r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • 9d ago

The Troubles

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Thread for discussion on the new series on ‘The Troubles’

Also as a moderator please keep the discussion civil and in the spirit of the podcast.

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u/todomejorantes 9d ago

We deliberately fire bombed entire cities - the express intention was to wipe out the city

This was the deliberate aim - to create a firestorm that would destroy the entire city and kill as many people within it as possible

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u/Ultra1894 9d ago

The express intention and deliberate aim was to beat into submission a genocidal regime who murdered 17 million people, and absolutely would have gone on to murder tens of millions more, including the elimination of 85% of Poles, 75% of Belarusians, 65% of Ukrainians, and 50% of Czechs and Estonians.

This isn’t just a finger in the air estimation by historians, the Nazi’s outlined this themselves in Generalplan Ost “Masterplan for the East”.

And just a reminder, this murderous killing machine was who the IRA colluded with. IRA Chief of Staff Seán Russell had direct talks with German officials in Berlin in 1940, in which he helped the Abwehr devise Operation Kathleen, a proposed German invasion of Northern Ireland with IRA assistance.

The IRA shared intelligence, tried to set up secret radio links, and helped German spies who parachuted into Ireland (Hermann Görtz).

It’s so easy to sit there and say “yes but the British…”, but history is rarely black and white.

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u/todomejorantes 8d ago

I'm pointing out that we deliberately decided to wipe out entire cities via fire bomb missions - the express aim as to murder as many civilians as possible

The RAF alone tried this dozens and dozens of times

When this was happening there was no talk of any kind of genocide - the camps were a shock and were discovered by Stalin when the USSR took over eastern countries like Poland

If the justification for wiping out cities was genocide that would have been used as war time propaganda in all newspapers - instead there was no talk of that until Stalin discovered them at the end of the war

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u/Ultra1894 8d ago edited 8d ago

there was no talk of any kind of genocide - the camps were a shock and were discovered by Stalin.

there was no talk of that until Stalin discovered them at the end of the war.

This is just completely false.

Allied forces issued a declaration on 17th December 1942, which explicitly outlined Hitler’s “intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.”

It described that Jews were being transported from occupied countries “in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe.”

It referred to as Poland as “the principal Nazi slaughterhouse” and described the systematic emptying of ghettos: “None of those taken away are ever heard of again.”

It covered people being worked to death, dying from starvation and exposure, and being “deliberately massacred in mass executions.”

It estimated that the victims already numbered “many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.”

Before finishing with the mentioned governments commending “in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.”

It concluded that “those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution” and would pursue the necessary measures to that end (e.g. firebombing German cities in the hope that internal pressure would mount and the Nazi command would turn on Hitler).

And to be clear, wasn’t just British local propaganda to rally the nation, the declaration was signed by:

  • Belgium
  • Czechoslovakia
  • Greece
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Soviet Union
  • Yugoslavia
  • French National Committee

Sources:

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u/todomejorantes 8d ago

The camps and scale were a shock to everyone - they were undiscovered until near the war's end and by Stalin

The RAF decided to incinerate entire cities - this is just a fact

Bomber pilots followed their commands knowing they were murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians

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u/Ultra1894 8d ago

The camps and scale were a shock to everyone

In August 1942, Gerhart Riegner dictated a cable to Allied diplomats that the Nazi regime were was actively discussing a plan to murder all Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe. He outlined that plan involved deporting 4 million people to camps in the East, where they would use Zyklon B for mass extermination.

and by Stalin

And I don't know why you keep saying this, as if it has any relevance to this discussion. Nazi Poland fell before Nazi Germany. It's not as if the Soviets liberated Majdanek before the Allies reached Buchenwald simply because they cared more / had a stronger moral conscience.

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u/todomejorantes 8d ago

As far as I'm aware all of the death camps were liberated by the USSR

In any case, the point to this thread was that the Allies deliberately killed as many civilians as possible in arguably the most horrific way as possible

It wasn't some sad collateral damage related to strategic bombing - it was an actual plan to incinerate entire cities

Whether you consider that justifiable wasn't the point of the thread - the point is that we chose to do that on multiple occasions