degree of justification for their participation?

Further, it is reasonable to say that, e.g., the US bears the moral responsibility for dropping the atomic bomb, not the allies who played no part in the decision to do so.

--Tom Clune

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ken
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But can an atrocity committed against one country retrospectively justify what others have done previously? It would seem odd.

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Ken

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art dunce
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Interesting, relevant piece in today's NYT.

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jbohn
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
the US:

December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

No, that cannot be true. It might be the moment that the USA got involved in the shooting war on a large scale, but it can't be the moment the war became just if it ever was just before.

Surely a war - or any other activity - cannot be just for one participant and unjust for another co-operating with them?

I'm not sure that's so. Isn't it possible that the UK had a just reason for engaging in war with the Germans in 1939 (treaty obligation to defend Poland), but that the US had no such reason? (For the record, Germany declared war on the US after the US declared war on Japan- a reciprocal declaration of war by the US followed later that day.)

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tclune
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
But can an atrocity committed against one country retrospectively justify what others have done previously? It would seem odd.

It would have been odd, had I said or implied that.

--Tom Clune

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rolyn
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I often say it's possible to justify anything if we try hard enough.
The thing with with our part in WW2 is you don't have to try very hard to justify it, because of the direct threat this country faced . I would say it was "just" on Sept 3rd 1939, the day it was declared.

Unlike the 2003 Iraq war . Blair told the Country it faced a direct threat from Iraq, when in fact it did not .
As I said though, try hard enough ? And , low and behold, we can justify it.

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Martin60
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The moment Christianity failed to stop it.

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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Surely a war - or any other activity - cannot be just for one participant and unjust for another co-operating with them?

I'm not sure that's so. Isn't it possible that the UK had a just reason for engaging in war with the Germans in 1939 (treaty obligation to defend Poland), but that the US had no such reason?
Yes, that was clearly the issue from the US point of view.

The US needed a good reason, and the population, and congress, did not think that European or Asian problems were good enough.

Pearl Harbor changed everything, making the war "just" from an American point of view.

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Martin60
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rolyn, quote please.

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mdijon
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This seems to be a conflation of "just" and "worth it for us".

It might be perfectly just to intervene to stop genocide in Rwanda, or to stop Jews and communists being gassed in Europe, but not considered to involve us directly enough to make it "worth it for us".

On the other hand protecting British commercial interests against an uprising in the middle of the 19th century might be considered "worth it for us" by public opinion and the government of the day, but not "just" by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't think any element of justice can be made relative dependent on self-interest.

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ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon

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Dafyd
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For as long as the allied intention was to require an unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, it was not a just war. A just war cannot require unconditional surrender; a just war is undertaken with the intention of offering just conditions which if met will result in peace.
Also, bombing of civilian populations is unjust.

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Martin60
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Once you start, you can't stop. Don't start. There is no such thing as a civilian in a total war.

I will always be in awe of my grammar school chemistry teacher, Eric Annable, who was a conscientious objector in WWII and served in the unit with the highest casualty rate: bomb disposal.

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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
For as long as the allied intention was to require an unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, it was not a just war. A just war cannot require unconditional surrender; a just war is undertaken with the intention of offering just conditions which if met will result in peace.
Also, bombing of civilian populations is unjust.

Very interesting point. Normally that is correct, but I suppose one argument for it, was that Nazism was seen as so destructive, and so death-dealing to the people of Europe, and the Soviet Union, that it had to be destroyed. A peace with Germany which left the Nazis in power was intolerable, therefore, and I suppose this meant that the Allies took it upon themselves to occupy Germany and deNazify it, which of course, they failed to do, since it was impossible.

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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by ken
And the corollary of that is that it must have been unjust, immoral, for German or Japanese soldiers to take part in their invasions of those countries.

The Nazis executed Franz Jagerstatter for refusing to fight in what he considered an unjust war. He was beatified on October 26, 2012.

Moo

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
For as long as the allied intention was to require an unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, it was not a just war. A just war cannot require unconditional surrender; a just war is undertaken with the intention of offering just conditions which if met will result in peace.
Also, bombing of civilian populations is unjust.

Very interesting point. Normally that is correct, but I suppose one argument for it, was that Nazism was seen as so destructive, and so death-dealing to the people of Europe, and the Soviet Union, that it had to be destroyed. A peace with Germany which left the Nazis in power was intolerable, therefore, and I suppose this meant that the Allies took it upon themselves to occupy Germany and deNazify it, which of course, they failed to do, since it was impossible.
The Versailles Treaty was seen as a massive failure, and that was a conditional surrender. Allied troops did cross into Germany after Nov. 11th, the "Pursuit to the Rhine".

Unconditional Surrender was code for the fact that no Verseailles-like negotiations were going to take place this time.

In Germany, the government was so bound up with the Nazi Party that Germany was subjected to a debilitation; the entire Germany state ceased to exist legally.

In Japan the surrender was military, not total. The civilian government stayed in place and there was less of a purge than in Germany. The new Constitution of Japan, the present document, was passed by the old Diet as a general amendment which amounted a complete erasure and renewal but provided legal continuity.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
For those of us in the US:

  • December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Which is the way it has always been told. But a few other things are involved and it's not that simple.

The Japanese were feeling provoked by the USA's continued brutal holding of the Philippines, which had not dignified the Americans in terms of the savage nature of the conquest and occupation. Second, the take over of the USA of the British bases post-WW1, and common interests expressed in Asia, with Brit's holding of India etc also. The support by the Americans of the French and British colonial possessions in South East Asia, with at times, atrocious treatment of the locals. Third, the cut-off of oil and steel exports from USA to Japan in the summer of 1941.

The Japanese expansion into Manchuria (China) is always used as a counterpoint and reason. There are elements of manifest destiny and Japan's knowledge of this American ideology. Takes us back to the Philippines and the overthrow and annexation of Hawaii. The Japanese were thus conscious of the USA's historical designs on a general Pacific empire (call it what you will).

The eventual, dispassionate history is yet to be written, but I think it will complicate the general USA take as expressed.

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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet
The Japanese were feeling provoked by the USA's continued brutal holding of the Philippines, which had not dignified the Americans in terms of the savage nature of the conquest and occupation.]

The American occupation of the Philippines left a lot to be desired, but the Japanese occupation was far more brutal.

The great majority of Filipinos welcomed the returning Americans when they recaptured the islands.

Moo

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Martin60
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The most war-mongering nation bar none in the past 500 years is, of course, my beloved England, beloved BECAUSE of that prowess. A prowess fed ABOVE ALL from the Anglican pulpit.

What a travesty.

And it was ONE lone Anglican voice, the Bishop of Salisbury, as I recall, that opposed Dresden in the House of Lords.

Far too little, far too late.

And I repent of reviling him for it.

And nice one no prophet.

[ 12. November 2012, 22:50: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]

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Prester John
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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet
The Japanese were feeling provoked by the USA's continued brutal holding of the Philippines, which had not dignified the Americans in terms of the savage nature of the conquest and occupation.]

The American occupation of the Philippines left a lot to be desired, but the Japanese occupation was far more brutal.

The great majority of Filipinos welcomed the returning Americans when they recaptured the islands.

Moo

Filipino civilian casualities during the initial conquest were hundreds of thousands by conservative estimates. I would say the main reason for their enthusiasm was the fact that the U.S. was already halfway through granting them independence when the Japanese invasion. They could look forward to eventual independence under the Americans- no such promise under the Japanese.
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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by Prester John:
Filipino civilian casualities during the initial conquest were hundreds of thousands by conservative estimates. I would say the main reason for their enthusiasm was the fact that the U.S. was already halfway through granting them independence when the Japanese invasion. They could look forward to eventual independence under the Americans- no such promise under the Japanese.

AIUI the Japanese had important military installations in Manila. When the American army came near, many civilians wanted to flee, but the Japanese occupation authorities wouldn't let them. The civilian death toll in Manila has been estimated at one hundred thousand. The conquest of Manila took a month, and it's likely that many of the civilian deaths were due to starvation and dehydration.

Moo

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Og: Thread Killer
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

.

The Japanese were feeling provoked by the USA's continued brutal holding of the Philippines, which had not dignified the Americans in terms of the savage nature of the conquest and occupation. Second, the take over of the USA of the British bases post-WW1, and common interests expressed in Asia, with Brit's holding of India etc also. The support by the Americans of the French and British colonial possessions in South East Asia, with at times, atrocious treatment of the locals.

My understanding is those reasons were propaganda for internal consumption. Within the territories the Japanese occupied, there was far more brutality.

quote:
Third, the cut-off of oil and steel exports from USA to Japan in the summer of 1941.

A more likely reason for why this happened. That and the Japanese were overconfident in their superior attitude and believed the soft US would not be able to recover from the total destruction of their Pacific fleet.

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Gramps49
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Here we are talking as citizens of the victorious countries, but how about members of the vanquished countries? Did they feel their country had entered a just war? How do they feel about it now?

I can think of a number of Christians who resisted going to war in Germany. Did Roman Catholics in Italy also resist. Shintoism was so ingrained in the Japeople, hardly anyone there questioned the wisdom of the God Emperor, though it has been shown he was being manipulated by their military complex.

Saturation bombing, just or unjust? I think it can be argued both ways. On the just side I would point out that whole societies were putting everything they had in the war effort. Women were working in armament factories, children were collecting scrap metal, churches were making first aid kits for military, everyone was sacrificing for the good of the cause. The point of Saturation bombing is to break the will of the people, and thus shorten the war.

When the US dropped the two Atomic Bombs on Japan it was to limit the number of casualties both military and civilian, had Japan been invaded.

Now what would have made everything unjust was if we had refused to go in and assist the vanquished after their defeat. My father was part of the Army Construction Battalions who went in to help the Japanese. He was stationed in Nagasaki. His unit worked to help decontaminate the area and clear it of war debris. He never wanted to see another atomic bomb ever used again, but he felt it had to be used against Japan.

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Evangeline
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by jbohn:
For those of us in the US:

  • December 7, 1941 Unprovoked Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Which is the way it has always been told. But a few other things are involved and it's not that simple.

The Japanese were feeling provoked by the USA's continued brutal holding of the Philippines, which had not dignified the Americans in terms of the savage nature of the conquest and occupation. Second, the take over of the USA of the British bases post-WW1, and common interests expressed in Asia, with Brit's holding of India etc also. The support by the Americans of the French and British colonial possessions in South East Asia, with at times, atrocious treatment of the locals. Third, the cut-off of oil and steel exports from USA to Japan in the summer of 1941.

The Japanese expansion into Manchuria (China) is always used as a counterpoint and reason. There are elements of manifest destiny and Japan's knowledge of this American ideology. Takes us back to the Philippines and the overthrow and annexation of Hawaii. The Japanese were thus conscious of the USA's historical designs on a general Pacific empire (call it what you will).

The eventual, dispassionate history is yet to be written, but I think it will complicate the general USA take as expressed.

Whilst I agree with some of what you say, I find the implication that the Japanese had any qualms about the way "locals" were treated by the French or British to be offensive. I know local people who survived Japanese occupation in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, they still hold a great deal of animosity towards the Japanese for their cruelty and they relate stories of atrocities committed by the Japanese occupiers. Japan's treatment of occupied countries was barbaric and whilst the British are certainly not spotless in this regard the Japanese certainly did not act to invade SE Asia out of any regard for how the locals were being treated and to suggest so is an outrageously offensive historical misstatement.
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Finger
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Was it a just war? Let me put it this way. Most of you here are ignorant of a fact that German submarines were spotted in the St-Lawrence river north of Quebec city. Quebec borders New-Hamshire, Vermont and part of the New-York State. More than this, a sunken German sub was discovered just south of Quebec City. You didn't read this in your history books did you? Of course not. Still going to ask if this was a just war?
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PaulBC
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Look at the fascist nations aggression between 1933-39 . Hitler had a plan for the elimination of Jjews etc. Imperial Japan has been running amuck against the Chinese since 1931. All the above is aggression by a national power and thus that justiified war.
It has to be noted that none of the Allies stood up to Hitler before they were aggressed against.
As for the area bombing as war crime . I can't buy that . How you aimed bombs then is
way different from how it can be done today.
Dresden was an active railhead the German army could have moved troops east agains Soviet forces, so it's a legitimate target.
As for using the Atomic bombs , yes they were nasty but the USAAF 20th Bomber Command's
fire bombing raid caused more caualties than Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Also if the invansion's had happened losses would have been massive
and unlike Normandy there was no safe place to withdraw to. And to those who say accepting 10% casualties would have been better than using the bombs . You want to chose whose parent/wife gets the "we regret to inform you "telegram? And that is just on the US side . The Japanese were on minimal rations an d beeing urged to attack tanks with bambolo sticks. Have some sense of mercy for those people . The dead of Hiroshima & Nagasaki saved lives in the long run.
Was it a success ? Well the nuclear genie hasn't slipped out of the bottle since 1945
[Votive] [Angel] [Smile]

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quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Whilst I agree with some of what you say, I find the implication that the Japanese had any qualms about the way "locals" were treated by the French or British to be offensive. I know local people who survived Japanese occupation in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, they still hold a great deal of animosity towards the Japanese for their cruelty and they relate stories of atrocities committed by the Japanese occupiers.

Japan's treatment of occupied countries was barbaric and whilst the British are certainly not spotless in this regard the Japanese certainly did not act to invade SE Asia out of any regard for how the locals were being treated and to suggest so is an outrageously offensive historical misstatement.

Sure. And some locals allied with the Japanese and profitted from the relationship. They were savagely treated post-war with victors' justice. Just as Romanians and some Ukrainians etc took up with the Germans in Europe. My heretical take comes from my father, who was a German national when Japan bombed Hawaii. His family had lived in Hanoi, Manilla and Singapore, and were granted British passports in 1942 in rather complicated circumstances. I had family on both sides of WW2.

My father described in detail how friends after the war talked of a sense of liberation particularly in French Indochina and Indonesia. If not for who employed my grandfather (an American-British company), they would have stayed as they were German nationals, as it was they got out of Hong Kong just before it fell, and obtained British travel documents. I will grant you that I am more familiar of the French and Dutch conduct in SE Asia than of the other countries. And it was not good at all, neither before nor after the war. The Dutch were particularly foul. No European country was in the far east for any altruistic purpose. They wanted to export the resources, enrich themselves, and they judged the locals as worthy of being servants. No clean hands. I will grant that after the war started, including Japan in China in the 1930s, and the full scale Pacific wars that some aspects of Japanese conduct were particularly foul, but I won't grant that about colonial regimes, i.e., which country was nicer than the next.

The British, French, Dutch, and Americans were interested in SE Asia because they wanted economic control of the countries to enrich their own. That was the root cause of the war wasn't it. Are there really any others? The Americans had more advanced ideas of control not necessarily requiring colonial conquest, which was more characteristic of the other countries. Once the war started in Pacific, the beast was unleashed, and the conduct then is another discussion.

I am not meaning to offend anyone's sense of received truth, but there is something to discuss. I don't believe the root causes for the Pacific war are discussed sufficiently
[/QB][/QUOTE]

[ 13. November 2012, 01:57: Message edited by: no prophet ]

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PaulBC
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To follow on my last post. Guess I side with
General Charles Sweeny , who commanded the instrument aircraft at Hiroshima and the strike aircraft at Nagasaki . In his biography he say's I am the man who dropped the last atomic bomb and I want to keep that distinction,. [Votive] [Angel] [Smile]

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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# 15560

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quote:
Originally posted by PaulBC:
As for the area bombing as war crime . I can't buy that . How you aimed bombs then is
way different from how it can be done today.

It doesn't matter what it is called. It is still death of innocents. In a little village in the Rhineland in late 1944 the bombers came and destroyed 4 families of my relatives, just the children and their mothers as the men were off fighting somewhere. There are these beautiful round little water filled ponds created by saturation bombing of the area. I'm lucky that one baby, born in 1942 survived or I would not have any relatives there at all.

I have also seen the pictures of Holland taken by relatives on the other side of my family, with the invading Canadian army, which look comparably the same, and I have seen the haunted and traumatised looks in the faces of the children. I'm thinking from the perspective of children that all bombing is war crime. Whether in one country or the next.

The nuclear part of your posts, well, imagine for a minute it is your 2 or 4 year old child, or 12 year old getting burnt to death or exploded. The candle for the soldier is misplaced. Place them for the children.

[ 13. November 2012, 02:15: Message edited by: no prophet ]

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Timothy the Obscure

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I think you have to look at the European and Pacific wars separately. The Pacific war was essentially a clash between empires over spheres of influence. What Japan was doing was no worse than what Britain, France and the US had done before them--dreadful as it was. There was really no moral dimension to that part of the war--at least no positive moral dimension, though the ultimate result was the decolonization of Asia, a good thing, but an unintended consequence. (And Tom, to say that the US had no alternative but surrender after Pearl Harbor is silly. Pearl Harbor was not an attempt at conquest, it was just an effort to immobilize the US Pacific Fleet long enough for Japan to consolidate its position. Yamamoto told his bosses it wouldn't work, but they made him do it anyway.)

The war against Germany is more complex, though certainly the saturation bombing of German cities can't be justified under any just war theory ever devised (except the one used in Vietnam: "Any target whose destruction reduces the enemy's will to fight is a military target.")

The New York Times piece linked to above is quite interesting, and I'm looking forward to Part 2 tomorrow. It raises a question I confess I'd never really thought much about: the distinction between just war theory as it applies to states (when is it just for a nation to go to war?) and to individuals (when is it just for an individual to participate in war?) I had never really considered those as separate questions.

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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There is nothing just about war tactics, just degrees of harm. Civilian freighters were legitimate targets.

Air power had a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn, especially at night. Air power was simply a very long range artillery barrage most of the time, and less accurate. Anyone can see the trend on both sides to ever-larger raids with more bombers causing more destruction. The Atomic Bombs did the same thing, just with one bomber. Curiously, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki raids went as easily as they did in getting to the target because the Japanese did not want to bother with just a bomber pair (bomber and chase plane). The planes were hardly challenged by AAA or fighters.

Operation Olympic, the planed invasion of Japan is always tough to judge as it was theoretical, but the salient facts are these: 6 divisions landed on D-Day in Normandy, 13 divisions would have hit the beach on X-day in Kyushu. American war plans assumed the presence of 5,000 Japanese aircraft, in reality 13,000 were available because of hoarding for the possibility of invasion. Lastly there would be no tactical or strategic surprise on Kyushu as there was at Normandy (by the grace of spies). Post-war debriefs showed that the Japanese knew the landing beaches and had them defended. The geography of Kyushu left only one option on the table. It was going to be bloody.

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Kaplan Corday
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It is easy to discuss this topic with detachment, because probably none of us were alive during WWII, and precious few of us have experienced military combat.

My father volunteered in 1939 at the age of thirty-five, fought in North Africa, mainland Greece and Crete, and then spent three years in a German POW camp.

He never voiced the slightest regret at having served in the struggle against fascism - on the contrary, he was glad at having done so - and this was typical of Allied service personnel, nearly all of whom came out of the war believing that it had been a just enterprise, whatever their individual experiences of suffering.

While it is an interesting, leisurely post facto exercise to attempt to decide the war’s justice, and try to line it up against lists of criteria such as Aquinas’s, in practice the best anyone can do at the time when faced with the option of war is make an assessment of what is the lesser of two evils.

Here is the conclusion to a 2011 history of WWII by British military historian Max Hastings:

“It is impossible to dignify the struggle as an unalloyed contest between good and evil, nor rationally to celebrate an experience, and even an outcome, which imposed much misery upon so many. Allied victory did not bring universal peace, prosperity, justice or freedom; it brought merely a portion of those things to some fraction of those who had taken part. All that seems certain is that Allied victory saved the world from a much worse fate that would have followed the triumph of Germany and Japan. With this knowledge, seekers after virtue and truth must be content”.

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Timothy the Obscure

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Part 2 of the NYT Article.

I think it exposes the fundamental incoherence of traditional just war theory, but I'm still working it through.

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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
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Evangeline
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Whilst I agree with some of what you say, I find the implication that the Japanese had any qualms about the way "locals" were treated by the French or British to be offensive. I know local people who survived Japanese occupation in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, they still hold a great deal of animosity towards the Japanese for their cruelty and they relate stories of atrocities committed by the Japanese occupiers.

Japan's treatment of occupied countries was barbaric and whilst the British are certainly not spotless in this regard the Japanese certainly did not act to invade SE Asia out of any regard for how the locals were being treated and to suggest so is an outrageously offensive historical misstatement.

Sure. And some locals allied with the Japanese and profitted from the relationship. They were savagely treated post-war with victors' justice. Just as Romanians and some Ukrainians etc took up with the Germans in Europe. My heretical take comes from my father, who was a German national when Japan bombed Hawaii. His family had lived in Hanoi, Manilla and Singapore, and were granted British passports in 1942 in rather complicated circumstances. I had family on both sides of WW2.

My father described in detail how friends after the war talked of a sense of liberation particularly in French Indochina and Indonesia. If not for who employed my grandfather (an American-British company), they would have stayed as they were German nationals, as it was they got out of Hong Kong just before it fell, and obtained British travel documents. I will grant you that I am more familiar of the French and Dutch conduct in SE Asia than of the other countries. And it was not good at all, neither before nor after the war. The Dutch were particularly foul. No European country was in the far east for any altruistic purpose. They wanted to export the resources, enrich themselves, and they judged the locals as worthy of being servants. No clean hands. I will grant that after the war started, including Japan in China in the 1930s, and the full scale Pacific wars that some aspects of Japanese conduct were particularly foul, but I won't grant that about colonial regimes, i.e., which country was nicer than the next.

The British, French, Dutch, and Americans were interested in SE Asia because they wanted economic control of the countries to enrich their own. That was the root cause of the war wasn't it. Are there really any others? The Americans had more advanced ideas of control not necessarily requiring colonial conquest, which was more characteristic of the other countries. Once the war started in Pacific, the beast was unleashed, and the conduct then is another discussion.

I am not meaning to offend anyone's sense of received truth, but there is something to discuss. I don't believe the root causes for the Pacific war are discussed sufficiently

[/QB][/QUOTE]

I agree that the European powers were in SE Asia to exploit the area's economic resources and the Japanese wanted a piece of the exploitative action-that is a crude summation of the war in the Pacific that I won' t dispute.

I will need a lot of convincing though that my received truth that the English were a less cruel exploitative power than the Japanese is in error.

This view of the war in the Pacific is very Euro-centric though. THe Australian view can never be as objective as that of a European or North American. Australia was a self-governing nation, not a colony, we weren't being exploited by colonial powers nor were we exploiting anyone else, but the threat of Japanese invasion was very real (the Japanese navy wanted to invade in 1942 but the army put the kibosh on it). Australians certainly view the USA as a liberating force in the Pacific.

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Gee D
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Evangeline said: Australians certainly view the USA as a liberating force in the Pacific.

And are extremely grateful still to the US for the support and protection it gave us - the Battle of the Coral Sea being simply the start.

There can be little doubt that the behaviour of the Japanese towards conquered people was barbaric in the extreme, and that Malraux's descriptions in La Condiiton Humaine were accurate. This was far worse that the behaviour of the colonial powers in India, Indonesia or Indo-China. Does that justify Hiroshime and Nagasaki? Ultimately it does.

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the long ranger
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quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Does that justify Hiroshime and Nagasaki? Ultimately it does.

That is quite a statement.

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Beeswax Altar
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quote:
originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I think you have to look at the European and Pacific wars separately. The Pacific war was essentially a clash between empires over spheres of influence. What Japan was doing was no worse than what Britain, France and the US had done before them--dreadful as it was.

Why was the European war anything other than a clash of empires over spheres of influence? How is Germany's invasion of Poland any different than Japan's invasion of China? Japan wanted more influence in East Asia. Germany wanted more influence in Europe. The Germans killed millions of people in the nations they conquered. The Japanese killed millions of people in China alone. The only difference I see is the Japanese didn't have anything comparable to the Final Solution. However, the Allies weren't fighting the Nazis over the Final Solution.

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mdijon
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"wanted more influence" is rather a euphemistic way of describing the annexing of Europe under military rule.

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Haydee
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To be devil's advocate, didn't it become a 'just' war at the Nurenberg Trials (and Japanese equivalent)?

As the need for the ANC & other liberation groups to testify and apply for amnesty at the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa showed, both sides got up to some deeply unpleasant activities - I would be very surprised if the Allied forces were atrocity-free.

Would GB have cared about Poland if Germany's expansion wasn't also threatening GB? Let's face it, we had the same treaty obligation to Czechoslovakia as to Poland, and let that go without too many qualms ("a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing").

At the point of going to war in 1939, GB hadn't been attacked. Jews in German controlled areas weren't receiving worse treatment than that applied to 'the natives' by Britain in many colonies, and there was a serious degree of anti-semitism in Britain. Many of the countries who 'saved the Jews from the final solution' were the ones who refused them entry so they could escape Germany during the 1930s; because they didn't want to be 'over-run' - it wasn't only German propaganda that used the terminology of vermin infestation.

So... does a war become just or unjust by intention or by (unintended) outcome?

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mdijon
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The British were still running concentration camps to starve and torture 1.5 million Kenyans who belonged to the wrong tribe in the late 50s.

But I don't think that means they did wrong in preventing Hitler from gassing more Jews.

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*Leon*
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I was under the impression that a war had to be winnable to be just; it is unjust to go into a no-hope situation that would achieve a just aim were you to succeed, since you could cause less hardship and the same end result by just capitulating without a fight.

By that definition, the war in Europe arguably became just at Pearl harbour. Without the American involvement it was far from clear that Britain could win.

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Haydee
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quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
The British were still running concentration camps to starve and torture 1.5 million Kenyans who belonged to the wrong tribe in the late 50s.

But I don't think that means they did wrong in preventing Hitler from gassing more Jews.

I'm not saying that preventing Hitler from gassing more Jews was wrong. But that in 1939 it wasn't a factor, and in the subsequent years of war it didn't become a factor.

So - does being 'just' mean that you have to intend to do right, or only that you end up doing something right that is incidental to your intentions? Does the outcome or the intention matter more in assessing 'justness'?

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