Churchill's "Exterminating Attack"

[HansHill]

Splitting this off from Callafanger's Sonthofen thread as I don't want to derail that thread any more than I already have.

"...But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.”

- https://winstonchurchill.org/publicatio ... ng-policy/

The discussion in that thread was: What specifically about Churchill's speech precludes it from being a literal genocide of the German Nation? What specifically is to prevent a Holocaust Revisionist from applying Himmler-goggles to this speech and infer a literal genocide was planned / performed on the German people?

[Stubble]

Terror bombing civilians = genocide.

/shrug

[HansHill]

Fascinating! So far we have:

Messrs Bombsaway & Stubble interpreting that exterminate in fact does mean literal genocide. Nessie in the slop forum is still arguing it doesn't mean genocide, and something closer to "destroy" or "reduce" in a resource / logistics capacity.

FWIW I'm closer to Nessie's interpretation on this one, and so far the score is 2 v 2 on what "exterminate" means as per Churchill!

[Stubble]

Perhaps I should have said 'genocidal' not that the distinction means much to the people of Dresden, Frankfurt, Berlin etc.

Terror bombing was genocidal.

An important caveat;

Churchill was obviously being hyperbolic here.

Below you will see a comment from the user named 'Bombsaway' (reflect on his name here...) justifying terror bombing and saying it was justifiable. I will here and now link a documentary about the bombing of Dresden and remind the forum that Dresden was not a viable military target.

GENOCIDAL BOMBINGS OF INNOCENT GERMAN CIVILIANS

https://www.bitchute.com/video/02soBrUmNraR

[bombsaway]

Well Bombsaway, I will give you something - at least you are consistent!

Archie is right though, you have veered headlong into WW2 Revisionism that I would imagine many of your fellow travelers would be very uncomfortable to see. Actually I don't even have to imagine much, because already your buddie Nessie in the slop forum has just now defended "exterminate = destroy infrastructure".

Perhaps you guys should duke it out and ascertain exactly what "exterminating" means then come back to us.

I'll put this here because it's relevant

A stated aim of the bombings was to harm German industrial production, therefore Nessie's reading is also possible.

But let's assume it was about killing people. The goal was to win the war and it helped them win the war substantially. There was a valid military objective to the genocide, it saved lives in the long run etc.

If you want to understand my viewpoint here in full, you should examine what orthodoxy believes about the justifications for the Holocaust and weigh them against what the allies did.

The line we get repeatedly in Himmler's speeches is we did it because we don't want our children to have to deal with the avengers that inevitably arise when we kill their relatives. This is only one of the reasons. They are decidedly different from those given by Churchill. You probably don't appreciate this because you are incapable of taking the perspective that you are wrong and the Holocaust did actually happen.

[Wahrheitssucher]

…you are incapable of taking the perspective that you are wrong…

I have never yet come across a true-believer holocaust defender who has demonstrated that they themselves are capable of considering they might be wrong on the ACTUAL aspects of the undeniable and undenied ‘holocaust’ experience that revisionists are actually questioning and debating.
So the hypocrisy, psychological-projection and lack of self-awareness in this statement is humongous.

…the Holocaust did actually happen.

Cheeses of Lazarus!
This guy can’t understand the simplest of statements or arguments.

No serious person is arguing against that, you idiot!

[HansHill]

But let's assume it was about killing people.

And this lades and gentlemen is the whole problem with quotefare in this capacity. I think the point being made stands on it's own merits but for those in the cheap seats I will elaborate.

For the "exterminate = genocide" position to hold, it must assume the premise itself to be true a priori, that is, as Bombsaway states here, we have to assume it was about killing people before we even begin. We are not off to a great start, especially when we consider that Bombsaway has already acknowledged it possibly means something else, and that we are interrogating usage of a key word in its original English. "Exterminate = mass destruction / reduction in a logistic / military capacity" is a perfectly viable interpretation and doesn't require unsubstantiated external assumptions.

Secondly, it opens questions about what "exterminate" and "genocide" and even "to kill" mean, and the merits / morality of each given the war framing. For "Exterminate = Genocide" to hold, the Allied Apologist must thread the eye of the needle that the genocide was still good / necessary in the long term! A necessary genocide! As both Archie and I have said before, this asks very uncomfortable questions of the modern Nuremberg Liberal Consensus. Under the alt hype, none of this is necessary as it is simply understood as a routine military action.

Thirdly, the quotefare as proof of genocide strategy falls apart the moment Bombsaway requires external tools to support the position, viz-a-viz circular assumptions, mindreading and literal interpretations (ignoring that people did and still do just say things like this sometimes), whataboutism (Himmler's justification of the Holocaust as a rhetorical tool to support Churchill's justification for German genocide).

TL;DR

Churchill meant literal genocide is a weak position and throws Churchill under the bus in an attempt to bolster the Himmler Ausrotten attack vector

Churchill didn't mean literal genocide is a strong position that mirrors the Revisionist position that neither did Himmler for many of the same reasons.

[bombsaway]

But let's assume it was about killing people.

And this lades and gentlemen is the whole problem with quotefare in this capacity. I think the point being made stands on it's own merits but for those in the cheap seats I will elaborate.

For the "exterminate = genocide" position to hold, it must assume the premise itself to be true a priori, that is, as Bombsaway states here, we have to assume it was about killing people before we even begin. We are not off to a great start, especially when we consider that Bombsaway has already acknowledged it possibly means something else, and that we are interrogating usage of a key word in its original English. "Exterminate = mass destruction / reduction in a logistic / military capacity" is a perfectly viable interpretation and doesn't require unsubstantiated external assumptions.

You have a cartoon approach to history where words can only mean one thing. hilariously I think you use a priori reasoning to declare my own

it's a simple fact that the British in particular had killing lots of people as a strategy. That was why they chose indiscriminate bombing and used firebombing strategies, which were specifically designed to suck the air out of cities so people in the shelters would die too

Don't know what the point of all of this is. Genocide at base level "refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group". It's clear this applies to most conflicts to some extent, but there's a spectrum of severity.

[bombsaway]

Unlike Churchill, it must be said that Himmler clarified what he meant by extermination/uprooting

I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men – in other words, to kill them

so the case is clearer there

[Stubble]

The more I reflect on this, and the more I ruminate over how the terror bombing came about, initially to stoke retaliation from the Luftwaffe, and later to cause capitulation of the German people, I can't step away from the genocidal nature of indiscriminate bombings of civilian centers and leveling of entire cities.

Was the goal the annihilation of the German people as a whole? No, it was the destruction of the German spirit. The will of the German people to fight had to be broken.

With this in mind, when I reflect on what Churchill said in the passage in the OP, I have to consider that he may have been in ernest in advocating for the genocidal policy of terror bombing. There is also the dam busting to consider. So many innocent people were murdered by the western allies that it boggles the mind. To the people of Frankfurt or Dresden or any of the other cities absolutely annihilated by the allies, it was a genocide, of local populations if not of the German people as a whole.

Perhaps we should explore this further. To me, when Churchill referred to 'saturation bombing' as '[...]exterminating attack', I absolutely can not discount the idea of him being literal.

Germany didn't want the war, neither did the English. Churchill and his handlers had other plans...

[TlsMS93]

The justification will be that they were Germans, so exceeding all limits was justifiable because they were fighting against barbarians; German farmers supplied potatoes and sauerkraut to the soldiers.

I don't think Churchill's expression is genocidal in itself. The bombings were indiscriminate to provoke internal resentment against Hitler and accelerate the collapse of the war effort, just as in 1917-18, especially since there weren't that many Jews in the Reich to instigate communist strikes and uprisings.

That's why proving genocide is so complicated; words can denote intentions to a certain extent.

[bombsaway]

In an internal letter dated 25 Oct 1943, Bomber Command chief Arthur “Bomber” Harris argued

The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive and the part which
Bomber Command is required by agreed British-US strategy to play
in it, should be unambiguously and publicly stated. That aim is the
destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the
disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany.
It should be emphasised that the destruction of houses, public
utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an
unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and
at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are
accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy.
They are not byproducts of attempts to hit factories.

ditto firebombing of Japanese cities and atom bomb drops

ditto starvation of Germany in WW1

this sort of destruction became formally part of military doctrine in the interwar period, where the thought was the razing of cities with air power could insta win wars

But to think that Germany wasn't also operating with this logic is deeply naive, before the Nazis ever rose to power even

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_annihilation

What about the decimation of Leningrad, the deaths of 2 million Soviet POWS in less than a year on the heels of Barbarossa? Here alone you've 5x'd the civilian losses Germany suffered through the bombings, with the military objectives being far more questionable for these.

[HansHill]

This is so dishonest lol. We are talking about the Holocaust Bombsaway.

To equate the Holocaust with routine military operations because you need them both to be a form of genocide on both sides, shows you are clutching at straws. "Don't know what the point of all this is" - Archie and I have already told you; you've upset the Nuremberg Liberal Consensus, and equated "Genocide" with all forms of modern urban warfare. All so you can maintain Himmler was also being genocidal.

The good faith interpretation from these quotes, for most people, will be that Churchill was bloviating about strategic, resource and infrastructure exercises, and as Stubble has mentioned, speaking euphemistically. This is disastrous for you, because once applied to Churchill, we understand "Ausrotten" in it's proper context.

[bombsaway]

This is so dishonest lol. We are talking about the Holocaust Bombsaway.

To equate the Holocaust with routine military operations because you need them both to be a form of genocide on both sides, shows you are clutching at straws. "Don't know what the point of all this is" - Archie and I have already told you; you've upset the Nuremberg Liberal Consensus, and equated "Genocide" with all forms of modern urban warfare. All so you can maintain Himmler was also being genocidal.

The good faith interpretation from these quotes, for most people, will be that Churchill was bloviating about strategic, resource and infrastructure exercises, and as Stubble has mentioned, speaking euphemistically. This is disastrous for you, because once applied to Churchill, we understand "Ausrotten" in it's proper context.

How am I equating it with a military operation?

Himmler not only gave context for his usage of Ausrotten, he clarified his meaning directly.

I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men – in other words, to kill them

I'm not doing anything to "maintain an order", my beliefs don't come from a priori reasoning (eg you see the quote from Harris about how killing Germans was not a "byproduct" but their objective). You are using a priori reasoning to level this very accusation at me. You are a hypocrite on many levels.

[bombsaway]

BTW I noticed you said this to Nessie in the other thread

I'll post this here so Nessie has a fair chance to respond: Nessie how do you feel about Bombsaway's insistence that Churchill was speaking genocidally?

Completely wrong.

I won't say this is a lie, more likely a result of motivated reasoning, but I never interpreted Churchill's word in a precise way - I said in this thread "A stated aim of the bombings was to harm German industrial production, therefore Nessie's reading is also possible."