Having grown up with this story, I am fully aware both of the horrors of that period, and also the lack of attention it has received in histories of, and discussions about, the end of World War II. But I have two critical clarifications to make: language does not equal ethnicity, and ethnicity is rarely homogeneous, particularly in a heterogeneous country such as the former Czechoslovakia. In some points of the article, Mr. Douglas refers to the deportees as "German-speaking" but then conflates that with being ethnically German or just German. German-speaking is also conflated with being sympathetic to the political cause of the state of Germany during the war, and, by association, the Holocaust. Neither characterization is true.
Taking my own family as an example, while primarily German-speaking (family members spoke both German and Czech) genealogy traced back to the 15th century shows both Slavic and Germanic heritage, along with a variety of other ethnicities. The labelling of any group of individuals, as one singular ethnicity based on their language, hair color, or any other aspect is a slippery slope, as DNA testing is increasingly showing.
Politics loves simplicity, so by characterizing a group of individuals based on their language, it is easy to set one group against a recognizable "other." But historical analysis, in striving to clarify the the wrongs of policy and in an attempt to prevent it from happening again, should strive for clarity. Deportations and executions during the periods of mass expulsion were cloaked in "German-ness" but were really an excuse for the political forces in power to rid themselves of those they felt we undesirable in one way or another. Many citizens, with only a tenuous link to "German-ness" or really no link at all, were either executed or expelled in those post-war years when combat had ceased and peace supposedly reigned.
I thank Mr. Douglass for presenting the horrors of the expulsions, horrors that attend all forced migrations, and should never be condoned in a modern world. But I would ask for clarity in describing the excuses for the expulsions - for that is what they were. Excuses. That is the only possibility we have for ensuring that the same excuses will not be used again, in another place, by the "righteous" victors of war.
"Was the punishment against the Germans justified?"
Another phony question but I'll bite.
*It is Absolutely Justified*.
Millions of people fought and sacrificed to win struggles which
ultimately came to be known as World War 2. If these people, who worked
so hard to win the war are not in a position to pass judgment on the
Germans, then who is Douglass to pass judgment from atop an ivory tower
decades afterwards? - Professor Douglass who sacrificed nothing, knows
nothing, suffered nothing, risked nothing.
As we say in the military "You were not there". You risked nothing.
You won nothing. And so you are not in the position to affect the
outcome. You're judgment means nothing and that is the way it should
be. You have no say in whoever lives or dies in Iraq unless your finger
is on the trigger, your face is caked with a patina of powdered sand,
your life is on the line, and your courage is resolute to step into the
sandbox.
That is the ULTIMATE morality and you have no say in the matter.
You want a say?
Then fight and win the next war.
Otherwise, do not pretend that you have ANYTHING for us to listen to in
the outcome, let alone an outcome that was won over half a century ago -
one that you had no hand in winning.
Because Judgement is carried out irregardless of whether anyone at a safe distance thinks it's justified or not - and for many reasons (there is never a singular
reason) - it's carried out by those most qualified to Judge: by some who
lost loved ones, by others who saw their communities betrayed by an
ethnic minority, by still others who used their claims as an excuse to
rob those vanquished Germans, by millions of individual initiatives each
with their own agendas "in the moment".
Not by RM Douglass who lived decades after the fact, who has no claim
on the final judgment which has already been passed, and who clearly is
unfit to lecture about war as it is, rather than what he pretends it to
be.
There is no such thing as "innocence" in war. It is not, has never
been and WILL NEVER BE the talisman of invincibility that Douglass
claims it to be - it is a false idol for the ignorant and the obtuse,
who want that which only victory in war provides: "the Power to
Decide". But people like Douglass are too cowardly to achieve the
victory necessary to obtain this Power they covet - and they are envious of better
and braver people who can and do achieve it.
Some people call this the Grand Design or simply Reality, but it is
what it is: The ignorant, the obtuse, the cowardly cannot achieve
victory in wars - and thus cannot obtain the Power to decide the course
of history. It is the ultimate Truth in the fate of humanity. And it
is only natural that weaklings like Douglass rebel against this Truth,
hiding behind the Big Lie that makes up academia's so-called "Moral
authority".
True Morality is never so cheap.
War is visited upon everyone including "women and children" - from
the newly born to the 17 year old Army recruit to the 80 year old
grandmas who scream "Heil Hitler!" and "Make Love not War". The German
minorities understood this when they were "winning". They came to
experience it first hand when they were losing, protests of "Innocence"
notwithstanding.
If I were to accede to people like Douglass, I'd only contribute to
losing the next wars and my family will suffer the same fate - and
rightly so; those are the consequences of losing.
That's what it means to lose a war; that's the way it was yesterday,
the way it is today, and the way it will be tomorrow. The Reality of
war is the most absolute moral authority humanity has to offer because
it strips away the Lies and false ideologies perpetuated by the likes of
Douglass. The Truth is not a casualty of War...quite the contrary, War
is a crucible that tests the Truth of all human endeavors; ideology,
politics, economics, culture and civilization.
To quote one of the most decorated marines in our history, Smedley Bulter : "war is a racket".
Your pleonastic ramblings trying to equate critisism of abhorent behavior in war with cowardice proves you're a moron. Your last paragraph that somehow war tests the truth of all human endeavors, and if something is unfit to survive it wont survive seems like a hybrid of thought between genghis khan and eugenics. You are one sick, warped human being. Almost as sick as the banksters and internationalists who bankroll both sides of these wars, knowing they can count on suckers like you to think they're doing something honorable and poetic to keep the bullets flying, and make their wallets fatter.
Every war from WW1 on has been a sham, just internationalists and bankers playing with the lives of millions to further their own interests, as they see themselves as the chosen few who are entitled to pull the strings safely from above the carnage, horror, and misery they cause.
Just the fact that you're somewhere spewing this nonsense disproves the last line of your idiotic post.
However which way you want to sanctify your views on war is
immaterial.
The point remains: You will do nothing because you have neither the will, nor
the competence, nor especially the courage to back up your
convictions. You scream at the darkness or bemoan fait accomplis that are
decades old, in the safe knowledge that your protests have no substance behind them. And there your protests will end with no action of
measureable worth, no accomplishments of note. Perhaps even you and Douglass "hope" that your entreaties will be ignored, vapid as they are. Because where your convictions have consequences, you've shrunk, because your incompetence is embarrassingly apparent.
Embarrassing to you.
Deadly to us.
You wanted to close Gitmo. Did that mean you were willing to let these
terrorists run free in America? No other country would take them. And who will bear the cost of having to recapture them? Or even pick up the pieces?
You wanted the drone strikes to end. Did that mean you would order
American officers to risk their men, only to have them answer to the next-of-kin as to why a needless raid was ordered to satisfy the self-righteous
pieties of another dumb liberal? Or why air support was denied given the
hand-wringing of a JAG officer more concerned with your safe-at-home opinions than with the lives of the men under his charge?
You wanted elections in Pakistan. Did you not consider that this would mean the weakening of a barely-secular Pakistani Military to be placed further under the thumb of an Islamic terrorist matrix and ISI, thus cutting our troops from their supplies?
You wanted an end to the Afghan War. Did you never consider that this meant abandoning the population to the ravages of a vengeful and rejuvenated insurrection, one that was allied to Pakistan, a nuclear and now hostile, "Democratic" Islamic state?
You claimed Iran was not a threat. The Navy has already fought a war with Iran in the 1980s, has been de facto at war with them ever since and has honed its SGP scenarios mimicking suicide inbounds similar to the Vincennes incident. And Iran has done much worse in the past decade to each service with shaped charges, snipers, rat lines and financial networks feeding the terrorists. Were you unaware? Or did you not care?
Your man, Obama, has already regurgitated the nonsense you have regurgitated above. Gitmo, Drones, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, War for oil, and more.
Where are his convictions now that your contretempts have all gone for naught. Where are his grand pronouncements now that he must face the consequences of his phony convictions? Where are your convictions which were so adamant not long ago? Why don't you take Obama to task? Never mind taking up a weapon and staking your life to what you claim to believe (You don’t even know how, do you?); you can't even stand up to Obama who has rejected and contradicted - in deed if not in word - everything you liberals have claimed was sacrosanct.
Gitmo is still open. Drone sorties and actual strikes have grown five to
ten fold in various theaters. To avoid "violating" the civil liberties of terrorists, Obama has instead slaughtered them wholesale - families and all - with no trial and no justification of law (as if you honestly cared to begin with). Even Bush had his Justice Department inform Congress and inform them of the legal merit of individual strikes. Obama has even replaced soldiers with "Mercenary" contractors to man the Iraqi base/camps so as to allow the appearance of American troops leaving Iraq. His administration even claims Iraq as his own victory as if he had never called it "illegal" and "lost". I thought Iran was our friend but I don't see the Navy's posture towards Iran changing - in fact, I see materiel heading to Diego Garcia, Iraq, Kuwait, Djibouti, etc.
You can lecture men at arms on the industry of war and have no semblance of its necessity to your quality of life or that of billions of others with the improved logistical network, engineering and research departments, Sat and GPS systems, the innumerable measures and maintenance necessary to ensure trade and commodities across vast distances, etc in time, on land, at sea, in space, even the fact that you are on the internet to begin with. You can dismiss the deadly reality of the need to survive but the truth is you've never really considered how fragile this societal world we're holding together really is. You’re like one of those “indestructible” blowhard kids who’s never contemplated the mortality around you, let alone your own.
You can blithely accuse people like us with playing with millions of lives, when the truth is that it is YOU who makes grand policy statements and assumptions without first considering or contemplating the implications of what you say and do.
Children no older than 12 are in the field retrieving weapons and ammunition
for insurgents in a town in the Salah ad Din Province of Iraq under your
overwatch who's next leap is being stunted with direct fire being fed by this
replenishment.
Your alternate is under threat as it requires your immediate support.
Do you understand the stakes?
Do you understand the consequences?
Do you stay up at night thinking about such scenarios beforehand, going over
training, discarding some options, grasping others you've learned, hoping it
will make a difference, knowing it might not?
Do you lay the groundwork with the locals, making sense of the situation and customs and their relationships with all the convening forces and agendas when even the locals themselves don't understand it? Training, giving and receiving ops briefs, gathering, reporting, dispensing of intelligence - highlighting some of it, disregarding most of it, knowing much is yet unknown?
Do you spend breaks and down-times thinking about your priorities, your men, the local militia, the enemy, the terrain, the corner, the nest, the mission objective, the family at home, the Flag and the Chain of command? Did you keep the faith and battle the doubts? Did you experience the exhilaration in spite of the fear?
The bell has rung.
Do you shoot the children?
Do you let them go?
If you let them go, the enemy will be able to continue this fight. They might
win. Insurgents winning means your men are dying, the locals suffering, and the locals who sided with you suffering most. Even IF you ultimately prevail, the fight is prolonged, the butcher's bill is lengthening, you will have to
retrieve and help bury the resulting dead locals, offering condolences and assuring the community and your own men that they will still win, that the insurgents will not prevail and gain the Power to Decide.
And the man who trusted you with his life and died because you decided to prolong the fight and let the "Innocent children" go? You will answer to his family and friends, saying to their faces that the tradeoff was justified - and there will be no escape from this final duty save death in battle, or a cowardly suicide.
The consequences are far-reaching. From ignorant people in anonymous
places who will gleefully call you a 'Murderer', to insurgents who will
continue this tactic should they discover that you won't shoot "Innocent children".
Are they "Innocent"?
Or is "Innocence" just another claptrap used by the ignorant to stoke
their inflated egos and justify their small and miserable existence?
Why do such people have the Power to Decide over events that they can only
pretend to know about?
Do they even have this Power?
How can they?
Who has the Power to Decide at the moment when Reality dictates that a decision must be made on the field?
Not you.
Why?
Because you were not there.
You were neither brave enough nor strong enough to pass the rigors necessary to be there in the first place: as a US soldier with more Power to
Decide than most. You were not present in any capacity be it civilian, military
or paramilitary - enemy or ally. You cast not a single vote 'for' or 'against'
because you were absent when it mattered most - a mercy that was self-inflicted by your own choices in an inconsequential life. You were at home sitting meekly and shouting at the darkness without a staked claim in this fight and you have no one to blame but yourself.
You had no 'say' then.
You have no 'say' now.
All you and Douglass are capable of doing is smearing the name of others after the fact with "Narratives" in order to substitute Fiction for Reality, where there are decisions you shudder to consider, for situations you pretend don't exist
If I were to accede to people like Douglass, I'd only contribute to losing the next wars and my family will suffer the same fate - and rightly so; those are the consequences of losing.
Gotta love that "might makes right!" mentality. Of course if we take you seriously, we have no moral grounds for criticizing the Nazis or the Communists.
You people really don't have an original thought in your heads, do you?
"Might and "Right" are synonymous.
If you are "Right" you become "Mighty".
And the "Mighty" can only sustain themselves if they continue to be "Right".
Apply that to any walk of life.
A doctor who makes the right decisions more often than not will save more lives. A soldier who makes the best decisions quickly under difficult circumstances will accomplish his missions more readily. An engineer who posits the correct recursive algorithm with which to simplify complex subroutines will make his company more money.
Those who are "Mighty" become so for a reason.
The inverse is also true.
If there are flaws within a society, system, method, design, etc those flaws are a Weakness which endangers the overall system - sometimes to a fatal degree.
Unless the "Wrong" or the "Weakness" is corrected, it will continue to produce inefficiencies or threaten catastrophic failure.
Make the "Wrong" choices and it will make you "Weak".
If you become "Weak" enough, you will die.
Socialism, whether in its Nazi or Soviet form, ultimately died and was proven "Wrong".
American Socialism will have to be pared back if not dismantled if the country is to survive.
It's not about your pea-brained "Morality".
If anything, it's about the Ultimate Morality called "Reality".
Physics, Math and Consequence don't care about your precious pretensions. Neither will billions of people the world over should their food supplies and energy reserves dwindle.
I can maintain and provide sustenance to these people. Feeding families, protecting them under the Aegis of the Military's Nuclear and Conventional shield of revenge, and securing a brighter future...this is true power. This is "Might" from those who are doing something "Right".
Hence, "Might" indeed makes "Right" because only those who are "Right" will remain "Mighty".
The cliche "Might does not make Right" is an empty-headed cliche meant to inflate the egos of otherwise worthless and "Weak" individuals who have no other recourse to justify their existence - like Severn no doubt.
You ARE a Nazi. What was the point of all the fighting - which you glorify- if the result is identical in any case? Why should any of us care which group of brutal thugs call the shots?
You people really don't have an original thought in your heads, do you?
Because "Might makes Right" is such a staggeringly original thought?
A doctor who makes the right decisions more often than not will save more lives. A soldier who makes the best decisions quickly under difficult circumstances will accomplish his missions more readily.
What does any of this garbage have to do with the mass murder of innocent civilians as described in the story?
I can maintain and provide sustenance to these people. Feeding families, protecting them under the Aegis of the Military's Nuclear and Conventional shield of revenge, and securing a brighter future...this is true power. This is "Might" from those who are doing something "Right".
What does any of this garbage have to do with the mass murder of innocent civilians as described in this story?
Physics, Math and Consequence don't care about your precious pretensions. Neither will billions of people the world over should their food supplies and energy reserves dwindle.
What does any of this garbage have to do with the mass murder of innocent civilians as described in this story?
After reading your responses Art, it's pretty clear that you must be one of the biggest punks the world has ever known. You don't think I have the courage to back up my convictions son? I'll cut you open from bowel to stern. You are an enemy to humanity, and as such, according to your logic, I 'd be justified in protecting the liberty of us all from totalitarian supporters such as yourself.
By the way, where did your little peanut sized brain come up with the idea I'm a Obama supporter? I never support globalists and puppets. You talk about Iran in the 80's? Why not talk about Iran in the 50's when Kermit Roosevelt and Dulles were running operation Ajax so British Petroleum could keep it's oil. Of course, a retard like you dosen't know too much about orchestrated coups, and installing a thug like the Shah to brutalize it's people for 20 years. Without that interference, Khomeni would have stayed in France.Perhaps you should read some George Washington boy, you know, where we should stay out of the affairs of other nations.
So keep following your puppet masters little boy, as long as they have sheep like you to graze in the grass fields, they'll be able to accomplish their sinister agendas.
And which drones are you talking about, the ones spying on Nebraska cattle ranchers?
And since you inferred I don't know how to use a weapon, you're free to look me up anytime son, and see how well i handle my Spyderco.
