Nashwan is correct in that there's no direct forensic evidence or a paper trail showing the Brits used gas in the '20s against Muslims. There are just claims and denials.
In other words there's no evidence, just claims, largely since Gulf War I, and largely by campaigners against sanctions (and war) against Iraq.
British historian David Omissi, author of Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939
Nothing about gas from him, though, I don't think.
Again, the source for Wotan's piece is the World Socialist Website, as part of their campaign against the coming war in Iraq in 2003. Hardly an unbiased, or even credible, source on events in Iraq in the 1920s.
British and French occupation of the Middle East following WW1 is one of the primary reasons for Muslim hatred of the West present day.
And yet strangely it's not the British and French they mainly hate, it's the US.
Strange, that.
In fact, Britain and France both have long histories of very good relations with the Arab countries.
And British troops seem to be operating in Iraq now with much less hatred directed against them than the US troops.
(And I'm not blaming the US for the hatred the US receives, just pointing out Wotan's assertion is wrong)
he British made arrangements with Arabs in which the Arabs were lead to believe that if they entered the war on the side of the British and made attacks against the Turks they would get control over their own destiny.
That didn't happen and British and French used extreme measures to put down any discontent.
Only they did get control of their own destiny. Iraq, for instance, gained independence in 1930.
There was no real plan to invade Britain. It wasn't going happen it was a pressure tactic (threat of invasion) to bring the war to Britain to a negotiated end.
Sealowe was a fraud.
Hardly a fraud, more an impossible dream.
The Luftwaffe was ordered to "create the conditions" for an invasion, which they failed to do. If they had succeeded, then Jodl's idea of an invasion of a Britain that was already collapsing might have been possible.
But Sea Lion aside, the Luftwaffe bombed Britain to try to try to force us out of the war. That's no different to what the RAF did to Germany.
If the Germans weren't attempting to "Bomb their way to victory", what exactly were they doing? And why did it leave 40,000 civilians dead?
Those were vengeance weapons, in retaliation for indiscriminate British bombing and ineffective at that.
You mean the Germans weren't trying to bomb their way to victory with them? You mean the vast industrial resouces were devoted to them purely out of revenge, rather than as an attempt to gain some advantage?
Still, it's the same principle they applied to the
untermensch, I suppose. Kill as many as possible, even if it costs us to do it.
That's the difference between the allies and Germany. The allies wanted to win the war, the Germans wanted to kill those they hated. Don't ascribe pathological Nazi motivations to Britain or the RAF, please, they were intent on winning, not destroying those they hated.
Nonsense the civilians (laborers of the war machine) were the targets.
Nonsense, the people of Rotterdam, Warsaw, London, Coventry, Leningrad, etc were the targets.
Nonsense again the British made a strike on Germany and that lead to retaliation by the Nazis.
No. Around the 3rd week of August the Germans began intensifying their night attacks against Britain, all (and their were quite a few) "accidental" attacks against London were part of this effort, as were the quite deliberate raids on provincal cities in Britain.
Civilian casualties from German bombign were 258 killed in July, 1075 in August.
To put that in context, by the end of 1940 Britain had killed somewhat less than 1,000 in Germany, in other words the German "retaliation" on London came after casualties much less than the British had already suffered (it seems odd to retaliate against an enemy you have already caused more suffering to)
Economic warfare was also conducted by sea, so what?
So that was the German plan, to bomb their way to victory.
Reprisals for what? For what the British did...
Um, Jodl is saying we'll bomb them and say it's reprisal. Not everything the senior Nazis said was true, you know...
Jodl was planning terror raids, and the justification for them, from very early on.
With the amount of resources and efforts put into the de-housing strategy its reasonable to conclude that had those resources been put to better use it would have a had a meaningful impact on the out come of the war. Rather then the neglegible effect de-housing achieved.
Couple of assumptions there, 1 that it was neglegible, the other that something else would have been better.
I'd just like to point out that every major air force in WW2 started off with attempts at precsion bombing, and switched over to area attacks on cities.
The Germans did it, the RAF did it, and despite their denials, the USAAF did it, both in Europe and Japan (and in Japan to an extent not seen before).
And the British only chose to do so after having first hand experience of being on the receiving end of both types of attack.
What are you qualifications to judge the effectiveness again?
What's that suppose to show?
It's supposed to show a sense of proportion. The bombing campaign was one of the minor killers of the war, certainly less damaging to the civilian population than fighting a war in heavily populated areas, certainly less damaging than assaulting cities with ground troops, certainly less damaging then allowing the Nazis free reign.
The Nazis were the bad guys, evil is no surprise from them. Bomber Command wasn't saving Jews or relieving the siege at Leningrad.
Wasn't it? Bomber Command was hitting the enemy, giving them less resources to murder Jews or lay siege to Leningrad.
It was fire bombing women and children.
It was firebombing cities.
To quote Denis Richards' biography of Charles Portal, head of the RAF:
"his objective was to demolish factories, communications, the homes of the workers, the apparatus and amenities of major urban life. It was not to massacre civilians, who, he hoped, would retreat from the urban areas to the countryside with consequent loss of production, or, if they remained, suffer loss of morale from hours spent in shelters and from the reduced amenities of life."
Britain evacuated many women and children from the cities, I think they had reason to believe the Germans would do the same (perhaps the German railways were too busy moving other groups of civilians around?)
The fact that they only account for 1% (your numbers) of civilians killed only shows they weren't as good as it as the Nazis
No, it shows it wasn't the aim.
I don't recall hearing of British Einsatzgruppen following the British army into Germany and liquidating civilians, German prisoners being sent to camps and murdered, or even bombing raids in areas already captured.
In other words, the British stopped killing Germans as soon as they had surrendered, whereas the Germans intensified their killing after surrender.
That's the difference, not in numbers killed, but in that the British attacked German cities, the Germans murdered people, soldiers and civilians alike, who had surrendered themselves into German care.
No matter how evil the nazis were there's no reason to belive they forced the Bomber Command into the straregy Harris had chosen.
Forced, no. Led the way, yes. Instructed in the most effective methods, yes.
The air war in the west tied up LW day fighters for the most a part. The Bombing campaign didn't open up more fronts. It sinply extended the LW.
Look at German bomber and close support aircraft production. Look at artillery production, where a large proportion went on anti aircraft guns to shoot down bombers.
The Germans increasingly
reacted to the allies, and a side that spends it's time reacting is going to lose.
Instead of offensive support for the army, the Luftwaffe became a defensive force (that didn't succeed in defending either)
The allies didn't necessarily need more tanks. The resources saved from the heavy bombers could have been employed anywhere, from fighters and fighter bombers to ships etc...
They didn't need more fighters, or fighter bombers, either. They had all the ships they needed too.
What the western allies lacked is ways of bringing their strength againsg Germany. The bombing campaign gave them another front.
