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The Stalin-led massacre of Holodomor

Vixen said:
You were the one who claimed the Japanese were somehow egregious in fighting for 'Emperor and Country'. I provided the necessary balance that western armed forces are not superior in this. I note you haven't acknowledged I am correct re the British Armed Forces oath of allegiance to a king who is barely even British.
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A military oath of allegiance isn't 'egregious' whether to a king, emperor or constitution etc.
Expecting and wanting to die for it is.
Civilian populations make no such formal oath and yet Japanese civilians committed suicide rather than surrender.

After the second bomb dropped and the Emperor moved to surrender, a number of the general staff wanted to fight on and were prepared to depose the Emperor.

How is King Charles 'barely even British'?
 
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Jack by the hedge said:
You appear to have failed to recognise the difference: it was millions of civilians who were expected to die for their Emperor.
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Unlike, Brits, Germans and Americans..? Or Russians dying for Putin..? (Usually the remote country boys not the Moscow chattering class.)

I see, so they only join the Armed Forces because they want 'adventure and travel'. Whereas the pesky Japanese are different so it was all right to mass murder civilians there.
 
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Vixen said:
Unlike, Brits, Germans and Americans..? Or Russians dying for Putin..? (Usually the remote country boys not the Moscow chattering class.)

I see, so they only join the Armed Forces because they want 'adventure and travel'. Whereas the pesky Japanese are different so it was all right to mass murder civilians there.
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What on earth are you talking about? The Japanese population were not joining the armed forces. They weren't even hoping to successfully defend their homeland. They were being prepared to be sacrificed wholesale to make their enemies pay a higher price in blood and to avoid the disgrace of the Emperor having to surrender.
 
Vixen said:
Unlike, Brits, Germans and Americans..? Or Russians dying for Putin..? (Usually the remote country boys not the Moscow chattering class.)

I see, so they only join the Armed Forces because they want 'adventure and travel'. Whereas the pesky Japanese are different so it was all right to mass murder civilians there.
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Grow up
 
Jack by the hedge said:
What on earth are you talking about? The Japanese population were not joining the armed forces. They weren't even hoping to successfully defend their homeland. They were being prepared to be sacrificed wholesale to make their enemies pay a higher price in blood and to avoid the disgrace of the Emperor having to surrender.
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The argument being put is that they were 'all willing to die' (for the 'Emperor and Country'). Hence, the mass destruction of their civilian population was different from Stalin's deliberate or incidental mass starvation of Ukrainian civilians. It hasn't even been established that Stalin's aim was genocide, so I am out.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Deliberate killing, versus callous indifference to deaths caused by your own policies, versus incompetent incomprehension that you are causing such suffering is certainly worth considering.

But I do think you have a greatly overinflated idea of the numbers who died as a direct and a long-term result of the atomic bombings. Direct victims were fewer than some of the conventional bombing raids on Japan. And although many suffered, the numbers who died of radiation-induced diseases was surprisingly low. The British killed, or perhaps more charitably failed to save, vastly greater numbers in both the Irish famine and the Bengal famine both of which they handled inexcusably badly. But that pales before the numbers Mao and Stalin wiped out with their ideological reorganisations of farming which could not be questioned.
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In terms of absolute numbers, the Holodomor killed between 3.5 and 5 million people, the Bengal famine approximately 2.1 million in Bengal plus an unknown number of Orissans. The Irish famine killed about 1 million with a further 2 to 3 million emigrating.
 
Vixen said:
Well, when people sign up to the British Armed Forces, they swear an allegiance to - not the country - but the King.
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But the King is considered synonymous with the state because of the constitution. When you swear allegiance to the King, you are swearing allegiance to the United Kingdom.

Vixen said:
You are fighting for the Mountbatten-Windsors
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The current house name is Windsor.

Vixen said:
and their sprogs (who are thoroughly German except for the odd spouse).
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This is totally false. The last monarch not to be born in the UK was George II. Every monarch since then was born and raised in Britain.

Vixen said:
So AndyRoss jeering about the Japanese faithful to the Emperor and their country (?) is kinda hmmmm.
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The British monarch has no real power. The Emperor Hirohito did have, although, for various reasons he was very reluctant to exercise it and only did so right at the end of the War to stop Japan from being turned into a slag heap.
 
SteveAitch said:
The last German born monarch was one of the early Georges. all the recent ones are English born and (mainly) educated.

The 'the queen/king is German' is just a lazy idea for second rate stand-up and other comedians to make second rate jokes.
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So your father's German, you're half German and you married a German.


Not always lazy. Sometimes sublimely brilliant.

SteveAitch said:
People like Stephen Fry go for the 'ah, but they are CULTURALLY German' line.
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I don't think he would. He would argue that all the monarchs since George III are culturally British.
 
Vixen said:
The argument being put is that they were 'all willing to die' (for the 'Emperor and Country'). Hence, the mass destruction of their civilian population was different from Stalin's deliberate or incidental mass starvation of Ukrainian civilians. It hasn't even been established that Stalin's aim was genocide, so I am out.
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Had it happened, you might have a point, but it didn't happen. The population might have been willing to die for the emperor but the emperor wasn't willing to sacrifice them for a lost cause.
 
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