Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: When did World War II become a just war?
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Right intention is classically part of just war theory, but personally I can take it or leave it.
In classical just way theory it is necessary but not sufficient (i.e. not having it rules out a just war but having it doesn't rule it in).
Personally I tend more towards utilitarian ethics, and I think it is near impossible to discern intent anyway.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday: 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”.
I loved that book and agree with what you are saying.
"Just" is almost always a relative term when it comes to war. The very nature of war virtually requires bad behavior on almost everyone's part because it places so many people in desparate, fearful, hellish situations.
So I think that if by "just" we mean "without fault or blame on our part in either cause or conduct" we are fooling ourselves.
Compared to most wars, though, WWII was something to be proud of. The valiant efforts of the Allied powers saved the world.
-------------------- "Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Alaric the Goth
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# 511
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Posted
My late parents served in the military in WWII and I have always been proud of the fact. I don't think my father was, though.
My father was in the RAF, in Bomber Command. I think he wished afterwards that he had had the courage to be a consciencious (sp.?) objector. He trained in Rhodesia and England, and was not involved in active bombing raids till 1945. The targets were 'industrial', mainly in the Ruhr, but that's not to say civilians weren't killed. I think that possiblity haunted his conscience for years.
My mother was in the WAAF (at a Licolnshire bomber station) and always, I think, saw the war as a 'just' war. Partly this might have been due to her GI boyfriend sending her letters back after D-Day, including after seeing inside a concentration camp... [ 13. November 2012, 11:09: Message edited by: Alaric the Goth ]
Posts: 3322 | From: West Thriding | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hawk
 Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Freddy: Compared to most wars, though, WWII was something to be proud of. The valiant efforts of the Allied powers saved the world.
Saved it from what? We didn't save the Jews from the Holocaust, we didn't save Germany from an oppressive government since after the war ended the soviets took over.
We certainly didn't save the world from mass death, destruction, massacres, and economic and social collapse, since the war itself brought all that - and on a larger scale than ever before.
We saved the world from any more years of Hitler, but he would have died at some point anyway. And there were (and still are) plenty of other despots commiting atrocities that we didn't save the world from. We didn't save the world from Stalin, or Mao, in fact our efforts supported their takeover and expansion of their influence, and they were in many ways worse.
We saved the world from the Nazi party. But the world still suffered terribly under the governments that came after.
We cannot prevent suffering by causing suffering. And war is the biggest cause of suffering a state can make.
Hastings says it would have been worse if there had been no war at all. I think that theory needs to be defended as it is by no means certain. [ 13. November 2012, 11:37: Message edited by: Hawk ]
-------------------- “We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Hawk: We didn't save the Jews from the Holocaust
How many more millions do you think Hitler would have gassed if left to it?
quote: Originally posted by Hawk: we didn't save Germany from an oppressive government since after the war ended the soviets took over.
Not West Germany they didn't.
quote: Originally posted by Hawk: We certainly didn't save the world from mass death, destruction, massacres, and economic and social collapse, since the war itself brought all that - and on a larger scale than ever before.
I think you're setting the bar quite high. I think the evil of unopposed Nazi rule in Europe while waiting for Hitler to die would have been greater than WWII.
And after Hitler died that would not have been the outbreak of democratic peaceful rule, the Nazi party would still have been in power. North Korea hasn't improved much with the death of successive dictators.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by mdijon: "wanted more influence" is rather a euphemistic way of describing the annexing of Europe under military rule.
And Japan was trying to annex most of East Asia under military rule.
-------------------- Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible. -Og: King of Bashan
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fletcher christian
 Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
posted by Truman: quote: Or how about when he started laying out plans for the systematic genocide of Jews ?
Most of Europe either didn't care, or lived in a bubble and refused to believe it.
-------------------- 'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe' Staretz Silouan
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Moo
 Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Upthread someone said that no one posting here was alive during WW2. I was. I was seven years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and eleven years old at the end of the war.
More importantly, I was a student in Germany from 1955 to 1957. I heard many war stories from my contemporaries.
During March and April just before the war ended, British and American planes strafed anyone they saw moving on the ground. (To be fair, at that height they couldn't see who they were shooting at.) Children walking home from school learned to drop into ditches whenever they heard a plane. Most farmers gave up trying to plant their fields. This led to famine later.
At the same time the SS fanatics were terrorizing the civilian population. A sixteen-year-old who went swimming with a friend had the forethought to put his papers in a little bag and hang it around his neck. His friend did not do this. Some SS soldiers demanded proof that they were not deserters. The man who told me the story could prove that he was not. The other one was strung up.
I heard a story, which I think must have been exaggerated, about an atrocity in Heilbronn. A friend of mine, a trained historian, went to Heilbronn to examine some eighteenth-century documents. When she mentioned in casual conversation that she was a historian, several different people told her substantially the same story.
They said that very near the end of the war, the SS rounded up all the fourteen-year-old members of the Hitler Youth. They put rifles in their hands, loaded them in freight cars, and shipped them toward the front. The boys knew that in combat they would be killed immediately, and they wanted to escape. When the freight car was put on a siding, the boys jumped out and ran. The SS mowed down most of them.
I think there is substance to the story, because so many people told it, and because my friend had training in evaluating what she heard. OTOH, I think that if most the fourteen-year-olds in Heilbronn had been killed, I would be able to find a reference. I assume that the group of boys was fairly small, but this was still an atrocity.
My point is that in the spring of 1945, both the Allies and the Nazis placed little value on the lives of German civilians.
Moo
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
And neither side cared much about Japanese civilians or Russian civilians for that matter.
-------------------- Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible. -Og: King of Bashan
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by mdijon: "wanted more influence" is rather a euphemistic way of describing the annexing of Europe under military rule.
quote: Originally posted by Beeswax Altar: And Japan was trying to annex most of East Asia under military rule.
Well quite. I wouldn't put that down to "wanting more influence" either.
I'm not sure how the moral equivalence between Japan and Germany in WW2 plays out, but I'm pretty certain that the Allied forces don't have moral equivalence with Nazi Germany in terms of both vying for influence.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
Why? Because the allies contented themselves with empires in Africa, South America, and Asia but Germany wanted an empire in Europe? Well, most of the allies weren't trying to build European empires. Russia wanted a European empire but was willing to stay out of Western Europe.
-------------------- Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible. -Og: King of Bashan
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
The 2nd World War would have met one of the tests for a just war from the moment Germany invaded Czechoslovakia at the latest. At that point, it didn't meet one of the others, which is that one must have a reasonable prospect of winning. Even the extra months time for preparation between then and the German invasion of Poland make that touch and go, as evidenced by the fact that the Germans knocked the French out of the war so quickly, and would have knocked us out if it hadn't been for the Channel.
Even fighting a just war, the Allies did not manage to achieve all the just aims. At the end of the war, Poland had merely been transferred from one oppressive invader to another. But that doesn't mean the war was not just. A war may be just if your cause is right, and at the start you have a reasonable prospect of success, even if at the end, you lose, viz Austria in 1866 and 1740.
Tangent Alert IMHO, the 1st Iraq War mets all of them; the second, none. End of Tangent Alert
-------------------- Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
This is what I was getting at by asking if the Treaty of Versailles was just. The time to stop Hitler was in 1935 or 1936 at the latest. Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by increasing the size of the German military and then occupying the Rhineland. Would it have been just for the allies to stop him then?
-------------------- Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible. -Og: King of Bashan
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Matt Black
 Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
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
Roll it back further: Japanese invasion of Manchuria from September 1931 (if you have the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, why can't I have the Mukden Incident?).
-------------------- "Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
It's interesting that on the ground, just war theory is probably ignored. For example, various resistance movements presumably do not sit around having academic discussions about it, I would think. It seems pretty instinctive, that if you have been invaded by another power, you will resist, or at least, some people will. This seems to be one of the lessons in the Middle East!
-------------------- I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Beeswax Altar: Why? Because the allies contented themselves with empires in Africa, South America, and Asia but Germany wanted an empire in Europe?
As bad as colonialism was (and I'm certainly no fan) I don't think it compares with Nazi Germany. Taking over other countries is bad wherever they are. Taking them over and subjecting the populations to terror, extermination and eugenics is worse.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Matt Black
 Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday: 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”.
Reading this book ATM.
-------------------- "Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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the giant cheeseburger
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# 10942
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by mdijon: quote: Originally posted by Beeswax Altar: Why? Because the allies contented themselves with empires in Africa, South America, and Asia but Germany wanted an empire in Europe?
As bad as colonialism was (and I'm certainly no fan) I don't think it compares with Nazi Germany. Taking over other countries is bad wherever they are. Taking them over and subjecting the populations to terror, extermination and eugenics is worse.
Didn't colonialists do all that and more?
-------------------- If I give a homeopathy advocate a really huge punch in the face, can the injury be cured by giving them another really small punch in the face?
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Comparisons like that are irrelevant to just war theory, aren't they? In a colonial situation, it is just to have an anti-colonial insurgency; in Europe, it was just to fight the Nazi occupations.
-------------------- I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure: 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.
I'd be very wary of any view of morality that held that some actions could be morally correct (as opposed to legal) for states, but not for individuals.
You could only logically hold that position if you either believed that an action can be right for a group of people but not an individual (which seems very dodgy to me and also lets corporations and so on do what they like) or else that nation states are some special kind of moral actor with rights and duties of their own that are different from those of the people they rule over or represent. And that seems worse - that's selling the pass to the Fascists, that's part of what we were fighting against.
quote: Originally posted by Finger: 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?
That's a strange post.
I think anyone who ever read anything much about the Atlantic war knows that German subs starred to hunt in US territorial waters before Pearl Harbour.
quote: Originally posted by Beeswax Altar: How is Germany's invasion of Poland any different than Japan's invasion of China?
Japan wanted to conquer China and was willing to kill and enslave large numbers of Chinese people to do it. Germany did not kill nd enslave Poles in order to conquer Poland, Germany conquered Poland in order to kill nd enslave Poles. There is a moral diference. (Though not a practical one if you are the victim)
And not just Jews and Slavs. By the end of the war Hitler and his gang didn;t even want Germany to win any more. They kept on fighting because they wanted Germans to die as well. They had tricked the country into a kind of mass-suicide-by-cop - in this case the cop was the Soviet Union, ably assisted by the RAF.
quote: However, the Allies weren't fighting the Nazis over the Final Solution.
But would have in the end. As it turned out Naziism was an intolerable imposition on humaity. Sooner or later it was going to be brought down in flames. You can no more live with a Nazi superpower next door than you can with a rabid dog in your house.
quote: Originally posted by *Leon*: 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.
No, the Germans were never going to win. They were astonishingly lucky - and skilful, and brave - to get as far as they did. Even after German conquests in Europe in 1940 they were still just about outnumbered and outgunned by their opponents, and the Allies already had massive economic and industrial support from the USA which helped a great deal. And then Germany invaded Russia. From that moment on they were almost certain to lose, and lose badly.
The attack on the Soviet Union was stalled in the late autumn of 1941. The first large Russian counter-offensives began before Pearl Harbour. The question then wasn't whether or not Germany would lose, but how long it would take.
Direct US intervention in Europe probably shortened the war by a long time. And it almost certainly meant that the Russians stopped advancing further East than they might have got on their own. But I doubt if there could have been a German victory if it hadn't happened.
quote: Originally posted by Matt Black: 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
Roll it back further: Japanese invasion of Manchuria from September 1931 (if you have the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, why can't I have the Mukden Incident?).
I'm sure there are dozens of possibilities! Also you could argue that Nazi oppression of Jews inside Germany was an internal matter and not an excuse for war (though in that case, how bad does it have to get before it becomes one?) and also that most Austrians actually wanted to unite with Germany (arguably true) so that wasn't really justification for anyone to fight against Germany. Other than perhaps the government of Austria, who by that time were otherwise engaged.
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
The Japanese DID subject their subjects to terror, slavery, mass murder and medical experimentation.
-------------------- Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible. -Og: King of Bashan
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Indeed. My point was that the allies did not.
There was nothing in colonial rule in the 20th century that compared to Hitler's final solution, to eugenics, or the level of brutality that fascism applied.
I know there was brutality, massacres, torture and other crimes against humanity, but not on the same scale or ferocity.
For instance in Kenya the British killed around 20,000 Kikuyus in an effort to put down the Mau Mau. Compare this with the millions of civilians killed by the Nazis.
And there was another difference. The British gave up. The public outcry over news of the brutality was sufficient to cause a change of policy. I can't see that happening in Nazi Germany.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Beeswax Altar: The Japanese DID subject their subjects to terror, slavery, mass murder and medical experimentation.
So did the Soviets, and on a larger scale than Japan, when taken over a long period of time. And they were on our side.
So, on a smaller scale, did the British and the Americans. And just about every other government there ever was that ruled anything much larger than a decent-sized small town. And sometimes even then.
quote: Originally posted by mdijon: As bad as colonialism was (and I'm certainly no fan) I don't think it compares with Nazi Germany. Taking over other countries is bad wherever they are..
I think the slave states in the Caribbean got pretty close to it. Maybe not as bad, and perhaps on a smaller scale, and certainly and with much less industrial power behind it - but it bears comparison. Though there it was all done at arms length. The governments of Portugal and Spain and Britain and France and the Netherlands were happy to allow their citizens to murder and rape Africans on the other side of the ocean, as long as they didn't bring it home. And when the reality did sink in at home, in Britain and France anyway, the people rejected slavery.
The sort-of-Belgian Congo was pretty foul too. As was German behaviour in parts of Tanzania and in Namibia, and the few Pacific islands they got their claws on.
On the whole the British and the Dutch were less bad than the Germans, Spanish, and Portuguese. And the French were probably less bad than the British - certainly in Africa. But even the French did pretty bloody badly - and they had a lot worse time giving it up than we did. And at its worse, with chattel slavery in plantations and mines, European colonialism was as bad as anything people have ever done.
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by ken: And when the reality did sink in at home, in Britain and France anyway, the people rejected slavery.
That is one important difference from Nazi Germany.
quote: Originally posted by ken: And at its worse, with chattel slavery in plantations and mines, European colonialism was as bad as anything people have ever done.
Completely agree with that. On the other hand Nazi Germany, at its best, was as bad as anything people have ever done.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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John D. Ward
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# 1378
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by ken: No, the Germans were never going to win. They were astonishingly lucky - and skilful, and brave - to get as far as they did. Even after German conquests in Europe in 1940 they were still just about outnumbered and outgunned by their opponents, and the Allies already had massive economic and industrial support from the USA which helped a great deal. And then Germany invaded Russia. From that moment on they were almost certain to lose, and lose badly.
The attack on the Soviet Union was stalled in the late autumn of 1941. The first large Russian counter-offensives began before Pearl Harbour. The question then wasn't whether or not Germany would lose, but how long it would take.
This is hindsight. My father, who fought in World War II, in North Africa and Europe, remembered 1942 as the worst year of the war. German victory was still seen as very possible until after Stalingrad and El Alamein.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by ken: I'd be very wary of any view of morality that held that some actions could be morally correct (as opposed to legal) for states, but not for individuals.
I think the argument is that war involves a great deal of inconvenience to all parties. And therefore a declaration of war should only be made by someone who has the authority to act on behalf of those parties. If there's already a war going on then someone has the right to get involved as a private individual. But a general doesn't have the right to intervene with his troops unless duly authorised by the government of his or her country.
-------------------- we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Jay-Emm
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# 11411
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by mdijon:
There was nothing in colonial rule in the 20th century that compared to Hitler's final solution, to eugenics, or the level of brutality that fascism applied.
California (or North Carolina) ought to be mentioned here. They only stopped in the 70's.
Though in a way it also supports your point as 20,000 forced sterilisations in 60 years is a lot less than 400,000 in less than 10.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Or in response to the Nazi medical experiments one can point to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment which ended in 1972. Although there is a qualitative similarity, actually quantitatively the medical experimentation in Nazi Germany was far worse and far more frequent.
To liken the medical profession in the US in 1970 to that of Nazi Germany because they did the same things would be egregious. But on paper the name of the crime is the same.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
quetzalcoatl - Jesus disagrees.
-------------------- Love wins
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no prophet's flag is set so...
 Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
In reading the lists compiled on this thread and considering the history I recall of how many killed by whom, I think the Soviet Union wins, followed by Germany. After that, I'm not so sure.
I'm also not sure how many murders of civilians it takes before we call it genocide, and whether one genocide is worse than another. The Nazis have always been considered the worst because of the typical German meticulous planning and good documentation of what they did. But we should be wary of calling one country's murderous mistreatment of the population of another better than another's. Condemn it all.
A just war? The quote I remember from the early 1970s is "fighting for peace is like fucking for celibacy." Apparently both can be rather jolly.
-------------------- Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. \_(ツ)_/
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Evangeline
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# 7002
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday: 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.
...
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”.
^^ This, well said Kaplan Corday and Max Hastings.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
SOL no prophet. I didn't mean it in the '70's - I do now.
Evangeline, Kaplan Corday: Jesus commands us to a third way that isn't evil at all. [ 13. November 2012, 20:41: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
-------------------- Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Sometimes evil needs to be fought.
Standing by idly while genocide takes place is evil and Jesus does not command it. There is always some greater evil, some speck in a brother's eye, some undone good to distract us from a particular problem.
So yes we should condemn it all. Terribly satisfying and righteous, but of little use in the defence against evil. Many pacifists enjoy a freedom bought by the blood of others.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
An interesting false dichotomy mdijon. Funny how we turn from the third way isn't it? I have for over 50 years.
The third non-evil way of Jesus does not involve standing idly by.
As I said my pacifist chemistry teacher risked his life more than the average combatant in bomb disposal. What a hero. Doubly so.
My NATURAL instinct is to be in awe of Britain's military, I deeply regret not having served myself. I've been an armchair warrior - like you I suspect and if not please say - all my conscious life. I am a free man because of the sacrifice of better men than I.
Jesus expects GREATER sacrifice. And it will be called upon in our lifetimes. [ 13. November 2012, 21:12: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
-------------------- Love wins
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Evangeline
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# 7002
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: An interesting false dichotomy mdijon. Funny how we turn from the third way isn't it? I have for over 50 years.
The third non-evil way of Jesus does not involve standing idly by.
As I said my pacifist chemistry teacher risked his life more than the average combatant in bomb disposal. What a hero. Doubly so.
My NATURAL instinct is to be in awe of Britain's military, I deeply regret not having served myself. I've been an armchair warrior - like you I suspect and if not please say - all my conscious life. I am a free man because of the sacrifice of better men than I.
Jesus expects GREATER sacrifice. And it will be called upon in our lifetimes.
As heroic as your pacifist teacher was, to stop evil dominating, in certain instances you have to actually fight it, like the Allied servicemen did. The Nazis and Japanese were not going to be stopped by people safely disposing of the minority of their bombs that didn't detonate on impact. No sense keeping people alive for long enough so that the enemy can come in and bayonet them for practice or put them in concentration camps and starve and work them to death (that was Japan's plan for Australians once they took over all of the Pacific).
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Dafyd: 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.
The Allies made that mistake Nov 11th 1918 , don't think they were in a hurry to repeat that mistake second time around.
Also, bombing of civilian populations is unjust.
Maybe it is . However when it comes to indiscriminate aerial bombing it could be said that what Zeppelins started in Great Yarmouth January 1915, Lancaster bombers finished 30 years later in Dresden.
-------------------- Change is the only certainty of existence
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Evangeline, I know ALL that and more and have argued vehemently for it and more. I was a total Clausewitzian.
Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
Name it.
South Africa because it was anti-communist.
I am SO ashamed.
And you will say that's why I've flipped. In part I'm sure.
quetzalcoatl claimed that insurrection against colonial oppression is justified.
Jesus DENIES that. By His life and DEATH refutes that. Utterly. We have that example.
Christianity - following Jesus - has NEVER BEEN APPLIED in the history of warfare to ANY noticeable degree ANYWHERE. As in all our social endeavours.
Our first and last and only chance is coming.
-------------------- Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Moo
 Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I am disturbed by the way the word genocide is being used on this thread. My dictionary defines it as quote: the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group
Wholesale slaughter has been going on ever since people climbed down from the trees. In OT times there were episodes when every man, woman, and child living in certain places was killed. This is not the same as checking out people's ancestry and deciding who should live and who should die on that basis.
The word genocide was not coined until after World War 2, when it was necessary to name this new kind of atrocity.
Moo
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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PaulBC
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# 13712
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Posted
The one thing I have come to realize after looking at military history is . That war should never be the 1st solution we look at. If matters so deterioate that it is thye only means to end suffering , then do it full force and be ready to hold out a helpingh hand & pocketbook to rebuild afterwards, a la Marshall plan. But never go into a war for some of the reasons we have seen since 9/11 . Some the reasoning was extremely & made al of us more enemies than we needed bad ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
-------------------- "He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
When did Jesus look at it? Where was it on His list of contingencies?
The reasons WE, Christendom, go to war are BECAUSE of Christendom. Which is why we're naturally hated.
-------------------- Love wins
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Moo: Upthread someone said that no one posting here was alive during WW2.
I did qualify it with a "probably".
Thanks for your interesting post.
The Waffen SS were incredibly ruthless, but also incredibly brave, and a number shot themselves at the end of the war.
One of the embarrassing facts about WWII is that the West's enemies (especially the Japanese) while espousing repulsive ideologies, were on the whole, braver than the Allies.
Even Hitler was a holder of a WWI Iron Cross, which the Germans did not award for nothing.
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by no prophet: In reading the lists compiled on this thread and considering the history I recall of how many killed by whom, I think the Soviet Union wins, followed by Germany.
The most recent scholarly assessment of which I am aware was presented by Timothy Snyder in his Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler And Stalin, published a couple of years ago.
His figures for deliberate killings, more conservative than previous estimates, are 11 million for Nazi Germany and 6 million for Stalin's Soviet Union.
Mao, of course, dwarfed them both. [ 13. November 2012, 23:54: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
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Moo
 Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday: Even Hitler was a holder of a WWI Iron Cross, which the Germans did not award for nothing.
Actually, they did.
There is an extremely interesting book by Thomas Weber called Hitler's First War. In it he tells that Hitler was stationed at regimental headquarters, rather than in the trenches. He was a dispatch runner, and dispatch runners in the trenches had an extremely dangerous job. Dispatch runners at headquarters, however, were quite safe and also enjoyed much better food and sleeping arrangements.
Each regiment was supposed to award a certain number of Iron Crosses, and the officer whose job it was to recommend recipients was stationed at headquarters. Hitler was a good dispatch runner, so he was nominated.
Most biographers of Hitler make the mistake of assuming that in Mein Kampf Hitler told the truth about his life. In fact, he was no more truthful about his own life history than he was about the Jews and about European history. Hitler's First War is a real eye-opener.
Moo
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Sober Preacher's Kid
 Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday: quote: Originally posted by Moo: Upthread someone said that no one posting here was alive during WW2.
I did qualify it with a "probably".
Thanks for your interesting post.
The Waffen SS were incredibly ruthless, but also incredibly brave, and a number shot themselves at the end of the war.
One of the embarrassing facts about WWII is that the West's enemies (especially the Japanese) while espousing repulsive ideologies, were on the whole, braver than the Allies.
Even Hitler was a holder of a WWI Iron Cross, which the Germans did not award for nothing.
Superior force, weapons and tactics lessen the need for direct bravery, that's the point of better stuff and better ways to use it. By 1944 the US had better everything in the Pacific. The Japanese were on the defensive and at points were cut off.
What bravery is there in using a flamethrower to clear bunkers and caves by roasting everyone inside alive? This was standard US practice by 1944. It was ruthlessly effective though.
-------------------- NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
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Timothy the Obscure
 Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by ken: quote: Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure: 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.
I'd be very wary of any view of morality that held that some actions could be morally correct (as opposed to legal) for states, but not for individuals.
You could only logically hold that position if you either believed that an action can be right for a group of people but not an individual (which seems very dodgy to me and also lets corporations and so on do what they like) or else that nation states are some special kind of moral actor with rights and duties of their own that are different from those of the people they rule over or represent. And that seems worse - that's selling the pass to the Fascists, that's part of what we were fighting against.
The distinction had to do mostly with the question of whether an individual's conduct in war could be just if the war itself is not. Individuals (other than heads of state, who rarely engage in combat any more) do not make the decision to go to war (the current "war on terror" raises all kinds of questions that traditional just war theory can't cope with, but...) Presumably, a war can be just for only one side (at most). So what does that mean for those fighting for the unjust side? Can they conduct themselves justly by observing the laws of war (avoiding harm to noncombatants, proportionality, etc.) or is their only moral option to become conscientious objectors?
I am a pacifist, so I already have an opinion, but it adds a layer of complexity.
-------------------- 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. - C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Evangeline
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# 7002
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The Waffen SS were incredibly ruthless, but also incredibly brave, and a number shot themselves at the end of the war.
One of the embarrassing facts about WWII is that the West's enemies (especially the Japanese) while espousing repulsive ideologies, were on the whole, braver than the Allies.
[/QB]
I don't find it at all embarrassing that as SPK points out the Allies had smarter ways of winning the war. The Japanese had a deeply ingrained warrior culture that emphasised the disgrace of defeat and that death was better than disgrace. This is the main that THE BOMBS (yep, one wasn't enough, they wouldn't surrender until a second one was used) were necessary, the Japanese would have fought to the very last man, woman or child.
I don't even view the Japanese as brave so much as brainwashed and terrified of disgrace. There are different types of bravery, I don't think murdering the POWs that you've
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Moo: Dispatch runners at headquarters, however, were quite safe and also enjoyed much better food and sleeping arrangements.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler's most recent serious biographer, writes of this issue:
"..the attempts of his political enemies in the early 1930s to belittle the dangers involved in the duties of the dispatch runner and decry Hitler's war service, accusing him of shirking and cowardice, were misplaced....the dangers faced by dispatch runners during battles, carrying messages to the front through the firing line, were real enough. The losses among dispatch runners were relatively high....Hitler was a committed, rather than simply conscientous and dutiful, soldier, and did not lack physical courage".
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: The reasons WE, Christendom, go to war are BECAUSE of Christendom. Which is why we're naturally hated.
Not universally the reason, no. In Rwanda the West was hated because it stood idly by and discussed the definition of "genocide" vs "genocidal acts" while the slaughter took place. And there was no 3rd "bomb disposal" way. Machete disposal would not have been possible without force.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Evangeline: I don't even view the Japanese as brave so much as brainwashed and terrified of disgrace.
General Slim, commander of the Fourteenth Army, wrote in his account of the Burma campaign, Defeat Into Victory, that every army talks about fighting to the last man and the last bullet, but only the Japanese actually did it.
The novelist John Masters, who served under Slim in Burma, wrote in his The Road Past Mandalay:
"They are the bravest people I have ever met. In our armies, any of them, nearly every Japanese would have had a Congressional Medal or a Victoria Cross. It is the fashion to dismiss their courage as fanaticism, but this only begs the question.They believed in something, and they were willing to die for it, for any smallest detail which would help to achieve it. What else is bravery?"
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Sadly bravery can be as misguided and evil as it can be noble.
-------------------- mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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