Fasces wrote:Not against Germany, no, though to say they had not planned many a war of aggression is imbicilic.
In the interwar period precisely who did the British plan an aggressive war against? Contemporary events are relevant because
1) Standards change
2) It would be a fairly silly argument to use say, The Hundred Years War, as example of hypocracy in 1945-1946.
Fasces wrote:Not to mention that the Soviet Union, which did foresee such a conflict, was also one of the hangmen.
In the same way having relatively benign Finland paired with the Axis doesn't negate crimes committed by individual Axis nations, having the Soviet Union has part of the Allies does not by default implicate all Allied nations with war crimes.
Fasces wrote:The use of gas to kill prisoners was not invented by the Germans. The idea of genocide was not invented by the Germans.
I dispute neither of these things, but I repeat that industrial style genocide was something invented in Germany. For example individual gassings of prisoners is not unusual of, but mass gassing wasn't common and purpose built facilities for it were unique. The Nazis don't appear to have referred to any existing examples in constructing their gas chambers, and indeed they had to test the principle a few times first.
Fasces wrote:Neither were a crime prior to the Nuremberg trials. Both had unprosecuted precedents.
There had been attempts to prosecute the Armenian genocide, the trials really only fell apart for political reasons. So the idea that nobody thought it a crime prior to Nuremberg is incorrect.
Decky wrote:Indeed, Britain invented concentration camps for use against the Boers in South Africa for example.
The term and modern concept of concentration camps actually comes from the Spainish and their wars in Cuba. Really the idea of placing a broadly defined 'enemy' group in a camp under guard wasn't new even then. Rounding them up for the purpose of wiping them out however was not common.
Fitzcarraldo wrote:The Polish-Jew.
Lemkin's heritage is totally irrelevant to this discussion
Fitzcarraldo wrote:Raphael Lemkin who coined the bastard term 'genocide', did not exclusively define the term as mass killings of the particular group. Indeed, he even warned against this limited definition. Mass deportations of the pecuilar Germanic nationals living for centuries in Central and Eastern European states would be included in his broad definition. As would the actions against Muslim nations in the Soviet Union from 1943 to 1956.
Lemkin's definition did however require an intent for destruction, which was not in evidence in the examples you give.
Fitzcarraldo wrote:The expulsions were agreed upon by the United States and the United Kingdom at the Potsdam Conference. It is true that the Soviets and Yugoslavs were expelling, killing and persecuting German ethnics in their control before, but the Allies agreed to mass expulsions of Germans in principle at Potsdam.
That's pretty misleading. Point XII of the Potsdamn Agreement:
- Actually called for an immediate halt to expulsions on the basis of further consideration being needed.
- Stated any further expulsions were to be organised and humane. This runs counter to your claim they were complicit in genocide per the intent requirement I noted above.
- There is no reason to believe that not having the agreement would have stopped the deportations. Given the choice between doing nothing and at least trying to make the process more humane etc. of course the western Allied leaders picked the latter.
Fitzcarraldo wrote:All armed forces in conflict act aggressively and defensively at differing times or even lines
Which is great except at Nuremberg the offence was in relation to the planning of a war, not how the war itself was run. And Nazi war plans were not defensive in any sense.
Fitzcarraldo wrote:European law and order was destroyed by American and Bolsheviks at Nuremberg.
Had the Nazis decided not to destroy European law and order in the first place it never would have come to that.