U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

[Leoreth]

To me 'Total War' means a country using all of it's resources against an enemies army and it's civilian population. Of course Nazi-Germany was waging total war against Britain. And Russia, most of all.

For me, too. Now I wonder if there's a different connotation to the term in Germany and the Anglosphere respectively. Off to the history forum! *Batman jingle*

 

[Takhisis]

Ye-es...

Just ignore him and keep walking, he'll stop following you after a while.

 

[Old Hippy]

Killing helpless people isnt war. It is MURDER.

[snip]

And if bombing London was total war, then so was bombing Dresden.

ssshhh... "don't mention the war" especially Dresden... they get their memorial next month for bomber command ... after 60 odd years

 

[MobBoss]

Killing helpless people isnt war. It is MURDER.
Germany did indeed practice total war, but not against everyone.

Well...they practiced it against everyone they could reach...

and again your wrong =)
Cyanide is NOT nerve gas. Showing you know very little about either subject.

I think you know very little as well. Just from the wiki on it, its evident that Germany had every intention of using nerve agent as a weapon, but were unlucky in timing and enemy action. From the wiki:

In 1939, a pilot plant for tabun production was set up at Munster-Lager, on Lüneburg Heath near the German Army proving grounds at Raubkammer. In January 1940, construction began on a secret plant, code named "Hochwerk" (High factory), for the production of tabun at Dyherrnfurth an der Oder (now Brzeg Dolny in Poland), on the Oder River 40 km (25 mi) from Breslau (now Wrocław) in Silesia.

The plant was large, covering an area of 2.4 by 0.8 km (1.5 by 0.5 miles) and was completely self-contained, synthesizing all intermediates as well as the final product, tabun. The factory even had an underground plant for filling munitions, which were then stored at Krappitz (now Krapkowice) in Upper Silesia. The plant was operated by Anorgana GmbH, a subsidiary of IG Farben, as were all other chemical weapon agent production plants in Germany at the time.

Because of the plant's deep secrecy and the difficult nature of the production process, it took from January 1940 until June 1942 for the plant to become fully operational. Many of tabun's chemical precursors were so corrosive that reaction chambers not lined with quartz or silver soon became useless. Tabun itself was so hazardous that the final processes had to be performed while enclosed in double glass-lined chambers with a stream of pressurized air circulating between the walls.

3,000 German nationals were employed at Hochwerk, all equipped with respirators and clothing constructed of a poly-layered rubber/cloth/rubber sandwich that was destroyed after the tenth wearing. Despite all precautions, there were over 300 accidents before production even began and at least ten workers died during the two and a half years of operation. Some incidents cited in A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare are as follows:
Four pipe fitters had liquid tabun drain onto them and died before their rubber suits could be removed.
A worker had two liters of tabun pour down the neck of his rubber suit. He died within two minutes.
Seven workers were hit in the face with a stream of tabun of such force that the liquid was forced behind their respirators. Only two survived despite resuscitation measures.

The plant produced between 10,000 and 30,000 tons of tabun before its capture by the Soviet Army.[13]

In 1940 the German Army Weapons Office ordered the mass production of sarin for wartime use. A number of pilot plants were built and a high-production facility was under construction (but was not finished) by the end of World War II. Estimates for total sarin production by Nazi Germany range from 500 kg to 10 tons.

During that time, German intelligence believed that the Allies also knew of these compounds, assuming that because these compounds were not discussed in the Allies' scientific journals information about them was being suppressed. Though sarin, tabun and soman were incorporated into artillery shells, the German government ultimately decided not to use nerve agents against Allied targets. The Allies did not learn of these agents until shells filled with them were captured towards the end of the war

 

[kramerfan86]

Basically sounds like Germans only didnt use it because of a "proto" MAD idea, which was based on the false idea we had those compounds too.

 

[r16]

RAF was bombing German cities with 1000 bombers , nearly every week , Americans were getting stronger anyday and it has already been in the thread that Churchill threatened the use of chemicals . Such aerial attacks on Germany would be even worse than those with HE loads . Even when the agents were of a previous generation .

 

[Chiteng]

Well...they practiced it against everyone they could reach...



I think you know very little as well. Just from the wiki on it, its evident that Germany had every intention of using nerve agent as a weapon, but were unlucky in timing and enemy action. From the wiki:

Did they use it? If so, against whom =)

Your attribution is ignored

 

[red_elk]

Well...they practiced it against everyone they could reach...

Not exactly.
They treated Western Allied POWs in accordance with Geneva convention, their death rate was ~3.5%
Death rate of Soviet and Polish POWs in German captivity was about 60%

 

[Flying Pig]

Not exactly.
They treated Western Allied POWs in accordance with Geneva convention, their death rate was ~3.5%
Death rate of Soviet and Polish POWs in German captivity was about 60%

This is correct, although 3.5% is still one man in each platoon - unacceptable by modern standards. Of course, the Nazis thought that their Eastern neighbours were subhuman and so any laws and customs of war didn't apply to them - and these figures of course ignore the huge elephant in the room which was Japanese treatment of their PoWs.

 

[Aroddo]

why are we talking about nazis again?

 

[Old Hippy]

why are we talking about nazis again?

its just kind of hard not to... when the thread title refers to WWII and total war

 

[del62]

The term Total War relates to a countries whole (or at least the ovewhelming majority of) economy being involved in the war effort, it has nothing to do with weapons used.

 

[Flying Pig]

It's more about the country's whole economy being fair game for the war - the Germans waged total war against the British in 1940 because they considered civilians part of the war, which was not the case in 1815 - in 'civilised' war, it all happens in some corner of a foreign field and you don't get bombed in your home for being born in the wrong country.

 

[Old Hippy]

The term Total War relates to a countries whole (or at least the ovewhelming majority of) economy being involved in the war effort, it has nothing to do with weapons used.

i would say it relates more to the the attitude of command ..when the British turned to night time bombing, the US continued with day time bombing because of greater accuracy for bombing military targets, it was a deliberate moral choice

When the war began on 1 September 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland) to confine their air raids to military targets, and "under no circumstances undertake bombardment from the air of civilian populations in unfortified cities"[22] The British and French agreed to abide by the request, with the British reply undertaking to "confine bombardment to strictly military objectives upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all their opponents"

somewhere along the way, its hard to give an exact date, it just became OK to carpet fire bomb cities and nuke Hiroshima, even tho no change was made to the official policy of the US

 

[del62]

or I am trying to give is the genrally accepted definition of total war which is about mass mobilisation and the wheels of a countries economy being engaged towards that war.

here is wikis defintion

Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.

 

[Old Hippy]

or I am trying to give is the genrally accepted definition of total war which is about mass mobilisation and the wheels of a countries economy being engaged towards that war.

here is wikis defintion

Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.

so using "Hiroshima tactics for total war" dose not fall in your definition even tho they were suggested in the Korean war...

all tho nuclear weapons were not used....

In a major strike on the industrial city of Hungnam on 31 July 1950, 500 tons of ordnance was delivered through clouds by radar; the flames rose 200-300 feet into the air. The air force dropped 625 tons of bombs over North Korea on 12 August, a tonnage that would have required a fleet of 250 B-17s in the second world war. By late August B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. (5) Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B-29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm.

all the while the US was happily going through its fonzy happy days...
hardly, the complete mass mobilisation and the wheels of a countries economy being engaged towards that war
wikki might be right, but it falls far short of what total war is in reality

On 26 August I found in this same source the single entry: "fired 11 villages." (4) Pilots were told to bomb targets that they could see to avoid hitting civilians, but they frequently bombed major population centres by radar, or dumped huge amounts of napalm on secondary targets when the primary one was unavailable

http://hnn.us/articles/9245.html

This was Korea, "the limited war." The views of its architect, Curtis LeMay, serve as its epitaph. After it started, he said: "We slipped a note kind of under the door into the Pentagon and said let us go up there . . . and burn down five of the biggest towns in North Korea -- and they're not very big -- and that ought to stop it. Well, the answer to that was four or five screams -- 'You'll kill a lot of non-combatants' and 'It's too horrible.' Yet over a period of three years or so . . . we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too . . . Now, over a period of three years this is palatable, but to kill a few people to stop this from happening -- a lot of people can't stomach it." (19)

 

[r16]

one could justify long term operations by the trucks moved through cities , troops billeted , repair shops all sorts of things . There would be flak fire from the ground , planes intercepting , so no clause for undefended cities . Going for cities right from the start would have been far less defendable . The North Korean offensive in 1950 could only be stopped by fighting from the ground , it reached Pusan before enough reinforcements could reach the battle from the US . Chinese offensive of November 1950 could not be stopped by bombers alone , even when the Entire North was bombed and napalmed and where does that leave Le May ? ı have been known to be anti-LeMay for years ...

 

[MobBoss]

Did they use it? If so, against whom =)

Your attribution is ignored

Its clear they intended to use it, and probably would have if the Russians hadn't captured the factory when they did, or the war was about to end.

And I think you meant 'contribution'. Attribution doesnt make much sense in that context.

Not exactly.
They treated Western Allied POWs in accordance with Geneva convention, their death rate was ~3.5%
Death rate of Soviet and Polish POWs in German captivity was about 60%

And they also practiced unrestricted submarine warfare, and bombing campaigns; not to mention V1 and V2 rocket attacks against the enemys they could feasibly reach. Fwiw, i'm not sure I would include prisoner treatment in what is generally defined as 'unrestricted warfare'.

 

[kramerfan86]

Yea Im not sure how many definitions of total war require you to butcher all prisoners to qualify.

 

[del62]

so using "Hiroshima tactics for total war" dose not fall in your definition even tho they were suggested in the Korean war...

I think you are confusing total war and using weapons/methods of mass destruction.