There was quite a bit of hypocracy in the various post WWII trials and executions, to say nothing of the thousands of germans within the occupied Russian zone who were sent off to the gulags. One example:

The only U-boat commander (along with 2 of his officers) convicted and executed for war crimes. His actions? On his maiden voyage in his new command while passing into an especially dangerous zone (where every IXc like the one he commanded that entered previously had been sunk) he torpedoed and sunk a greek steamer, then was left with a dilemna as to if he could escape before the wreckage was discovered. After conferring with his officers he decided the best chance of escaping the area undetected, and enhancing the survival chances of his men, was to destroy the wreckage.

There were about a dozen survivors in the water and in life rafts and the Commander and the men on the bridge were aware of that, but he decided anyway to try and sink the life rafts. The deckgun/flak were unsuitable so he had machine guns brought up and gave orders that the rafts were to be sunk. Four officers participated, to varying extents, in machine gunning the lifeboats but they wouldn't sink. After further deliberation it was decided to try grenades, which also failed, followed by ramming which likewise was unsuccessful.

Having wasted several hours in this unsuccessful attempt, amd with dawn rapidly approaching, he gave up and fled the area. Later he came upon a second steamer, torpedoed and sank it, and slipped away with no attempt to eliminate the wreckage. Meanwhile the allies had discovered the U-boat was in the area and undertook a massive operation to find it, and eventually they did.

Spotted by aircraft and bombed, he crash dived but had to surface 15 mins later due to the extensive damage to the boat. While allied aircraft rained bombs and machine gun fire onto the crippled uboat the commander decided his only hope was to try and beach it.

He succeeded, and as the crew poured onto the beach allied aircraft continued their strafing runs, gunning down and killing several fleeing crewman and wounding the first officer.

Anyway, to sum up the long story the CO and 4 crew members were tried and convicted of warcrimes by a British military tribunal for deliberately attacking the survivors (most of the dozen who survived the initial torpedoing of their vessel were killed in the subsequent attack on the lifeboats) of the greek steamer, 3 were executed and 2 were sentenced to lengthy prison terms (which were subsequently greatly reduced).

The defence had unsuccessfully argued that the CO had deemed it an operational necessity in order to escape undetected and thereby increase the survival chances of the men under his command. This defence was rejected despite many similar precedents lumped under the term "operational necessity" by both the British and the Americans (the Laconia incident being the most famous, where an American bomber was ordered to attack and sink a Uboat that was undertaking the rescue attempt of several hundred Italian and British survivors despite the U-boats prior repeated broadcasts, in english, to that effect and the large red cross flag draped across the bow of his ship). The Americans considered destroying the U-boat, despite the unavoidable killing of their British allies who were aboard in the process an operationa necessityl and one for which there were no later ramifications.

I should add, for more context, that the CO maintained it was never his intention to deliberately kill the survivors, nor was this ever established by the prosecution (which was what he was convicted and executed for) but only to destroy the liferafts so as to eliminate traces of wreckage that would be visible from the air. He did concede that in destroying the liferafts many, if not all, of the men who'd survived the initial attack upon their sunken steamer would perish. But he insisted, and was never contradicted, that he gave no orders to kill the survivors and the defence maintained that without that specific intent to commit murder he could not be convicted of that crime.

Because such practices were not unique to either side (and were very common among the Americans, particularly in the Pacific theatre, and they made no secret of it either) I think the trial was a farce: the victors needed their pound of flesh to satiate the public's need for blood and therefore the most notorious participants on the losing side paid the ultimate price. I find it ironic that the British rejected the "operational necessity" arguement while deliberately escalating their own actions from targetting initially munitions factories and such to purely civilian population centers (a practice they referred to as "dehousing germans").

BS IE BULL****

Sorry..Don't follow that...please explain :up:

How about dropping a couple of nukes on a couple of cities with no military targets with maximum civilian casualties? If Nazi Germany or Japan got to it first, it would've surely gone down as the most heinous war crime in history.

I understand the logic behind it and all that, but its still an interesting reflection of perspective.

There's logic behind it? I don't see it - to me its one of the most irrational strategic decisions made in the war. Consider:

The US, in the Pacific theatre, thanks to a high powered surface and submarine Navy had achieved what Germany was nearly on the verge of in the Battle of the Atlantic in '41: laying complete seige to the island of Japan and preventing it from importing the resources and goods it would need to continue the fight, plus the defeat of its navy which ensured the American blockade would not be broken.

Additionally, its allies - Germany and Italy - had been defeated so there was no one to turn to for help or any kind of diversionary campaign elsewhere.

Surrender was not only inevitable, but at most only a couple months away. Rather than wait, however, it was decided to use the war and prior Japanese atrocities as a pretext to conduct a test of these new weapons "in theatre". The motivation was purely political and had nothing to do with operational necessity or military objectives; the US, in their agreement with Russia and Britain just prior to Germany's surrender, had carved Europe up into "zones of control" and the Americans suddenly feared that their ally of necessity, Stalin, might one day become a threat himself once Russia had recuperated from the devestation of the war, So they nuked Japan to instill fear in Russia and thereby deter any future expansionist plans Stalin (who was every bit as maniacal as Hitler, talk about your warped alliances) might dream up.

Of course they didn't forsee that Russia would soon possess the technology itself and that the ensuing arms race and massive expenditures to keep ahead of it would render their political gains moot. In any case, this kind of "live test" of a weapon as devestating as the A-bomb against a civilian population - not simply once, but twice - and against an all but defeated enemy done purely for political purposes, ranks, in my mind, as one of the most irrational and heinous acts committed in a war that was rife with plenty of both by all the major participants.

I agree with you. The logic that is used for justification for using the two nuclear bombs that you hear the most is that the casulties sustained on both sides from war continuing on would exceed the casulties sustained from the two bombings itself. I didn't live in those times and didn't endure what the world endured at that time, so its tough for me to judge. All I can do is reflect back and read history books, and it does seem drastic to me.

The thought of using such a device on a civilian population today is absolutely horrifying, even one civilian casulty from a guided missile's accidental collateral damage is something the public can't stand these days. That wasn't the mindset of the public at the end of WWII however.

Scandium, I won't go into your arguments in detail, but from everything I've read and researched over the last forty years everything you expressed as fact is nothing more than speculation and opinion. You don't "know" that the motivations were purely political any more than I "know" that they weren't. That said, the writings of the people involved indicate that they believed their motives were (mostly) pure. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed far more people than both the atomic bombs. The other side of this coin is the "winners write the history" argument: most American and British historians admit that the fire bombings in Japan and Europe were wrong at the least, and atrocities at the worst.

Also, this discussion belongs on the General Topics Boards, not one of the gaming boards.

Which is why I prefaced that discussion with, in my very first sentence: "There's logic behind it? I don't see it - to me its one of the most irrational strategic decisions made in the war. Consider: ... "

You're of the opinion it wasn't political but, therefore, had to have been motivated for military reasons (for if not political nor military then what other motivation could there be?) - I don't see any military purpose served and don't buy the often given arguement that they "forced" the surrender of Japan because from my own research the surrender of Japan was not only inevitable but only a matter of months away.

Nor do I accept the other often given arguement that killing two hundred thousand Japanese by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki "saved" x number of american lives. I don't accept it because Japan had no capability by that time (surely you agree with this much) to inflict any damage on American soil and the worst it could do was strike out (futilely) against the blockaders - which were combatants and legitimate military targets while the 200,000 civilians bombed, in these two incidents alone, were not.

At any rate, if everyone agreed on everything life would be pretty boring and we're each entitled to our own opinions on history. From my point of view, even after 60 years have passed, history has been written very lopsidedly and while everyone is in agreement on the horror of the holocaust (the denial of which is a crime in many countries) and other Nazi excesses, not as many people appreciate the scope of allied indifference (the holocaust was not the reason any of the allies went to war with Germany, and the horrors taking place there were going on for many years before Sept 1939 and Dec '41) and the atrocies committed by the allies to win the war at any cost (to the enemy).

Admiral Dönitz was guilty of: "unrestricted submarine war" and "being the succesor of hitler" (the 2nd thing thanx to Herman "more wide than tall" gëring)
while he was under trial guess who entered the room... Admiral Nimitz... yes, the same Nimitz that commanded the fleet agains japan, and said that he had ordered the same things to the subs "leave survivors behind" and "atack merchant ships with no warning"

and as you might guess, Nimitz was told that "they where punishings the ppl that had lost the war, not the winners" he went home and herr Karl spent 10 years in jail.

thats not cool :nope:

According to Clay Blair in "Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunted, 1942-1945" Donitz was prosecuted on three charges

1. Plotting to wage aggressive war
2. Waging agressive war
3. War Crimes

Donitz was acquitted of the first charge, however "in a vague and confusing verdict" he was found guilty on the second. As for the third count, the American Judge said "Germany waged a much cleaner [submarine] war than we did" and voted to aquit. However the other judges apparently thought (or so Blair says) that Donitz shouldn't get off "scot-free" and found him guilty.

Apparently his conviction caused outrage among a large number of senior Allied naval officers and over one hundred wrote to Donitz to deplore the verdict. One even said that "His conviction was an insult to our own submariners in the Pacific" which is pretty strong stuff.

So I agree with kenijaru, not cool at all

Did you know Nagasaki was not even the primary target of that bomb? It was a military base, but due to weather interference they had to shift to a secondary target - Nagasaki.

Or alternatively they could have designated another target as secondary (one that wasn't a civilian target) when drawing up the mission plan, or aborted/postponed the mission until the weather cleared up.

I don't accept this rationalization either as it seems to fall under the "we had no choice/it was the best solution we had" umbrella. There were other options.

I do recall from prior reading years ago that when the first operational plans were drawn up (under different code names), there was a Plan A that designated German cities as targets and a Plan B that designated Japanese targets. Germany was saved from Plan A by Hitler's suicide, and the subsequent appointment as Fuhrer of Grand Admiral Doenitz, who knew the war was lost and surrendered unconditionally almost immediately. Thus Germany was spared Plan A while Doenitz was derided by critics on both sides and ultimated tried, convicted, and imprisoned by the Allies for 10 years.

Japan, having not surrendered in a timely enough manner, did not escape Plan B and was twice nuked. I just don't see the justification, anywhere, in nuking the civillian populations of an all but defeated enemy no matter the motivation, political or military, you subscribe to.

It is still true today that the Americans were the only ones at the time to possess this capability, and the only ones who have ever employed it. The only "benefit" I can see from it is that they showed the world how indiscriminate (even a "military" target would have had consequences for the civilians downwind of it) and devastating these weapons are, and the terror they instilled has meant 60 years and counting of no other country ever employing them.

Ever see guns of Navarone? (or Apocalypse Now for that matter - Sampan off the port bow hehehehe...) seriously, small craft are so unrepresented in this series. That being said they should have the option to send a 'boarding party' by a picket boat for DDs or a rubber raft for SUBS aboard the other ship to scuttle it. Well I guess the animations would be a royal pain but it would sure be fun.

Trawlers were used by virtually every nation as intelligence gatherers. In many cases they were armed with small guns. I think the German term was Vorpostenboot?

Mountbatten

What about RMS Queen Mary? I heard that Hitler offered a big reward to the U-boat skipper that took her down.

Mountbatten