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Post by themeddlingmonk on May 16, 2020 7:16:25 GMT
Overall, I liked this. The resolution felt very Doctory to me. To me, he'll always be the Man (or Woman) Who Finds Another Way. (also I too was horrified by Constance's opinions, the same way Flip was, but I suppose that was the point!) The weirdest thing to me was how July 1944 was treated as Constance's future. Her attempted return in Quicksilver was apparently some time after Criss-Cross, which was set in 1944, so it can't be that far off! I'm not sure why this was treated as "the near future" and not a "well, Mrs. Clark, are you staying or coming with us?" But that's really rather minor in the grand scheme of things! The Doctor actually says that the War will be over by the same time next year in Criss-Cross, so if he’s referring to VE Day then Criss-Cross would be set roughly in May meaning that Scorched Earth was only a few months ahead. And yeah Quicksilver also seemed to be a few months after Criss-Cross as Joel Fry’s character says he waited for months for the Doctor to come back after locating him at Bletchley. |
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Post by tuigirl on May 16, 2020 7:18:19 GMT
Devil's advocate here, but Sixie does say they'll get their comeuppance at the end. I think the fact that 1) they realized their wrongdoing (the punishment from hell) and 2) the fact that Six flat out says he's never been on their side before helps A LOT in this area. I'm no apologist, but I like that the Nazi POWs weren't mustache twirling evil villains. They were humans who realized what they did was monstrous and submitted themselves to whatever punishment lay in wait for them, tried to make good for the village (which they sort of did) and then drove off into the night with the implication they'll be caught and punished for their crimes. Scorched Earth felt like a "history is written by the victors" tale where everyone lies on a shade of gray and the Doctor and companions can only help bring out the innate good in everyone in the story and the Nazis helped drive that point home. It's a bit of Sympathy for the Devil. Well, I certainly agree on the mustache twirling villain bit. We had too many of those already and they have become a bit of a tired trope. So yes, having more layered villains is always a plus.
Still, I think the crimes committed back then were much too horrendous to just relegate to "they will get what is coming for them" in a side sentence.
But I do understand where you are coming from.
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Post by tuigirl on May 16, 2020 7:35:06 GMT
I find it utterly wrong that the Doctor teams up with them so easily and does not really question them and then HE LETS THEM GET AWAY. Personally I don't think we need worry about the Doctor's actions - like Churchill allying Britain with Stalin, he knew that sometimes making a choice between devils was the right thing to do, and here with many innocent lives at risk from the Furio and no time to lose, the Doctor took help from wherever he could get it.
And as for the ending, well, Klaus had a top-ranking officers' car and said he 'drove it into Paris in 1940', so even by 1940 he must have been a very senior Nazi (a General perhaps?) and if Klaus is someone that significant in History, the Doctor probably knew exactly who he was and what justice awaited him after the war. He did sort of imply so - and the Doctor usually knows these things!...
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What bothered me was that the only Germans we meet are a very senior officer and his aides (presumably guilty as hell of assisting/organising war crimes) and they're "better" in terms of their actions in the story than the only French Resistance member we meet, who is the villain. This was the sort of thing which nagged at me all through and helped to put me off. The only "traitor" we meet is an effectively innocent young woman, not one of the many who really did betray their country and their fellow citizens to the Nazis - discovering the crimes of one of them would have given the Flip/Constance argument much more meat - how would Flip have responded to that?
It would also have been very welcome to hear from a clearly good, heroic Resistance fighter, or someone who had lost family in one of the many mass shootings carried out in retribution for their struggles. And to have met some ordinary German soldiers, not Nazis, hearing what they'd seen (and had been ordered to do) in occupied France. Or maybe a little cut-away to hear what happened to Clementine's lover at Stalingrad. I think that a pure historical would have had the space to make these sort of contrasts and would have been a better treatment of the same basic story. Hmm. As for the Doctors actions and how this is handled see above.
But with the French Resistance, you raise a very valid point. That was another thing that was nagging me.
I am also not sure making the resistance fighter the villain here was the right choice. Yes, they most likely wanted to make a point in deviating from the norm in not making the Nazis villains. Because that has been done to death. However, fact is, simply put, that they WERE villains.
Suddenly having war criminals helping out the Doctor and rescuing a village while having the resistance leader going off the villainous deep end... yes, it is kind of unexpected and breaks with the established cliche, but I am also wondering if it sends the wrong message.
I wonder if this would have been better served as a story having a surviving Werewolf squad of indoctrinated youths (the short lived German "resistance" against the Allies, yes, they were called Werewolves) defending an insignificant place as the villains. And have them control the fire demon, and then some of them see the error of their ways while the leader dies horribly.
Then we could also have incorporated some normal German soldiers and how they felt.
And have the French Resistance being all heroic.
We could still have had the conflict and the extreme views in the French population and still have had the tension in the TARDIS team.
But maybe that was seen as too "cookie-cutter"?
I also agree on the point you make about the collaborators. Yes, many of them were women who collaborated "horizontally". And back in the day that would have been pretty bad, especially taken in all the now conservative views on sex and marriage and purity of the blood and so on. Maybe they just chickened out on making the collaborator a bit more darker shade of grey?
There is also only so much grey and grey stuff you can do and lengths you can go in the scope of this franchise I assume.
I don't know. This was a very good release, but there are a few points that just do not sit well with me.
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Post by tuigirl on May 16, 2020 7:37:05 GMT
I enjoyed it, liking how they turned on the head the usual somewhat trite “rebels good guy, Nazis bad guys” structure of these sort of things while at the same time keeping us well aware that most rebels are the better people than most Nazis. In a nutshell, that's a part of why I didn't enjoy it. I half expected this would be the direction of the story because it seems the fashion in fiction (not talking specifically about BF) to have to invert expectations (so much so, that now is the expectation), but still hoped it wouldn't be, not in this case.Yeah, basically.
As I said above, maybe having a fanatical German Werewolf squad as the villains would have been a better choice.
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on May 16, 2020 8:06:58 GMT
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Post by tuigirl on May 16, 2020 8:26:33 GMT
As per the usual, women bearing the brunt of the blame and retaliation. Most likely because back then, they were less likely to strike back.
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Post by number13 on May 16, 2020 9:47:25 GMT
Around 20 years ago, the acclaimed TV series 'Band of Brothers' depicted practically identical scenes with the Dutch Resistance (the liberated town, the joyous anthem singing, the revenge head-shaving of women) during the episode based on Operation 'Market Garden', the Allied advance into the Netherlands. Male collaborators were rounded up and shot without trial. In some parts of occupied Europe where the governments did not collaborate, Nazi atrocities were even worse than in France. We have friends whose parents lived through the Nazi occupation of their country. Many decades later they were still not comfortable meeting older Germans of the wartime generation. |
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Post by Stevo on May 16, 2020 10:10:43 GMT
I enjoyed The Scorched Earth although I often wonder is there a BBC mandate that every Doctor Who story has to have an alien monster? As this story would have been really good as a pure historical. There was enough drama and moral conflict in The Scorched Earth to drive this story, it didn't really need the traditional monster. There were villains and wrong doings on both sides during/after the German occupation of France in the 1940's so a conflict of opinions is pretty normal when a story touches on those subjects. Nothing in life is always black and white though so I'm glad The Scorched Earth didn't follow the usual stereotypes. By the numbers Nazi villain stories are ten a penny so it was clever to have a story that threw something different in to the mix, plus it also enabled the moral dilemma with Flip and Constance; companion conflict drama is something we don't often get in Doctor Who stories. The Scorched Earth did work well as a Doctor Who story though and shows once again that Sixie is still on top form, with Constance and Flip making themselves valuable additions to his legacy. I love them both!
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Post by number13 on May 16, 2020 11:02:40 GMT
I've wasted far too much time thinking/posting about a story I didn't even enjoy and will be selling on when the CD eventually arrives! So I will shut up now.
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2020 11:50:40 GMT
I feel it is a shame that so many modern Dramas these days feel that it is edgy or all grown up to make it an uncomfortable watch or listen for the audience. It's happening on the BBC where every adaptation of Dickens of Agatha Christie these days has to make us atone for the evils of our forebears, viewing through the prism of modern day sensibilities and liberal sentiments. Suddenly they have to have a subplot exploring racism and slavery and how we should be ashamed of ourselves, really. Jane Austen is suddenly a commentary on 21st Century sensibilities.
The crimes of the Nazis remain within living memory for many still whilst most of us are likely to have known at some point, someone who lived through the War. Terry Nation had the right idea to make an allegory of it, to allow private contemplation through the medium of fictional escapism. Once you are fairly knowledgeable of the horrors committed, you need to be careful of how it is covered and what kind of Drama you are covering. Entertainment?
When you decide to cover grey areas and blurred moral boundaries, I feel that you need to get the facts absolute. No room for faffing with Aliens and historical inaccuracies. And especially in a show which, next story, could be a comedy or space opera.
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Post by levi3o4 on May 17, 2020 0:14:38 GMT
I feel it is a shame that so many modern Dramas these days feel that it is edgy or all grown up to make it an uncomfortable watch or listen for the audience. It's happening on the BBC where every adaptation of Dickens of Agatha Christie these days has to make us atone for the evils of our forebears, viewing through the prism of modern day sensibilities and liberal sentiments. Suddenly they have to have a subplot exploring racism and slavery and how we should be ashamed of ourselves, really. Jane Austen is suddenly a commentary on 21st Century sensibilities. Well, it's drama's drama. It's not really meant to be comfortable in the first place - it's supposed to make you feel things, and preferably, make you think. And the social aspects are only uncomfortable insofar as you identify with the people being judged. It's an absolutely normal human experience to think that your parents, grandparents, etc got things wrong. And it's also normal for basically good people to do bad things. And that's not to mention actually, properly evil people. Exploring actual bigotry via period drama makes a lot of sense - there is a lot of bigotry to be found in human history. Given that you're criticizing "modern" dramas, it's safe then to assume that older dramas tended to paper over these issues - of course we should address them now. And as for Jane Austen being a commentary on 21st Century sensibilities, well, what do you think is the point of a remount? The most recent Austen adaptation, Emma, is the 7th adaptation of that novel. If you're going to make a new version of something that's been done numerous times, surely the point is to say something about the world. Any decent theater production of a classic play will take the well-worn material and try and say something new with it. Unfortunately, there are lots of people for whom the crimes of the Nazis aren't that well-known. Like Holocaust deniers, and young people who are increasingly exposed to Nazi propaganda, and nationalists who seem to think that the main thing wrong with the Nazis was that "they tried to take over my country specifically," as opposed to genocide and totalitarianism. If anything, the main problem with modern drama's coverage of bigotry and historical atrocities - and, I think, the real reason it can feel cloying or inappropriate to a lot of people - is that a lot of the "hey look at these terrible things" writing often feels like it's done by rote, by writers who recognize that that's how modern drama is done, but lack either the skills or the genuine interest to do it properly. I think it's absolutely fair to say that depictions of injustice, when written on autopilot, feel sanctimonious. And I think that Big Finish has issues with this - many of the audios I've listened to recently have felt like they cover "big issues" in the most perfunctory way possible, with little attempt at actual insight. Just a sort of, "well, that's what New Who does, and I have to write / script edit another 15 of these by the end of the year, so this is as good as it's going to get." The last time I listened to a Big Finish audio that dealt with these themes in a way that resonated with me at all was probably A Thousand Tiny Wings, and that was 10 years ago! Anywho. This isn't a defense of Scorched Earth, as I haven't listened to it, and would be shocked to discover that BF did a "but maybe both sides have a point" story about the WWII era at all well, especially given what I've seen in this thread. I just think that any criticism of drama that revolves around its engagement with social issues is misguided at best, and ought to be responded to. |
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Post by elkawho on May 17, 2020 1:50:10 GMT
I find it interesting that I feel I have to defend this audio. Especially the "villain". I actually did not find him "moustache-twirling" and I thought the choice to make him a French resistance fighter a brave and interesting choice. It highlighted the fact that the war poisoned everything, and it put a focus on what terrible things hate can do, even to good people. I had the feeling that he was a good man that became vengeful and twisted by the events he witnessed and the things he was forced to do in the war. It's a relatively new take on an antagonist in a Doctor Who historical, isn't it? I mean, we've had leaders that have had to make hard decisions based on their position, but an average person warped by events, that is much more powerful. As for the Constance/Flip falling out, I thought it was very believable. (Sorry number13). I didn't think this was going to be a friendship ending situation at all, but I can see it being a shock to Flip. She had no idea these things happened after the war, and I completely believe that she would have a hard time with the ease that Constance accepts it, even agrees with it. Flip does have a tendency to fly off the handle at times, so it is not out of character for her. They just both needed some time to cool off. Maybe Clementine was too sympathetic, it may have been better to have been more ambiguous regarding her relationship and whether or not she was a spy, but it doesn't change the fact that Flip and Constance were coming from different points of view and they needed time to work it out. It would have felt false if they hadn't. As for the German officers, it would have been easy just to make them terrible and evil Nazis. But that was the true horror of it. The Nazis were just people. Horrible, misguided, hateful people wrong in every way. Yes, these officers most probably did dreadful things and I knew that while I was listening. I did not find them sympathetic as characters, but I found the fear that they felt understandable and human. These choices that people are stating as reasons why they didn't like this story are reasons I thought it was a great one. |
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Post by elkawho on May 17, 2020 1:56:36 GMT
Around 20 years ago, the acclaimed TV series 'Band of Brothers' depicted practically identical scenes with the Dutch Resistance (the liberated town, the joyous anthem singing, the revenge head-shaving of women) during the episode based on Operation 'Market Garden', the Allied advance into the Netherlands. Male collaborators were rounded up and shot without trial. In some parts of occupied Europe where the governments did not collaborate, Nazi atrocities were even worse than in France. We have friends whose parents lived through the Nazi occupation of their country. Many decades later they were still not comfortable meeting older Germans of the wartime generation. My mother was a Jew born in Berlin and escaped when she was 13 years old in 1939. Her father committed suicide the year before she left, and she lived through Kristalnacht. As an adult she refused to go back to Germany, even though she was invited by the government and they were willing to pay her way. In 1989, when I was 20, she finally agreed to go, as long as she only went to places she didn't recognize from her childhood. We went to Bavaria (she had never been there as a girl) with my aunt and cousins. Even then she had a hard time. She said that whenever she would see someone her age or older, all she could think of was , "So what were you doing during the war?". |
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 17, 2020 3:07:54 GMT
I think a far more dramatic tale could have been told without the fire monster.
Basically, Flip and her 21st century morality versus Constance and her 1940s morality with the Doctor trying to stop Flip from going too far, helping Constance realise ahe’s given ino her hate, all with thr backdrop of both innocent and nasty resisters and an added grey dimension to the pair of surviving Nazis (make them conscripts if you don’t want to do a ‘redeemed ideological Nazi” story).
It would have been a nice juicy story for Colin, Miranda and Lisa to showcase their chops.
The Doctor was chums with Churchill and Mao, so forgiving war criminals is certsinly something he’s happy to do.
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 17, 2020 4:23:56 GMT
I feel it is a shame that so many modern Dramas these days feel that it is edgy or all grown up to make it an uncomfortable watch or listen for the audience. It's happening on the BBC where every adaptation of Dickens of Agatha Christie these days has to make us atone for the evils of our forebears, viewing through the prism of modern day sensibilities and liberal sentiments. Suddenly they have to have a subplot exploring racism and slavery and how we should be ashamed of ourselves, really. Jane Austen is suddenly a commentary on 21st Century sensibilities. The crimes of the Nazis remain within living memory for many still whilst most of us are likely to have known at some point, someone who lived through the War. Terry Nation had the right idea to make an allegory of it, to allow private contemplation through the medium of fictional escapism. Once you are fairly knowledgeable of the horrors committed, you need to be careful of how it is covered and what kind of Drama you are covering. Entertainment? When you decide to cover grey areas and blurred moral boundaries, I feel that you need to get the facts absolute. No room for faffing with Aliens and historical inaccuracies. And especially in a show which, next story, could be a comedy or space opera. What facts were inaccurate? that they did shave the heads of collaborators? That they did worse? Thst the victims of such treatment were inevitably women (because they simply shot the men)? That some Nazis realised how vile the ideology they once subscribed to was? Yuo’re right, none of those things are usually or comfortably part of light entertainment. You’re right, you should be unsettled by it because we are one missed meal, one angry shot away from doing exactly the same thing today. |
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2020 4:26:58 GMT
I find it interesting that I feel I have to defend this audio. Especially the "villain". I actually did not find him "moustache-twirling" and I thought the choice to make him a French resistance fighter a brave and interesting choice. It highlighted the fact that the war poisoned everything, and it put a focus on what terrible things hate can do, even to good people. I had the feeling that he was a good man that became vengeful and twisted by the events he witnessed and the things he was forced to do in the war. It's a relatively new take on an antagonist in a Doctor Who historical, isn't it? I mean, we've had leaders that have had to make hard decisions based on their position, but an average person warped by events, that is much more powerful. As for the Constance/Flip falling out, I thought it was very believable. (Sorry number13 ). I didn't think this was going to be a friendship ending situation at all, but I can see it being a shock to Flip. She had no idea these things happened after the war, and I completely believe that she would have a hard time with the ease that Constance accepts it, even agrees with it. Flip does have a tendency to fly off the handle at times, so it is not out of character for her. They just both needed some time to cool off. Maybe Clementine was too sympathetic, it may have been better to have been more ambiguous regarding her relationship and whether or not she was a spy, but it doesn't change the fact that Flip and Constance were coming from different points of view and they needed time to work it out. It would have felt false if they hadn't. As for the German officers, it would have been easy just to make them terrible and evil Nazis. But that was the true horror of it. The Nazis were just people. Horrible, misguided, hateful people wrong in every way. Yes, these officers most probably did dreadful things and I knew that while I was listening. I did not find them sympathetic as characters, but I found the fear that they felt understandable and human.
These choices that people are stating as reasons why they didn't like this story are reasons I thought it was a great one. *nods* It's the "ordinary evil". The tragedy of the commons. Everyone believes that someone else is going to do something about it, so in the end, no one does. A population trapped by the misery of a psychotic dogma. Bitterness and resentment so potent that it corrupted everything it touched. Someone had to be responsible. Someone had to be blamed. No, they had to be punished. A rage that lost all reason, all sense, and when the Nazis found their target, they went mad. The sheer horror of a situation that consents, condones, even encourages the worst aspects of human nature. War is seen to give permission for so much evil, which is why something like Foyle's War -- which tries to balance reason and justice in such a deranged world -- is so powerful. It's an incredibly difficult subject to cover, but worthwhile. Because you have the dyed-in-the-wool madmen, but you also have the wide variety of collaborators. Those who cooperated because they believed in the message, if not the means (or were unaware of the means). Those who cooperated because that was what was expected of them. Those who cooperated out of fear that resistance would destroy them. And those, perhaps the most complex to understand, who cooperated because they wanted to see if they could find humanity in their monsters. If not humanity, then maybe some sort of catharsis. Whether or not they succeeded or failed, well... That's a matter for history. The history of the world, perhaps, but also maybe the personal histories of families. A private conclusion. Either way, the word "Nazi" has become a stain. A mark of some of the most terrible deeds unleashed in modern history. The inhuman ideology of totalitarian fascism that came from deeply human emotions. A desire for control. Exercised from the darkest part of our natures. It's a reminder that such events are the product of many small steps, pushing that line just a little bit further each time. Rationalising the logic. Rationalising the prejudice. When you're engaged in war, it's easy to be pushed and it's easy to fall. And sometimes, it becomes so easy you don't notice... It's certainly a topic worth analysing in greater detail. |
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Post by number13 on May 17, 2020 9:33:09 GMT
The Doctor was chums with Churchill and Mao, so forgiving war criminals is certsinly something he’s happy to do. This is an example of "equivalence" which I find deeply offensive. Please learn some history before you repeat accusations like that.
I know that some on the far-left in the UK and the far-right in Germany like to describe Dresden (for example) as a 'war crime' but they do that for their own current political ends.
Please don't fall into that trap and never do anything to compare such actions (or for that matter the Blitz inflicted on us in the UK) with Nanking, Belsen, Dachau, the Death Railway and all the other horrors committed by the Axis powers, or Mao's Cultural Revolution and Stalin's gulags where untold millions were murdered for being politically the 'wrong' people. There's a massive, massive difference between the horrors of war on one hand and war crimes on the other. |
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Post by tuigirl on May 17, 2020 10:33:07 GMT
Around 20 years ago, the acclaimed TV series 'Band of Brothers' depicted practically identical scenes with the Dutch Resistance (the liberated town, the joyous anthem singing, the revenge head-shaving of women) during the episode based on Operation 'Market Garden', the Allied advance into the Netherlands. Male collaborators were rounded up and shot without trial. In some parts of occupied Europe where the governments did not collaborate, Nazi atrocities were even worse than in France. We have friends whose parents lived through the Nazi occupation of their country. Many decades later they were still not comfortable meeting older Germans of the wartime generation. My mother was a Jew born in Berlin and escaped when she was 13 years old in 1939. Her father committed suicide the year before she left, and she lived through Kristalnacht. As an adult she refused to go back to Germany, even though she was invited by the government and they were willing to pay her way. In 1989, when I was 20, she finally agreed to go, as long as she only went to places she didn't recognize from her childhood. We went to Bavaria (she had never been there as a girl) with my aunt and cousins. Even then she had a hard time. She said that whenever she would see someone her age or older, all she could think of was , " So what were you doing during the war?".Or NOT done for that matter. My grandparents were village farmers. They had no clue what was going on in the big picture. But even in my remote village everybody knew about the concentration camps. Maybe not of the death camps and the holocaust, but everybody was aware that people "disappeared". We have a famous story of one guy from the village hiding out in the woods for several years to escape from the Nazis because he refused to fight in the war (nobody reported him, but at the same time he was shunned in the village as a coward). And there was one husband who used to abuse his wife and children and they reported him and he was in the concentration camp for several months and came back mute and as a model citizen who died very soon after the war. And my great-granddad once spoke out against the war and Hitler in the pub and feared for his life for several weeks after (he was a WWI war veteran who had lost a leg in the war and was not exactly a fan of war to say the least. That is what lying in the trenches for years does to you).
The big issue was that people, while maybe not actively collaborating, did not speak out and stand up.
As Mr. Niemöller says in his famous poem:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
And this is right now as relevant as it was back then.
And I am not talking about these ridiculous "We have the right to die" Covidiot demonstrations.
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Post by tuigirl on May 17, 2020 10:44:24 GMT
The Doctor was chums with Churchill and Mao, so forgiving war criminals is certsinly something he’s happy to do. This is an example of "equivalence" which I find deeply offensive. Please learn some history before you repeat accusations like that.
I know that some on the far-left in the UK and the far-right in Germany like to describe Dresden (for example) as a 'war crime' but they do that for their own current political ends.
Please don't fall into that trap and never do anything to compare such actions (or for that matter the Blitz inflicted on us in the UK) with Nanking, Belsen, Dachau, the Death Railway and all the other horrors committed by the Axis powers, or Mao's Cultural Revolution and Stalin's gulags where untold millions were murdered for being politically the 'wrong' people. There's a massive, massive difference between the horrors of war on one hand and war crimes on the other. Well, the destruction of Dresden was an act of revenge. It certainly was eye for an eye and inflicted the same terror and death toll the Luftwaffe inflicted on London and other British cities, if not even more so, because of all the refugees.
Was it a war crime? That is up for discussion. It certainly was not necessary.
The UK government has since then admitted this and apologized and gifted money for the restoration of historical monuments.
Where do you draw the line between a war crime and "necessary" horror of war?
I personally see ANY war as a crime from the start. I was lucky that my great- grandparents and grand-parents came back from the war, even if all of them had missing limbs. Many others were not so lucky and had lost them. It is exactly as the 12 Doctor says in his Zygon Anti-War speech. That should actually be compulsory viewing for any politician and diplomat.
There just is no "just" war.
Everyone has ulterior motives.
And no, I do neither align with the Left nor the Right, I align with humanity.
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 17, 2020 10:55:09 GMT
The Doctor was chums with Churchill and Mao, so forgiving war criminals is certsinly something he’s happy to do. This is an example of "equivalence" which I find deeply offensive. Please learn some history before you repeat accusations like that.
I know that some on the far-left in the UK and the far-right in Germany like to describe Dresden (for example) as a 'war crime' but they do that for their own current political ends.
Please don't fall into that trap and never do anything to compare such actions (or for that matter the Blitz inflicted on us in the UK) with Nanking, Belsen, Dachau, the Death Railway and all the other horrors committed by the Axis powers, or Mao's Cultural Revolution and Stalin's gulags where untold millions were murdered for being politically the 'wrong' people. There's a massive, massive difference between the horrors of war on one hand and war crimes on the other. See, murdering one fella is bad, and as much a crime as murdering dozens. It’s only the punishment that varies, not the criminality of the action itself. Just because my neighbour burned down an orphanage doesn’t immunise me from prosecution for stealing one car. Churchill was a racist prick (Sorry “product of his time”) who hated unions to the point of sending squaddies to break up strikes by workers. But yes, Hitler was worse. Using ‘Hitler was worse” excuses everything short of genocide. So yes, Dresden was a war crime. Belsen was a war crime. The machine gunning of POWs was a war crime. Hiroshima was a war crime. Unit 13 was a war crime. The Kakoda Death March was a war crime. One side committee terrible crimes. Crimes that history cannot be allowed to forget. But history must not forget that the other side also committed crimes. If the Nazis performed the Dambuster raid, Barnes Wallace would be called a War Criminal. If the allies dropped V-weapons on Berlin, it would be ignored because Hitler did worse things. So you can take your offence at equivalence and boil it. |
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