German POWs after WW2 - did the allies commit mass murder?

The topic was "Did the allies commit mass murder!"


??? Lemme see if I get this right...the british bomber command was justified in murdering german civilians day and night because of the german war crimes in Poland???

Well, then maybe Hitler was right punishing Poles for the British war crimes in Dresden and Hamburg...

Boy are you crazy!


You have no idea what you are speaking of, right? Toliver (not Toland my error, that was someone else) was a british pilot during the war, Hartmann a german...not your average german pilot mind you but the best ever!

The Blond Knight of Germany: A Biography of Erich Hartmann
search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Blond-Knight-of-Germany/Raymond-F-Toliver/e/9780830681891

Absolutely recommendable...could be an eye opener for you!


No idea! :)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_World_War_II_aces

Places 1 till 98, all german aces!
You don't get that successfull with preying on civilians...

They didn't.
German civilians were collateral damage. All German males who had pubic hair were considered fighting force.


Both were important centers supporting German war machine - factories and such. Both were inhabited by Ubermensch who decided that the best way to go out of the economic crisis is to blame the Jew and take over Poland for some cozy Lebensraum.

oopsie, it didn't work.


I'll try to read the book someday. Gotta finish a shed in the backyard first.
Again, biographies are about small groups of people, and often through the prism of their eyes. I don;t know the book, so I cannot speak about it. Still, Luftwaffe is responsible by so much civilian damage that it will be hard for you to convice us that Luftwaffe consisted of only honorable. Some yes. A few, I'd say, untill I get hold of the book,


BBoy, I am not talking about their skill. Many were good and I read accounts of how some of the best shot down by Polish pilots.

Anyway, I am talking about their moral side, or rather the deficiency of morals, not about skill


of how many pilots in total?

What moral side?
If they did their job well and skillfully why do they still suck in your opinion?


Of course they are...but they are the best pair of eyes into the past you can get.
Better than any ideologized generalization...and you can read many different from all sides.
Gives a better rounded view than just:
Allies = good
Germans = bad

SS soldiers helping russian prisoners...
(Believe it, it's true)




Click the link :)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_World_War_II_aces

Skillfully?
How much skill does a pilot need to engage a machine gun while flying over frightened civilians on a country road?


Best, but limited angle of vision, and their own reputation at stake.


And that's exactly how I started posting here. I responded to an ideologized generalization about Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht by offering another angle.


Not my view.

This is my view:

Germans during WW2 = bad
Allies = did to Germans during WW2 anything to speed up the collapse of German paranoia.

Because they are Germans that's what they did all the time yes?
Makes one wonder how the german aces shot down so many enemy air crafts....
They shouldn't have had time for that!


The list about the WWII flying aces is neutral and objective, nothing idealized about it! :)
The best pilots of all! :)
The same holds true for the Wehrmacht...some darn good soldiers!

I think you misunderstood the question. I am not asking how many pilots were aces, but how many pilots Germans had in WW2?

I don't know the number but it weren't so many as the allies had...and as the end neared they got even less...but those who still could flew and flew and flew till they got shot down. No break for them!

Hmmm....reading this list I wonder about the polish aces...

The first is

Erich "Bubi" Hartmann Germany Luftwaffe 352
(Of course only done in the short breaks between shooting civilians)
and
the last one

Michael R. Yunck USA U.S. Marine Corps 5

What about the best polish ace?
Oh I found him:

Stanisław Skalski Poland Polish Air Force/RAF 18 11/12

Nice :)

I am interested in the ratio of pilots to aces. Poles had 29 (on that list) but they didn't fly as much as Germans aces did, there was far fewer of them and when they did fly, they fought against the best - Germans, while a bulk of German pilots fought against Russians. On the same list there are only 11 or 12 Russian aces.

Polish fighters where known to shot down helpless german pilots hanging in their parachutes...not very chivalrous if you ask me! :(


You just want to downtalk and foul mouth the Luftwaffe...be my guest.
The experts know better! :)

I didn't know about that. I heard German pilots did that too. They practiced in Poland in September of 1939 by shooting Polish civilians on open roads.


Not at all. Germans had more than enough pilots at the top to even try to dispute that.

But if you have 6 years to learn something, and someone else has 1 year, and the latter learns 1/6th of what the former knows then who is a faster learner?

You don't know alot of things...leave it at that!
Just because your enemy is strong and skilled and successfull doesn't mean he is a criminal...


Well...Poland had enough time to learn...they had their big mouth always wide open!

quote:


Mistreating the german minority, threatening Danzig and denying any compromise
for a corridor always counting on the English and the French to bail them out if pushes came to show wasn't the best diplomacy advisable...

Another quote from that time:


They should have been ready....

You don't come even close to understanding how much I don't know. One day you'll realize you suffer from the same.


Agreed. The enemy was criminal not because of the strength, but because of the purpose for which that strength was used.

You know...someone who states "The Luftwaffe sucks" CAN'T have any knowledge.
That is just ridiculous....sorry...:)

And even if the purpose was wrong (what it was) that doesn't make the soldier automatically a criminal.
Was every american Vietnam soldier a criminal? Is every allied Iraq war soldier a criminal just for fighting in it?
What about the british empire soldiers conquering half of the world...all war criminals???

What's ridiculous is that you continue taking pride in the death Luftwaffe inflicted on the innocent. When I said Luftwaffe sucked that is what I meant. I don't give a flying fvck about how great the German aces were. I do think it is regrettable that Luftwaffe killed so many innocent people. In that respect they suck more than any other air force in history.


You got a point here, and hence not all German soldiers were subject to post war criminal investigations.


That varied. A lot of British troops were forced to become troops, sometimes literally kidnapped. Ask the Irish.

The individual soldiers was not necessarily a criminal, the Crown was, just like Luftwaffe as a whole was.

Well...it took awhile...:)


You really seem to think that the foremost goal of the german forces was to kill innocent civilians?
But then tell me how a relatively small country without much natural resources or natural boundaries could hold out a two front war for so long on several continents?

You can't do that if you concentrate on unimportant civilians...you have to fight the enemy forces to come forward or to defend!
Try to be logical here...killing civilians with purpose was a waste of rare and valuable resources.

A german fighter ace was mostly alone against several of enemy aircrafts, this ratio
worsened as the war dragged on.
WHEN AND WHY should they have concentrated on killing civilians...it would have been absolutely contrary to the war aim.

To kill civilians to somehow influence the war progress...well ask Churchill, it was his idea!

And again...how could an ace as Hartmann crank up his number till to 352 if he was busy killing civilians?

Yeah, kinda late here too and I gotta do some woodworking tomorrow. Wood will be flying :)

later alligator.

PS: There is nothing wrong with acknowledging bravery and skill in the enemy Darius...

PPS: You know..even the Russians exonerated Hartmann of all crimes officially in 1997, admitting that court and sentence after the war were faked. No atrocities, no war crimes, no killed civilians for the ace of the aces, just a great pilot and a fine, human being!

damn this blew up. I always thought that what distinguished the Allies from the Axis powers, (in myth at least) was that the allies were humane, the axis powers, evil (hitler in particular.)

The Geneva conventions of back then required better treatment than deliberate starvation of the German population, the enslavement of all POWs, mass expulsions of ethnic germans, etc..

But my real question is how true is all this in actuality? It's a debate that's going on, it's hard to make out which side is right over the internet, the whistleblowers, or those whose heroic image of morally upstanding allied powers threatens to be shattered?

THanks Bratwurst, you seem to have known about this stuff. But I think the 2 million dead figure is the worst possible estimate. We can't know for sure what happened to whom because a huge library of files were destroyed (in France I think.)

Instead of blaming allies for acts of genocide which certainly took place, Germans should blame Hitler and their own blind adherence to his leadership and crazy ideals.


It is natural that the fight against paranoic murderers sent by Hitler to conquer the world had a considerable impact on allies` morals. When dealing with murderers, you must resort to murder too. It is normal.

One example: in the beginning of the war, while Poland was still fighting a lonely fight in September 1939, French and British bombers flew air raids over Germany to drop.... propaganda leaflets. A joke was created in Britain then: A RAF pilot returns from his mission and reports he had to drop the leaflets in the unopened container because there was some emergency or fault in plane`s systems. A high-rank officer exclaimed: Are you crazy? It could have hurt someone down there!!!

So, you see, allies tried to be gentle with Germans at first.

But soon they learnt how to conduct a total war. Germans taught them.

Germans have already done that. And if the allies committed acts of genocide, we certainly should never forget!!


Well no it isn't normal, here in civilized society we imprison murderers.

when it comes to war, the nazi leadership was held accountable, but the treatment of prisoners should never compare with the treatment of the leadership, the soldiers were simply following orders.

Any way no matter what anyone says if, after overtaking the axis powers we committed the same moral crimes then we were little better and only deserved to win as a matter of survival. We'll all have a chance to explain ourselves with Hitler, Stalin et al in hell.

I agree, masks. U don't have to resort to murder at all. That is reciprocity and the sign of a backward civilisation. 2 wrongs don't make a right.

Murder should be a last resort in the name of survival. Really, it shouldn't need to happen at all.

I'd only strike out of self-defense, so I agree. Most of the soldiers were just young men who were drafted, and following their orders. It doesn't make it right, but for those who don't understand; A soldier who refuses to perform his duty in times of war, will get himself executed.

So for most soldiers (Who are people like you and me, some people see them as heroes, but really they can get just as scared as you and me sometimes.) it really is a matter of survival. You or him.

There were and always will be people (Both men and women!) who have extreme vieuws and ideas, and those people most likely will not behave themselves in times of war.

War is hell. There's nothing heroic or good about it. In my opinion there can be no glorious victory, because on all sides, everyone loses something of their humanity and the aftermath should be clear for all to see. Look at us. 63 years after, we are still trying to place the blame for a number of things on eachother, when in reality, most of us didn't want this to happen..

So I agree with Bratwurst Boy to a certain extent, because most Wehrmacht soldiers where drafted young men who followed their orders, and behaved in ways that should be expected from soldiers, (Again, that doesn't make it right!) just like most of the Allied troops did.

Again, so true Arien. Emotional scarring is a major problem. I've never been a soldier so I always pinch myself to serve as a reminder that I'm only an armchair commentator. In the heat of the moment, maybe in cold blood after the falling of a comrade, you will act differently.

It's sad that war is glorified. I find it pathetic when America hails its war veterans. A war (Vietnam) that was dragged out unnecessarily to profit the few and scar the many. Britain, at least, had a reason to go to war. Vietnam was no real threat to America. B4 Americans jump down my throat, I applaud their involvement in WWII. They tipped the balance.

Don't be silly. Not just from TV and cinema. You seem to forget that most of the participants on this forum have Polish relatives, some of whom went through the war and witnessed first hand German niceties. These details are usually passed on.

Again, the topic was a question about the Allies. And then it degenerated into the Poles, Russians, and Germans. There have been other topics discussing these things.

I have little knowledge about Allied conduct during the war and the closing days of the war, but I was surprised when searching for descendents of my relatives who were expelled from Poland that in the three allied zone camps where many were held, there were posters reminding the soldiers that they were forbidden to befriend any Germans, or have relationships.

If a child was born because a soldier impregnated one of the Germans or expellees, they were initially, forbidden to support the child or marry the mother.

An online acquaintance who was 14 years old at the time and fled on a horse across rivers where the bridges had been blown up, said that he feared the allies, too. And his father was fighting on behalf of Poland.

Not at all excusing what happened during the war, but attempting to bring the discussion back on topic.

I think the problem was the lack of a suitable deterrent. What real threat of punishment was there? My memory fails me, when was the Convention regulating the treatment of POW's? Was it b4 the Genocide Convention?

It's a tragic situation when bad deeds are done and all people do is talk about it.

This is the biggest bunch of bull schidt that I ever saw. All of you Monday morning quarterbacks read distorted versions of what happened.
Franek was there. I spent time as an American POW in Germany in WW2. I can tell you things that would make your hair stand up. But there were the civilized things that happened.. I for one was well treated by my captors.. I received the same medical attention that the German soldier received. I was served the same rations as the German soldier did. It-is true, most were not as lucky as I was. I was lucky enough to be captured by the regular German Volkstrum. Had I been captured by an SS outfit,the outcome may have been different.

WAR is hell.. Atrocities were committed by both sides.. But we Americans were warned about committing atrocities. Yet I personally witnessed a few, DAMN FEW.

I can elaborate on a few that I personally witnessed, but it would take too long.

HMMM maybe I should write a book. I saw a lot.. I landed at Utah beach and was wounded and captured crossing the Rhine at Remagan. Oh well.. It is all history now.

It is all history now, yes, but experience nonetheless. You obviously told Don King all about it :)

Whatever the "allies" did was still far better than Gerries deserved. That's on the "macro scale"... On the individual level indeed some innocent Gerries (as much as Germanics could be) suffered a lot but on the other hand vast majority of their war criminals lived a nice life till the end. The only problem could be unfair redistribution of punishment among Gerries.

That's a good point Greg. Eichmann fled to Argentina and lived it up for quite a while. He slipped under the radar until the Mossad got smart.