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Originally Posted by dduff442
Gaaah.... You know full well that Churchill felt that placing Germany in a permanently subordinate position would have left Britain 'manacled to a corpse' as he memorably phrased it. His concern was to break a mindset, not a country.
Ironically, area-bombing of cities was almost declared a war crime in the early 30s. The treaty was blocked by two countries: Britain and Germany.
Germany trashed Warsaw, Rotterdam and London. In 1940, it was widely believed that 30,000 had died in Rotterdam.
Maybe strangely given the tone of the era, racism was never a major feature of propaganda against Germany. Japan, on the other hand, was portrayed in explicitly racist terms.
dduff
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Here I agree. WWII was the second time Germany had kicked up a war in less than half a century. We can argue about whether or not they were forced into WWII, but the fact remains that they started it lol. There was absolutely a determination in the Allies to eliminate the mind sets that had lead Germany into two world wars.
Racism was present on several fronts. People look at the Nazi regime, their propaganda, and what they did to certain groups of people, but the most racist mindset in the war was Japanese. As a culture, they looked down on every other culture and race. In their minds, it was their destiny to rule Asia and they certainly saw themselves as superior to the western races. This was evidenced by the systematic atrocities committed by Japanese forces which were sanctioned by the government.
You just don't spit babies on bayonets unless you feel they are less than human.
Was there a bigoted element against Japan? Certainly. If you look at the propaganda of the time, the Japanese were portrayed as evil. There was even a belief, prior to the war, that the Japanese could not fly planes because of poor eye sight...no lie. Yes, people were that stupid.
However, the dropping of the A-bombs was about destroying the mindset of the Japanese just as the destruction of Germany was aimed at destroying their mindset. Through invasion or annihilation, the Allies were determined to eliminate Japan as a future threat and to occupy the country.
People want to point to the decision to drop the bombs as a war crime. The best argument to this is to look at how Japan was treated after surrender....which was with great kindness and respect considering the destruction they had brought about. That may have actually been MacArthur's greatest service in his life.
Destroying the mindset that lead to aggression is the one and only way to end a war for good. Harsh but true. If you leave the mindset in place, another war is inevitable.
By the way, in reading journals of American soldiers and watching interviews, I have very seldom heard one express hatred for the German people (I actually heard it most blatantly last night from an American P-51 ace). However, there was certainly a high level of hatred for the Japanese military forces far in excess of what was felt against Germans. Even then, however, I have seen little hatred expressed against the Japanese people except by some surviving POW's.
Lastly, most of what many call "racism" is actually just bigotry. Bigotry is ignorance. Racism is hatred.
Splitter