Atomic bombs use-a war crime?

There is no need for that.

Avoid such distorted views on Holocaust victims, with the clear intention of Holocaust denial, or do it elsewhere.

That's just one of the facts about Patton that make him such an interesting figure. I know his troops uncovered evidence of Nazi atrocities too, but somehow he seems to have maintained a distinction in his mind between "Germans" and "Nazis" more than some other Allied commanders.

I did not mean to imply that Warsaw was the first instance of terror attacks from the air against civilians. I just confined myself to WW2 in Europe, and it made sense to use a German example due to the suffering they experienced later in the war from Allied bombing. Certainly after Guernica and the other Spanish Civil War examples you cite, nobody should have been surprised. Douhet and other air power thinkers provided the theoretical foundation. (I find it interesting that he justified the destruction of industrial centers (i.e., cities) from the air using the same justification many use for the use of the atomic bomb -- that it will ultimately save lives by shortening the war.)

There's no doubt in my mind that use of the atomic bombs was meant to serve both goals: defeat of Japan without invasion, and signalling to the Soviets.

There is no need for that.

Avoid such distorted views on Holocaust victims, with the clear intention of Holocaust denial, or do it elsewhere.

Where is the denial to which you are referring to?

Where is the falsehood in my statement, and which part in particular are you affraid of? Did I say anything that is not correct?
Do you wanted me to say that these starved and sick victims that the allies found were infact gassed and did not die of other causes? Why would i be telling a lie?
You made a mistake in the regulations section by referring to "holcaust denial",
You sould have said "Any debate whatsoever on this topic is strictly forbidden, and no other view different from what "we" have establised so far will be tolerated". "." (period)

In other words, that topic is not to be debated at all, under any circumstance.
I won't touch this topic too much, (but if you insist) but I will bring you in a Historian in here who knows more about this then both you and me put together.
..and then we'll see.



This post has been edited by Der Maresal on January 21, 2005 02:00 am

- you use the term Holocaust in quotation marks, like it would be a false assumption
- you put the crimes of the Nazis on the same level with the crimes of the Allies
- now you say there were no gas chambers for killing inmates

I think your opinion on this is quite obvious. And no, I don't want you to bring here a Historian to "enlighten" us. So you are asked to avoid making any more claims of this kind.

To use the atomic bombes is war crime clearly.
In hiroshima city,Nagasakicity, you can see the sadness of atomic bombes.
This is forbidden act what ever the reason.
Miahi

If it is clearly a war crime, you should clearly be able to state according to which law or treaty or international convention it is a war crime.

We also want to know why it politically correct for some nations to possess Weapons of War Crimes (WWCs).

During WWII, there were two kinds of weapons whose usage would have been, by itself, a war crime: chemical weapons and biological weapons. Their usage was prohibited by the Geneva 1928 Protocol.

Gases and biological agents, as far as I know, _were_ used in war; the first ones by Italians against the Ethiopians in 1935-36, and the second ones, on a little more than experimental scale, by the Japanese against the Chinese.

Note, however, that only _using_ these weapons was a war crime. Storing them and keeping them ready was not. The USA, in particular, made it very clear that they would not break the Protocol by using gases first. They would, however, retaliate in kind if the enemy had used them first. In the event, the enemies of the USA did not employ those prohibited weapons against them, and so neither side broke the Protocol.

The Protocol did not apply to nuclear weapons.

So, just owning, without using, what you call "weapon of war crimes", was neither politically correct or incorrect; it was simply not a war crime.
Owning, and using, weapons that had not been prohibited by any convention, regardless of any creative definition you can come up with for them, was neither politically correct or incorrect; it was simply not a war crime.

We can agree that using atom bombs was barbaric and cruel; so were the rape of Nanking and the razing of Warsaw and the fire-bombing of Tokio and the bombing of Coventry and the bombing of Belgrade. However, some of these were also war crimes, and some other were not. Knowledge of the applicable treaties will tell you which were war crimes, and which were not.

USA brock the pact, if you and me have a box fight and we agree not to use the feet in this fight, and after a while i found a knife on the floor and stab you, is bracking the initial law, the ideea of this pact was not to afect civilian populations as it happened in the first world war, but it was the USA who moved on the next level of mass civilian distruction.

The idea was that war should not affect civilians? I'm afraid that's very naive and misguided. Find one treaty, convention or law of war applicable to WWII that stipulated that civilian populations are to be spared from acts of war. If you can. But you cannot, because they don't exist. Barbaric, and cruel and all that - but that's how things were.
And anyway, you can't blame the USA for being the first to "affect civilians", regardless of the fact that no treaty forbade that.

This post has been edited by Curioso on January 24, 2005 02:03 pm

Acording to Discovery chanel there was agreements not to bomb cities till one he111 dropt its bombs on London, after they responded whit an atack on Berlin, then Hittler retaliated, and so on. But there was an initial agreement.
But USA wipe out cityes just becouse that countryes liders whanted a few small islands, and they couldn't get them any way, the war was allmost over... God forgive them.

I believe you are taking too limited a view of what makes a "war crime". Historically, it has not been limited to violations of treaties and conventions. One good example of this is from the charter for the Nuremberg Trials:

The "crimes against humanity" section criminalizes "inhumane acts", makes no mention of treaties or international law, and specifically says that domestic law does not apply. Also, the "war crimes" section says that it refers to "violations of the laws or customs or war", while going on to define what customs it refers to. These are not necessarily violations of treaties or laws.

Even though I believe that the use of the atomic bombs was justified, it is hard to say that it was not "wanton destruction of cities". Several of the other conventional bombing raids made by the Americans would fit this definition too. Certainly it looks like "victor's justice" (that is "victor" with a small "v"... no offense intended to our moderator).

I'm afraid you are really wrong and poorly informed.

First thing, quoting Discovery Channel isn't going to cut. To be convincing, you need to cite either a bilateral agreement, in writing (you seem to think, wrongly, that there was such a thing between Great Britain and Germany - there wasn't) or a treaty or convention signed by the parties involved.
I know the history of those treaties, and I can tell you right now that you won't find anything like that.

Sure enough, in the summer of 1940 both sides had reservations about bombing enemy cities, and things went, very very roughly, as you recall from that Discovery Channel program. However, that was a _political_ decision each side thought about, and eventually took, on its own. Neither side was bound by an agreement or treaty.

If in 1944 there is a sniper perched in a bell tower, and I'm the officer in command of the tactical situation, I can decide to send in my men to dispose of the sniper, or I can call down 155mm arty fire and destroy the sniper, the tower, and the 11th-century cathedral. However brutal and barbaric the second decision is, it's within my rights and perfectly legitimate. If I refrain from destroying that church, it's not because a treaty or agreement forbids it, it's that because I choose to do so.
The same goes for bombing defended cities. For some time in 1940, Hitler thought he could convince the British to come to terms, and he also thought it would be suitable, to that end, to avoid bombing their cities. So he refrained from that. Then he changed his mind - and so long as the cities were defended, he was not breaking any law of war or treaty.

BTW, if you believe the Germans had an agreement not to bomb cities, how do you explain what happened to Warsaw in the first month of war?

Um, no. It's you. You are misinterpreting the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. Indeed, it does state that its jurisdiction is not limited to war crimes. It arrogates jurisdiction as to

- crimes against peace
- crimes against humanity

as well as to

- war crimes.

Now, the previous posters have claimed that using the atom bombs was a war crime. Claiming that it might have been a crime against humanity is a totally different charge, and indeed the IMT indicted the accused according to different counts (which means separate accusations). Mixing up crimes against peace and crimes against humanity and war crimes is a mistake.

If you want to argue that using the atom bombs was a crime against humanity, go ahead and do that.

As to the fact that war crimes are violations of either both of international laws, treaties, conventions _and_/or_ the customs of war, you are mistaken in making a distinction between the two. You see, the laws of war had been for a long time customary laws and part of the ius gentium, wherein customs had the force of laws. Indeed do you know the full name of relevant international treaty? It's Convention IV of the Hague (1907) and its full name is "Laws and Customs of war on Land". So it's just a manner of speaking.
Besides, it's very difficult to argue that the "customs of war" are different from what is stipulated in that treaty because, you see, the signatories acknowledged that the purpose of Convention IV was "to revise the general laws and customs of war, either with a view to defining them with greater precision or to confining them within such limits as would mitigate their severity as far as possible". Therefore, what's written there is what goes.
Unless of course, you are going to prove that the killing of civilians was not customary in war?
Even assuming that you try to prove that the size, means or ways of killing civilians by atom bombs was against some customs, you should remember that customary laws are based on precedents. Since the only atom bombs ever used in history had no precedents, that's going to be too difficult to stick.

Finally, I object to your interpretation of "wanton", and the text you quoted agrees with me. "Wanton" means "done on purpose with no good reason". Likewise, the text you quoted explains what "wanton" is: "devastation not justified by military necessity".
Therefore, burning down a village just because its whole population was Jewish, for instance, was a wanton act of destruction. Using the atom bombs in order to force the Japanese government to sue for peace had a "good reason" and a "military necessity". Therefore it was not wanton. Therefore it was no war crime.
The same holds for many other bombing missions.

Does "knowledge of the applicable treaties" gives you the answer to this question :

Is it ethically admissible to retaliate with war crimes to other war crimes ?

This post has been edited by Chandernagore on January 24, 2005 06:25 pm