John Nowak
Graduate Poster
My father had the bad luck to grow up in Germany during WWII, and I think he laughed harder at that line than anything else I can recall. Not even the Roadrunner and Coyote.
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Merged Winston Churchill a war criminal?
- Thread starter moon1969
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My father had the bad luck to grow up in Germany during WWII, and I think he laughed harder at that line than anything else I can recall. Not even the Roadrunner and Coyote.
Meadmaker
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At the risk of entering a conversation that will fill my screen with stupid, I'll bite.
I haven't read the links, nor do I intend to, but I think I know enough about the history that I don't need to.
So, to your points.....
1) He targeted civilians. No doubt at all about it. He did.
And? Did the post-war criminal tribunals define the targeting of civilians as a war crime? Was anyone prosecuted for the blitz? Or the bombing of Rotterdam? When that happened, people were outraged, but by the end of the war, it was pretty much an accepted part of war.
The key difference, when it comes to targeting civilians, between Hitler and Churchill was the circumstances under which civilians were killed. Hitler deliberately killed civilians living in territory that his armies controlled. Churchill killed civilians that were in enemy occupied territory, actively supporting the enemy armies.
World War II really blurred the lines between civilian and military. People have debated the morality of allied bombings, but no reasonable person would compare the allied targeting of civilians and Hitler's programs of murdering civilians in occupied territory.
2) He was a racist and imperialist.
Yes. What was your point again?
3) The Indian famine.
At least since the invention of the steam ship, there's really no reason that anyone should have ever had to starve in a famine. Shall we prosecute people for some sort of crime for failing to provide adequate relief? This particular famine involved crop failures and war. That means they had more excuses than most world leaders have had in other cases where people starved.
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
There wasn't enough food sent to China to alleviate the famine. And propping up China kept the Japanese out of India. If anyone thinks the Brits where harsh overlords...
Let's dig Churchill up, try his corpse, find it guilty, behead it, and spike the trophy up on the facade of some cathedral or other. The Stuarts did that with Old Noll, and just see all the good it did them.
rjh01
Gentleman of leisure
The Germans did similar things in WW1. No war crimes followed.
Border Reiver
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Looking at the laws of armed conflict, no.
Wasn't there also a dig-em-up and try them after death event with Pope Formosus?
fagin
Philosopher
Dressed in drag?
I take it he wasn't infallible.
Andy_Ross
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With a plastic bag
Moral Equivalency is of no importance as best I can see. ROW state that any civilian area that contains military, military production, military supplies, military services, military transport/facilitation, military energy supplies /output/command/communication/personnel is a legitimate target -though if it is possible civilians should not be targeted. Also, by the ROW, any person(s) responsible for such being in the civilian locations is considered to be a war criminal.
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fagin
Philosopher
What a drag.
tsig
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Hitler could paint a room before Churchill could get the paint mixed.
Border Reiver
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Using the general definition from Wiki, or
"Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during peace or war.[1] They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; massacres; dehumanization; extermination; human experimentation; extrajudicial punishments; death squads; forced disappearances; military use of children; kidnappings; unjust imprisonment; slavery; cannibalism, torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution that may include the use of blasphemy laws or laws against defamation of religion or other similar wording, or inappropriate hate speech laws; and other inhumane acts may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice."
Not for his conduct during WWII.
Irrelevant. Here is Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris enunciating the principles on which the bombing campaign was based.
The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany.
... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.
... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.
catsmate
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Cromwell was executed post-mortem.
The remains of the rebel "Mahdi" of Sudan were exhumed and desecrated following the British reconquest in 1898. Churchill later criticised this act in terms that do him credit.
Churchill had strong feelings about Kitchener and his destruction of the Mahdi's Tomb, writing in The River War: "By Sir H. Kitchener's orders, the Tomb has been profaned and razed to the ground. The corpse of the Mahdi was dug up. The head was separated from the body, and, to quote the official explanation, 'preserved for future disposal'.... If, on the other hand, the people of the Sudan still venerated the memory of the Mahdi, and more than 50,000 had fought hard only a week before to assert their respect and belief, then I shall not hesitate to declare that to destroy what was sacred and holy to them was a wicked act, of which the true Christian, no less than the philosopher, must express his abhorrence.
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SpuriusMaximus
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Well, while possibly not illegal in WW2, given that most of the curret rules come from the Geneva Convention of 1949 (you know, AFTER the war), deliberately targeting civilians for the sole purpose of terrorizing them is currently explicitly forbidden. (See, for example: http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac_3.htm ) Needless to say, terror bombing was an actual doctrine on both sides in WW2.
I would also like to point out that in firebombing and generally terror bombing, civilians were not colateral damage -- which is accepted when attacking a military objective -- but the MAIN targets of the RAF attacks, and for that matter of the USAAF later in Japan. It's not like they attacked a factory, and the city just got the side effect. Burning down cities was the purpose. And the bomb mix and the whole bombing tactic also wasn't even all that good against factories or anything. It was something designed for one purpose only: to burn down civilian houses.
Again, I'm aware that you can't apply a convention from 1949 to Dresden (and actually other cities got hit even worse), but I hope I can be excused if I still view it as a bit of a, you know, dick move.
And sure, the Nazis started it, but, you know, it's hard to see someone as the hero if they model their behaviour on being more ruthless and efficient at it than the villain.