Well it is a difficult one Jules and its all about where do you draw the line so to speak. But if we look at the article and the statement you described perhaps one difference jumps out. I would imagine all pilots were excited on a mission like that no doubt about it. But did the RAAF chap say killing Germans was ' A lot of fun'?. Or did he just state he was excited to be on the raid?. Because the German pilot actually described machine gunning civilians and that ' it was a lot of fun'. We can if we want try to lump everybody together and say oh well we were all as bad as each other, but if we study the actual words I'm afraid that does not fit. In all my years of study I have never read an Allied Pilot's statement in which he clearly states that he had great enjoyment out of killing unarmed civilians with his machine guns.
I think we do our Allied servicemen a great misjustice if we lump them all together I really do. And before anyone makes the link to bombing of cities etc I don't think that works, both sides did it and it was terrible. But here we have (two actually) pilots who actually gained pleasure from killing civvies with their guns, wholly different I suggest.
I don't think it has anything to do with glossing over the acts we carried out in the War either because we won, its about basic humanity and the will to commit murder and enjoy it while you are doing it.
The difference I suggest is that we were a better class of people with much higher standards of humanity and not as ready as the Germans were to commit atrocities at the drop of a hat and with such regularity as they were. I will resist to my last day the idea we were the same as them, we just were not. One ruined town stands as testament to this, Oradour. The murder of 642 men women and children and the destruction of their town was a wanton outrage that I suggest no Allied ground commander would have sanctioned. The burning alive, machine gunning of people herded into a church had no gain for the muderers whatever, to this day the real reason is debated and perhaps it was nothing more than spite. But what more can we expect from the country who gave us the Holocaust, V1 and V2 weapons that killed civilians at random, the murder of prisoners of War, the sinking of Ships bearing Children on their way out of the War zone, this was an aggressive fanatical country bent on world domination, we may have had to do bad things during the War that we did not start, but we were'nt in the same league as Adolf and co.
Just my view you understand. :smile2:
Rob
I agree with you up to a point Rob. The RAAF'ie may not have said "I enjoy killing civilians" but at the same time he did not recoil from the very notion of doing it. He said that he found the whole thing exciting, and this was despite him knowing that he would be responsible for the deaths of innocents.
We can excuse that any way we like and we can play with the semantics of exactly what was said, who said it, who translated it, how it was interpreted and why those statements by the German flyers were chosen by the journo to be used in the context of that article, but it changes nothing. In both instances neither aviator expressed any regret (at the time) for killing innocents.
So why can you lump all Germans together and yet say that we can't do the same to those on our side?
To say that no allied ground commander would ever have sanctioned the murder of civilians and the destruction of a town is simply ridiculous. It may not have happened on that scale, it may not have been sanctioned at the highest level, but that is not to say that it could NEVER have happened under certain circumstances. Let's fast forward a few decades to Vietnam. Ever heard of My Lai where US troops raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered between 350 and 500 (depending on the account) civilians? So do we use that incident as the underpinning evidence to generalize about the US military? My Lai wasn't an isolated incident when it came to deliberately killing innocent civilians.
But one of the key differences between WW2 and Vietnam was the role, access and the independence of the media covering the conflicts. So, it's possible that our side committed atrocities but because of censorship and a united sense of purpose they did not receive the coverage that they would have had they occurred today. Do you define the 'humanity' of the US people by the atrocities such as committed at My Lai or even the indiscriminate carpet bombing of large sections of Laos and Cambodia as defining the basic humanity (your words) of the American people? Why not, it's the test that you're applying to the German people?
My point simply being that we should not be too hasty to generalize or stereotype. War by it's very nature causes men to do things and make decisions that are abhorrent by civilized standards. Some may do it willingly, some may do it reluctantly and after a while be so brutalised by the experience of war that the lines between what is right and wrong become blurred. And let's not forget that every society has it's psychopaths.
I do think that some societies have different value systems and beliefs which may make it easier to exploit, but it's never quite as simple or B&W as the politicians and propagandists would have us believe. To simply pigeonhole a race/culture/nation as all being a pack of evil SOB's with no moral scruples whilst we were/are always angels is simplistic, ignorant and does not demonstrate a capacity for intelligent consideration or analysis... And to think that way is not being respectful or patriotic, far from it. It's dangerous and undermines the sacrifice that the servicemen made for us because it means that we can easily be fooled by catchy slogans and BS beat-ups into letting the same mistakes happen again.
My view, I hope you understand too
