Hellstorm - WW2 Crimes of the "Good Guys"

[jimbob]

I prefer, "laughably vile", rather than "dull", Hans.

[Hans]

Originally Posted by jimbob

I prefer, "laughably vile", rather than "dull", Hans.

You requested laughably vile - so laughably vile you shall have!

[Mondial]

Mass rape of Italian women by Free French forces -
http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.co...-moroccan.html
Maybe the makers of Hellstorm - www.hellstormdocumentary.com - can produce a documentary about Allied war crimes against the Italians ?

[ddt]

Originally Posted by Mondial

Mass rape of Italian women by Free French forces -
http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.co...-moroccan.html
Maybe the makers of Hellstorm - www.hellstormdocumentary.com - can produce a documentary about Allied war crimes against the Italians ?

From that blogpost:

Quote:

At the dawn of day chosen for the attack, May 14, 1944, General Juin forwarded to the men of IIa Infantry Division (Jan. Dody) and IVa Mountain Division (Jan. Guillaume) the following proclamation: [...] "For fifty hours you will be absolute masters of what you will find beyond the enemy. No one will punish you for what you do, no one will ask you to account for what you take. "

And then in the very next paragraph, the very same proclamation is repeated in a slightly differing translation as if it were a different proclamation from the same general Juin.

This is what wiki says about that alleged proclamation:

Quote:

Recent research has showed this statement was forged after the war by Italian victims' associations and is linked to the perception of the crimes by the Italians rather than an official policy of the French Army.[3]

For a more balanced view of what took place you might follow that link. You can read French, Mondial?

Oh, to top it off, that blogpost then offers an image with the caption "The letter by Juin was forwarded to all Goumier units which gave the Moroccans carte blanche". Really? That image says nothing of the kind, and it's written in Italian. Why would a French general commanding troops speaking Arabic and/or Berber write in Italian? Can you tell me that, Mondial?

"Uncensored" in the name of that blogspot apparently means "throwing any falsified crap at you they can find".

[Degeneve]

In addition I refer to a Italian draft law of 1996 which cited a figure of 2000 women : http://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDF...T/00001012.pdf

And this study (in French) concludes it is impossible to provide a accurate figure but its évaluations are far below 60,000 : https://www.cairn.info/revue-vingtie...-1-page-47.htm

[Craig B]

I have spent time in the area occupied by these Moroccan troops in Central Italy, and their abuses in the region are well remembered. But I have never heard it suggested this the French high command ordered or encouraged them; the complaint has been that they didn't act swiftly or effectively to prevent or punish these atrocities.

However, this bad reputation doesn't extend to Allied forces in general. The incursion by Allied troops was welcomed, because the main complaint of the local people was against the Germans, who were taking civilian hostages and shooting them in very large numbers. Of all the accusations made against any of the armies engaged in the area, that was the most frequent and the most serious.

[Craig B]

Further to my last post. Here is a note on German hostage taking.

The published order by the German Commandant, General Kesselring, was that for every German killed by partisans 10 Italians selected at random would be shot. Here is just a flavour of many similar public notices: German 5 Corps, 1 S, No. 391, of 9 August 1944: '(c) If crimes of outstanding violence are committed, especially against German soldiers, an appropriate number of hostages will be hanged. In such cases the whole population of the place will be assembled to witness the executions. After the bodies have been left hanging for 12 hours, the public will be ordered to bury them without ceremony and without the assistance of any priest.' (see pages 316-327 of 'War In Italy 1943-1945 — A Brutal Story' by Richard Lamb (published by John Murray, 1993) for the full text of this order and many other chilling documents).
Most certainly these were not empty threats, mere bluff and bluster. On 12 August 1944 at Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Lucca, 560 civilians were massacred and on 26 September 31 men were publicly hanged at Bassano del Grappa. These are but two out of many such brutal incidents.

Kesselring had in fact been present in the area, in the very village in which I heard accounts of the behaviour of the German forces on the Gustav Line.

[Degeneve]

Originally Posted by Craig B

Kesselring had in fact been present in the area, in the very village in which I heard accounts of the behaviour of the German forces on the Gustav Line.

BTW Kesselring had been sentenced to death in 1947 but he got a lot of support including from the Allied side. Even Churchill stated that the sentence was too harsh. As a result Kesselring has been released from prison in 1952 instead of being executed by a firing squad.

However historical researches published after his death in 1960 show Kesselring was a true and fanatic nazi who has never hesitated to order killings of civilians. And he is also regarded as the responsible for the death of many German civilians because of some decisions he has taken at the end of the war. But he clearly did not take care of the life of his fellow countrymen.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by Degeneve

BTW Kesselring had been sentenced to death in 1947 but he got a lot of support including from the Allied side. Even Churchill stated that the sentence was too harsh. As a result Kesselring has been released from prison in 1952 instead of being executed by a firing squad.

Kesselring did not maltreat Allied prisoners, and Churchill held Italians, whether civilian or military, in very low esteem.

But the Italian government did not vigorously demand Kesselring's execution in 1947, because the death penalty had already been abolished in Italy in 1944, a fact which is much to the credit of the post-fascist Italian state.

[MinnesotaBrant]

I have not seen the movie hellstorm but I have read some holocaust books some of which talked about civilian deaths in allied concentration camps after the war. I heard the number was 1.5m but a scan of the internet turns up 900k. I am guessing the 15m. million figure is accurate. Anyways, they this total did include nazi children etc. I guess on the scale of things its not all that much. I am not too sure about the Russian side, but I did see a movie about the fall of berlin that suggested that they killed any male that happened to be the right age to be a soldier. What else, this is old info but I think the total number of war dead including soldiers is probably as high for the Nazi's as anybody else's. I am sure that at least that many died outside of concentration camps too.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/2...trocities.html

Oh, this link is a refutation. I read a work that I can't remember the name but was hardly sympathetic to Nazi's that they have several camps along the Rhine river filled with Nazi civilians. The writer claimed that there were too many Nazi's left alive after the war to let go so they starved them. And this makes perfect sense. The write claimed that the prisoners were not only not fed, they also were not given clothing or shelter. Geeze I wish I remembered the name of the book. I read it in the 90's

[Border Reiver]

Originally Posted by MinnesotaBrant

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/2...trocities.html

Oh, this link is a refutation. I read a work that I can't remember the name but was hardly sympathetic to Nazi's that they have several camps along the Rhine river filled with Nazi civilians. The writer claimed that there were too many Nazi's left alive after the war to let go so they starved them. And this makes perfect sense. The write claimed that the prisoners were not only not fed, they also were not given clothing or shelter. Geeze I wish I remembered the name of the book. I read it in the 90's

I believe the work you are remembering is James Bacque's book "Other Losses". The conclusions made by Mr. Bacque have been rather thoroughly debunked.

[SpitfireIX]

Originally Posted by Border Reiver

I believe the work you are remembering is James Bacque's book "Other Losses". The conclusions made by Mr. Bacque have been rather thoroughly debunked.

[disclosure]During the last year of the war in Europe, my grandfather was commandant of a camp for German POWs used for labor on engineering projects. He was transferred out of the ETO in August, 1945.[/disclosure]

And the link is in fact to Stephen Ambrose's thorough debunking of Other Losses. So please explain, if you would, MinnesotaBrant, why you continue to rely on Bacque as a source, when he's been utterly discredited by a large number of respected historians.

[SpitfireIX]

<bump> MinnesotaBrant, are you going to answer my question?

[Shrike]

I'm guessing he won't.

[Mondial]

At the Nuremberg tribunal and other trials German doctors were condemned for experiments - https://codoh.com/library/document/2369/

And yet before, during and after the war American doctors also conducted experiments -
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-do...imentation.htm

Yet more hypocrisy and double standards from the Allies.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by Mondial

At the Nuremberg tribunal and other trials German doctors were condemned for experiments - https://codoh.com/library/document/2369/

And yet before, during and after the war American doctors also conducted experiments -
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-do...imentation.htm

Yet more hypocrisy and double standards from the Allies.

This is just a crude Holocaust denial site. Also I can't check the reliability of the U.S. Experiment site. Not impressive.

[fuelair]

Originally Posted by Corsair 115

One can find similar things happening on a smaller scale on other fronts.

For example, there's a story from the battle for Ortona in 1943. The Germans lured a group of Canadian soldiers into a building, which the Germans then blew up. The Canadians regarded that as something of a dirty trick, so a few days later Canadian troops did the same thing to some Germans.

Then there's the Pacific, with U.S. troops versus the Japanese. The latter would sometimes feign surrender, only to drop concealed grenades as American soldiers got close. After a few such events, it should not be surprising that U.S. troops became decidedly less interested in accepting the apparent surrender of Japanese soldiers.





I don't offer it as excuse but rather as partial explanation. See the tit-for-tat examples given in the reply above.

In real life it is a perfect excuse. Once you know your enemy does not follow the rules.................

And, as to the cities, they had the things in them (war work, war communications, war offices, roads that military moved on, tracks that military goods and personnel moved on) and the RoW make that a war crime - for the side using/allowing the military to use them.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by fuelair

In real life it is a perfect excuse. Once you know your enemy does not follow the rules.................

And, as to the cities, they had the things in them (war work, war communications, war offices, roads that military moved on, tracks that military goods and personnel moved on) and the RoW make that a war crime - for the side using/allowing the military to use them.

I've been carefully distinguishing between attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers in Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel. To you it's all the same, I suppose, but I find it hard to accept that. I make a distinction between terrorism and attacks on military targets. In any case we've shown time and again that killing civilians was a primary aim of the bombing campaign, so your point is irrelevant.

[Mondial]

More Germans died after their country surrendered than during the war. What does that tell you about the so called "good guys" ? It tells me that they were nothing but two faced hypocrites and holier than thou types who are guilty of war crimes themselves.
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-1/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-2/
The 2 Million-The Rape of German Girls and Women
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-for-genocide/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...nocide-part-2/
95% of Babies Born in Berlin 1945 Die on America's Watch
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-into-germany/

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Mondial

More Germans died after their country surrendered than during the war.

Are you sure ?

Originally Posted by Mondial

What does that tell you about the so called "good guys" ? It tells me that they were nothing but two faced hypocrites and holier than thou types who are guilty of war crimes themselves.
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-1/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-2/
The 2 Million-The Rape of German Girls and Women
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-for-genocide/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...nocide-part-2/
95% of Babies Born in Berlin 1945 Die on America's Watch
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-into-germany/

I'm not going to click on those links because, no doubt, they lead to some kind of neo-nazi propaganda.

[Captain_Swoop]

yay Nazis!

[kookbreaker]

I hear a seagull, do you hear a seagull?

[fagin]

Originally Posted by The Don

Are you sure ?



....

And Germans are still dying up until today. Scandalous...

[Hans]

Originally Posted by Mondial

More Germans died after their country surrendered than during the war.

Nah

Oh our seagull has flown in and fled yet again for the happy lands of Nazi yearning.

As noted before Mondial your tactic doesn't work - how many years have you been trying this?

lol

[Hans]

Originally Posted by fagin

And Germans are still dying up until today. Scandalous...

Yeah and lets see Hitler killed 5,500,000 of his own soldiers and started a war that resulted in the death of over a 1,000,000 ethnic German civilians - well done Hitler!

[dudalb]

Originally Posted by Hans

Yeah and lets see Hitler killed 5,500,000 of his own soldiers and started a war that resulted in the death of over a 1,000,000 ethnic German civilians - well done Hitler!

Hitler stated right after Barabrossa began that this war would Decide the fate of Germany in the East for a thousand years. For once he was right..though not in the way he expected. You don't see East Prussia on maps anymore....

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Hitler stated right after Barabrossa began that this war would Decide the fate of Germany in the East for a thousand years. For once he was right..though not in the way he expected. You don't see East Prussia on maps anymore....

Worth posting this from HansMunstermann over on the "how competent were the Nazis" thread.

TLDR: Don't march on Russia if you are buying your oil from them and your own projections say you'll run out of supplies a fifth to a third of the way to the oil fields.

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Well, I'll revive this mainly since I'm bored, and look at the myth of super-competent German generals and their success in Barbarossa. Warning: lots of text. No way around it, if we want to avoid the over-simplifications.

The thing about Barbarossa is, Hitler's explicit order was to go south and take the Ukrainian farmland and the oil fields of Caucasus first. Not only that would cover Germany's massive food and oil deficit (even the addition of Romanian oil barely halved that defficit, but it still was massive, and it was crippling both tanks and logistics) and allow it to wage war better, but it should have in theory crippled the Soviet ability to wage war too.

Basically Barbarossa was supposed to START with what would later become Fall Blau.

Which makes sense strategically.

THAT was why they gambled doing the attack anyway, even after quartermaster general Wagner already warned them that their logistics leash would only go as far as 500 to 800 km from the border. Because if they managed to pull THAT stunt, the win would be massive and give them a chance to win anyway.

Problem is, if you take a ruler to a map, Caucasus is a LOT farther away than that. They'd have to go between 3 times that (if Wagner's maximum estimate was correct), and 5 times that (if the lower one was correct.) And normally you go with the lower one, better to be safe than sorry.

Mother Russia is big, comrade

Halder doesn't tell Hitler that. He just makes his own plans that are a rehash of France. Just encircle their army, drive for the capital, and *bam* they surrender. (Never mind that they didn't when Napoleon does it.) The army group that was supposed to go after the oil fields is actually given the lowest priority for supplies and reinforcements, and are now only expected to advance a short way to an arbitrary line on the map and keep the Russians busy. And by arbitrary, I mean not even defined by any geographic features. It's literally just an arbitrary slanted line on the map.

Now while you could argue that that's the least unrealistic plan, given the logistical constraints, the fact is he never tells Hitler that the initial plan is impossible, which might have avoided the whole idiocy. He just makes a different plan that completely misses the strategic objectives, but Hitler doesn't know that. Hitler only learns what's ACTUALLY happening when he starts getting reports of the thrust to Moscow.

(And incidentally, stuff like this, where his generals lied to him and did something that missed the strategic point, may well be why Hitler starts to distrust and ignore generals later in the war. At the very least it IS why he has someone check Halder's plans for Fall Blau, and correct them. Because, surprise, Halder was AGAIN ignoring an order from Hitler.)

What Halder doesn't get, though, is that Russia isn't France. The distances are much higher, and there is no sea to pin the enemy against. Instead of adapting it to do the smaller pincers of Fall Blau (never mind that those didn't work either), the idea is to encircle a whole front or two by making one big push to... WHAT EXACTLY? But the infantry can't keep up, so essentially instead of one big encirclement, they had just created a giant bulge that the Soviets could just walk out of if they wanted. That's why they have to stop the drive to Moscow and turn south to actually complete the encirclement.

The plan is so incompetent, it's slapstick comedy. Well, it would be if it didn't involve hundreds of thousand dead.


But wait, some will say, it worked great, didn't it? They took a lot of ground, they took UNBELIEVABLE numbers of prisoners, etc. Surely it was a good plan, if it worked so well? Well... thing is, Stalin was worse at military stuff than Halder and Hitler put together, that's why it worked.


1. Stalin correctly guesses that the only sane thing to do if you were going to attack the USSR is to go south. So that sector of the front is the most heavily manned, and the northern sector is given the lowest priority for material and reinforcements.

Remember when I said before that a lot of nominally tank or motorized divisions were actually lacking parts, ammo and trucks? How that made them less mobile than non-motorized divisions, because the latter at least had horses to pull their artillery? Yeah, the effort to fix that is concentrated in the south. The northern ones remain hamstrung.

Even with evidence suggesting otherwise, as reports of German forces massing on the border start coming in and painting a different picture, Stalin actually is convinced that that's just a diversion and the main attack will go south. (Strangely foreshadowing what the Germans will believe about Normandy and Calais a couple of years later.)

Stalin actually moves MORE of the northern divisions south, to counter that supposed main thrust. When Barbarossa starts, some divisions are caught disorganized because they're in the middle of moving south.

So when the main thrust goes center instead of south, they meet by far not enough resistance there. Germany is outnumbering the USSR by more than 2 to 1 on the whole front anyway, but that situation is far worse for the USSR in the centre and northern sectors. Those guys get completely overwhelmed by the German thrust.


2. Stalin does do something smart, and that is take the time to dismantle the factories in the west and move them into the Urals. Pretty much an order of magnitude beyond what the German logistics could possibly allow reaching.

But that is going to take time. Most of those won't be producing tanks or some even trucks until 1942. He deliberately trades more land and human lives in the short term, for a better fighting chance in 1942 and beyond.

Now this isn't bad strategy, but it makes the German wins look bigger, when it's really only a loan of territory, and it will come to bite them in the ass later. Hard.


3. Stalin has to do one more dumb thing, and this one tops it all. It's so idiotic, that even just a little more idiocy would cause it to collapse into a singularity of human stupidity, and the shockwave would leave the whole galaxy running around with pencils up the nose and underpants on the head

By his orders, and enforced by the NKVD commissars, there is only one allowed course of action: keep frontally counter-attacking to drive the Germans out. There is no strategic retreat, no regrouping, no reinforcing flanks or lines of supply. You can only order a frontal attack towards the west, or the commissars will override you. And shoot you.

Remember how I said that Germany didn't create as much encirclements for a while, as bulges that you could leisurely walk out of, if you wanted? Remember how they took ridiculous numbers of prisoners anyway?

Yeah, the Russians counter-attacked themselves into encirclements

Halder's plan was crap, but by Jove, Stalin worked hard to make it work anyway

[Hercules56]

The Nazis and Soviets committed horrible war crimes.

The West? Not so much.

[fuelair]

Originally Posted by Craig B

Nonsense. This is from your link.

I’m going to assume that most, if not all, the people reading this know that the Holocaust is a made up Jewish lie, but let’s suspend reality for a moment and say that it actually did happen as they claim. Although that would have been horrific, it would still be nothing compared to what the Germans suffered after the war.

I really do not care what the non-Jewish Germans suffered during the war, they could have risen up and stopped it but were too cowardly or evil or both to do so and we still have nazi slimes around. And that might not have happened anyway had they not violated the agreed to Rules of Warfare in so many ways. Not to mention that since the Nazi's were vile enough to have war plants, war offices, war transportation etc. in the cities where they knew (ROW) they were imminently attackable legallythey might have had a claim that precision targeting be used, but by putting those things in the cities they removed that concern from the air attacks completely. For those who think otherwise, please actually read the Rules of War for that period.

[fuelair]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

I haven't watched the documentary, but, did you have a point?



Sometimes these things get into a bunch of "who was worse" debates, but can you even compare that sort of thing? I mean, who was worse? Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Jodi Arias? All were responsible for killing of innocent people, so how exactly do we figure out who was worse?

I think motive plays a role in a lot of people's assessment of guilt in such situations. Adolf Hitler was trying to conquer territory and enslave or kill the current inhabitants, eventually freeing that land to become German Lebensraum. It doesn't seem too noble. Churchill was trying to overthrow the guy who was trying to enslave the Poles and exterminate the Jews, and to do so with the smallest possible number of deaths of his own people, even if that meant killing people whose only crime was supporting the German military, or living next to a lot of people who did. It doesn't make Dresden into a humanitarian act, but somehow it seems less despicable than building an extermination camp.

Again, the RoW contained language stating that any form of military function or production for the military, transportation of or for the military or military bases/communications in a city or other area made that location a legitimate target for the other side.

[fuelair]

Originally Posted by Mondial

Mass rape of Italian women by Free French forces -
http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.co...-moroccan.html
Maybe the makers of Hellstorm - www.hellstormdocumentary.com - can produce a documentary about Allied war crimes against the Italians ?

You do know that most of us cannot be taken in by propaganda made by slime and ******** I hope. The bit I am familiar with of Italian women being raped and more was Ethiopian soldiers. As to the Free French and moreso certain French military, they did real bad in Algeria and I would have loved seeing them dancing in air on lengths of wire. If you do not know why. look it up. We have this thing called the internet nowadays.

[fuelair]

Originally Posted by Craig B

This is just a crude Holocaust denial site. Also I can't check the reliability of the U.S. Experiment site. Not impressive.

Nazis do propaganda.......still!!!!!

[Henri McPhee]

My elder sister went on a school pupil exchange with a German family in the 1950s to Hanover, or Hannover. The German girl was a very nice gel and we all went on several visits together. I still have some cine film of her visit. I remember her being upset when she received a letter from her German boyfriend calling off the relationship. My sister was a bit miffed at the time at how Hanover was prospering and how her German family seemed to be quite wealthy with all the West German debts cancelled by America. The German father blamed Churchill for Germany's past troubles. He was obviously a proper old Nazi

Her brother visited us about a year later with a German male friend. They were a couple of toughs. They were about to go to a dance hall. One of them had a revolver which surprised me at the time.

The German girl visited us several years later with her husband and a son but we have lost touch since then.

It's just that a leopard cannot change its spots. The Germans are either at your feet or at your throat.

[fagin]

There are no words.....

[jimbob]

how about ********* stupid xenophobia?

[Nessie]

Originally Posted by Mondial

More Germans died after their country surrendered than during the war. What does that tell you about the so called "good guys" ? It tells me that they were nothing but two faced hypocrites and holier than thou types who are guilty of war crimes themselves.
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-1/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...people-part-2/
The 2 Million-The Rape of German Girls and Women
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-for-genocide/
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...nocide-part-2/
95% of Babies Born in Berlin 1945 Die on America's Watch
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/...-into-germany/

I do see the Western Allies as the good guys. They were developing social democracies, which are preferential to a racist dictatorship. The eastern Ally was supported due to a common enemy. The Soviets under Stalin was as bad as the Nazis.

The behaviour of all sides during the war was pretty atrocious at times. The Nazis set the tone of the war, with undeclared invasions, bombing of civilians and they went on to commit genocide. That the Western Allies fought hard and dirty at times was the only way to win. A ruthless enemy cannot be defeated any other way.

That terrible things happened after the war, in particular to the Germans, is hardly a shocker. You reap what you sow. That there was revenge is to be expected.

[Dave Rogers]

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee

My elder sister went on a school pupil exchange with a German family in the 1950s to Hanover, or Hannover. The German girl was a very nice gel and we all went on several visits together. I still have some cine film of her visit. I remember her being upset when she received a letter from her German boyfriend calling off the relationship. My sister was a bit miffed at the time at how Hanover was prospering and how her German family seemed to be quite wealthy with all the West German debts cancelled by America. The German father blamed Churchill for Germany's past troubles. He was obviously a proper old Nazi

Her brother visited us about a year later with a German male friend. They were a couple of toughs. They were about to go to a dance hall. One of them had a revolver which surprised me at the time.

The German girl visited us several years later with her husband and a son but we have lost touch since then.

It's just that a leopard cannot change its spots. The Germans are either at your feet or at your throat.

That sounds like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

Abe

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by fuelair

I really do not care what the non-Jewish Germans suffered during the war, they could have risen up and stopped it but were too cowardly or evil or both to do so and we still have nazi slimes around. And that might not have happened anyway had they not violated the agreed to Rules of Warfare in so many ways. Not to mention that since the Nazi's were vile enough to have war plants, war offices, war transportation etc. in the cities where they knew (ROW) they were imminently attackable legallythey might have had a claim that precision targeting be used, but by putting those things in the cities they removed that concern from the air attacks completely. For those who think otherwise, please actually read the Rules of War for that period.

Mate, frankly, where the hell do you think the allied industry was located? Do you think that, unlike those vile Nazis, anyone was carefully building their factories 2 miles from the city limit, or WTH?

Have you checked out for example where the Chrysler arsenal in Michigan that made M3 and M4 tanks was located, for example? Hint, it's better known as the "Detroit Arsenal (Warren, Michigan)", because it's smack dab in Warren, the biggest suburb of Detroit. And that's a factory expressly built for making tanks. The ones that were converted mid-war, nobody moved outside the city they were in.

So, please. I'm not defending the Nazis, but it's silly to pretend it's some Nazi grand plot to hide behind civilians. EVERYONE placed their factories close to where they expected their workers to live. Chiefly because you couldn't expect everyone to have a car in the 30's like you have now, public transportation sucked, etc. The whole of western Europe didn't have NEARLY enough fuel for any the of that. And a lot of factories had even been built long before the 30's.

And in fact when the Nazis did built a factory from the ground up -- as in, actually built from a government initiative, as opposed to wherever the hell Krupp or Opel happened to have built their private factories -- look up Volkswagen. It was actually built a couple of miles from the nearby town of Fallersleben. Mostly because the town didn't want to pay a part of the costs, mind you. But still, one way or another, is was actually built by the NAZIS away from populated areas. The later town of Wolfsburg grew around the factory, rather than the factory being built in the middle of a town as some evil Nazi plot.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee

The Germans are either at your feet or at your throat.

I've been dealing with Germans daily for close to 10 years in a professional capacity. In my experience this statement is utter tosh.....

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by The Don

I've been dealing with Germans daily for close to 10 years in a professional capacity. In my experience this statement is utter tosh.....

Likewise for me, only it's closer to twenty years.