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Originally Posted by David603
No. That statement is completely incorrect. If you want to break down the ethical rights and wrongs of fighting for individual countries during WWII in a game into percentages, which is a flawed concept in itself, then you will find that it would be less than 100% ethical to fight for just about any country.
Obviously, some countries have cleaner hands than others, but if I was going to make a list of countries that could be considered as completely ethical to fight for I would have to exclude any country that attacked another without provocation (Germany/USSR/Japan/Italy), as a policy deliberately targeted civilians in a country that they were at war with(Germany/USA/UK/Japan), were responsible for or condoned war crimes (No entirely clean hands here) or carried out crimes against their own people in the interests of maintaining control(Germany/USSR/Vichy France).
So, what are we left with? Off the top of my head I can only think of Finland, which was incidentally an Axis country for most of the war, and Poland. Some of the smaller central European and Asian countries didn't have a say in the matter at all. And that's about it.
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Excactly.
On balance, I'll take the Allies, except the USSR, over the Axis, in the "Ethics" department. With the USSR employing Blocking Units, machine gunning their own soldiers, punishing whole families whose soldiers were unlucky enough to be captured in the many encirclement battles from 1941-44, uprooting whole enthic groups and transporting them thousands of miles away for poltical purposes, scortched earth policies that left hundreds of thousands of their own people freezing to death behind enemy lines, etc etc, I can hardly consider the Politburo as benevolent to their own people.
Now, as for the Brave Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Siberians, etc etc etc, my hats off to You. YOU were responsible for kicking the Germans out of your country, IN SPITE of Stalin and his Purges, his millitary blundering, his Terror.
As for the other allies, the Brits and the Americans hands are dirty in this affair. Specifically, I refer to the Allied Strategic Bombing Offensive against Germany and Her Allies. Night bombing raids by the British, and Daylight "Precision" Bombing by the Americans were responsible, in retrospect, in countless hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
You could argue, convincingly, that a formation of Stukas are more 'humane' than a wing of B-17Gs in terms of effectiveness in taking out a target without incurring excessive non-combatants. You take 12 B-17Gs, each with 8 500lb gp bombs, for a total of 96. In a typical raid, flown at 20,000 feet, jinking through a flak corridor, you'd be lucky to get a couple of bombs directly on target. Where did the rest go? God forbid as Americans that we'd give it much thought.
And, what did it buy us? Not much, as German weapon production soared through 1944-45. That, and a lot of German cities demolished.
As for the Stukas, their individual bomb placement, against tactical targets, of course, could be measured within 50 yards of the target, and frequently MUCH less. Direct Hits were common amongst their highly trained formations. If bombing accuracy is a measure of 'humaneness' in War, you could certainly argue that the Dive Bomber is far more accurate and far more humane. Assuming, of course, they are used against strictly military targets.
Put it this way. It took Nazi Germany, what, 6 weeks to overrun France in a Blitzkrieg? 8 months to overrun all of Europe? It took the Allies 5 Years to take it all back.
It's crazy, I know, arguing about Stukas as a "humane" weapon. It doesn't jibe with all that footage on The History Channel. I only use it to illustrate the fact that, in War, NO party has white gloves.
But, there are lots of shades of grey....
Make the German Aircraft available to ALL players. It's the Right Thing To Do.
LJB
