lpetrich

OK, Radorth, try this on for size:

The Reformation resulted in several bloody Wars of Religion over which of Catholics and Protestants were right, of which the Thirty Years' War was especially bad. -- from this page.

That's a 24% population loss.

By comparison, the US's bloodiest war, its Civil War, killed about about 650,000 out of about 34 million people -- only 2%!

Radorth

Of course I was arguing that very few wars are just, needful, or meet NT criteria in God's eyes, and nobody gets much help from him. So your point is what?

Way off topic?

Rad

Philosoft

This seems to be a case of selective thinking. Are there also not examples of "extraordinary... events" that prolonged the war?

fishbulb

What sort of facts are you looking for? Are you looking for the fact that the Allies were willing to allow Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia in exchange for promises that he wouldn't attack them? Are you looking for the firebombing of Dresden which reportedly killed over 100,000 people? Are you looking for the fact that the United States didn't enter the war until 1941, only after it was directly attacked, long after the moral case for stopping Hitler became apparent? Are you looking for the events of Stalingrad, where almost none of the Germans who entered the city were ever seen again? (And I believe that about 5% of the Germans taken prisoner by the Soviets after the war eventually returned home. These were not all hardcore Nazis; many were conscript soldiers doing as they were commanded.) Are you looking for the fact that Allied countries refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Germany, either entirely or in significant numbers? Are you looking for the fact that Stalin and Hitler agreed to divide up Poland between them? Are you referring to Vichy France? Or are you more interested in the sort of casual battlefield atrocities that have been reported by soldiers on all sides, such as the common practice of simply shooting small groups of prisoners rather than bothering to take them to prisoner of war camps?

I am not for one moment suggesting that the Allies were moral equals to the Nazis, but they were neither as selfless nor as angelic as popular history remembers. They were pragmatic too, and they developed just as much of a bloodlust and penchant for revenge as anyone else who has suffered through a long, dehumanizing conflict.

I am well aware of the Marshall plan. Are you aware of the motivations behind it? It was certainly a nice thing to do, but niceness was not the motivating factor.

I said that certain events, had they not happened, may have prolonged the war. But I also said that other events, had they not happened, could have shortened it too. Not to mention all of the events which could have happened but didn't which could have changed the outcome.

What I said is that nothing happened that was so extraordinary that it requires a supernatural explanation. Exceptional things happen all of the time in war. In a war as long and intense as World War II, many such things can be expected to happen.

Demigawd

Does seeing Robert Plant on his Now and Zen tour count as credit hours on that one more course requirement? How about watching the movie Fists of Iron?

Radorth

A practice soon stopped, unlike the Nazi and Soviet attrocities, which only increased with time.

Heh. And I bet most of those who would see this as another "fault" are against the war in Iraq. I am, but for an ironic reason, that they did not attack us first.

Huh? You're claiming the Soviets are Christians now, or did you just forget what we were talking about? It wasn't the Allies, remember?

See above.

My friend, the U.S. would do just fine all by itself . All we'd have to do is give up our gas guzzling cars and keep the money. I'm sorry you can't see that and that you are among those who make sure no good deed goes unpunished. Yes, some countries are our friends for monetary reasons, and soon forget, yet we continue to take more than our share of responsibility for the world's problems.

Rad

Radorth

You can miss one class to see Plant, but the movie would have to be called Fistfuls of Irony , to count.

Rad

Daggah

Re: Dresden, Radorth says,

"A practice soon stopped, unlike the Nazi and Soviet attrocities, which only increased with time."

Are you even at all familiar with the Dresden attack? It occurred on the 13th and 14th of February, 1945, a mere 10 weeks before Germany's surrender. Not exactly a "practice soon stopped." And it's certainly arguable that Hiroshima & Nagasaki were merely continuations of this tradition... No, Radorth. It wasn't a practice soon stopped; it was 'merely' the most horrific act of the war, committed as part of the plan to bring Germany down to its knees. And given that the British were responsible for the first two waves (there were three), it's quite likely that vengeance over the Battle of Britain played a part as well.

So no, it was not a "practice soon stopped," and only someone incredibly ignorant of history would ever claim it was.

The fact of the matter is that, if public opinion about civilian casualties was anything like it is now, well, I'm betting WWII would've been a lot different.

Straw man...where did he claim soviets were Christians?

Radorth

I guess they ran out of incendiaries 10 weeks before the war ended.

From this site: http://www.meredith.edu/stones/newpage2.htm

Fire-bombing Dresden was a regrettable and overly vengeful decision, yes, but it qualifies as an anomaly when compared to Russian and Nazi atrocities. Skeptics love it because it is one of the few examples they can dredge up for WWII.

You totally missed the point, so I'll try to go slow, and explain it AGAIN. We began by comparing the atrocities of "Christian Civilization" with others in war, and since fishbulb apparently could not find anything comparable, he changed it to atrocities of the Allies- or just (rather conveniently) forgot what the issue was.

Well at least he didn't stoop to calling Hitler a Christian.

Rad

fishbulb

You said that World War II was the only just war. I merely pointed out that it was far less just and altruistically motivated than popular Western accounts portray. It was a lot more like every other war than many would care to admit.

The Soviet Union was one of the allies. More than that, it was the principal ally. The Soviet Union supplied most of the manpower, suffered most of the casualties, and won most of the victories. In the Pacific, the war was principally between the United States and Japan. In Europe, it was principally between the Soviets and the Germans. The Americans and British and colonial forces played what was essentially a supporting war, and they even purposefully delayed opening the Western front as long as they could in order to bleed the Soviet forces as much as possible, because the Cold War had already started well before the end of the Second World War.

If you want to change the topic to the conduct of Christians in war, we can do that. But Russians did not abandon Christianity in 1917 just because Lenin declared the state to be atheist. Most Soviet citizens throughout the entire life of the Soviet Union remained Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. They didn't have to re-convert in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

If you would feel better ignoring the conduct of the Soviets, there is still enough tarnish to apply to the Americans, British and other allies. I pointed out some already, but if you need more: the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The former is possibly militarily justifiable, but the latter is on pretty weak ground. Or how about the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps and the siezure of their property? Or fact that Britain and France continued to pursue peaceful relations with Germany for six years after the first concentration camps were established (for the Americans, it was eight years until they declared war), after Jews were stripped of citizenship and other rights, and even after Kristallnacht and the arrest of tens of thousands of Jews.

I don't want to turn this into a contest between who was worse: the Nazis or the Allies, because the answer is obvious. But being better than the Nazis is not an especially high moral standard to set for oneself.