08-05-2007, 03:39 AM | #1 |
Demiurge
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 36,368
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The sinking of the Bismarck
I watched the James Cameron documentary about this today, didn't catch the beginning.
A couple of the German survivors were along for the expedition. It was a miracle they survived. They were picked up from the water by British ships, and they say, were treated with "respect", not as enemies. That struck me. Yet again. How much we have changed. (don't bother with they were "uniformed" or blah, blah, blah). Point is we've forgotten what it is to be the good guys. and that's the trap that was laid for us. |
08-05-2007, 04:01 AM | #2 | |
Charon
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On the other hand, things were not so civilized on the Eastern front. The Germans were absolutely brutal with the Russians and Poles. And vice versa. After D-Day there was a group of Polish soldiers fighting on the Western Front with the Allies and they were supposed to transport a group of German POWs to a new location. When they got to the destination, there were only a few POWs left. They told the US commanders that the other POW's "died along the way". When asked how the remaining POW's survived, they replied "We ran out of bullets". In the Pacific theater, Japanese POW's did not fare well in US camps. This is not a well-known part of our history, but those camps were brutal. And that is not to mention the detention camps for US citizens of Japanese ancestry. There was most definitely racism in the US towards the Japanese relative to the Germans and Italians.
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"... the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice." Martin Luther King, Jr. |
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08-05-2007, 04:07 AM | #3 |
Senior Member
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oh brother.
"don't bother with they were uniformed, or blah blah, blah"? I'm pretty sure we treated uniformed Iraqi soldier POW's just fine in 91 and 03. Yes, there's a big difference. I do have concerns with with our policies regarding "enemy combatants", gitmo, waterboarding, etc, but please, using the sinking of the Bismark to prove your point just doesn't work. Try getting less hysterical on this issue, there are shades of gray here. |
08-05-2007, 04:18 AM | #4 | |
AKA SeattleNewt
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There was also the situation in 1942 when German spies were found in the U.S. They were tried before a military commission, approved by FDR and upheld by the SCOTUS, and six of them were executed by electrocution. |
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08-05-2007, 04:25 AM | #5 | |
Demiurge
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Last edited by MikeWaters; 08-05-2007 at 04:31 AM. Reason: I will keep my curse words in my head. |
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08-05-2007, 04:30 AM | #6 | |
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Doesn't that work into your definition of a mullah somewhere? Last edited by MikeWaters; 08-05-2007 at 04:31 AM. Reason: edited quote |
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08-05-2007, 04:33 AM | #7 | |
Charon
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Another interesting thing is that when a German U-boat would sink a US merchant ship, the U-boat would generally surface and put out a distress signal so that other US boats would come and rescue survivors. Allies generally did the same thing and if a US ship was nearby they would sometimes come and rescue German survivors. Not so in the Pacific. There was a movie clip taken near New Guinea that was shown in the "news reels" that would circulate in US theaters to be shown prior to movies. It showed US planes strafing Japanese sailors who were in the water clinging to debris after their ship had been sunk. The narrator said "Our boys are making sure these Japs don't fight again!" Audiences cheered.
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08-05-2007, 04:37 AM | #8 | |
AKA SeattleNewt
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08-05-2007, 07:02 AM | #9 |
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Naive.
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08-06-2007, 04:47 AM | #10 | |
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