FDR and Bush 43

From: Cub Driver warbird@m

He bore a particular animus toward France.

Yes. And he bluntly told DeGaulle that once Germany was disarmed, France would
have no need for more than a token armed force.

Sometimes it seems that his
principal object in a postwar Asia was to ensure that France would
never return to Indochina. (Too bad he didn't succeed!)

Amen. There's no reason that the French couldn't have been booted out of
Indochina in the same time-frame that the Dutch were drop-kicked out of
Indonesia. It's a safe bet that FDR's toe was itching to do just that.

Britain was a tougher nut, given that it was in reality America's only
friend in the world with any potential for carrying a load (rather
like today). Roosevelt was equally skeptical about the British
empire, but he choked it down for the sake of Churchill.

He was, however, cautious about making it appear that the US was fighting the
war to preserve the British Empire--which we were not.

As for Roosevelt's genius at coalition building, recall that it was
the cause of the Cold War that bedevilled the administrations of
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and
Reagan ... did I leve anyone out? Roosevelt was so afraid that Russia
would make a separate peace with Germany that he handed over half
of
Europe to Stalin.

From some point in 1944 Roosevelt really was a very sick man. He certainly
should not have run again in 1944. Had he been fully in control of his
faculties, we probably would not have seen the war's denoument play out the way
it did. Certainly if FDR had remained vigorous throughout his tenure and until
stepping down (presumably) in 1949, we would probably have seen a very
different world, if only because Roosevelt had a very clear vision of how he
wanted to shape it and position America, whereas Truman did not. Truman grew
into the job. But that took years, just those critical years that were to
shape the decades to come.
But, in any case, short of full-scale war, there was no way to pry the Soviet
Union loose from the territory it had conquered by force of arms. Poland, East
Germany, et al, were fated to endure what they did as long as the Soviet Union
existed.
As far as Roosevelt's ability to build coalitions, during the war, the allies
were allied because they all had common enemies that had attacked them
militarily. After that enemy was vanquished, the alliance could be expected to
melt away. Only the development of the Cold War kept a semblance of it alive
in the West for a further half century.
The worry about the SU dropping out of the war on Germany was of course caused
by Russia dropping out of WWOne, allowing Germany to shift nearly a million
troops to the Western front just as the US was getting its troops onto the
continent. In the spring of 1918 von Ludendorff was able to attack and advance
40 miles in 10 days, inflicting some 300,000 casualties, bringing the British
5th Army to the edge of disaster and opening up a gap between the French and
British. Only the most fearful fighting stopped that German offensive.
Roosevelt did everything he could to ensure that such a thing didn't happen
again, and, of course, Stalin played on that fear.

It is easy to romanticize the leaders of the past, now that their
blunderings have been frozen into history.

True. And easy to forget how contentious were eras that now are depicted as
times of harmony and unified national purpose. FDR's true genius at building
alliances was not demonstrated among foreign leaders, but at home with domestic
political rivals and, especially, industry leaders, many of whom hated him with
a passion for all sorts of New Deal endeavors, not least among them the Wagner
Act. The fact that he turned many of them into dollar-a-year men and got them
to cooperate in building our massive war machine was one of his most impressive
accomplishments. It's taken for granted, but delving into the details of how
it was done reveals astonishing legerdemain by the Roosevelt Administration.

I happen to be reading William Manchester's account of Tarawa atoll.
When the marines went ashore at Betio, it was a typical battalion that
lost half its men. Altogether, for that bit of coral, America gave up
more than three thousand of its sons.

Another oddity of history: MacArthur's masterful, low casualty (after Buna)
New Guinea campaign is neglected or disdained while King's murderously bloody
Central Pacific campaign is hallowed in popular memory. But not for nothing
did Manchester rate MacArthur the greatest soldier in American history.


Chris Mark

There were plenty of pilots engaged in this evil act and children and
old people walking the roads between villages had a terrible fear of
tieffliger.

A policy made famous by the German air force in Poland, Holland,
Belgium, France.

One of the harder things about war is that you tend to turn into the
people you are fighting.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org

That was a problem in Japan as well where aircrew had to avoid
civilians in order to surrender to the IJN becuase the civilians were
likely to avenge themselves upon them.

Well, clearly you know nothing of what you are saying. Aircrew avoided
civilians in order to surrender to the NAVY?

And how exactly did they avoid civilians?

U.S. aircrews knew very well that if they had to bail out over the
Empire, they would be tortured, starved, generally maltreated, and
very possibly have their heads chopped off, regardless of who
performed the formalities of arrest.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org

A policy made famous by the German air force in Poland, Holland,
Belgium, France.

Actually they only tried to imitate what a British officer named Harris (Later
Bomber Harris) had done in Iraq in 20s.

Thats just for record.

From: "Eunometic"


"B2431" wrote in message
...



"JDupre5762" wrote in message
...
Let's compare and contrast here, shall we?


FDR allowed the Germans and Japanese to murder and torture
American
POWs at
will from 1941 to 1945 and the American Press never called him on
it.

No proof of that for the Germans at all: they complied strictly
with
the Geneva Convention. Over 95% of American POWs of the Germans
survived the war.


John Dupre'

They did? Not towards the Soviets or occupied territories

Halve those figures: the Communist took the opportunity to attribute
their own genocides to the Germans.

nor towards the 12 million murdered in the camps.

I doubt the size of those figures. I'd say the Bull**** factor in
them is just under 50%. If revisionist weren't jailed and harassed
and
were free to carry out their investigations we could get to the truth
sooner.

The 12 million comes fromactual German documents and allied intercepts.
Remember the Germans had a fetish for documentation. 12 million was the number
given at the Nuremberg trials.


Want to keep it just to POWS? Ever heard of The Great Escape? 50
escapees were
murdered in groups of 2 or 3 AFTER being captured.

These men were not in uniform I believe and were thus treated as
illegal combatents.

Read the Geneva Convention in effect at the time. As POWS they were not to be
executed for escaping. The Nazis knew they were POWs and were murdered to make
an example and because the Nazis felt impotent. Most of the POWs if not all had
their ID discs on their persons when captured.

If they had on a uniform then this was clearly a
violation of the convention. Violations of the convention in terms
of illgeal executions, over work, inadaquete food were however still
rare.

Tell that to the families of suspected underground members who were sent to
concentration camps simply for being related to the suspects. Tell that to the
men, women and children "deported" to the camps from occupied territories. They
had a concentration camp for children which name escapes me now. Ravensbruck
was for women.


Should Otto Skorneys Commandos that opperated in American uniform with
German ones beneath have been spared execution?

Nope, because their actions specifically violated Geneva.

The US incidently has a habbit of of declaring prisoners illegal
combatents and non POWs

As does every nation.

Ok, let's keep discussing
POWS. Ever heard of the "Commando Order" issued by Hitler?

Seems to have started when German prisoners with bound hands were
shot.

Really? When and where? The order was signed 18 October 1942. There were no
Allied forces on the continent.

Collectively extending the punishment is of course also a violation of
the convention. It wasn't always applied. The legendary paratrooper
Oberstleutnant Walter Koch for instance refused to be iexecute the
order and ofcourse many of the paratroops were Nazi party members as
well. (It was not abnormal most of the parties affairs were quite
pedestrian) http://www.eagle19.freeserve.co.uk/koch.htm


And this lessens the effect of the Commander Order how? Most Nazis obeyed the
order.

How many allied air crews were murdered before becoming POWs?

You tell me. I'd say very very few. Perhaps they were upset at the
strafing of civilians and children walking along country roads?
There were plenty of pilots engaged in this evil act and children and
old people walking the roads between villages had a terrible fear of
tieffliger.

Or the shooting down of the Parachutes of downed pilots that was
particularly common towards then end of the war.

I'm not saying this was the norm, most airmen were decent, Art Kramer
for instance says he stopped strafing when a woman ran in front of his
gun.

I'm talking here about murders by
military people not civilians as in Hamburg where British aircrewen
who
parachuted into the city were bound and thrown alive into the
burning
buildings.

That was a problem in Japan as well where aircrew had to avoid
civilians in order to surrender to the IJN becuase the civilians were
likely to avenge themselves upon them.

If you had seen your children, niece nephews or grandchildren die in
repeated and apparently indiscriminant bombings on suburb you might in
the rage of the momment do the same. I can totaly understand that.

You should read "On the Natural History of Destruction" by W.G.
Sebald. One of the things the allies did is destroy the extensive
documentation the Germans had of the effects of fire bombing and the
wounds and deathes it created.

I've spoken to people that had to clean out flats with the body of a
mother scorched to death by fire huddled over he baby. When touched
these bodies often just crumpled into a pile of dust leaving nothing
but a wedding ring or other jewelery.



On the other hand FDR didn't "allow" Axis atrocities. He just
couldn't stop
them.


FDR was sick and a sham.

His toast was a salute to shooting them, "as fast as we can, all of
them." Churchill was horrified. Quick as a flash, he was on his feet;
his face and neck were red, says Elliott Roosevelt, who was present.
He announced that British conceptions of law and justice would never
tolerate such butchery. Into this breach stepped President Roosevelt.
He had a compromise to suggest. Instead of executing fifty thousand,
perhaps "we should settle on a smaller number. Shall we say 49,500?"
All the Russians at the table roared with laughter. So did the
Americans, who were obliged to show proper appreciation for their
chief's "humor." Churchill left the table." (1)

Undoubtedly, the President's little grim "joke" was a source of great
amusement for the Soviets, who were still laughing over the 14,000
Polish officers they had slain at Katyn, Miedjoye, and Kharkov Forest.
Later, one of President Roosevelt's interpreters said of his
emaciated, crippled chief: "He looked sick, he acted sick, and he
talked sick." (2)

Lest anyone think that the President's remark was made in jest,
consider that less than one year later he was willing to ratify the
notorious "Morgenthau Plan" , had it not been for the adamant
objections of his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson.

In order to fully appreciate the attitude of the allies in regard to
the treatment meted out to the defeated Germans, a brief review of
events would be in order. To those who might object that the allies
were too "civilized" to employ third degree methods on captured German
officers to extract damning "confessions", I believe that certain
criteria should first be investigated , presented, and addressed,
namely:

1. How did the allies treat non-combatants? How were Germans treated
who had nothing to do with the waging of the war? What was the allies
policy in regard to women, the elderly, and in particular, German
children?

2. How were German prisoners of war treated? Specifically, members of
the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, etc. against whom no criminal charges had
been preferred?

If the allies treated the defeated Germans with justice and equity,
and can be proven so by documentation and the actual historical
record, then the allegation that German POW's were tortured and
mistreated falls flat on it's face.

Let us now examine the record: Germany's civilian population received
a foretaste of allied policy in 1940, when British pilots bombed a
Berlin schoolhouse, killing a number of children. The air strikes
increased in severity over the course of the war, culminating in the
destruction of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, and other
cities at a loss of probably half a million lives. It was a common
occurrence for allied pilots to bomb and strafe columns of refugees
and the homeless. For this reason, American and British pilots earned
the infamous sobriquet "terror-pilots" and were often treated as such
when caught by German civilians. Parachuting pilots were often killed
upon capture by German civilians who had often lost beloved family
members to the attacks of terror-bombers. The allies made it a point
to trace down the civilians responsible for these acts of righteous
retribution and summarily hanged them all, whenever and wherever they
were found.

The allies were particularly sensitive concerning the shooting of 50
allied fliers who had escaped from the Sagan POW camp in 1944. From
the German point of view, many of these fliers were warned that should
they attempt any more escapes, they would be shot.

The threat alone was a violation of Geneva.

Aside from that,
many of the escapees were caught in civilian clothes or else in German
uniforms, thus leading the German authorities to conclude that they
were spies. When one reflects on the fact that members of Otto
Skorzeny's commando group, which infiltrated American lines during the
battle of the Bulge, were also shot upon capture even though they were
wearing German uniforms under the American gear, then the shooting of
the 50 terror fliers loses some of it's punch. Nevertheless, German
officers were executed for this "crime" while the allied crime of
shooting the German "spies" went unpunished.

The shooting of Americans at Malmedy was given the widest publicity,
and those German units which participated in this battle were all
brought before the allied inquisition, notwithstanding the fact that
the allies had, in one incident shot down members of the Waffen SS in
France in cold blood, and not one of the responsible parties was ever
brought to justice.

At Dachau, American soldiers lined German guards up against a wall and
shot them down without mercy.

Prove it.

The Americans also allowed crazed
inmates of the camp to savagely murder other guards who were stationed
there.

Prove it.

Often these victims were simply Wehrmacht officers who were
left to guard the camp after the SS personnel absconded.

They were still guards and every single picture of a dead Nazi and those caught
alive taken at Dachau that I have seen shows SS uniforms.


When the allied armies first entered German territory, did the
victorious "champions of democracy" comport themselves with dignity
and honor? Let the reader be the judge. What follows is just an
excerpt from volumes of documents relating to the rampaging allied
troops as they plundered, raped, and stole from the defenseless German
population. The one crime most often committed by allied forces
against German civilians in all sectors was forcible, violent rape,
which is evidenced by a selection of the following reports. Few of the
offenders were ever punished for this crime against women and
children.

According to the publication "The U.S. Army in the Occupation of
Germany":

"Of all the crimes committed by U.S. troops, the best....documented
was rape, and it showed a "spiral increase" in the closing months of
the war. Between July 1942 and October 1945, 904 rape cases were
charged in the European theater, 552 of them in Germany. All told, 487
soldiers were tried for rapes committed in the months of March and
April, 1945.(!)....By no means all the incidents were reported or, of
those reported, brought to trial, and the conviction rate was
relatively low."(3)

"Reports of rape and robbery by U.S. troops piled up on the public
safety officer's desk.."(4)

"The tension was greatest in areas where Negro troops were stationed,
since they....frequently interpreted efforts to curb prostitution as
another form of discrimination. In Kuenzelsau, Wuerttemberg, Negro
soldiers of the 350th Field Artillery Battalion beat up the local
jailer when he refused to release prostitutes being held for venereal
disease treatment. Later the whole police in Kuenzelsau tried to
resign after being threatened that they would be killed if they
interfered with the prostitutes."(5)

"Nearly all incidents involved liquor or women, often both. The
population of vagrant women-which the Army inadvertently increased
after November when it released penicillin for treating venereal
diseases in German women, thereby shortening for some the "turn around
time" from jail or hospital and attracting others who had been
deterred by the fear of infection-was often at the root of soldier
attacks on German officials and police....In one instance an American
officer took an Austrian girl from Linz to Stuttgart, raped her three
times, and then transported her to Ulm, where he turned her over to
the military police on a charge of having improper papers." (6)

"...the Negroes, believing they were not getting an equal share of the
women, nursed grudges against both the Germans and the white
Americans." (7)

Take note that these are cases which have been confirmed by the Allied
Occupation Authorities. Other reports may be offered to substantiate
the above in greater detail:

"From the east came the Bolshevized Mongolian and Slavic hordes,
repeatedly raping every captured woman and girl, contaminating them
with venereal diseases and impregnating them with a future race of
Russo-German *******s.

In the west the British used colonial troops, the French Sengalese and
Moroccans, the Americans an excessively high percentage of Negroes.
Our own method was not so direct as the Russian: ....we compelled
women to yield their virtue in order to live-to get food to eat, beds
to sleep in, soap to bathe with, roofs to shelter them." (8)

The following was related by a catholic priest concerning a letter
which was smuggled out of Breslau, Germany, September 3, 1945: "In
unending succession were girls, women and nuns violated....Not merely
in secret, in hidden corners, but in the sight of everybody, even in
churches, in the streets and in public places were nuns, women and
even eight year old girls attacked again and again. Mothers were
violated before the eyes of their children; girls in the presence of
their brothers; nuns in the sight of pupils, were outraged again and
again to their very death even as corpses." (9)


And this justifies or excuses the Nazis being criminals how?



Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

If anyone was to become a war criminal I suspect you would be the most
likely.

Based on you steadfast denial of Nazi crimes the same could be said about you.

You are so utterly without doubt convinced of the villany of
the enemy.

I have never claimed the U.S. has never violated Geneva. The Nazi swine
documented most of their crimes since they considered them to be legal.

I've often wandered how many Iraqi's were shown no mercy because they
were accused of removing babies from baby incubators.

Every one of the animals who did such a thing needs be shown no mercy. Put them
on trial and execute them if found guilty.

I was staioned in West Germany. I have seen some of the sites where the crimes
were comitted. You mentioned Dachau. Go to that camp some day and visit the
museum. The Germans are harder on themselves that most of the rest of the world
is now.

In the final analysis the Germans STARTED the war and thus must be held
ultimately responsibility for all war related suffering. I don't excuse Allied
violations, but they wouldn't have happened at all if the Nazi pigs hadn't
started the war.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired